BRIAN MURPHY: Welcome to the bonus episode!
CALDWELL TANNER: [crosstalk] Mmm.
JAKE HURWITZ: [crosstalk] Alright!
EMILY AXFORD: Oh, wait! I have a song! [singing] ♬ After the episode is the bonus episode! ♬
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Really good.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Do you guys know what I’m referencing?
JAKE: [crosstalk] You haven’t spoken for ten minutes! [laughs]
EMILY: [laughs] I’ve been rehearsing it under my breath.
JAKE: [crosstalk] That’s really cool.
MURPH: Yeah, you have a notebook. You read that. That’s insane.
[all laugh]
JAKE: There’s so many drafts!
[Emily & Caldwell laugh again]
MURPH: But guys, thank you for getting us up to… We’re up to four-hundred reviews and climbing. We said if we got to four-hundred reviews, we would do an episode where we answered your guys’ questions about the campaign or D&D in general.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mmm.
JAKE: We keep our promises.
MURPH: Yeah, we keep our promises, We’re good people.
EMILY: Yes.
[Caldwell laughs]
MURPH: So why don’t we— Should we just kick it off right onto a question?
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah… yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: I would love that, personally.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Ready.
MURPH: Cool, so I’ve organized some here—
JAKE: Fuck it! Episode four spoilers, here we go!
[Emily & Murph laugh]
MURPH: Yeah, we record the episodes in blocks, so I had to prep these guys before we started today not to give spoilers for things that happened.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
JAKE: And I got a good one.
[all laugh]
MURPH: Hardwon kills Denny.
[Emily & Jake laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Is this— [laughs]
EMILY: Denny comes back.
JAKE: [crosstalk] I wish. Yeah, I would never kill Denny.
[Murph laughs]
JAKE: I love Denny’s character too much.
EMILY: Turns out he was king of the bullywugs.
JAKE: Oh, that’s cool.
MURPH: [laughs again] Okay, cool. So guys, people asked us questions on the, uh…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Subreddit?
EMILY: [crosstalk] Subreddit?
MURPH: Not Another D&D Podcast subreddit—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: You can check it out at r/NotAnotherDnDPodcast. We’re on Twitter at #NaDDPod.
CALDWELL: That’s two ‘D’s.
MURPH: That’s two ‘D’s baby.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: And one ‘Pod’!
MURPH: [laughs] And one ‘Pod’!
EMILY: Yeah. Two ‘D’s up top, one ‘D’ at the end.
[Jake & Caldwell laugh]
MURPH: [crosstalk] Right.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Three collective ‘D’s.
JAKE: Someone is, like, very confused at their computer.
EMILY: [crosstalk] It’s— [laughs]
JAKE: That’s ‘NaDDPod’ with two ‘D’s — one ‘D’ at the end, though — and then an ‘A’ at the front, and then, uh…
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: — then an ‘N’ first and a ‘P’ RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE! And that’s how you spell it!
CALDWELL: Fuckin luv 2 spel.
MURPH: Dope! So we’re gonna get to as many questions as we can. If we didn’t get to your question I think we’re still gonna go on the subreddit and we’ll try to answer as many as we can.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, bitch.
MURPH: I’ll be on there; I can’t speak for these ragamuffins.
JAKE: I love that, let’s do that.
EMILY: I always read the subreddit!
MURPH: Alright! First question comes from Mike T. on Twitter. He says, “I’m curious how you all decided on which race/class you were going to be. Did you just pick the one that sounded coolest? Was there any conscious collaborative effort made to balance the party? What, if any, guidance did Murph provide?”
CALDWELL: Hmm!
EMILY: Murph provided jack-shit, um…
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] That’s r—!
EMILY: [crosstalk] I write his DM speeches for him.
MURPH: I actively encourage you guys not to play.
[Emily & Jake laugh]
CALDWELL: Uh, yeah. I texted with Murph a little bit about my character I played—
EMILY: I derailed Caldwell.
CALDWELL: Yeah, it’s true. I had initially— I was just gonna play, like, a pretty straight-up Duid. I think I was still going to do a halfling Druid, but I was going to do a Druid that was a Boy Scout. I knew I wanted to be a Boy Scout, but I was going to be—
MURPH: You already had kind of created the Green Teens.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Exactly.
MURPH: You were going to do the Green Teens, but you were going to be a Druid.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
MURPH: [crosstalk] But then Emily read—
JAKE: [crosstalk] A Druid is like a normal-sized person? What is a Druid?
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] No. [laughs]
MURPH: [crosstalk] No, no, no — a Druid’s a class. You play with a Druid.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: [crosstalk] Emily’s a Druid.
JAKE: [crosstalk] I thought you said, like… a half—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Moonshine’s a Druid.
JAKE: Oh, Moonshine’s a Druid.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: Although Moonshine is a pretty funky Druid.
JAKE: So it’s just, like, a magic person?
EMILY: Yeah—
JAKE: [crosstalk] Got it.
EMILY: —but Moonshine’s a pretty funky Druid, because she can actually deal some damage — because I was reluctant to play a Druid because I play a Druid in another campaign, and I was like, “I already play a Druid, and my Druid isn’t that powerful; I’m worried about having, like, just three people, and, like, one of them is a Druid.” But then I read about the Circle of Spores Druid, and I was like, “That’s pretty…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: And then you had to text Caldwell—
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Uh-huh. [laughs]
MURPH: — and tell him that he couldn’t be a Druid anymore.
EMILY: I floated—
JAKE: It’s— I thought you were… you’re a halfling Druid? No, you’re not a—
[Murph laughs]
CALDWELL: I’m a halfling, uh… Green—
MURPH: Paladin.
CALDWELL: Green Knight Paladin, yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Paladin?
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: Is a Paladin a race?
CALDWELL: No.
MURPH: No. A Paladin’s a class.
CALDWELL: Yeah. [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: [crosstalk] Jake, I—
JAKE: I’m learning along with the listeners! This is why—
MURPH: You’re doing a good job. Like, on the podcast you’re very entertaining—
[Jake laughs]
MURPH: —you’re playing the game pretty intelligently.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: ‘Preciate that!
MURPH: It’s amazing you don’t know anything!
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
JAKE: I’m dumb!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Stick with this character.
JAKE: Well, that’s why I chose human!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
JAKE: Because I was afraid of, like, all the spells and the potions and all the healing shit.
MURPH: [crosstalk] Well the human can still be a Wizard.
JAKE: Oh, no.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] We just, we all—
[Emily & Jake laugh]
MURPH: Your class is Fighter. You chose ‘Fighter’ because of that.
JAKE: Right. I mean, Murph gave me a lot of guidance — clearly — as anybody listening could tell.
EMILY: So… Yeah, I was gonna say: to go back to the original question, we were here when Jake chose his character race and class. He knew he wanted to be human, like Aragorn. Uh, but then—
JAKE: Mhm.
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: That’s where it came from. [laughs]
EMILY: — Murph was probing you, being like, “Well, what do you wanna do?” Like, basically seeing, like, “Oh, do you wanna be this kind of class? Do you wanna be this kind of class?” — and you were like, [imitating Jake] “I just wanna be really cool and good at stuff.”
[all laugh]
EMILY: — and then Murph was like, “Do you wanna be, like, a Champion?” — and you were like, [imitating Jake] “Yeah. A Champion.” [laughs]
[all laugh again]
JAKE: Yeah. That really is it. I just waited for buzzwords.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: Yeah, there’s a subclass of Fighter that is really the easiest class to play; which is at Level 3 you can take the Champion subclass — and all it means is that you critical hit easier, you get more attacks earlier. It’s the easiest class, and also it really plays into Hardwon’s personality, which is great.
JAKE: Yeah.
CALDWELL: It makes it very easy to be your friend, since you just—
JAKE: If it clears anything up, when I was in college my math credit was ‘Elementary School Math’ for, like, teaching major people…
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh.
JAKE: — but I hadn’t declared, so I was allowed to take that as a math credit.
[Emily & Murph laugh]
JAKE: So I just relearned, like, my multiplication tables. [laughs]
MURPH: Wow.
CALDWELL: So it’s like when you do—
JAKE: I always take the path of least resistance!
EMILY: That is so funny— Wait, were your, like, final, like, tests, like… did you have to, like, host a math class for the rest of the class?
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: Uh, the sad truth to this is that I didn’t go to my final, because I skipped everything and I got a F in the class. [laughs]
CALDWELL: Hell yeah.
EMILY: You got an F in Elementary Math! [laughs]
JAKE: That’s right.
CALDWELL: But Jake, the teachers get to look at the answers. That’s the whole point. [laughs]
JAKE: I know, it’s crazy.
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: I had a final, and I had a D in the class, and then instead of taking the final I just went home for summer early.
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Look at ‘im now!
MURPH: That is a level of not giving a fuck I wish I could achieve.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah. It was weird.
MURPH: But Caldwell, you’re— I feel like Beverly was kind of a happy accident, because you—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: — you became a Paladin as sort of a concession to Emily…
CALDWELL: Right. [laughs] Uh-huh.
MURPH: — but I think Beverly wouldn’t be as good if he wasn’t a little Paladin.
CALDWELL: No, I think making Beverly a strong boy really worked in his favor.
[Murph & Jake laugh]
EMILY: It’s so adorable.
MURPH: Would he have not been a boy? If he was a Druid?
CALDWELL: Uh…. no, I think he probably was—
MURPH: [crosstalk] You were gonna make him a little man?
CALDWELL: Uh, no… I think he was always going to be a boy. He was always gonna be a Boy Scout, but I think that by him leaning into being a strong boy, it got a little more into what I wanted him to be: which is just a little anime character.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Mmm.
EMILY: Yeah! [laughs]
CALDWELL: And by having him be, like, this nice little strong boy, he’s basically, like, he’s basically the protagonist of every shōnen anime.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: He’s basically just Deku from My Hero, but, like, since he’s a halfling, he’ll always just be a sweet little guy.
[Murph & Emily laugh]
MURPH: Okay, that brings us to another question. I kinda have these organized so we’re quasi- on-topic; that’s the DM in me. [laughs] Believe it or not, I value order, okay?
JAKE: [crosstalk] Very nice.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Wow. [laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Weird. Should we be rolling?
JAKE: We should at least be rolling for who answers the question first.
[all laugh]
MURPH: Oh, that would actually be really fun! I don’t have my dice with me.
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: I don’t have my dice with me.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Alright.
MURPH: [crosstalk] So let’s just… yeah.
JAKE: Alright, so let’s just everybody guess what they rolled.
[Emily & Murph laugh]
JAKE: Uh, I think I just got a twenty.
MURPH: Okay, wow. That’s really good.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] ‘S’weird.
EMILY: I got a twenty-five, ‘cuz I have plus-five to whatever I roll.
JAKE: Shit, that’s awesome.
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
JAKE: [crosstalk] You do the… [unintelligible crosstalk] — first.
MURPH: So, uh… theodudley from Reddit asks, “Hey, guys; my question is for everybody. Are your characters expressions of yourselves to some extent, or are you more into the idea of playing a character completely unlike your real-life self?
JAKE: I feel like I can answer for everybody, right? [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah. [laughs] Go for it.
JAKE: You’re such a good boy!
CALDWELL: [laughs] Awww!
[Emily laughs again]
JAKE: — and you literally are a Crick-elf!
[Murph & Emily laugh]
CALDWELL: Yeah, the weird thing was—
JAKE: — and I’ve been growing my beard, on purpose… [laughs] — since we started playing, I’m trying to be Hardwon.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: I did buy two pairs of overalls the other day.
[Caldwell & Jake laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Emily—
MURPH: Emily has been wearing so much overalls.
JAKE: — and eating more mushrooms.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: [tougher voice] “Hey! Don’t sell me out!” I have been eating more mushrooms!
JAKE: — and you’ve got the cats.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mhm.
EMILY: I mean, I think that when I was gonna play Moonshine, I remember having this really big debate in my head, which — when I voiced it out to Murph, it sounded insane — which is that I was like, “I think I really want her to be…” — ‘cuz a lot of the other D&D characters I play are, like, really angsty, or, like, really staunchly about something else, or you know, like… I’ve got, like, a really… — I don’t know how to describe her — a really, uh… religiously close-minded Cleric that I play…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mmm.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Wow.
EMILY: — and I wanted to play this one, like, super sweet. I was like, “Should I play a real sweetheart?” And— [laughs]
JAKE: [Scrosstalk] That’s really cool!
MURPH: You originally wanted to name her ‘Sweetie.’
EMILY: Yeah.
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Wow.
MURPH: [crosstalk] And I said, “Please!”
JAKE: I’m so glad you went with that; I can’t imagine playing with, like, anyone that doesn’t—
MURPH: You guys do have a great group dynamic, because your characters all have, y’know, character flaws and personalities, but none of you are, like… [angsty, edgy voice] — the angsty Rogue who doesn’t want to work with anyone—
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] It’s true.
MURPH: —which is always just leads to fucking— a bad game.
CALDWELL: We’re all very enthusiastic.
EMILY: Oh — I will say that is the one thing that ties all of my characters together — is that I’m VERY obsessed with party. Like, I am incapable of playing a character that’s like, [angsty, edgy voice] “I don’t know if I wanna be travelin’ around with you guys.”
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: And I’m always like, “Cool, we’re family now!”
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: — “I’ve immediately met you and you are now under my wing!”
CALDWELL: I saw a lot of comments about people waiting for the episode where I slip up and call Hardwon and Moonshine ‘Mom and Dad.’
[all laugh]
EMILY: [crosstalk] That really made me laugh too.
JAKE: Right, I mean in the first episode we became your scoutmasters.
CALDWELL: It’s .. exactly.
MURPH: You guys are pretty much his parents.
CALDWELL: Uh-huh.
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: You know what — going back to that question of the Moonshine thing — well, first off, one thing is, like: I really relate to her hospitality, I love cooking for other people, and I love, like, love gettin’ everyone together, but I also… She like, desperately does not want to be a mother, even though she loves family.
CALDWELL: Whoa.
EMILY: — and so, like, I would say that’s true about me. So I think that all the stuff with Beverly and Moonshine, it’s just like she gets to have, like, this little son without havin’ to actually do it!
CALDWELL: Yeah. You also do have a fungal entity form.
[Jake & Murph laugh]
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, that’s… that’s the other side of me.
JAKE: Well, I think that’s the fun part about the characters too, because, like, on a light-hearted level, you’re like, “Oh, this person’s a badass,” but then, like, on a deeper level, you also, like, insert a small part of you into the character that makes them so much more to play too.
EMILY & CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: Yeah, you kind of have to, right? Like, that’s kind of the only way to get invested. I think you’re either playing a version of yourself or you’re playing kind of who you want to be, in a way.
EMILY & CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
[Jake & Murph laugh]
JAKE: Hardwon, for me, is both. [laughs]
[Caldwell & Murph laugh]
EMILY: I will say—
MURPH: The insecurity, but he also does rule.
[All laugh]
EMILY: I will say: all of my characters are very interested in women. [laughs]
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: — so that’s always acting out something that I don’t act out in my day-to-day life.
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: Yeah, Caldwell — do you wanna talk about your connection to Beverly a little?
[Jake laughs again]
CALDWELL: Um… I do have— I was an Eagle Scout. I was in the Boy Scouts of America, and I do have a merit badge sash, and I like quantifiable achievement!
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: — and I do like pleasing people, and making sure people are happy and sated.
MURPH: That sounds like Beverly to me!
CALDWELL: Yup.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Very much.
MURPH: Alright. Let’s go on to another question. On the topic of the characters, Olivia Moody from Twitter asks, “How did Moonshine get PawPaw? Is he from a pedigree possum breeder, or is he a rescue possum?”
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Oh, wow, I think it’s much more one of those situations, like — if you watch that ‘cats’ documentary on YouTube — like, the cat just shows up…
CALDWELL: Oliver & Company?
MURPH: Kedi?
EMILY: Kedi, yeah!
CALDWELL: Okay.
EMILY: Um, it’s, like— the cat just shows up every day! I think it’s kind of just like PawPaw and Moonshine were, like— They just kept crossin’ paths, and then it was like, “I don’t know! Do we just team up? Okay!”
[Murph & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: I think it was like that.
MURPH: I was telling Emily that there is a MeeMaw Gump. And that is MeeMaw’s possum. And she’s a big possum.
CALDWELL: Oh!
MURPH: And, so — little peek behind the screen, but—
JAKE: [crosstalk] Ooh.
MURPH: — PawPaw is the runt of one of MeeMaw’s litters.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh, man.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Wow.
EMILY: [gasps] I didn’t even know that yet!
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: This is great; I can’t wait for us to all—
EMILY: He’s a RUNT?! Please don’t have that reflected in his stats.
[Jake & Caldwell laugh]
MURPH: No, he’s just like— He’s not… he’s—
JAKE: [crosstalk] He’s a strong runt.
MURPH: He’s not actually, like, you know— developmentally different than a different possum, but he’s maybe a little bit crazier. Maybe a little bit more grabby PawPaw.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] He didn’t get quite as nourished as a child.
CALDWELL: I can’t wait—
EMILY: Wait! And another thing is: whenever there’s PawPaw noises, it’s usually Jake.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: [laughs] It’s true.
EMILY: Jake, will you do your little PawPaw noise?
JAKE: [as PawPaw; possum noises]
[all laugh]
MURPH: When we did the shout-outs at the end of the last episode, Emily was like, “Jake has to do the PawPaw shout-outs.”
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
MURPH: I was like, “You gotta be responsible for them! It’s your possum!”
JAKE: What did you— how does your PawPaw voice go?
EMILY: Oh, I didn’t do it. I just, like… [as Moonshine; southern drawl] “PawPaw! Why are you, like, bitin’ on my leg?!”
[all laugh]
EMILY: [crosstalk] “Oh, it’s because he wants to say hi to you too!”
JAKE: I had this weird fantasy— Uh, well, not even a fantasy… but I guess more of an idea.
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] But some day when we get our—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Uhhh. No, it’s cool! I understand, you were in bed and…
JAKE: — when we get our first ad, I wanna have our coupon code be ‘PAWPAW.’
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Absolutely!
MURPH: Ohhh, that would be amazing!
CALDWELL: What a big dream!
JAKE: I know.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Oh, God.
CALDWELL: What a big dream that you had!
JAKE: One ad.
[Murph & Caldwell laugh]
JAKE: Can you imagine?
EMILY: PawPaw—
MURPH: It’s awesome that you described that as a… [laughs] — fantasy.
[all laugh]
JAKE: I have a boring life, man.
CALDWELL: It’s just Jake sitting on his porch looking at the sunset, being like, “One day.” [laughs]
EMILY: One of these days we’ll say: “Enter PAWPAW for five-percent off!”
JAKE: C’mon Squarespace!
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: I just can’t wait for everyone in our party to be dead, so that it can finally be PawPaw Adventures.
EMILY: Nuhh!
JAKE: Oh, man.
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: That is one thing that I don’t— Murph and I haven’t really come to a conclusion yet about if PawPaw will level up like an animal companion or not.
CALDWELL: I am SO close to being able to talk to PawPaw.
MURPH: You are very close to being able to talk to PawPaw, ‘cuz you guys are Level 2 right now.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: At Level 3, if Beverly takes the Green Knight subclass—
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: — the Oath of Ancients, you’ll be able to cast Speak to Animals. [laughs]
CALDWELL: You better fuckin’ believe I’m gonna do that.
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: Do you know how awful it is to be with your family at dinner, and they’re all sharing jokes with the dog, and you don’t know what they’re saying?
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Wow.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] It’s the worst. Uck.
JAKE: It’s a cool character trait.
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
JAKE: [angry voice] “I watched my dad talk to my dog growing up, and I always wondered what they were talking about!”
[Emily laughs again]
CALDWELL: It’s ‘cuz, like, every dad does talk to the dog, but, like, this dad can actually understand what the dog’s saying.
JAKE: Yeah, they had long meaningful conversations by the fire.
[Emily laughs again]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: A lot of people have been commenting on Reddit and tweeting at me, suggesting to have Amir come on and voice PawPaw.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Mmm!
[Caldwell laughs]
MURPH: And I don’t—
EMILY: But see, that makes me mad, because Jake is the voice of PawPaw!
MURPH: But even that; PawPaw—
JAKE: People have been trying to give Amir my accomplishments for years.
[all laugh]
MURPH: PawPaw is gonna talk so much. Like, soon you guys are going to be able to SPEAK to him.
EMILY: [crosstalk] That’s true.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: Amir would need to want to sit with us and play D&D for six hours at a time, several times.
CALDWELL: Uh-huh.
JAKE: [unintelligible crosstalk]
EMILY: [crosstalk] Oh!
MURPH: — and he can’t even, like, not make fun of you…
JAKE: Right, right. [laughs]
CALDWELL: Plus we already know that Amir’s gonna voice the resurrected dark dragon. [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: Right!
JAKE: [laughs] That’s right.
EMILY: I just realized: isn’t there a Druid thing that I can cast, like, Awaken — can I Awaken PawPaw at, like, a super-high level?
CALDWELL: What do you mean, “Awaken PawPaw”? [laughs] Like, shake him?
EMILY: [crosstalk] Like, give him his own…
MURPH: [crosstalk; laughs] Like, becomes more intelligent? [laughs]
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah!
JAKE: This is finally when you’re willing to become a mother; it’s like Shape of Water with you and PawPaw.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: [crosstalk] You could Awaken PawPaw!
EMILY: [crosstalk; laughs] I love PawPaw. [laughs]
CALDWELL: Wait — Emily, you could Rats of NIMH PawPaw?
EMILY: I think so!
CALDWELL: Holy shit, you could Mrs. Frisby PawPaw? Oh, yeah — do it!
EMILY: Yeah.
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: PawPaw’s gonna invent electricity! [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: Cool. Let’s do another question! This one’s from the ‘reddit from ThePrinceOfFear.
CALDWELL: LOVE Reddit.
EMILY: Ooh, terrifying!
MURPH: “How far ahead is the story planned? Is there going to be a big plot, or just a bunch of mini-arcs like The Moonstone Saga? Also, is character death a risk here?” Hmm…
EMILY: I can answer that— I’m just kidding, I have no idea.
[all laugh]
MURPH: I think about it — as far as how far ahead the story is planned — I wouldn’t consider The Moonstone Saga, like, a mini-arc. That’s just the village you guys are in right now.
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: And you guys will still be the same characters — you’ll pick up clues in Moonstone that will lead you somewhere else. So everything will be connected; it’s not just gonna be, like, “Oh, you guys do this, and then you go onto the next thing for no reason,” or you, y’know, get rid of these characters and roll new ones. It’s gonna be: Moonstone will happen, you guys will do good or you’ll do bad, and then things will happen based on that. [laughs]
CALDWELL: — and then we’ll get to decide where we go next?
MURPH: Pretty much, yeah!
CALDWELL: Oh, cool!
JAKE: I think I have two questions. One: I don’t know if you’re allowed to answer this, or if it’ll be too much behind the curtain…
MURPH: Sure.
JAKE: — but when we snuck around that, like, half-orc barbarian guard dude…
MURPH: Right.
JAKE: — in your head, are you, like: you have what’s gonna happen if we talk to that dude? Or at least enough backstory on that guy?
MURPH: Right…
JAKE: — and you have enough backstory if we just ignore him and go across the river?
MURPH: Totally.
JAKE: Are you, like, hoping for one thing or the other? What’s your thought process as we’re deciding?
MURPH: Hmm… So, with Moonstone, I have the barbarians who kind of have their own goals; I have the Green Teens quest, and then there also other things going on that haven’t happened yet on the podcast so I won’t say them, but basically everyone has their own goals and fears and things that they want, so it’s less about me being like,”Oh, if they don’t talk to this guy, I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” and it’s more like, “Okay, this guy wants to x.”
JAKE: Mhm.
MURPH: “If they stop him, he won’t do x. If they don’t stop him, maybe he will.” Or maybe he would’ve helped.
JAKE: Right.
MURPH: You know what I mean? Maybe he was tired of the other barbarians. Maybe he’s, like, more of a peace-minded druid who wants to join the other druids in Moonstone, and maybe he would’ve helped you guys.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right. That’s what he was, guys. I fuckin’ knew it.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Oh, bad!
MURPH: — or maybe he’s a bad guy. Maybe he would’ve turned into a bird; as soon as he came near you he would’ve flew off and told the other barbarians. Or maybe he was super-powerful, and you would’ve fought him, and he would’ve kicked your ass.
JAKE: — and even though you have something for no matter what we decide to do, is there ever, like, a hope in your heart? Like, “I hope they talk to this guy; this would be fun.”
MURPH: Yes. For instance, at the tavern— you can kind of influence what people do by making it more tantalizing. Like: Scoutmaster Denny, I wanted you guys to talk to him. You could’ve walked right in that bar and sat with the fishermen, which would’ve been a little bit less interesting than Scoutmaster Denny was.
JAKE: ‘Cuz we would’ve just talked about fish? [laughs]
EMILY: I don’t know, man — I could really sit through some descriptions of fantasy fish! [laughs]
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: Episode one is just us talking about fish for an hour and a half. [laughs]
CALDWELL: “Get this: tuna is called zuna.”
[all laugh]
MURPH: But I think you can, like, encourage that stuff by being like: “Well, Denny’s sitting by himself at the bar.” So he’s at the bar.
JAKE: Mhm.
MURPH: So you’re probably going to go up and order a drink, right?
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
MURPH: So then I can initiate that conversation. But there’s also— it’s encouraging people to do the most interesting thing, but ultimately they’ll kind of come up with the most interesting thing on your own.
CALDWELL: Yeah, it’s like in a video game where, like, one area is really well-lit and everywhere else is dark.
[Jake laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] Yeah.
CALDWELL: It’s like: “I guess I’ll go here…”
MURPH: You could show up to Moonstone, and it could’ve been — and I’ve certainly played games where this has happened — where it could be, like, Caldwell’s character shows up and instead of running right up to Hardwon, he instead is just like, “I don’t wanna go to the tavern because I’m a Paladin, and I don’t want to be at a place where they’re serving alcohol!”
CALDWELL: That’s true.
MURPH: — and I just have to be like, “Alright, well, he walks around…” What does he see? Well, maybe he sees this half-orc Druid that’s sitting down by the bay, you know?
CALDWELL: Oh, great.
MURPH: You still have all these things planned out.
CALDWELL: New character detail: Beverly does have a bunch of condoms that he hands out to people.
[Murph & Jake laugh]
EMILY: Ooh, hell yeah! Wait — what is a fantasy condom?
[all laugh]
JAKE: Yeah!
EMILY: What does a condom in Bahumia look like?
JAKE: Same question.
CALDWELL: Alright, well, it would be like a lamb-skin, but from, like, a fantasy animal. What’s a good, like…?
EMILY: [crosstalk] Ohh… like a griffin skin?
MURPH: [crosstalk] Like an owlbear skin? Owlbear-skin condom.
EMILY: An owlbear skin!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk; laughs] Yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Just an owlbear’s foreskin that’s been stitched up with some seagrass. [laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh.
JAKE: Just, like, possum skin? Beverly keeps on looking at PawPaw.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah. I feel like owlbear foreskins are, like, naturally elastic, so it would just work perfectly. Yeah.
[Murph laughs]
EMILY: [laughs] Yeah!
MURPH: They also have spermicide naturally-occurring in their hides.
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Ooh, yeah! The oils of their skin discourage the growth of sperm!
JAKE: [crosstalk] God, that’s hot.
EMILY: [crosstalk] So that’s now canon in Bahumia. [laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Write that down? [laughs]
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, please write that down.
MURPH: [laughs] Yeah, I’m typing as we speak.
CALDWELL: “Dear Wizards of the Coast…”
[all laugh]
MURPH: Oh, man.
CALDWELL: “Some ideas:” [laughs]
MURPH: Let’s talk about the second part of this question, because they asked, “Is character death a risk here?” — and I will say it absolutely is a risk here.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Noooo!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, it is. It is. That is why…
JAKE: [crosstalk] So that’s another warning to us.
CALDWELL: Yeah. [laughs]
JAKE: We’ve been chastised week after week! Our DM won’t stop hectoring us to stay alive!
CALDWELL: [laughs] Yeah, this is, like, after a big game you, like, go to the locker room, and, like, you get cornered by the coach.
[Jake laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] — and they’re just like, “You won this time, but those were bad fundamentals.” [laughs]
EMILY: Yeah! [laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] Yeah, we got a talking-to by Coach Taylor.
[all laugh]
JAKE: [laughs] “You’re not always gonna win when you shoot the ball up from fucking mid-court.”
[all laugh]
MURPH: Right, but— I mean, Hardwon’s had a couple close calls.
CALDWELL: Uh-huh.
EMILY: Yeah.
JAKE: Yeah. I think that what happened is the first game I was super-scared that I was dead, and then it turned out I was knocked out and everybody bailed me out—
EMILY: I will say that, like, if I had not played a lot of D&D — if I didn’t know that Murph would gladly kill one of my characters just to teach me a lesson…
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: — I would send PawPaw on, like, spy missions and, like, fight with him and stuff like that.
CALDWELL: Right.
EMILY: — but because I know that the threat of death is looming, I’m very conservative and pretty much keep him in my overall bib, which is—
MURPH: Well… yeah. I will say I don’t kill people as punishment. I’m not being unfair.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right, right. You kill as…
EMILY: [crosstalk] No, I just think that you are a very fair DM.
MURPH: Right, but I think that the podcast would be less interesting to listen to, and I think the game would be less interesting to play if there was no danger.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah!
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: That’s true. I mean, a lot of times things go— like, we have another campaign with Murph’s friends from New Jersey…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Bragging.
EMILY: — and two of the people have had to reroll new characters because one of them was turned into a werewolf, and the other one was accidentally sent to another astral plane.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: But these were all because of stupid moves on our party’s part. So it’s like, they were all very fair. It made sense. It was the right move as a DM.
CALDWELL: I have a question for Murph: if I die, can I just introduce Beverly’s secret twin, Sneverly?
[all laugh]
MURPH: No. The rule is: you have to pick a different class.
CALDWELL: Oh, okay.
MURPH: If you really, really were like, “I really just need to play Beverly’s cousin, and I need to be a Halfling Druid,” or something that was like similar to Beverly we could talk about it…
CALDWELL: [laughs] Uh-huh.
MURPH: — but I think it’s cool when people, y’know… if like, one character goes, just make a new one instead of making a junior version of the other one.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
CALDWELL: Yeah! It’s gonna be cool if one of us dies, ‘cuz then, like, we do get to have a funeral in real life with all of our listeners.
[Murph & Emily laugh]
JAKE: I would be so depressed if Hardwon Surefoot died. I wouldn’t know what to do.
EMILY: Yeah!
MURPH: It would legitimately be sad if one of the characters died.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah, but it’s sad in, like—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, I don’t even want to think about that.
JAKE: [crosstalk] I fucking ordered my hero from HeroForge!
[Murph & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: I know! [laughs]
JAKE: — and it hasn’t even arrived yet! And if it comes when I’m dead I’ll be very sad.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Aw, man. I’m sorry.
JAKE: I don’t think I could handle that.
MURPH: But I think consequences is what makes the game so exciting. So the fact that you failed at that bullywug call and the whole camp was alerted…
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: — the next time you do something like that and you succeed, you guys will flip the fuck out!
CALDWELL: It’s true!
MURPH: And the listeners will be so happy, as opposed to—
JAKE: Right. And it will be more fun when we’re, like, talking about, like, “Should we try this again?” “Fuck it!” Y’know? [laughs]
CALDWELL: — and I am going to try it, again and again and again.
JAKE: That’s right!
EMILY: So this is what we were talking about almost a little bit before we started recording: which is that when I re-listened to the podcast, I had thought, like, “Oh, man, that was such a good idea of Caldwell to make that mating call. That was such a good call.”
[Murph & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: [laughs] — and then I re-listened to the podcast, and it was me who said to make the mating call… [laughs]
[Jake & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: — and I was so ashamed! [laughs]
[Caldwell laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] It was also funny, because Jake brought up— he’s like, “Couldn’t we just snap some twigs?”
EMILY: [laughs] Yeah! [laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] — and I was thinking the same— as you guys were like, “We need to lure him out with a sound,” in my head I’m like, “Okay, they’re gonna, y’know, make some sounds in the woods like they’re an animal or something…”
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] Yeah, fuck-noises!
JAKE: Yeah.
MURPH: “— so he goes and looks and investigates himself…”
JAKE: But there’s something that’s so funny to me — like, just pure comedy — about, like, being steamrolled by a dumber idea. [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah. [laughs] Yes, I agree. Absolutely.
JAKE: [laughs] Like, “The tide has turned—”, like, “No, no, no! We’re doing a mating call!” [laughs; unintelligible crosstalk]
CALDWELL: Right.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: And I never wanna discourage you guys from doing those bold moves, but I think it’s fun to kind of balance the major victories in those moments, and the major failures.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: Right.
EMILY: But here’s the thing, though: that would’ve been such a fucking awesome moment if little Bev has just let out a super-convincing female bullywug call. [laughs]
CALDWELL: Absolutely. Yeah!
JAKE: Yeah. You know what that makes me think of, is when you walked into the Temple of Melora…
EMILY: Uh-huh.
JAKE: — and you’re like, “Can I sing a song?” — and Murph was like, “Fine. Roll it,” and you rolled a fucking twenty or an eighteen or something… [laughs]
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: — and it was just, like…
MURPH: — brilliant.
JAKE: Yeah! [laughs]
CALDWELL: Top 40 Hit.
JAKE: Yeah, it’s like: yeah, we can’t do anything about it, it’s an amazing song.
[all laugh]
JAKE: [laughs] You win this round.
MURPH: — and you had a plus-six to Deception, right?
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: You had a plus-six to Deception, I gave you Advantage; you had to get a twenty, but you had two chances — you had to roll two die to roll a fourteen or higher — so that’s still pretty good odds.
CALDWELL: I got really close, yeah.
MURPH: And I will say, as far as, like, character death or consequences or anything like that, I would never have, y’know: you do that and all of a sudden spears come out of everywhere and you fight thirty bullywugs.
CALDWELL: [laughs] Right.
MURPH: It’s like: the scouting party was alerted, they came after you guys. Now that, after that happened, you guys have made another crazy decision to run towards the camp, now you might die.
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] Know that if we die, it will be because we’ve committed some grave sin.
[all laugh]
MURPH: You have to commit— yeah, it’s kind of like a two-strike rule, basically.
CALDWELL: Uh-huh.
MURPH: [laughs] You can do one thing really stupid, consequences will happen. If then, after that — while you’re barely alive from that consequence — you do something stupid again?
JAKE: [crosstalk] Learning no lessons. [laughs]
MURPH: — then you might die. Let’s get to another question.
EMILY: Wait— I also wanna say one thing since we’re talking about that, ‘cuz I just feel like I really fudged it. I mean, I stand by the decision, but I also had no clue that the gong was to alert other bullywugs.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah, which made it—
EMILY: I thought, “Oh, that’s a ritualistic gong.”
JAKE: Yeah.
EMILY: ”That’s gonna be for when they—“ [laughs; unintelligible crosstalk]
JAKE: It made a lot of sense in retrospect, but it did not occur to us at all.
EMILY: No!
MURPH: That’s very funny, because it just goes to show: nothing ever goes the way you think it’s gonna go. [laughs]
EMILY: [crosstalk] You set it up perfectly as a DM! [laughs]
MURPH: I was like, “They’ll see this guy and they’ll know that they need to sneak up to him and get him before he rings the gong.”
CALDWELL: [laughs] We thought, “Oh, cool! He has a gong! He must be in a band!”
MURPH: Yeah! [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: Yeah, right, I thought that the dude was, like, there for the ritual, waiting for the kids to be brought to him.
[Murph laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah! [laughs]
EMILY: Yeah! That’s what I thought, too! I was like, “That gong’s gonna get rung, and then they’re going to eat the kids!”
JAKE: That’s what I thought, too. I thought the gong started the ritual.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] So wrong on the gong.
JAKE: The wrong-gong.
EMILY: Wrong-gong!
MURPH: So some of these questions were a little bit longer, but we shortened them a little bit just so we could get to more questions. But JustClaire on Reddit asked, “Murph-specific: how worried are you that story elements you spend minutes, hours, days planning will just get skipped by the party entirely?”
[Caldwell laughs]
MURPH: “How much would you try to coax them into doing a specific thing without using too heavy a hand?”
JAKE: Oh! I sort of asked this question.
EMILY: Yeah!
MURPH: I think we kind of talked about this…
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: — but I kind of just set up… y’know, you lay out breadcrumbs. You basically try to give them, like, three really great choices, and you hope that they go down one of those paths — and usually people do.
[Jake laughs]
MURPH: Sometimes you’ll get somebody that’ll just be like, “I want to get a haircut,” and you’ll be like, ‘Fuck. Now I have to just pull a barber character out of my ass.”
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, like, why lob that shit?
JAKE: I feel like that’s the person that when a magician is like, “Pick a card, any card,” they, like, try to pick one from the bottom, like, just to fuck up the trick. [laughs]
MURPH: Yeah! [laughs] Right.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah, they, like, take the bowtie off the magician.
JAKE: Right.
MURPH: I mean, I guess I’ll ask you guys: do you guys kinda feel like you can do anything?
CALDWELL: Almost to a scary degree.
[Murph laughs]
EMILY: Yes.
JAKE: I feel like I can do anything, but also… just, I think all of us want to go on the coolest adventure…
EMILY & CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] — and I think we also all like being together. Like, I just want to, like—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] That’s like—
EMILY: I always, like, just wanna be part of the group and make sure everyone’s safe.
CALDWELL: Mhm.
EMILY: So that is a good directive to have, in terms of, like— I’m not going to be like, “I jump off the cliff!” [laughs]
MURPH: Right.
CALDWELL: Right, yeah.
JAKE: I guess I can imagine people playing like that, but it would not be fun, to be honest.
EMILY: Yeah. I also never— aren’t there, like, really annoying people who are, like, basically… what do they call them? ‘Murder hobos’ or something like that?
MURPH: [laughs] Yeah. ‘Murder hobos’ are people who just ride into town and just kill whoever disagrees with them or is rude to them or anything like that, and they kind of don’t do quests and just run into cities and just— it becomes GTA essentially.
JAKE: Yeah, yeah.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: I don’t get that.
MURPH: Right?
EMILY: When I play video games, I want to open every single chest and armoire and drawer that I possibly can; I want to talk to every NPC that I can — and that’s, like, how I like to play D&D, too.
CALDWELL: Yeah. I want to know, Murph: is there, like, one tavern we can go to where if we, like, find a secret wall, there’s, like, a black void space and there’s gonna be a treasure chest there like in Final Fantasy?
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] There are treasures in secret places.
CALDWELL & EMILY: [crosstalk] What!?
JAKE: [crosstalk] Ooh!
MURPH: I do have plans.
CALDWELL: Treasures abound?
MURPH: [laughs] I’m not encouraging you guys to, like, show up—
JAKE: Fuck the kids! Fuck the kids, were finding the treasure!
MURPH: [crosstalk] There’s always—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Fuck the kiiids! [laughs] We’re heading back to Moonstone and I’m looking under that Druid! I bet you he’s sitting on a bed of treasure!
JAKE: Oh, shit! [laughs] He’s sitting on a diamond!
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
MURPH: There’s always, y’know, hints to things — like, the big things.
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: So you would never— if you, for instance, went into the tavern…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Like the thing glowing in the bay is a fucking jewel!?
CALDWELL: What!?
EMILY: [crosstalk; gasps] Let’s go back to Moonstone…
MURPH: [crosstalk] You guys already know what the thing glowing in the bay is.
JAKE: [crosstalk] It’s a stone!
EMILY: Yeah! Let’s go get that Moon Stone!
MURPH: No, it’s a trident! It’s, like, a staff.
CALDWELL: It’s a trident, yeah.
EMILY: Let’s go get that trident!
JAKE: [crosstalk] We should go get that trident.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] We should definitely get it, yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, we’re murderhobos now! [laughs]
MURPH: This is definitely murderhobo behaviour.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah, I know! That’s what I’m saying!
MURPH: [crosstalk] You’re just gonna steal the…
EMILY: Yeah!
CALDWELL: Oh, yeah.
EMILY: Well, you’ve turned us into murderhobos.
CALDWELL: No, this will be fun; we’ll steal it, but then, like, we’ll see all the fishermen looking sad, and we’ll be like, “Okay…” We’ll have a ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment.
JAKE: Yeah.
EMILY: What if we steal it, then give it to the fishermen?
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh!
JAKE: That’s cool. Then they just put it back in the lake! [laughs]
MURPH: [crosstalk] The fishermen—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah. Right.
EMILY: [crosstalk] They’re like, “Please… we benefit from this being here!” [laughs] Just keep stealing it and then giving it to them!
JAKE: [crosstalk; laughs] They don’t know what to do. “Uh… oh, thank you, great heroes…”
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: Yeah, this is kind of an example of, like, how people can play in different ways, right?
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: So if you guys were, y’know— if you guys showed up to this town and you were like, “Wait, there’s a staff at the bottom of the water? I wanna go out and I wanna try to find it,” there’s a way that you guys could maybe get down there and get it, but then you might have to fight Shae or something. Like, the Druids of the town.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh, whoa.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Oh, my God, I’ll never fight her!
MURPH: [crosstalk] You’d get into… And then you guys would be bad guys, you know what I mean?
JAKE: Right.
EMILY: I just want to be under her Downward Dog.
[Jake & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: [laughs] I just want her to go from Downward Dog to Plank, giving me little kisses along the way. [laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Oh, man. Just see her go through the— [unintelligible crosstalk]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] I just want her to cook me dinner. [laughs]
EMILY: [laughs] Ooh, yeah!
MURPH: Uh… curbanski13 from Reddit asks: “Caldwell—“
JAKE: [crosstalk] Dope.
MURPH: “— do you come up with Bev’s pledges/creeds on the spot, or do you think of them before and recite them in the story as it fits them? [laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] That’s giving me so much credit. No; I, like, write them out in advance…
[Jake laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] Which is arguably more impressive!
EMILY: I think that’s cooler, man. I do.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: Alright. I do, like… yeah. I try to come up with one or so every couple episodes, and I do write them out in Google Docs, and then before we start I write them out on a green notecard so that I— [laughs; unintelligible crosstalk]
EMILY: [crosstalk] I’ve seen you!
MURPH: [crosstalk] Do you remember the Green Teen’s Creed?
CALDWELL: Oh, I don’t know if I could recite it off the top of my head. “A Green Teen is never mean,” uh… “Something something something light unseen…”
MURPH: [crosstalk] “Our something…? Our hearts serene?”
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: “To glean the sheen of a light unseen?” Something like that?
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] There it is! Wow, you’re a better Green Teen than I am.
[Murph laughs]
EMILY: [crosstalk] I’m kinda inspired by that. Now I think that Moonshine is gonna start referencing Crick songs.
JAKE: I know! I… I just wanna… One day I want to show up here with notecards. I think that’s my goal.
[all laugh]
JAKE: I wanna have a fuckin’ folder.
EMILY: [laughs] Jake, maybe your notecards can just have, like, your abilities on it…? [laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] Maybe you can just your Action Surge some time. Or your Second Wind.
JAKE: I don’t know, people have potions for me.
[all laugh]
MURPH: Oh, my God. One day, perhaps, Hardwon will return to Irondeep and we’ll get to meet all his… y’know, his foster parents and his…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Oh, my God, I love it. His family and all that. His first girlfriend.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] It’s so fun that we have, like, three homes—
[Murph laughs]
EMILY: Oh, wait— you’re straight-up orphaned. You might meet your actual parents some day!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah!
JAKE: Oh, that’d be cool! I was left on that base of the mountain.
EMILY: Do you think that Hardwon’s first girlfriend was a dwarf?
JAKE: I think that he’s only ever fucked dwarves.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yo! That’s awesome; he’s fucked women with beards! That’s awesome.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Whoa!
JAKE: Right! And I haven’t quite decided in my head if I, like— I guess he’s already expressed that your character’s hot, so maybe he thinks that all races are hot.
EMILY: [crosstalk] He could just think a whole bunch— I mean, that’s the fun part about D&D: is you can think a bunch of different… [laughs] —creatures are hot.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah!
JAKE: Like, “Druids are hot, but nothing’s hotter than a dwarf.” [laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] Yeah, you feel like—
EMILY: [laughs] “Druids are hot, but their faces are so… hngh… smooth! It’s gross; it’s like a kitchen counter!”
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah!
MURPH: Hardwon just has this buried childhood crush that he can’t get over that’s just a beautiful dwarf woman.
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: Yeah. His first love. The one that broke his heart. [laughs]
CALDWELL: I just can’t wait for the very awkward dinner that we all have at my house. [laughs]
EMILY: [crosstalk] Ohh!
MURPH: [laughs] This is a case where I am actually gonna type out Hardwon’s lost dwarf love.
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: [laughs] I’m so excited.
CALDWELL: Some nuzzling into, like, her beard when you’re sleeping, yeah.
JAKE: Yeah. [laughs] Our beards entwined.
EMILY: Oh! [laughs]
CALDWELL: Ah! Nothing’s purer than that!
EMILY: Whoa.
JAKE: It is. It’s beautiful.
EMILY: New relationship goals!
CALDWELL: Yeah!
JAKE: Braid eachother’s beards…
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
MURPH: Another question from Reddit; lake-griffy asks— this person asked a few questions, so I’ll just do a couple of them because one of them’s just real quick. A lot of people have actually asked this: how we generated our ability scores — whether we did the standard array where we use the preset numbers, or if we rolled for them — we rolled for them.
EMILY: [crosstalk] We rolled ‘em!
JAKE: [crosstalk] We rolled a bunch of dice!
CALDWELL: [unintelligble crosstalk]
EMILY: We rolled ‘em.
MURPH: We rolled them, but I think the total of the basic numbers that they give you is seventy-two, so I try to make sure it’s not too much in either direction — and I remember when Jake first rolled Hardwon, your total was like ninety-five or something!
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: It was really high, right?
EMILY: Whoa…
MURPH: You had, like… yeah! You had, like… three eighteens or something? Which is insane.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] You used up—
MURPH: So we literally took, like, five points off of some of your stats.
JAKE: Which, in retrospect, I’m very pissed about. [laughs]
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: Now that I’ve been knocked out twice and almost died…
MURPH: You would’ve had, like, a plus-four in Wisdom, which would’ve been insane for Hardwon.
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: [laughs] Oh, no — so it’s good that we took that away, actually.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
[Emily laughs again]
MURPH: I think, ultimately—
JAKE: My character should be dumb, because it’s hard for me to play smart without being that. [laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mhm. Mhm.
EMILY: [laughs] That is true. Actually, I’ve never played a character who’s, like, super-smart, because I just don’t even… like, the idea of playing a character who’s really well-spoken and convincing — like, “Oh, I have to roleplay that? I can’t do that.”
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right. [laughs]
CALDWELL: [laughs] Yeah.
MURPH: I’ll also say: Hardwon’s not dumb, though, because…
EMILY: [crosstalk] True! True!
MURPH: — you’re specifically playing a character that’s kind of the sensible one.
JAKE: Right.
MURPH: Like, Moonshine and Beverly always wanna do crazy stuff.
CALDWELL: Right.
JAKE: I think that definitely helps from, like, me not knowing too much about the world, so I’m drawing from your story to, like… to make decisions.
CALDWELL: And dwarves are steadfast and stubborn, so it makes sense!
MURPH: [crosstalk] Yeah!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Cool. I love it.
MURPH: Second part of lake-griffy’s question was—
EMILY: You’re like Aragorn with a side of Gimli! [laughs]
CALDWELL: Oh! [laughs]
JAKE: Oh, my God. The perfect man! Aragorn with Gimli’s beard!
MURPH: [laughs] It kind of is what’s going on here.
EMILY: [laughs] Yeah!
JAKE: [laughs] All I’d ever want.
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
MURPH: lake-griffy also asked: “What surprised you most when you played D&D for the first time?”
[beat]
CALDWELL: Is that for all of us, or for Jake?
MURPH: That’s for all of you, I guess!
CALDWELL: Hmm…
EMILY: I’ll say the first time I ever played D&D, it’s, like… the very first moment when you just say, “Okay, I do this,” and in your mind you’re like, “Is anyone gonna stop me from doing this?”
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Like, and you can just do it? That’s the moment that either you get hooked or you aren’t into D&D.
MURPH: Mm.
CALDWELL: I think, for me, it was, like, when I played D&D and then I drew everyone’s character and everyone respected me for having a skill.
[all laugh]
JAKE: That’s beautiful.
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
MURPH: So, Jake — your first time playing D&D was literally the first episode of this podcast.
JAKE: Yeah. I mean, I think a couple things surprised me—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] — and he’s only gettin’ worse! [laughs]
[Jake & Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Dyin’ more and more! [laughs]
JAKE: I feel like… I kind of knew I was gonna like it, but I did not anticipate, like, the pure unbridled joy that’s associated with it.
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: It’s, like, addicting!
EMILY: Yeah.
JAKE: There was that night where our plan was to play for, like, two hours— or two games…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: Yeah, we were gonna get a session or two in for an episode.
JAKE: — and we just, like, basically played ‘til midnight, and after we were done playing we were just, like, downstairs, talking about what we were gonna do next time!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah! That was— when that night ended, I was kinda like, “[sighs]…” Like, “One more?” [laughs] “Maybe we should do one more!”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah!
JAKE: Yeah, I would’ve done one more!
EMILY: Yeah.
JAKE: I probably would’ve done it until the morning.
EMILY: Yeah!
CALDWELL: Fuck! That was a good-ass night! We ate cheeseburgers, too!
JAKE: It was a great night! Fuck! It was a great night!
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: EVERY OTHER DAY SUCKS, OKAY?
[Emily laughs again]
JAKE: I think another thing that surprised me, even though I still don’t get a lot of it — it was surprisingly easy to, like… fall into step. Especially playing with you guys, since you know what you’re doing.
CALDWELL: Mhm.
MURPH: Right! I think that, y’know — and I’ve seen a lot of people Tweeting about this or posting on the ‘reddit, people asking how to play — you just have to play. Like, you just kinda pick it up as you go along.
CALDWELL & JAKE: Mhm.
EMILY: Yeah!
MURPH: And the rules — especially as a player — the rules really aren’t that complicated. As a ‘caster it gets a little bit more difficult.
JAKE: Right.
EMILY: But even as a DM, it’s like, “Yeah, you’ll make mistakes… and only you will know your mistakes,” kind of. Y’know?
[Caldwell & Jake laugh]
MURPH: Right! You just need a basic understanding of the rules. You don’t need to—
JAKE: And you listen to our— like, everybody listening right now listens to the show, probably. It’s not, like, a tightly-scripted, immaculate thing. Like, you can discuss— [laughs]
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah. [laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] No, right! And Murph lies a lot.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: I’m a born liar!
JAKE: You’re allowed to discuss things and ask questions…
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: — and you guys have played forever, and you still ask, like, “Oh, what do I add to that?” or “Which dice do I roll for that part of the spell?”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh, yeah. And part of—
EMILY: It is— best description I’ve heard of it is ‘collective storytelling’. So, like, if you were like, “Oh, I wanna DM, but, like, I’m scared I don’t know all the rules,” yeah — like, you don’t have to. You guys— you as a group can kinda make up the rules to a certain extent. There’s malleability within the rules.
MURPH: [crosstalk] Yeah. Yeah.
CALDWELL: You can do ‘house rules’ a little bit, sure.
EMILY: Yeah.
MURPH: Yeah, and then I think as a DM you also learn: once you learn the basic rules, you can kinda apply that to everything. Like when Beverly decided to use the snake fang to stab the frog.
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: You just have to take a second and kind of think; you have to be like, “Well, this is something I’m gonna have to pull out of my ass, but okay. Now let’s think about it:”
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
MURPH: “It’s a fang, so it’ll work like a dagger. What’s a dagger? It’s a d4 plus your modifier.”
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: So that’s how that works. “Plus it would also do, probably, some Poison damage.” So I gave him a d6 of Poison damage.
JAKE: Yeah.
CALDWELL: Mhm.
MURPH: And it’s, y’know— it’s balanced and stuff.
EMILY: Right.
MURPH: Caldwell gets to feel like he improvised something cool…
[all laugh]
MURPH: [crosstalk] Which he did! Which he did!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Caldwell gets… yup!
JAKE: [crosstalk] It was cool! It was cool, it was dangerous!
EMILY: You bitch-slapped someone with that!
MURPH: He did bitch-slap someone with a fang, which is pretty dope.
JAKE: [unintelligible crosstalk]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah.
EMILY: I will say, though, that’s also one of the fun things about playing is, like… maybe it’s because I often play with Murph as my DM so it’s, like, kind of, like, my husband, so I have, like, a bit of, like, that—
CALDWELL: [laughs] A little bit!
EMILY: — but it’s, like, fun to throw stuff at you!
MURPH: [laughs] I think Caldwell also has that. Just from doing 8-Bit Book Club and stuff together.
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Yeah!
MURPH: I think you guys are my rebellious children…
CALDWELL: Yeah.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: — and, weirdly enough, Jake is probably the good boy.
JAKE: Yeah!
EMILY: No, but he’ll get there, though.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah, that’s true.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh. Yeah — Jake’s gonna join the Nasty Boy School, don’t worry.
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: But that’s always the fun part, to be like, “I wanna do this,” and then seeing, like, the gears work in your head where you’re like, “Okay, well… you’d have to roll… I’ll give it to you if you can roll…” like, “That’s gonna be, like, a DC19 Bluff check,” or something like that. I like that.
MURPH: Right.
CALDWELL: Being a DM is absolutely just like being a dad, where you have to, like, bargain with your children, where like, “If you do your chores, I’ll give you this treat,” and for us, the treats are, like, getting to do something cool if we do a good enough roll. [laughs]
MURPH: [crosstalk] Yeah!
[all laugh]
JAKE: Yeah, I mean… we’re very lucky that you’re willing to do this.
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
MURPH: Yeah, it’s also— we were talking before about, like, consequences and everything, and I think kind of the way I think about it is that ‘your players are as badass as, like, Legolas, but they’re not Bugs Bunny.’ You know what I mean?
CALDWELL: Mm.
JAKE: Yeah.
MURPH: So you can’t do completely insane shit that breaks the world and makes it so there’s no consequences, but you could ride a shield down some stairs and try to crash through people.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: That’s something you could do!
JAKE: [crosstalk] Legolas rules!
EMILY: But also, I like that loophole — one of the beautiful loopholes in D&D is that, like, a nat20, like, bumps you up.
CALDWELL: Oh, yeah.
EMILY: It’s not like you go from nineteen to twenty. Like, a nat20 will let you do shit that you normally could not do.
CALDWELL: Yeah, you do ‘Michael Jordan-long-arm’ dunks.
EMILY: Yeah! So that’s when you get— I feel like—
JAKE: [crosstalk; laughs] So it’s Michael Jordan in Space Jam, not Bugs Bunny in Space Jam.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MURPH: [crosstalk] Well, a nat20 isn’t—
EMILY: I feel like a nat20 is, like, your ‘Bugs Bunny moment’, almost.
MURPH: No! No, nat20–
EMILY: It’s not; obviously you couldn’t do something physically insane that, like, defied the laws of physics…
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: — but I think that, like, you get to do something that your character couldn’t do otherwise.
CALDWELL: I will say that making a toad fall in love with you is pretty Bugs Bunny as far as things go.
[all laugh]
MURPH: Well, no! That’s the thing, right? If you were like, “I want to seduce this bullywug…”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: — and you rolled a twenty, that’s… it’s not gonna work, no matter what.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah. True, true.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Should’ve done that, yeah. Right.
MURPH: [crosstalk] That’s not gonna work, no matter what. A mating call, on the other hand…
CALDWELL: Mhm?
MURPH: If you rolled a nat20 on a mating call, then you just did a fucking brilliant mating call and this bullywug thinks that there’s another bullywug out in the swamp.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: You can get the bullywug to jerk off.
[all laugh]
JAKE: — but you can’t get him to—
EMILY: [crosstalk] That’s what I’m saying! That’s my point, is I do feel like you would get the bullywug to jerk off!
CALDWELL: Uh-huh. [laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk; laughs] With a nat20–
MURPH: [crosstalk] Right. I’ll give you a handjob, but I’m not gonna blow you.
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] That’s exactly how this goes.
JAKE: That’s the difference between a nineteen and a twenty, folks.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: Yeah, but those were from lake-griffy. I also want to thank lake-griffy, because lake-griffy has been answering people’s questions on the ‘reddit who want to be DMs and stuff.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Aw!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Ah, about D&D! Cool as hell!
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah!
MURPH: I think that’s a very valuable part of this little community that we have so far; I really want to be able to encourage more people to DM, so I really appreciate your work.
MURPH: Let’s see here… somebody asked— now I realize these are a lot of DM questions…
JAKE: [crosstalk] That’s fine; answer ‘em!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] That’s okay!
EMILY: [crosstalk] That’s fine!
MURPH: — but we can all kind of talk about it. Somebody said, “If/when you do another campaign, will you switch up who will be the DM?”
CALDWELL: Oh!
JAKE: Fuck it, I’ll do it!
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: Thank you.
EMILY: I have been vaguely interested, however: I have many hobbies, and I see the way that being a DM has taken over Murph’s life…
[Caldwell & Jake laugh]
EMILY: — and I don’t know that I would have the time for it. I sometimes wonder.
CALDWELL: I DM, like, a… I wouldn’t call it DMing, but I run, like, a vague campaign for Drawfee called Drawga — which is like a drawing-based version of Dungeons & Dragons where instead of rolling dice, you essentially just, like, draw what you want to do — and I really enjoy doing that, so I could definitely be tempted to try that out, but I also am like Emily and have a lot going on, so yeah. [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: [laughs] I would… I mean — obviously, no, I could not DM for a very, very long time…
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: — but I will say that it would be very fun to play with you as a person that—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh!
MURPH: We should do bonus episodes, maybe…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Hey!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Oh! Where one of us—
MURPH: [crosstalk] — where we do one-shots where you guys DM!
EMILY: I would definitely DM a one-shot! That’s be fun as hell.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh! That would be fun
JAKE: [crosstalk] That would be super cool, ‘cuz that’d be fun to play with Murph, just as, like, you having PawPaw or your own version of it.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah! [laughs]
MURPH: [laughs] Yeah, it is interesting when you’re doing something like this, because the dynamic would kind of change completely.
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: And, so, for us to all play together — and let’s say that we do a full campaign that lasts a couple years and everybody gets up to Level 20 and there’s some big, epic boss fight, and you guys save the world or whatever, and we’ve done, y’know, hundreds of episodes together or something — to then completely change it seems kind of crazy.
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah!
MURPH: But I— y’know. I think we could also experiment with it.
JAKE: Yeah?
EMILY: I feel like an interesting question here is: Murph, you play multiple characters, but you also DM multiple campaigns. Which do you prefer? Or is that, like, not even… is it not about that?
MURPH: I think I kind of… I prefer DMing, but I feel like it’s only possible to give your heart and soul to, like, one campaign.
CALDWELL: Hmm…
MURPH: Like, when I’m DMing— now that I’m DMing this, our kind of New Jersey crew is suffering.
CALDWELL: Oh, no!
JAKE: Thank God I’m not suffering.
[all laugh]
JAKE: Take that, New Jersey!
[Caldwell & Emily laugh again]
CALDWELL: Do they know?
MURPH: I—… yes.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Okay.
MURPH: Because we haven’t been playing as often, and, y’know, also: when it’s not being recorded—
CALDWELL: Right.
MURPH: — you also don’t need to be quite as consistent, so you can be like…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right. The pressure’s not there.
MURPH: “I have kinda a general idea of what’s going here…”
EMILY & CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: — and then I can shoot from the hip a bit.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Absolutely.
MURPH: Whereas, when we’re all playing together — Moonstone? I know it like the back of my hand.
[Caldwell laughs]
MURPH: So you guys, you guys can say—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Whoa.
MURPH: “I wanna go try talk to this person,” or “I wanna go find this,” or something.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: I will have an answer for that, and that’s a lot of work—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] It’s true.
MURPH: — to, like, know the…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] I do wanna—
EMILY: Wait — this is fun; I wanna ask about Moonstone.
CALDWELL: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: Is there a brothel in Moonstone?
MURPH: There’s not a brothel in Moonstone.
CALDWELL: Is there an ice cream store?
MURPH: There is not an ice cream store.
CALDWELL: Fuck!
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: How many restaurants are there in Moonstone?
CALDWELL: Yeah, that’s a good question.
MURPH: There’s not… there’s The Hungry Trout Inn and Tavern, and there is another, like, smaller inn, where you can get food at.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Hrm…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Is there an Eggslut?
MURPH: It’s a very, very small village.
EMILY: What kind of food?
MURPH: [crosstalk] It’s mostly fish.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah, do they have coffee in Bahumia?
MURPH: They have coffee, yeah.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Whaaat?
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] No—
JAKE: Can I get a flat white?
[Emily laughs again]
MURPH: [laughs] Yeah, just go up to Mishka and order—
[all laugh]
MURPH: — order a tea. A green tea. Order a green tea.
JAKE: [crosstalk] A complicated latte.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] No Eggslut though?
JAKE: It’s like when I asked her if I… her largest beer.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
[Emily laughs again]
MURPH: But somebody asked a question that is kind of interesting and perhaps we can all weigh in.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: Somebody said— this is CultOfTheHelixFossil.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Okay.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Whoa.
MURPH: [crosstalk; laughs] Great name from Reddit—
CALDWELL: Little TwitchPlaysPokémon throwback.
MURPH: — said that they’re DMing right now, and, “We’ve had some issue with characters not getting along. Players work together, but personality types of characters clash making me worried that one character is going to end up just killing another and ending the campaign.”
EMILY: Whoa.
MURPH: “Without metagaming too much, how do you or would you handle infighting among the party?”
EMILY: [gasps]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Hmm.
MURPH: “How do you plan to make sure this party stays as a party rather than just disbanding?”
JAKE: [crosstalk] Damn.
EMILY: This is crazy shit! I will say that there was one session for one campaign that me and Murph are in — but Murph does not DM it — and… things got tense, and we had to, like, text each other afterwards to be like, “Hey, uh…”
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: “We’re all cool, right…?”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Whoa.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Damn.
MURPH: Well, I think that’s the key. That’s the key, right, is, like, talking to the other players. So I would encourage this—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh.
MURPH: I would encourage this person, uh… [laughs] CultOfTheHelixFossil, to talk to your players.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: You guys don’t feel like… Do you guys think that there’s gonna be big tension with like, Hardwon and Moonshine and…
EMILY: [crosstalk] I cannot imagine—
JAKE: [crosstalk] It really doesn’t seem like it.
MURPH: [crosstalk] — Beverly in the future?
EMILY: I cannot imagine a world where any of my D&D characters, like, doesn’t like another.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] I mean—
JAKE: Right. This is fun to play—
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: I can’t quite imagine, like, sitting here, rolling dice, and being in a bad mood…
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
JAKE: — ‘cuz someone’s been mean to my human raised by dwarves.
[Emily laughs again]
CALDWELL: Why— I think that, like… I mean, again: by the end of the day it’s about telling a story, and, like… any good story needs a little conflict. So, like—
MURPH: [crosstalk] Right.
CALDWELL: I think that in and of itself can be fun to kind of, like—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Mhm. Oh, yeah!
CALDWELL: — inject that conflict…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: But I—, yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna get, like, mad at each other. And I think, like, if you can find a way for that conflict to be fun… It seems like this group is just kind of, like, roadblocking each other a little bit.
MURPH: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: Yeah, that’s what I wonder. I would maybe encourage the DM to, like, kinda reach out to people individually or, like, to try to figure out, like, “Oh, is this person mad because they feel like they’re trying to make a move…”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: “— and then this other person is, like, railroading it?” In which case you could reach out to the other person and be like…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: “You know, like, maybe—”
JAKE: It’s like DMing life, in addition to the game.
CALDWELL: Yeah. [laughs]
EMILY: Yeah!
MURPH: Yeah. Well, kind of, like, the classic D&D problem is the Paladin versus the Rogue, right?
CALDWELL: Right.
EMILY: Yeah.
MURPH: Because sometimes you have somebody who wants to play, and they wanna be a hero. They wanna do the good stuff, and they wanna conquer all the quests, and save people and stuff. And then you have the other people that just wanna do whatever they want. So, for instance, it could cause infighting if you guys are in that bar in the first episode, and you guys are fighting the barbarians and stuff, and then somebody in the party is like, “Let’s kill Mishka and steal whatever’s behind the bar.”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
MURPH: It’s like, “That’s fucked up.”
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: I think that would piss me off as a player.
CALDWELL: Yeah. Or if one of them tried to smoke weed.
[all laugh]
EMILY: Oh, my gosh!
JAKE: You just have to remind everybody that Aragorn was once Strider, you know?
EMILY: Yeah.
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: Like, he was wandering through Middle-earth alone…
CALDWELL: That’s so true.
JAKE: — and he didn’t rise to his rightful throne until he partnered with Legolas and Gimli and Frodo and Samwise.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah. Pippin… yeah.
EMILY: — until he learned how to work as a team.
JAKE: Mhm!
EMILY: I actually think that that is — just to be serious for a second — I think that is the nice thing about D&D, is that it does… it kind of, like, teaches you. Gets you out of the mindset of, like, “I’m the hero of this story, I’m the main character.”
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: And it’s like everyone’s involved.
CALDWELL: It’s communication skills.
JAKE: Absolutely.
MURPH: Right.
JAKE: Another thing that gets you out of ‘I’m the hero of the story’ mindset is being knocked out.
[Jake & Emily laugh]
CALDWELL: Yeah. A lot.
JAKE: And you’re like, [high-pitched] “Help me with your potion!”
EMILY: Ahh.
CALDWELL: I think another solution might be to just, like, roast those two members in a separate group chat.
EMILY: Ooh, yeah.
[Jake & Murph laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Just like—
MURPH: [crosstalk] Real passive-aggressive-like.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah.
EMILY: Oh, my God! Wait, that’s really good advice though!
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Just start a group chat with just, like, the two members who are fighting…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Ohhh.
EMILY: — and then be like, “Hey…”
JAKE: “You guys gotta figure it out.”
EMILY: Like… “I see that tension. Let’s talk.”
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] “Let’s all talk this out.”
MURPH: [crosstalk] We’ve also had… Y’know, I think that if it plays into the story and if everybody’s having fun, it can be a good thing, but it can’t…
EMILY: Absolutely.
MURPH: But when… You don’t want to have too much player-versus-player combat ‘cuz then they’re just, y’know… you don’t wanna have…
JAKE: You don’t do shit. You’re not doing shit.
CALDWELL: Uh-huh.
MURPH: Then you’re not doing anything. And then people can be real cheap-asses.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: Like, if you guys just decided to kill each other, you guys could just decide while you’re camping for a long rest, it’s just like, “Hardwon tries to chop Moonshine’s head off.”
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh.
JAKE: [crosstalk] I would never. I would never.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Oh, my God. Don’t. Please don’t.
JAKE: PawPaw would kill me.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Even Goku and Vegeta were, like, number-one enemies… and now, like, they babysit each other’s kids.
MURPH: Right. [laughs]
CALDWELL: So it’s like—
EMILY: [crosstalk] Whoaaa.
CALDWELL: — anything’s possible.
EMILY: That’s beautiful.
[Caldwell & Jake laugh]
EMILY: Can I get that on a T-shirt, a bumper sticker…
[Caldwell laughs again]
EMILY: — some Juicy sweatpants?
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] All that on the butt.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Just across the entire ass.
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
MURPH: We had a fun conflict in one campaign that we played, where Emily’s character and a few of the other characters got into a bar fight with a dude that they didn’t need to get into a bar fight with. They just into a fight with him. He—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Ohh.
EMILY: Mmmm, I’d say he… we needed to get into a bar fight with him.
MURPH: [crosstalk] He was being rude, but like Han Solo-rude, not, like, evil-rude.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: Ehhh, he needed to learn a lesson.
MURPH: [laughs] Anyway…
JAKE: [crosstalk] He needed to die.
EMILY: That’s my closed-minded religious Cleric, so… yeah.
MURPH: Anyway, they got into a fight with this dude.
EMILY: She’s also a huge drunk.
[all laugh]
MURPH: She got into a fight with this dude, in this bar, and he had all of his friends there. It was, like, his hangout spot. So him and his friends beat the shit out of the whole party, knocked everyone out, stole all of their stuff, and threw them out into the street. So then one of the characters had to go make a deal with this, like, evil shadow organization, and he essentially had to sell his soul to help get everybody’s stuff back…
CALDWELL: Whoa.
MURPH: — so then that character became evil. So he’s an NPC now.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: So you can kind of turn these conflicts into ways that the game is still fun—
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: — without having it PvP.
CALDWELL: Problem-solving.
MURPH: Right.
EMILY: Yeah, I guess maybe that’s thing is, like, are they getting mad at each other because their characters are getting mad at each other? — in which case you can work with that — or are they mad at each other because they, as people, are like…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: — pissed at each other? — in which case you’re gonna have to start that separate group text. [laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
MURPH: [crosstalk] Right. Like, if you’re playing with someone who’s playing Lawful Good and they get pissed anytime somebody lies, or anytime somebody drinks, or anytime somebody does something that’s rude, that’s really annoying. But if you’re playing a Chaotic Neutral, and you, y’know, stab everybody or you just go steal stuff everywhere you get, that’s annoying too, because that makes the whole party a bunch of, you know, stupid ruffians.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: I love that this has turned into, like, relationship talk with Adam Carolla, but, like, for D&D.
MURPH: [laughs] This is Loveline, yeah.
[Jake & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: This is Loveline for groups of four to seven. [laughs]
CALDWELL: I love how… wait, can I just, like, briefly say: I’m looking at how we’re all sitting in the room right now, and if you took a picture…. like, each of the ways that we’re sitting, like, fully represents how our characters act in the game. [laughs]
[Emily & Jake laugh]
JAKE: Your posture is perfect, leaning forward towards the mic.
[Caldwell laughs again]
EMILY: I am, like, sitting in a chair like it’s a hammock. [laughs]
CALDWELL: Uh-huh. And Jake has an axe.
JAKE: That’s right!
EMILY: Yep!
MURPH: [laughs] This one might be our last question. Because I am not going to answer at all, ‘cuz I don’t wanna give you guys any kind of spoilers, I just wanna—
EMILY: [crosstalk] What?!
MURPH: — hear you guys talk about it.
CALDWELL: Ooh!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yoouuu teeeaase.
MURPH: This is from Reddit. username456123 says…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Classic reference.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Nice username. That was available?
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Whoa.
MURPH: Classic. — says: “So the original three heroes of Bahumia are in hiding. Does that mean it would be possible for Hardwon, Beverly, and Moonshine to run into them? That would be really interesting.”
JAKE: Ooh.
CALDWELL: I absolutely want to.
EMILY: I definitely want to run into them.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: I want to, too.
CALDWELL: I wanna have, like, a Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To with the Paladin.
EMILY: [gasps] That’s what I was thinking, is that I’d love to run into them—
CALDWELL: [gasps] Ohh!
EMILY: —l ike, almost like, beards grown out… like—
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: — disillusioned look in their eyes. Like, drinking too much.
CALDWELL: What if we all met up with, like, the corresponding heroes, and did, like, separate training missions with them?
JAKE: [crosstalk] Wait, ‘cuz there was—
EMILY: [laughs] No, but I would say being separate in D&D is always really disappointing.
CALDWELL: Oh, yeah. It hard, it’s hard. It’s. like, you’re kind of sitting around, cracking, like, excellent jokes while they’re, like, doing cool action stuff and, like, your jokes are, like, super good…
[Emily & Jake laugh]
CALDWELL: — but you feel like you’re missing out.
EMILY: But you also, like, wanna get in there.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: Our characters, like, probably worship these heroes, right?
CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: Like, I know that Hardwon is, like, super into the dwarf guy.
CALDWELL: Absolutely, and, like—
JAKE: What’s that dwarf guy’s name?
MURPH: Ulfgar.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: Ulfgar.
MURPH: It’s Ulfgar, who’s a Fighter, Alonis—
JAKE: There’s like a drawing of Ulfgar on his cave wall back home.
[Murph laughs]
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: Dude, you should get an Ulfgar calf tattoo.
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] Uh, that’s really good.
EMILY: Moonshine’ll do it.
JAKE: Yeah, you guys have yet to prick me with something.
[Emily laughs]
JAKE: What was the tattoo that I was supposed to get? Oppa Aladdin-style?
[all laugh]
JAKE: Maybe next episode I should get the tattoo.
CALDWELL: Yeah, you should meet a Tattoomancer. I think Beverly definitely has, like, an action figure of the Paladin character.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Mm.
MURPH: You mean the Cleric?
CALDWELL: Oh, yeah. The Cleric, sorry.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Mm.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mhm.
MURPH: Yeah, it’s a Cleric, that’s Thiala…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: — then there’s Ulfgar, that’s the dwarf Fighter—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mhm.
MURPH: — and then there’s Alonis, who is the elf Wizard.
CALDWELL: It’s definitely closer to a Barbie doll, but he likes it anyway.
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: Truthfully, I don’t think Moonshine would idolize any of them, but I think it’s just out of ignorance.
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: I think she just hasn’t, like, been exposed to them enough…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: — ‘cuz she’s been like, living in that insular Crick—
JAKE: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: — until it went amiss—
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Mhm.
EMILY: — and then had to wander out of it.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: I can’t wait for all of us to go to The Crick someday.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Aw, man.
JAKE: Oh, me too. After all we’ve heard about The Crick.
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: Really amazing hospitality, but what’s amiss?
[Emily laughs again]
MURPH: [laughs] What’s going on at The Crick?
CALDWELL: I want us to go in there and it’s, like, a Wet n’ Wild theme park. It was never actually a Crick.
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: It’s very built up.
[Jake laughs]
EMILY: It’s just, like, a Wizard casts an Illusion of a Crick—
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: — and we’ve all been worshiping it… [laughs] — and bathing in it daily. That’s why we smell like shit.
CALDWELL: [laughs] Yeah, it’s just a sewage plant.
EMILY: We think we’re bathing in water but it’s just a Wizard’s Illusion.
JAKE: [laughs] It’s crawling with PawPaws.
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
JAKE: “This is a possum infestation!”
EMILY: [laughs] “This isn’t a Crick! This is a…”
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: “This is a li’l possum hive!”
MURPH: Cool, guys! Those are all the questions I have prepped.
CALDWELL: Yeah!
MURPH: Were there anything…?
CALDWELL: Oh! The only thing that… somebody — I don’t have the name ready — but somebody asked, like, “What merit badges I have,” and I have been keeping a tally.
JAKE: [laughs] Really?
EMILY: Ohhhh! This is great.
CALDWELL: I have a list. I don’t have it with me, but I would like to give this opportunity for the group to decide which merit badges I have that I haven’t mentioned yet.
EMILY: Ohhhh.
CALDWELL: Are there any merit badges? The only one I was thinking of is I like giving Beverly merit badges that seem cool at first, but are actually super lame. So, like, I don’t know how to play the violin, but I have Violin Appreciation.
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: Which is, like—
EMILY: That’s really funny.
CALDWELL: Yeah, just ,like, knowledge of things, but not any… application. [laughs]
EMILY: Yeah.
JAKE: Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot.
CALDWELL: Mhm.
MURPH: I feel like… is there— I mean, you were, uh… were you an Eagle Scout? You said before.
CALDWELL: Yeah. Oh, there’s some really lame ones.
MURPH: Yeah, are—
EMILY: Like you have Maps Drawing, but not not Maps Reading.
JAKE: Reading. [laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah, definitely Cartography, but definitely not, like… Navigation. Yeah. [laughs]
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Um, I’m trying to think about the—
JAKE: Like Fire Putting-Out, but not -Starting.
[Emily laughs again]
CALDWELL: One-hundred percent. I had a badge called, like… Emergency Preparedness? Which was just, like — it was not how to administer, like, First Aid or anything — it’s just, like, how to—
JAKE: [crosstalk] It’s just having the kit.
CALDWELL: Yeah, how to identify that’s someone’s having a heart attack; not how to fix it.
EMILY: Oh, my God.
MURPH: [laughs] Rather— [unintelligible crosstalk]
JAKE: “I’m really good at calling 911!”
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
MURPH: I would say Beverly would definitely have some kind of Manners Badge, or something.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh, yeah.
MURPH: Like an Etiquette Badge.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Ohhh.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] For sure.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
EMILY: Maybe, like, Utensil Identification.
MURPH: [crosstalk; laughs] Yeah—
CALDWELL: I feel like I’ve got, like, a whole section of my sash for that.
MURPH: [crosstalk] Yeah.
JAKE: Right. Like, you know how to cut and prepare, like… game. Like, if you were hunting.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
CALDWELL: Oh yeah! Dressing.
JAKE: — but you don’t know how to kill any of it.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: No, no, no, no, no. Certainly not.
EMILY: Or cook it.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: ‘Cuz you don’t have your Cooking Badge; we know that. [laughs]
JAKE: Right, but you can carve it.
CALDWELL: Mhm.
JAKE: Very evenly.
CALDWELL: I think that’s, like—
EMILY: That’s so funny if you know how to carve a cooked bird…
[Caldwell & Jake laugh]
EMILY: — but you don’t know how to cook it.
JAKE: “I don’t know how to build the trap.”
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: I think there’s like a whole section… I think there’s probably like sections that are required to, like, move up in the ranks, and one of them is just called ‘Little Gentlemen.; [laughs]
[Emily & Jake laugh]
EMILY: That’d be kind of fun if you just had a Emotional Openness one.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh, absolutely.
EMILY: So that’s like… a Vulnerability Badge, or something like that.
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: Just because it’d be fun for you to be like, “Look… I know how to do this. I have this badge.”
CALDWELL: It’s also very fun, like, anytime I do something sincere, for me to just instantly, like, put a little booklet in your face and be like, “That was actually just requirements for this badge.” [laughs]
[Murph & Emily laugh]
JAKE: Yeah. Is there— do you have a badge that you are hoping for?
CALDWELL: Well…
JAKE: Is there, like, one badge that you want more than anything?
EMILY: [gasps] Ooh.
CALDWELL: Um… The Cooking Badge. As we mentioned, I don’t have the Cooking Badge.
EMILY: I hope you really suck at it for a while.
[Jake & Caldwell laugh]
EMILY: It’d be really funny if you’re like this badass who’s, like—
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: — just felling creatures, and you can’t get your Cooking Badge.
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: Decapitating shit.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: I also loved that, we were talking about… because y’know, in the Player’s Manual and stuff—
CALDWELL: Yeah.
MURPH: — you get to choose your subclass at Level 3.
CALDWELL: Mhm.
MURPH: And then you’ll be able to talk to animals, and I was like, “Well, you’ll probably become a Junior Green Knight once you can talk to animals,” and your response was very funny, which is like, “Yeah, I think I need my Animal Relations Badge.”
[Emily & Jake laugh]
CALDWELL: Animal Relations Badge is—
MURPH: Which is so funny to call it Animal— it just sounds like you’re fucking animals.
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] That’s a bullywug mating call right there.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] I have—
EMILY: Oh, to me it sounds like you’re booking a trip for an animal. [laughs]
CALDWELL: God, yeah. Once I get that skill, I’m gonna be so much better at mating calls.
JAKE: Mhm.
EMILY: Ohhh.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Think about it.
MURPH: There is gonna be such an uptake in shenanigans once Beverly can speak to fucking animals.
[Caldwell & Emily laugh]
JAKE: Yeah, dude.
CALDWELL: Oh, man.
EMILY: That’s gonna be every— even though you’re this powerful Paladin, every single Beverly turn is gonna be like, “Ummm, can I do a Perception check if there are any animals around?” [laughs]
CALDWELL: That. Is. My. Shit!
[all laugh]
JAKE: BEVERLY WANTS TO TALK TO A WORM!
CALDWELL: Yeah. [laughs]
EMILY: Yeah, Murph’ll be like “I don’t know, I guess there’s a worm.” “Cool! I talk to the worm.” [laughs]
CALDWELL: Yeah, it’s gonna be like, [imitating Sherlock Holmes] “Are there any beetles about?”
[all laugh]
MURPH: Yeah. Just in addition to mapping out the NPCs and the town, I need to think of every bug that Beverly might speak to.
[all laugh]
CALDWELL: Oh, yeah.
MURPH: You know—
JAKE: That’s a ladybug… Go on. [laughs]
CALDWELL: You know that Beverly’s—
EMILY: Wait, I’m going to be able to speak to animals too, I bet.
MURPH: [laughs] Yeah, Goddamn it.
CALDWELL: Aw, man.
EMILY: Wow, we’re gonna have a real fuckin’ zoo of a time! [laughs]
[Murph laughs]
CALDWELL: Uh-huh.
JAKE: It’s gonna be great. ‘Cuz you guys are gonna have to translate for Hardwon, ‘cuz I’m also going to talk to the animals.
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: Yep. We’re going to have so many inside jokes. It’s gonna be great. [laughs]
EMILY: [laughs] Hardwon’s gonna definitely be laughing like he understood as well.
[Jake laughs]
CALDWELL: [imitating Hardwon] “Ha. That horse is funny, I know.”
JAKE: Yeah.
[Murph & Emily laugh]
EMILY: [Imitating Hardwon] “Yep, I can also understand that horse.”
[Caldwell laughs]
EMILY: “Hardwon, I think he’s—“
JAKE: [As Hardwon; deep, gruff voice] “I just need it to speak a little louder. What did the horse say, Bev?”
[Emily laughs]
CALDWELL: [as a horse] ”I know who your parents are, Hardwon!”
[Emily laughs again]
MURPH: Uhh—
JAKE: “Did the horse say something about me?”
[Emily laughs again]
CALDWELL: “Nahh… no, no.”
EMILY: That’d be funny if it was like, [neighs; deep voice] “Hardwon.”
[all laugh]
EMILY: “Okay, I know that that horse is talking about me.”
CALDWELL: “That’s just—“
JAKE: “He neighed my fucking name that time, guys!”
[Emily & Caldwell laugh]
CALDWELL: [imitating Hardwon] “He neighed my naaame.”
[Emily laughs again]
MURPH: Cool, guys, so I think we’re gonna wrap it up. Thank you again for all the reviews! We’ll continue to do to bonus episodes as we hit certain benchmarks and stuff. I think we’ll announce it on the actual episodes of the podcast…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yep!
MURPH: — what kind of bonus episodes and stuff we’re thinking about doing. But we appreciate all your questions!
JAKE: [crosstalk] That’s right.
MURPH: We’re gonna go on the ‘reddit — r/NotAnotherDnDPodcast — and we will answer more questions! Anything we didn’t get to.
EMILY: Yeah, baby.
JAKE: That’s right! And you leave another review, with the five stars, we’ll give you the shout-out.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh, yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah!
MURPH: Yeah, we’ll give you the shout-out next episode. We already had a bunch at the end of this last episode that just came out.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Those are fun.
EMILY: They are fun.
MURPH: They are fun. You guys did a great job, they were really funny.
CALDWELL: Thank you.
EMILY: It’s just, like, a chance to write in another person’s voice.
MURPH: Ah, beautiful.
[all laugh]
MURPH: There were, also, a lot of people asking about…
EMILY: [crosstalk] I’m an artist.
MURPH: — you know, I know we had a lot of DM questions and stuff here, but there were even more! Asking how to play, and how they can find people to play with and everything, and I would love to, y’know, I don’t know… maybe even once a week or something, I could do like an Ask Me Anything, or whatever, and we can talk about D&D and DMing and stuff. ‘Cuz it’s been super cool seeing people, like, y’know… we had one person send us a picture of them holding the Player’s Handbook they just bought.
EMILY: [crosstalk] With the Player’s Handbook!
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: [crosstalk] People are getting into D&D.
JAKE: [crosstalk] Amazing.
EMILY: [crosstalk] I love that shit!
JAKE: Yeah! Somebody commented— I think it was, I think their name was ksed on Reddit (Editor’s note: the post in question is likely by Redditor niloc1229) that was just like…
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Uh-huh.
JAKE: “I’ve never played,” they listened to the podcast, and now they wanna start a campaign. [crosstalk] That’s awesome.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Yeah.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: Yeah, it’s seems there’s so many of those people on the subreddit. You guys should play together.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Oh!
MURPH: Like, we’re happy to kind of help facilitate that.
EMILY: It’s also just a super-fun way to hang out with your friends.
MURPH & CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: We have multiple groups that we just go to cabins, play forever… it’s just a great way to hang out with friends, too.
MURPH: Right. But even… but we also play on Skype—
EMILY: Yes!
MURPH: — with our friends across the country.
EMILY: With the Jersey people.
MURPH: So if you guys, y’know, on the subreddit are interested in playing, maybe I’ll set up a thread or something or we can have volunteer DMs, or people can also learn to DM…
JAKE: [crosstalk] Right.
MURPH: It’s not as hard as it seems.
CALDWELL: You just have to read ONE book.
MURPH: And also, if everybody’s learning together, then everybody’s patient and if it’s y’know… I think this community and this fandom and stuff will be cool, nice people.
JAKE: Yeah. [crosstalk] Be positive.
CALDWELL: Yeah. [crosstalk] They better be.
EMILY: [crosstalk] Yeah.
MURPH: Well, we hope to facilitate, so let’s get some more DMs, and let’s get some Not Another D&D Podcast games going, people.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: Yeah.
JAKE: Woo!
CALDWELL: Thank you for listening!
MURPH: Yeah! Thank you for listening, thank you for all the questions, and thank you, David! Sent me a DM screen!
CALDWELL: OH, YEAH!
EMILY: [crosstalk] Aw, that’s cool as hell!
MURPH: [crosstalk] Listener David, thank you!
JAKE: [crosstalk] Oh, shit! It’s badass.
MURPH: It was so dope. I have the regular 5e DM screen, which has so much useless information on it. David sent me a new one, so I got lots of pertinent shit.
JAKE: [crosstalk] That’s awesome.
CALDWELL: If you wanna send us stuff, you could do it at 1920 Hillhurst Avenue #222. Los Feliz, California, 90027!
EMILY: If you send us miniatures, I’ll paint them, because I have a miniature-painting kit at home.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] Ahh!
JAKE: [crosstalk] By the way, I ordered my miniature, so I— [unintelligible crosstalk]
EMILY: [crosstalk] I know.
CALDWELL: [crosstalk] So don’t send Jake one. [laughs]
EMILY: That was a group text where Jake kept sending a picture of this miniature he designed, and he’s like “I’m so tempted, I’m so tempted.”
[Murph laughs]
JAKE: [crosstalk] I didn’t have the fucking huevos, man!
EMILY: And I was like, “By the way, I have miniature-painting set, you could paint it,” and he was, like, ordering it so fast. [laughs]
[Caldwell laughs]
JAKE: [laughs] I did order it instantly.
[Emily laughs]
MURPH: Yeah, guys, but check out our other projects! Emily and I have a book out, ‘HEY, U UP?: How to Turn Your Booty Call into Your Emergency Contact’ It’s a satirical relationship advice book. Obviously listen to this next episode of this podcast when it comes out on Thursday. [laughs]
JAKE: Yes!
CALDWELL: Yeah!
EMILY: Yeah.
JAKE: [threateningly] SUBSCRIBE! TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
MURPH: Subscribe. Tell your friends. Five stars.
CALDWELL: Do tell your friends. Hashtag—
JAKE: Telling your friends, by the way, is a really great way to get other conference in play.
EMILY: Ohhh.
MURPH: Right, yeah, the more attention this gets, the more people that listen to this, the more episodes we’ll do, the more bonus episodes we’ll do.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: No, but Jake has a great point, which is, like, if you’re like, “Oh, I really wanna play D&D but I don’t know anyone who knows it,” just have them listen to this, and then—
JAKE: If we convinced you, we might convince your friends!
CALDWELL: Ohhh.
JAKE: It’s possible.
EMILY: Yeah! Then you can— then if all your friends get into it, you can book a fuckin’ cabin and you’re like, “Let’s give this a fuckin’ whirl.”
JAKE: Yeah.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
JAKE: Book a cabin with your friends. Alright, boom.
MURPH: [laughs] Alright, guys, listen to If I Were You, watch Drawfee, listen to 8-Bit Book Club… Caldwell, got anything else?
CALDWELL: #NaDDPod on Twitter.
EMILY: Ooh!
CALDWELL: If you wanna talk about the show!
EMILY: We’re also gonna try… someone suggested an Instagram for all the cool art, and I’m gonna try to make that.
MURPH: Yeah, and we’ll have… If people want to be featured on there, we’ll have them send it to us.
EMILY: Yes! I’ll contact you.
CALDWELL: Yeah.
EMILY: I won’t put it on there without your permission, of course.
MURPH: Cool.
JAKE: Sweet.
MURPH: Thanks, guys. Thanks so much for listening! May the Baba Yaga not take you this night, and may Bahamut keep you.
CALDWELL: Pelor bless!
[Transcribed by Redditors hi_sweaty & siilhouette.]
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