Hello, this is why Stephen from Table Story. If you'd like this podcast,
please make sure to rate and review it. If you'd like to listen
to more of our podcasts, you can head on over to tablestory dot tv
for a variety of other shows. If you would like to support us,
you can head on over to tablestory dot tv slash pledge, and if you'd
like to join our community, you can head on over to tablestory dot tv
slash discord. Thank you, Joy, Hello everybody, and welcome to our
ashes of Area door Round Table Q and as everybody doing today, it's a
pleasure to see you. Uh, we have a uh, we have a
not quite here yet, myrgles, myrgles will be here soon, but uh
we're here now for you, and we are here to chat ship and hang
out and answer questions. And I'm sure there's a lot of questions I should
have worn a beard. I'm just I'm just loving the reaction. I'm loving
the chat reactions right now from people who thought that Meyer and I just always
have enormous beards. Yeah, I should have worn one today and just put
it on on your face, and then you're saying welcome on and everybody.
So, uh, I thought we'd start the Q and A off today with
with thanks Mayer. Uh. Any questions or anything that that that you all
may have. I mean, you can feel free to get started with that.
We've got our mods in chat that are going to be collecting some questions.
We've got a document kind of behind the scenes. Actually, let me
give that to you guys as well that you can check out. Thank you.
But I thought we could we'd start the show off with some some of
our favorite moments. If you can talk about some of our favorite moments,
if we can each pick like a favorite moment that we had. I'm going
first, all right, because I don't want the moment to be taken by
somebody else. That's fine, Okay, So I think it's the second to
last episode, that whole thing that nothing, in my mind will be more
Lord of the Rings than that. It was nuts. Hello, sorry my
cat the tail just pops up. Yeah, it's like, can I ask
specifically what what what you're I guess what what grabbed you? Well? I
mean that okay, So I guess the reason why I'm choosing that episode is
because we we had a lot of moments in the show that were Lord of
the Rings, but that entire episode felt from start to finish like it could
have been in a film. It's a wonderful compliment. Thank you. Mmmm
I agree with you. The I mean just the pacing, the music,
the the rescue that came in at the end. It didn't feel like it
was fan service at all. It just fit. Everything was perfect. It
was. It was fucking great and the last episode two was amazing. But
I I walked away from that second to last episode like on a high.
It was so good. Oh yeah, that's what I would choose. If
you think about it, every good moment and all of Lord of the Rings
is someone showing up at the last second to save the day. Happens like
fifteen times throughout the franchise, so it's kind of fitting that one of our
best moments was the same way. Yeah. Oh and my second favorite thing
was the finale where we basically had a bunch of fade to black endings.
I love that. Yeah, I'm sorry. There was a Meyer did something
in that last episode where he was kind of trying he was trying to do
like a natural fade to black for all of us. I'm like, oh,
and like Peeb was like, we need to end it there, like
you know, she was typing in this Oh that's good, Like is this
where we're ending? I think we're going to end it. I just thought
we were because the way the music was swelling and blah blah blah, and
then it faded and then we kept going and I was like, that's hysterical.
I was. I was like, oh shit, no, no,
no, I still there's like more holes, like plot holes. I want
to close up a little. Yeah. It was so good. Yeah,
I have one. I have one. It's from a Way's Back. It
is a combination of a few things, but it's when we were at the
homestead when the dead were coming at us. It was one of that episode
was really really interesting because I mean I think our characters were still learning each
other to a degree. You know, you watch the fellowships. As we
continue in that sense of family and loyalty and trust and stuff, it just
kept building and building. In that moment, it was such a well we
could all die, or some of us can die. Hell, maybe you
know Piper is dying. We don't know. She's fucked up. But then
when Rioth pulls out that Jim because I'd forgotten about that fucking gem. I'd
completely forgotten about that Jim, and he pulls out the gym and it,
you know, rolls well and this this uh magic just sort of spread out
and and it we lived. We survived. And this is coming off of
you know, all that stuff with those was it the the dune landings or
there was all that stuff that we were dealing with. There was so much
going on, but it was such a lovely moment of hope and warmth after
so much shit, so much shit. It's one of my favorite moments because
I really felt this warm connection in and outside of the show. It was
just, I don't know, there was something about it. So that's mine's
next. I don't want to take any moments in which I was actually a
part of it, you know what I mean. I loved I love that
episode. I loved every scene I was in. God, I fucking killed
it Homestead with the we we basically had a horror episode, you know,
with the dead coming and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, that
was really cool. I almost felt bad actually during the episode for like,
you know, pulling out the mcguffin, and the mcguffin actually worked I was
like, oh no, so I don't know if you remember I. I
was trying to hint at it mm hmm a little bit as a potential.
Yeah, I was. I was trying to do it and I and I
feel like you are really good at picking up on those really subtle cues.
It's just one of those things that you're very talented at. And I just
dropped the barest like like hints about it, and you were just like you
knew instantly what I was talking about. And I was like, fuck,
yeah, like that was great. Well, and what a of the rings
is all about? No, it's all about it. But you know,
even though you I mean, the ring itself is just this, you know,
this device for for these scenes. I don't think there's anything wrong with
having something special, you know, air Gorn's sword. There's there's all these
these items that exist within the world, and this was just another one that
no one ever really knew too much about. You almost almost a casual magic
that must exist in an area door that we got to see work. I
think it was great. I love how Wack also built far Bad as well,
because oh man, there is a magic regardless of I think the system
when you're in a new world and you're not too sure what anything is,
and in the discovery of just like some smaller, minor things. I wouldn't
say that the trolls were necessarily minor, but like following their path and all
the things that kind of led up to us finding the trolls in the first
place was really really cool. I enjoyed that long. You mean, like
Edward, dude, I was about to say, dude a terrible name.
That was my favorite fucking running joke. Oh yeah, that was my It
was my favorite running gag by the end of the series too. And I
don't think I don't think even character I ever said it either. Every time
I knew, I was like, here they go again for us. Set
that up for us a couple of times. Oh man, terrible name,
terribly Yeah. I was sitting here trying to think of a favorite, but
pvv me to the punch I thought. I thought the second to last episod
so with that whole setup and then being able to finally get that huge emotional
release from my character was also huge. And then Gandalf showing up at the
end, like everything was so spot on that it's hard to top. But
for the sake of not duplicating her answer, and since she already took the
clear correct answer, I figured, I figured, I'll just I'll give you
a miniature greatest hits list. Instead, I was sitting here thinking up a
few of them. Confrontation with the Sea Serpent. Love that whole thing,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, not just for not just for the combat sequence,
and I'm a sucker for a great action sequence, but I also love
the The best part of that moment for me was the brief hesitation on the
water before we fought, where we kind of looked at it as we're probably
gonna die. And then I think it was Gandalf, I think observed that
there were other people like drowning in the water, and it was like,
well, we have to fight the serpent or it's going to kill all these
people. And there was that brief moment of all right, are we really
willing to die to save all these total strangers? And the answer was yes,
And and then we went and fought anyway for a fight that we didn't
necessarily win, but you know, the thing retreated at least. But I
thought that that character moment of all right, collectively as a group, are
we all willing to actually just die for people we don't even know, And
the answer was yes. And I think that was a huge, like character
defining moment for everyone, and not the only time that it happened, Yeah,
the only time on the top Jesus ye will I will also cite the
whole rescuing the Hobbits from the dune lending camp in that entire sequence to me
was really fun because it let yeah, it was incredibly well paced. It
let the Hobbits showcase their own creativity and competence that you know, there's more
to life than smashing things. Uh, and and watching them you know,
talk their way out or sneak their way out in various ways of getting out
of the camp and then of course getting to use the like the character enchantment
thing, the magic alle role at the end for me was like really satisfying
to run into the camp just and then of course, uh and once again
it comes down to someone showing up in the nick of time to save the
day. But in that case it was real like coming in with that at
the end of it, like flying off his horse and jumping into the fray
when it was looking like it was gonna be me versus like nine guys,
and it's like, you know, the the my man moment was perfect right
there. Those were a couple that came to mind. There was a lot
of like Rio and and Dowin, like Predator Shaking you, Son of a
Big Thing was a buddy cop movie. Oh if I may, if I
may, one one more, one more. The The other greatest hit moment
was being able to spend a whole day just screwing around hunting with Gwilleth,
because it let me showcase the fact that and Dowin is in fact just a
big kid. No one asked the whole campaign how old he was. He
was only twenty eight. I wouldn't commuessed that. Yeah, he was so
well traveled despite his short years, like from leaving home and seeing so much
of the continent that I felt it like I needed to portray him as being
like world weary and wisened despite his age, you know. So he always
like he spoke with authority because he's I've seen this stuff myself, but it
reveals now. But yeah, he was. He was actually just I think
he was younger than all the Hobbits, right, how old with the Hobbits
yeah, thirty three, thirty three. Yeah, we just became. We
all just had our birthday one month after the other, and Piper's was last.
Yeah, so physically the biggest but Andwin was the baby of the group
the whole time. But I was like, I don't think he would come
out and say it unless asked, and no one asked, So I kept
that. I kept that up the sleeve for the whole run. Yeah.
I mean, if anything, it was the other thing. You don't ask
the age of your elders, And I think that's what he felt like.
He definitely felt like this person that you could listen to, you could trust
who has and and he had he had gone through a lot of ship.
You know that that wisdom isn't tied to age. And I think those wrinkles
and scars would still show at that age because he lived such a tough life.
But yeah, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have guessed what this is to
the lor master to whack. What day did we start the campaign and how
long did the campaign actually last for, like you know, in months,
So that was a question as well, that's somebody in chat. Okay,
Yeah, so let me, uh, I stopped updating calendar after a certain
point. Let me see, it is a good question. We should have
just kept going what day is it? Every single so how much time has
passed? Flashbacks? So this is is uh let's say rest at weather top.
Uh. Okay, so I updated it up until then. So uh,
it was basically you started at the some of you started at the very
beginning of July, the equivalent of July, and it ended in October,
so it was about three months wellkay, like three and a half months basically.
Now, the system itself kind of calls for like longer periods of time
in general, if you stick pretty heavily to the mechanics and stuff, and
you really really take into account every day and you get really down to the
nitty gritty and like really measure the travel time. It's pretty hard to do
when you're doing like an improv live show to really like figure that out and
keep it entertaining and shit and like have all those calculations worked out live.
And I didn't really feel like it was super important to the story, so
I wasn't really too finicky with it, okay, because technically they're very fucky
with time. If you read the books or if you watch the movies,
they're very fucky with time. I don't know how many of you know this
that have watched the movies. If you've read the books you might know.
But the scene where Gandolf in the very beginning of Lord of the Rings meets
with Frodo and the time where he goes to Gondor studies figures out that Frodo
has the ring is actually seventeen years Yeah. So Frodo is thirty three at
the very beginning of the movie, and then when Gandolf comes back, he's
fifty years old. Yeah. I don't know if that's the same in the
film though, Like I think they keep him thirty three for the I think
they just changed it to happen all in that year because it's more. Actually
can't people can't wrap their head around the cab and it like how far Gondor
is and like how much research Gandalf had to do. Yeah, So,
like, I don't know what his age is in the movies. I don't
think that it is. I think that he is supposed to be fifty because
I think because Sam is thirty three, I think lore wise or or no,
it's a twelve year difference, it's something like twelve years. I think
I wonder if canonically they actually go ahead and say, okay, we change
their ages, or if it's just like you know, for's sake of ease
of cinema, like time passes, they just don't make any mention of it
because it's not so it's been It's been a long time since I've read up
on this, so I don't have a link or a source or anything available,
and I would have to go look it up to double check. But
I do recall vaguely reading somewhere that the amount of time that Gandalf spent researching
in the movie script was shortened to like four months instead of seventeen years.
Okay, so he does leave for months of research and comes back, but
they trimmed out the hole gone for over a decade part or at least that's
what I recall reading somewhere. So I don't think photos intended to be fifty
in the movies. And there's also an amount of time, But I don't
know where this falls. Where Kandalf was looking for Smigel right, there wasn't
there there was a time period where he was aware of Sniegel's presence well in
some level of sickness, but he couldn't find him. So yeah, they
the books. In the movies, the lore is quite a bit different.
So like Gollum is basically captured across the Misty Mountains, and uh, there's
a lot of stuff that I'm not going to get into everything because I'm going
to definitely get it wrong before we started. Before we started the campaign,
I like read up for like two weeks, like I was really getting in
there, and there's just so much information that slowly but surely it's been leaking
out of my brain because the amount of like nuance and little bits of info
that happened in the story is crazy. Like that was the thing that Tolkien
I think was best at was just he all of these different things were happening
at the same time and he was keeping track of like everything, and uh
yeah, there was a lot of weird time stuff, so spending my weird
time stuff. And they want to want to guess how old were youth is.
Oh, I thought you were going to be like when when is Mark's
gonna sick here? Oh? Wow? Oh s one hundred and sixty years
old. I was gonna place my guests about undred and eighty based on he
was at the battle. Wasn't the battle like, yeah, forty Battle of
Five Armies wasn't that far in the past. We were only we were only
forty years past it. But I assume by then he already had to have
been an adult to participate, and if he held any kind of high station
and served directly under Dane Ironfoot, then he was probably like a well regarded
elder already by that point forty years ago. So yeah, I would say,
just shy of like, but then it's what like three hundred years is
about the life expectancy for dwarves and Lord of the Rings. I think I'll
put him at I'll put him at olds. I'll say two one hundred or
two twenty, I'll say one to eighty. Yeah, and I'm at one
sixty. Is whack guessing? No, No, I I don't. He's
senior character sheet. Yeah, it's exactly this, to be fair, I
know for a fact Meyer told me the exact number, but it was like
six months ago and I can't remember, so so I am guessing. So
Ruth fought in the Battle of the Five Armies, but also prior to that,
he also fought in the Battle of Azanul Bizarre in the east of Kazar
Doom, which was a long hold on. Mm hmm, yeah, yeah,
thank you. Yeah, there you go. So Ruth initially fought in
the Battle of Well, not initially, but time is as Lord Master Stephens
says or Wax Stephen Stephen isn't his name, Time is Fucky. He fought
in the Battle of the Five Armies alongside the likes of Dane iron Foot and
Gandalf. However, he also fought in the Battle of Azanul Bizarre in the
east of Casadoun. Now he fought alongside Dane Ironfoot as his page back.
Then Dagan himself, not even as striply at the time of the battle,
arrived towards the latter part of this pyrrhic victory against the goblins and Oaks of
the mountain. Dan was again nine adult about maybe thirty or so years old.
Ruth very close in age as well. At the end of Ashes of
aerod Or Youth is well it's October, so he is actually two hundred and
twenty two years old. It was two hundred and twenty one at the beginning,
and I wanted it to be a nicer triple number at some point.
Wow, so ten times my age e a old. I love it.
My favorite moment mm hmm is probably a toss up. I think one of
my favorite moments is when I first introduced uh Strider to you all and actually
introduced not hinted at Streider, but when Strider actually actually was introduced. Andrles
wasn't here. That's made you feel so bad, but I was like,
it has to be now. I can't I can't not do it now.
But yeah, and then Myrgles came back the next week and uh and got
to yeah yeah uh. And then I think the other one was probably when
Toddles chose to save Timber was beautiful. That was a pretty cool. Yeah,
great moment. Yeah, that was a beautiful moment. I was like,
that right there encapsulates why Hobbits are important to these journeys, and they
keep everybody, They keep everybody sort of sane and human and like they're the
moral compass. Yeah, for everybody. And despite all that stuff that happened,
and the fact that they were kidnapped and they were you know, uh,
going to be essentially slaves was not important. You still have to be
a decent person despite all of that. So that was that was a pretty
big moment. I remember being touched by that. I was like, that's
beautiful. It was a very fun moral quandary. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, we had the most hobbity of bits as well, Like there was
consistently halvity, and I loved it the entire way through the ending to that
topic. So trying to find that balance, you know, of being like
because if you look, if you look at the films, right, there's
maybe one or two moments where Mary and Pip aren't Mary and Pip, where
they're not being fucking ridiculous. So it's like, you know, and in
the beginning, I think it was a lot harder for me personally to find
that balance between being absurd and then you know, like not being absurd.
I guess during all of that, but I think specifically about the tottle saving
or you know, making that choice is the opposite of peb Like every instinct
in my body was like, oh yeah, cut his head off, dude,
the guy like can't can't be left alive. But yeah, I was
like, oh no, you're not driving Pumpkinberry. Sit down. You had
you had more of an impact on my character there too than I think you
may have originally realized, because I was one hundred percent kind of execute the
man with the classic return to nature the same way that you saw at the
very beginning of the campaign, but like, as I was about to do
it, I was like, now, hold on a second, freaking Toddles
and Lawton are right here. What I actually murdered this man in cold blood
with what are like not not not children, they're adults, but like they're
like just no, like the wide eyed innocence of the stars in their eyes
is it's very childlike. You know, they're they're supposed to be innocent and
child like. That's part of why they're, you know, portraits being so
small. And I was like, would you actually just murder a man with
your kid next to you? And I was like, I don't think I
could, so, so yeah, that was why I had like and would
not execute the guy. And then afterwards being able to say I didn't because
I knew you would save him. Was uh. And I do wonder if
I had actually murdered the guy. I feel like Whack would have slapped me
with shadow points. Absolutely, I don't see why not, But yeah,
that that that forced me to reconsider Andoin's brutality early and soften the character a
little bit, because I was going to have him be much more, much
more prone to violence, I'll say, as a first solution to many things.
And I was like, I don't think realistically I could play that kind
of a character when I've got the Hobbits in tow like he wouldn't he wouldn't
be able to. He would just see them and be like, bine,
Yeah, we'll do it your way. From a GM perspective as well,
those watching that you know are watching Whack and learning how to GM, that's
a great example of a moment where you're rewarding a player for making a difficult
role play decision because I made that choice, and then Whac turned around and
was like, get rid of all of your shadow points, which is that
that's nothing in the book that says that other than maybe it's at the GM's
discretion. But now that we bring that up, that's a good example of
when Whack rewarded me for making a difficult and sticking to my character what my
character would do. It's a being is tough, and I'm not saying this
to like, you know self, aggrandize or whatever. But it's like there's
a lot of things to pay attention to. The way we do things on
table story is also very tough but trying. There's a few things that you
always have to try to focus on, no matter if you miss some details
about rules whatever. One of the things that I think is the most important
thing that you can do as a GM is to try to reward your players
at the right times when it's like when they do that, When they do
that, I'm sticking to what my character is going to do, and I
think that this is very much in the right with what they would do despite
what's going to happen to the group. Unless you're kind of being like just
contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, that can get a little annoying.
But like when you're you know, when you make tough decisions, like you
should be rewarded for that stuff. I think that's played up a lot in
movies too. We see that happen in movies. You know, if you
watch a movie and somebody makes that tough decision, it's usually a big scene,
you know, and it's the memorable scene that people that people take with
them when they leave. You know, the scene with Aragorn and Legalists in
the Two Towers when ara Gorn says, then I shall die with them.
That was a powerful moment, like you could see like it affected Legalists.
That's when he recognized I think a little bit more about how Aragorn felt,
and that stuck with me, like I remember that moment very vividly. So
I think that's one of the really important things you have to do as a
GM, have to try and make those moments worthwhile for players. That's the
other thing too, that you don't want to just reward your players for you
know, playing the way that you are encouraging them to play, because that's
one way that you can give experience or whatever when you notice somebody is you
know, remaining in character or whatever, and you want to give them a
reward. But another thing is like when a player is choosing to do something
that is what their character would do, and like Wax said, they're not
just trying to be a contrarian, They're trying to commit to what their character
would do and it might disrupt the party dynamics. That is incredibly stressful for
a player to do, so giving them some sort of reward in game is
a way to offset that like either guilt or stress or oh my god,
everyone's going to hate me blah blah blah. It's a way for you as
the GM to kind of like keep aware of their emotional state as well,
which you have to do. I mean you don't have to, but good
gms are aware of people's stress level at the table as well. So it
was just a good moment because I was absolutely stressed about that and I was
not expecting anything in return, and he just wiped all of that shadow,
which ended up saving me at the end of the game. I had no
shadow, it was able to be that whope battery. Yeah. Sorry.
I also think that it propelled a lot of story, like interesting story moments
because you did that where it was just like, oh, now we have
these really cool interactions with Timber and like we see a different perspective, right.
That's one of the things that I always love to do in my games
is I love to give I hate it when it's black and white, when
it's just like we make this, these are the bad guys, these are
the good guys. I hate that. I'm like, when is that ever
a thing? It's like psychopath like psychopath versus you know, sane person.
You know, like, how often does that happen? You know? Really
like I like to have the dimensions. I like to have a reason behind
the choices that that NPCs make, that that people make, because that's what
happens in real life. Has gone through a lot of bad stuff. Remember
there was a world where there is a very clear good and evil. It's
Middle Earth though true, Yeah, very true. I think there's there's a
lot to be gained from a nuanced presentation of your villains, especially with gray
areas. I think having having a villain where you think, you know he
kind of has a point, you know that, that's great from a storytelling
standpoint, and I think as a player, it's it's fun to interact with
those kind of characters. But there's also there's definitely a time and a place
to just have the bad guy beyond relentingly evil so we can murder him with
that hesitation, because like it's you don't want your players always feeling guilty when
they're that guy, because I think it can be overdone if you overdo it
to the point where we're always second guessing and hesitating because we're not sure we're
in the right Eventually you kind of lose a sense of purpose. There's a
balancing act I feel like on both sides from the d from the game master
deciding whether to like you know, reward such actions, but also for the
player to decide what they're doing is you know, the right not just because
their character would do it necessarily, but also is this the right time for
that kind of thing, Because there are times when people will play their character
the way their character would be played and can derail everything completely and that's not
what happened here. And again it is because there is thought going into every
action. It's not just oh yeah, my character is violent, so they're
going to kill this guy or they're gonna kill every guy, you know.
So I think it's commendable on both sides for PB and WHACK, you know,
like doing that thing and again, you know, like a humanized Timber.
It brought a very interesting sting in somewhat difficult like you know, conversation
on the table, especially for like a tabletop RPG. You know, like
it's a very interesting place to kind of hash out certain things that even in
you know, present day is difficult for people to you know, reasonably discourse
about So yeah, like coulds to everybody as well for keeping it in character
as well and not necessarily like you know, letting you know that aspect of
it come into the into the game as well. Yeah, I mean managing
to casually slide a capital punishment debate into our role playing game. Even as
we were having those conversations, I was I was sitting here thinking, Man,
I know exactly what my character would say, but I don't want to
be crucified me. I was like, I'm gonna make some people real mad
if I just have my character answer with exactly what he's thinking. Go ahead.
We also had that. We also had that in this game where we
had you know, Timber being you know, kind of gray area. But
then we also had enemies that were just evil so we could go at it
with no worries and concerns. But yeah, I was a good favorite enemy
line was with the with the trolls, when the yeah, and then the
next town, oh Lloyd. I was thinking about that for weeks. I
think Middle Earth as a setting because it has so many monstrous types of individuals.
I think in a lot of cases most of them come across as being
black and white. I'd argue the majority of the majority of the like antagonists
throughout the whole franchise are pretty irredeemably evil. It's actually less common to see
a nuanced gray area character in a world where the battle lines are pretty usual,
very strictly drawn between good and evil. So Timber was like a nice
breath of fresh air to make make you think a little bit about you know,
what does he make? He does have a point, you know,
mm hmmm, just and I know what You're getting ready to ask something,
and I just need to throw this out real fast, talking about the trolls
and everything else going on. I took shadow points for falling into troll shit.
You did. That's right. That was another great moment. Shit that
was so good. You just never know what's going to happen. But I
remember as that happened thinking I was questioning it because because I was questioning the
decision because they read in the book and it's like shadow points. Witnessing grievous,
horrible acts, finding your whole family murdered, h watching people starve to
death on the streets. It's like these may cause shadow points, and you're
like you tripped and fell into some poop. I will say that I will
defend the choice to do that, mostly because human bones in it. There
was like people people in it. Yeah, Tharbad was so such a an
eye opening for the Hobbits. They were like, oh my god, I
didn't even know a place like this could exist. And falling into a pile
of shit. I don't think he's ever seen to that size, which just
like it was like a physical representation of just all of this muck that lives
over this place. And with his you know, with Lonton's like wonder,
I can't remember what the thing is his, uh, like the bad side
of of you know whatever. The further he got from home, the worse
it was going to get for him. So, I mean that was a
pretty hard moment. But anyway, I just wanted to bring up the fact
that Wanton fell and shit so and he did, so there's that will always
exist. Very so. Uh. I don't know if we should do this
at the end or if we should do this now. I get probably later
when myrgles is here. But something to percolate on is questions that you all
have for each other or me or whatever. Think about those as we're as
we're continuing here today. I think we should probably do those near the end.
I gotta do one now while it's still fresh. Whatever happened to Timber?
Did you write an ending for him? So there's how do I answer
this? Find out on season two? So there's like, so the the
the answer to that is kind of tied into what will probably be asked by
other people as we go on through this, because there's just there's a lot
of stuff that could be could be asked here for this show. We we
we kind of change directions pretty hard in the show, like halfway through or
so, and you know, I know that that is going to bring up
a lot of questions. So I don't know if there's a way I can
answer that without like kind of giving the answer to something else now, So
maybe I'll save the answers to that a little bit later. And and I'm
not going to forget that, because uh, there is there is an answer
to that, Okay. So I'm going to start with some of the questions
from the viewers. We had some stuff from Discord. I would also like
to remind Chat you guys can ask questions in Chat as well. Uh,
Keeper and Piranha. Thank you so so much for doing the excellent job of
moderating like you usually do. We appreciate you so much. They are keeping
track of questions and they're adding it to a document for us. But we've
got some questions from discord. Uh fifty four aqua snakes for me? What
did Piper need to roll to break her curse? Gandalf rom and that was
Aaron that made that role. Yeah, I decided. So when I started
this campaign, I decided that this was going to be a sad campaign.
I knew from the beginning that I was going to aim for h Yeah,
I didn't you a GM of doom. What did you expect. I didn't
know if you'd pick up on it in general, just because of the timeline,
because a lot of us did, like a lot of Lord of the
Rings in depth, like re search, I can read all the books.
Yeah, Like early on, because we didn't want to fuck it up.
I remember one of the early comments on YouTube was like, please don't fuck
it up, and I was just like, no pressure. I was like,
thanks, that's already what I think all the time when I do any
show. Please don't fuck it up. Uh No, that's I feel like
that's a comment that you pick yourself. You know. You go, h
man, I hope they don't fuck it up, but you don't. You
don't put that on YouTube? Yeh? Can you go to YouTube pb and
write that underneath. I think that's a now you should keep to your make
a Stallin account, make a Stalin account. I mean, I'm of two
minds of it, right, because on the one hand, I'm like,
yo, you should not be saying that stuff. But on the other hand,
a comment that still lives on a folder on my computer for when I'm
having a bad day is I hate more than Stalin, which somebody said about
my character in Darkfire, and I'm like, this is amazing. I which,
by the way, Phoebe will be replaying tomorrow on the Sill Show as
me, Brad, Phebe and Technique are going to be playing characters from previous
shows in Balder's Gate three, so hopefully check it out tomorrow here on Table
Story, we'll be doing it. Two. Can hate writ more than Stallin?
I have yet to go back through the logs and watch Dark Fire,
and now I feel like I must Unterstoll. Yep, everybody hated her.
I was good. It was good for all the casts. And this is
also from fifty four Oqua Snakes confused as to did Lnton and Toddles go with
Rio and and win on their quests or did they go back home? Do
you answer this or do should we leave it? That's a great question,
felt like I felt like it was pretty clearly answered. I thought I thought,
yeah, I thought so too, But well you don't think that.
Okay, hold on, because I think we all have a different idea of
what happened. Yeah, yeah, I thought I knew the answer. I
do, Okay, I sort of haven an answer from my own perspective.
From from the very beginning, uh pb Mergs and I had some convers conversations
about our hobbits, who they were to each other, how what they meant
to each other, and it was family, right, That's that's what that
was. When Piper passes, she had mentioned home and her parents. I
think as much Lanton and Toddles would probably want to continue with their new family,
they would have to go back and tell Piper's parents. I don't see
them getting around it. I think that that was probably of all the journey
that they went on, that was the hardest one. Yeah, to go
back home without her. So in my timeline, they did that after she
passed, because there was time that passed between her death scene and the time
where we all met together at the tree. So in my mind, they
went and they told them in that time frame, and then when they came
back and met that the tree and he said he had a quest that at
least Tottles, in my mind went with them. Oh that's good. Yeah.
See, I totally thought it was just going to turn into a buddy
cop movie because my understanding of it was Gandalf was volunteering to take them home,
and I thought he meant, like, after that funeral procession was done,
you would make sure the Hobbits got home safe. Yeah, that's what
I thought too. And then we journeyed all the way back to meet everybody
again to pay respects. Oh see, well yeah, as we've already established,
time is messed up. See, I saw that as happening afterwards,
the thing, like after the funeral or something. Yeah. So well,
now, I mean, hearing all these interpretations of it, it totally means
that Andowin and Rio set out on their second adventure, and like three days
into it, we just turned around and Tuttles and Lump are standing there like
wait what yeh, Yeah that was us in my mind the way I interpreted
it, Like, you know, after Piper passed, then Riot went on
his quest, and then Olwen said you're gonna need like you know, somebody,
and then that so they went together and Gandalf took the other's back.
Because I don't I mean they you know, the whole it could have come
back this way. Again. It's improbable because of how it we almost died
eight times, but you know, they could still do it. I think
I think actually with this, I think there's actually a canon answer. Yeah,
they must have gone back home to tell the parents, but then they
left the shire. Yeah, because I don't think. I can't imagine.
I was always wondering, like, how about that story there after her?
Yeah, but how could that story exist and not you know, the Lord
of the Rings being what it is and us trying not to fuck it up
the whole time we are thinking about our actions and our choices and the story.
It wouldn't make sense for them to be in the Shire when Bilbo and
Frodo and all that shit was happening, or telling our stories of the serpent
and the trolls and like over the top. I think I do like the
idea that they went home, and they did they told her parents and it
was probably just the worst thing ever. Yeah, well because too if you
look at like Hobbit culture, they absolutely would have probably blamed them for the
death of Piper, like this is why you don't go out of the show,
is why you don't go Yeah, yeah, it's just why good,
good Hobbits don't go on adventures, right, yeah, exactly. And I
imagined because that conversation with three youth and Tottles where he said I can wait
a few more years, I assumed it was like, we'll stay with will
stay with Piper until she's ready to pass. They go home, they tell
everybody, and then they all, you know, kind of go off together.
But oh that was my interpretation. Yeah, I love that. I
mean I would make that considering how I thought like five minutes ago, I
like that way better. I love the idea that they continue to adventure so
into REOs nonsense, which I want to know about. Well, there's also
sorry, whack, there's there. There's also one piece for Tottles specifically,
I think in that if she goes back to the Shire. Those people aren't
going to remember Piper the way that Toddles experienced the hero Piper. Yeah,
you know, she might tell the story of Piper, but you know,
when you lose family like that, I feel like Tottles would want to be
around her new family that she found because they will all know and remember and
keep that memory of Piper alive together. So yeah, I think it would
be important for her to be with Threeth and and In and hopefully Lawton as
well. Yeah, Lonton would have gone way, way, way back.
I had actually seated the idea that there was a girl that he was interested
in the Shire. It's sort of a mirror to Sam Wise and you know,
but yeah, there's no way in hell that that would have happened.
Like he wouldn't have I don't think he would have recognized himself anymore and wouldn't
have felt like a worthy person for some want to live such a nice,
simple life bad So yeah, yeah, it's so sad. The So here's
the way I saw it. I wanted to hear what you all thought first,
okay, but the way that I imagined it going. And keep in
mind when we're doing these shows, and when we're trying to I'm sorry,
hello, hi, hi, hi, sorry sorry sorry continue Okay. When
we when we do these shows and we wrap them up and stuff, you
know, as a GM I, you know, you always want to like
close up all the plot holes as much as possible. Like it's always that
ship always sits in the back of my mind, Like, God, I
really wish I could have done something with that or that, or that we're
limited by time and what we can do and what we can actually fit into
a show, you know. Yeahs you know, sometimes sometimes it just doesn't
go the way that you're hoping so that you can wrap things up the way
you need. Yeah, So, like it was kind of hard for me
to kind of convey what I imagined, but I kind of hearing what you
all said, I'm glad that it went the way that it did and that
you all had your own interpretations. I generally like that. I like when
people have their own interpretations for how things go when things are left a little
bit vague. I love the fact that so many different stories can crop up
from someone's interpretations of what happened, you know, like that that discourse that
can happen where you're like, oh, we don't know that that's what happened.
They didn't really give you the specifics or whatever. I love the premise
that our creativity helps other people create, Like, that's such a wonderful thought
for me. I love that. My intention when I was doing it was
that there was a period of time before you came back. And I love
the concept of you going to the Shire, telling them what happened and not
feeling like you can stay there. So now you're going to go on a
new adventure because you can't stay there, And the people that have kind of
become your family are the people that you're going to go on this adventure with
again. And it's like you're going on an adventure for a different reason now.
And maybe you go through Rivendell on your way back, like you left
the Shire, and now you go back to Rivendell, and that's your starting
point now. It was your end point before, and now it's really your
starting point now. As you say this, it it kind of dawns on
me that I hadn't really thought about it till now. But it's funny because
the Hobbits end up having the same kind of mental or like emotional epiphany that
and Dowin had in reverse, because my story starts off with me feeling like
I can't stay at home anymore. I do, I'm not welcome here for
one reason or another, and so and Dowin leaves, goes on an adventure,
finds acceptance. And then I was thinking of recording a narration of something
or something along those lines at some point to tell what happens and afterwards,
because I already you froze for a second, continue, I want to hear
this, but yeah, you're here. Oh yeah, So I already I
already had planned how and Dowin's story ends if he lived through the adventure,
because I didn't know what whack was going to throw at us at the end,
but like I kind of already have, like the next fifty years of
Antine was life planned out afterwards, and so I already know where he was
going next, and like how his story was going to end, assuming that
we've reached the end of this. And it's funny because anyway, like I
was saying, the beginning, the beginning of my story is leaving feeling unwelcome,
finding peace, and returning home. Hobbits had peace. They've left home,
and now they feel unwelcome. So we've had like this reverse growing phase.
You know, I didn't really see that until hearing you guys talk about
it just now, And I think that's really interesting to show how they're like
mental state in regards to how they feel about home has been completely polar reverse
between the two characters. Yeah, it also I think mimics a little bit
of what Bilbo expresses when he comes back to the Shire, and though he
stays there for a while, he ends up saying like they'll never understand,
you know, like you can go a little disconnected. Yeah, like you
just Yeah, It's like it's like going and seeing the whole world and then
coming back to people who just have no concept that there's anything outside of their
neighborhood. That was literally me at nineteen, joining the military from a small
town and then coming back and going, oh my god, like it doesn't
even feel familiar anymore. Yeah, it's really sad to think about the Hobbits
having to deal with that. If you ask me, Piper got it easy.
I think it's sad, but also in a way, it's like incredibly
beautiful. I think it depends on how you look at it. It's like
they don't feel like they can go back to the Shire necessarily and live that
life. But like they found family. They're seeing the world and yeah,
some of it's ugly, but they still managed to find incredible beauty in it,
and they're going to see, you know, they got to see Riven
Dell. They're going to see like all sorts of other stuff. They're you
know, they're helping their family, you know, complete quests and things like
that. I feel like that's a reward of itself. I feel like if
you look at it through uh this idea of education, they weren't educated,
So them learning more about the world and becoming educated isn't sad. I mean,
yeah, they learned about some sad things that exist, but those things
exist whether they're looking or not. So I think, yeah, I think
it's good him mergles, Hello, Hi, uh we did some of our
favorite moments from the show to start things off. Since you have joined us,
I'm curious what yours might have been. You can't answer the second to
last episode. I heard that part because I was listening on the drink.
I was gonna say, you got a letter, and I want to see
if she would say the same thing. First yeah, I should have shut
the back up. Uh well, actually, like the obviously, I think
the first thing that popped it to mind was something that was from the second
last episode, which was Launton singing. And I think the reason why it's
my favorite is like it's one thing to have like a very Lord of the
Rings overarching narrative where Gandalf and Arwin come in and we have that like big
moment, Helm's deep kind of Gandalf coming to save everyone moment where you have
that release of that tension. But there was just something that was really powerful
about having this established beat from the very beginning. That was like we had
discussed that we wanted to do songs. We knew from the beginning that the
Hobbits sang. There were songs that were written in the first episodes, there
were songs that were sung at different points in the journey, but nothing like
that. It is kind of like the Pippin moment where Pippen is singing over
the horrible images of what's happening in Denethorpe. But it was like way more
powerful too because I actually thought at I thought that he was like gonna die.
So it was just a really beautiful thing to see this like very stark
representation of what it means to retain an essence of yourself in the face of
extreme darkness and all loss, and this idea that these hobbits still found something
to sing about and that's still found a way to help us and keep us
strong. Yeah, it was such a beautiful moment. I think that's definitely
up there for me. I know it's from the second last episode, but
I appreciate that. Yeah, I really had no other things available to me,
and I'd sent I'd sent whack a message. I was like, is
it okay if I sing and he goes, yeah, if you wake up,
it's such a such a like okay, But I yeah, I do
appreciate that we can and we can think GPT for that song that I was
frantically. I was like retooling the song over and over and over again because
I wanted it to start slow. I wanted to have a beat that picked
up. I didn't know if it was going to, you know, match
along with everything else, but that's what I wanted the song to be.
I just love the idea that you know, when things are shit, things
can still get better. So I was I was like I had a Hobbit
song with this No No No, and I needed to sound and I was
like, I finally got these lines, and I was like, I don't
know what the beat's gonna be, but fuck it. And then I got
I got to do it slow, and then I got to pick it up,
and then I got to do it faster, because I figured that's probably
something that Hobbits do with their songs. I mean, they they can be
on the tables and sing a song a certain way with the tanker in their
hand, but they can also sit in the corner with a friend and sing
it solemnly at the same time, and it's the same song. So it
was, it was it was fun to do, so I appreciate that.
Thank you. Okay, next question, last socratic both for Whack, where
they're different endgame scenarios you imagined when you started the campaign and how were they
different than what happened. I can't wait. Oh god, not the case
as a GMO. Yeah, it's especially honestly, it's especially true for this
campaign. So I struggled so hard with trying to figure out what to do
with this show. When we got started with this show, I mean,
before we got started with this show. Just figuring out what I wanted to
do with the story was so fucking tough because there were a few beats like
in the trailer that I hit that I I was like, I loved a
few of these lines that I used. The greatest story never told? What
have I done? I have just set myself up for a disaster? You
wrote yourself into a fucking corner. Well you also it's the greatest story never
told, which makes me think that they returned home and didn't share the whole
story, which actually was the same. In the back of my head the
whole time was no one's really gonna know? So how is that gonna work?
Yeah, I say, yeah. I put so much freaking pressure on
myself. Yeah. It messed me up so bad. Before the show started,
I was fucking frantic. What am I gonna do? UH? So
they the I can't remember when it came out. When they released the expansion
for UH for the game for the One Ring system the Ruins something. I
don't have it open right now. When they released the expansion, they put
a lot of like story stuff in there, and when I saw it,
I was like, guys, don't read this. I was like, don't
look at it. There's nothing in here. There's no extra character stuff.
This is all lore. I was like, I don't want you to read
this. If there's anything more or appropriate, I'll like give that to you
that you that you'll have to worry about. But like, it was a
lot of lore, and there was a lot of stuff, and they have
a timeline in there Ruins of the Lost Realm. They have a timeline in
there for like what goes on in between the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
And there were a lot of things in there that I really liked.
But I remember the process of creating the show and I was really stuck for
a name, and I was like, I want the trailer to look cool.
A lot of production shit, right, I was like, maybe I'll
come up with the story as I'm making the trailer, and like I'm doing
all this stuff. It's just one of those like production things that I think
happens for me. I don't think it happens to Peeb and Brad. I
think they have like a really specific story in mind. A lot of times
I'm like, what am I gonna do? And I was struggling a lot,
and I was like man, I really like, we focus on what
in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, what do we focus on?
And it's usually the ring? Right, Like, we focus on the ring.
So my mentality was like, we need a ring. We need a
thing. Yeah, we need a thing. So when people were kind of
brainstorming their characters a little bit, uh, you know, and Meyer was
making re old, He's like, I want to make a dwarf and blah
blah blah. I still hadn't worked out the story really yet. I was
like, I just started with a time period and it was like, let's
do it the year of sam wise birth. And the reason I chose that
primarily was because that's when Theodin becomes king. Yep. So that was the
whole reason that I did this time period was sam Wise's birth and uh,
Theoden becomes king. Those were these that mean that your initial ring was the
helm that he was looking for, and then you just swap swipped switch switched
it. Sorry, my brain just malfunctioned switched it to. Yeah, that's
that I'm you know, but a aaaa plus because I feel like, again,
as a GM, you know, you might have an idea or a
goal and to address wax clear vision. I may or may not have something
in mind, but everything changes episode one or two and then I'm like,
well throw that out the window. Let's rewrite it. And that happens every
couple episodes. So he should have put us on the trail to the helmet
before Piper and I derailed the entire Iris store. No, it was.
It was perfect, and I think that they can still go find the helm
now, like in my brain, that's the next journey. It was.
It was part of the reason it was called ashes Varia Door. And I
was like, this is gonna be about fucking dragons. Oh wait what?
And we never we never got ashes of the title. Ashes of Area Door
was the title because dragons, and because of the fact that Area Door is
crumbling, it's it's dead, it's dying. So that that was the whole
reason behind the name. It was ashes Very Door because I was gonna do
a thing with dragons and I wanted to introduce different kinds of dragons. That's
where the the water worm came from. It was like, that's going to
be the start. That was going to be the start, and then yeah,
that's why they called it. The Leviathan Okay, that's cool. Yeah,
so I had rough stuff planned out. Because of the nature of the
system, it's really hard to do a lot of these shows when you haven't
played the system a bunch and you're not like super comfortable with it. You
can't really heavy system as well hugely, So like it was really cool to
see you just like you adapt that and like add little mini games and stuff
that didn't exist in the system to kind of facilitate a man things to do.
The combat, the many different combat scenarios, it was all so interesting
and so fun. And I will say I struggled at times with the clunkiness
of the system or where the information was provided. But I will say this
that I have not sweat as much, you know, in D and D
combat as I did during the combat during the show. Like it was almost
I got every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I like,
yeah, they did a very good job with the combat in this game,
Like I really felt like, holy shit, my life is on the line
every fucking time. It is very good and also whack because you you did
things that the game doesn't lay out for you in the book, like you
presented the chase scene, you presented the Horde combat. You gave us every
single taste of like varying types of combat throughout this journey, and it was
fucking great. Man. Yeah, I wanted to expand on a lot of
what you were saying, just for maybe the audience who doesn't understand the numbers,
like the mechanical aspects of the game. I'm a number cruncher, you
may have noticed. I I have had a lot of fun with this campaign
because it gave me a whole new system to dissect and look into from like
the strategic standpoint of it, and the it's basically like the high percentage chance
of effectively getting critical hits in this system is kind of where it comes from.
I wanted to explain this for the audience. What we were calling a
piercing blow happens what it's like fifteen percent of the time out of base value
and can be upgraded through abilities that you get later. The really high percentage
chance of getting kriit, and then the incredibly nasty side effects of what happens
when you get hit by a piercing blow, and this system can put your
character out for weeks on end. And it's also a system that doesn't have
like healing magic either, so there's no like getting back up in combat.
So, like, every fight in this whole adventure is super tense because at
any given moment, anytime you're trading hits with anybody, you might get krit
and if that happens and then you roll the severity of the injury and it's
a bad injury, like you're screwed for weeks in game and you can't heal
it up. So like every fight is just so like the sense of mortality
with this is incredibly strong compared to like any other system that I've played.
It was super intense, even even the most tame encounters where it's like,
oh, yeah, we're gonna wipe this encounter easily. Oh piercing bla maybe
not oh oh man, it's he gonna lose a limb, like it's it's
beautifully done. Yeah. And the music, my god, the song that's
thing right now gonna die. Well, he was talking about combat, so
I had to to take something to support that. I'm glad that you enjoyed
the combat. I was really struggling with it. Honestly, if it felt
like a it was really tough. I didn't know what I was doing with
balance, Like throughout the entirety of it. When they fought the trolls,
and I've said this a few times. You might not have seen it chat,
I'm not sure, but I've talked about it a little bit in various
places. When they fought the trolls, they should have died, honestly,
like they the trolls are some of the very hardest enemies in the book,
no joke. Yeah, then you were like, there's no shame in running,
Like you gave us every morning to like be like some fight. You
don't want to stay for it. So the highest level enemies in the book
are level ten. The trolls were level nine. I was well aware too.
I was well aware going into that fight that we were perhaps biting off
more than we could chew, which is also part of the reason I was
so hesitant for like, even in characters like it's trolls, we probably shouldn't
bother, but you know, the Hobbits weren't having it. They forced us
in, So that was interesting. I think. Mechanically speaking, the scaling
for this system is also kind of wonky because from the start to the end
of the adventure, your health pool never goes up. Yep, your armor
rating never really increases unless we have a successful adventure where we pick up a
bunch of loot and go back and physically buy an upgraded armor set. Your
armor doesn't go up, your health doesn't go up. The only thing that
really goes up is your skill level, and that mainly applies to your weapons,
so you hit harder, but outside that it doesn't really change much.
And I think that's part of the reason why we were able to fight the
trolls early on, because they were an endgame enemy, but realistically, like
we still had we would have had the same health at the end of the
adventure that we would have had at the beginning. We would have had the
same armor ratings. It really just comes down to hope that you don't get
like the I did the Math. It's it was a sixteen zero point six
percent chance of a CRIT from any basic enemy, and when you have four
or five of them swinging every turn like you do the Math, that you
get hit a lot, and the enemies that had like the Keen trait,
the crit jumps up to twenty five percent. That's a one in four chance
that every strike is going to be lethal in this system, So I think
it's more heavily reliant on just I mean, it all comes down to the
dice in the end, I guess with every one of these games, but
in this one in particular, you are even more kind of at the mercy
of the dice rolls because you can't really put together like min maxed broken character
builds aren't really a thing in the system. You can't really break the game
that way. Believe me, I tried. So it's like fighting the trolls
was just pure luck, honestly, the dice rolls being in our favor.
Yep. Okay, how many months ended up going by? We talked about
that. It was July to October. kJ Allen asks for whack or myrgles
related to the timeline. Did Piper make it to her thirty fourth birthday or
did the show start with her last birthday party? Mark? You want to
take that? Yeah, the show started with her last birthday party. Yeah,
because it was only like three months, right, so yep, Oh,
I wasn't sure how much three months. Oh So that's interesting because since
we're talking about wonky time passing, I thought it was left kind of up
to interpretation how much time they spent in Rivendell. Well, I assumed it
was like I assumed it was like many many months before you or even years
before you. Finally the Shadow took you. Yeah, did you mention it
already? Whack? When I messaged you? Oh what you messaged me?
What did you message me? Oh? No, no, no, no
no no. During the during the finale, I messaged you at one point
and I was like, hey, can this happen? But it didn't end
up coming up because just like obviously the natural progression. Can I say what
I said? Just talk about it? I can't remember. You got to
understand when we do a finale episode, Yeah, leaking out of every orifice?
Yeah, I messaged. I messaged Whack and I said, can can
Piper live double the amount of time she would have because they stayed Yeah,
so she would have gone faster, but because they stayed with her, she
she the Shadow took her slower than it would have. They got extra time.
So in my head canon, that happened. Yeah, I mean because
they were in Rivendell, and Rivendell was under the protection of you know,
Rain of the Three Rings exactly, like time is essentially moot, you know,
like it's an eternity in there. It's like a hyperbolic time chamber until
you, you know, get eated out. Yeah, yeah, let's get
let's get your opinion. Mury's how long do you think it was? Oh?
How long do I think it was? I yeah, based on where
Piper was when they got to revend Rivendell and how far the shadow had progressed
at that point, plus she took the rest of the curse from Andwin.
I would like to think that you maybe had like six months actually, and
that it would have been faster, but because everyone stayed with her, it
went longer. So so do you think it was Do you think it was
another year? You were in Rivendell for a year, Yeah, I think
so. I think so then like, was that your birthday? Bro walking
you out by the tree love? I'm gonna cry, But I don't think
they I don't think. I think she turned thirty three, and then she
didn't have like another acknowledgment of a birthday. So she might have aged and
like it might have a year, but I don't think that she acknowledged her
birthday again, it wasn't like happy birthday, Piper. I think when she
got to reven Doll and then she was like, oh, the shadow.
I think she just stopped really paying attention to She stopped tracking the time.
It was just about being present with who she was with and absorbing as much
as she could. And it didn't really matter. There's no seasons to track
it, there's no anything like that. So I think, yeah, that
feels right to me. So then let's say that that's canon. Yeah,
yeah, stooge gr says for Whack, I got the feeling that the story
took a sharp turn after Piper's curse. How unexpected was it for Whack?
And am I right in thinking that the plot was originally centered around Tharbad?
So I answered this a little bit. It took a sharp turn after Piper's
curse, and that's entire highly up to the role play. Because myrgles did
that thing. I was like, Oh, that's cool, let's roll with
that, and every it seemed like everybody was on board with that thing.
And before that, I felt like the cast was a little they were struggling
to figure out their purpose, and once that happened, it was everybody was
on board and I was like, Okay, decision made. So that's kind
of just how that went down. I had all these grandiose sort of ideas
for what I wanted to do with the story, and as far as I'm
concerned, all of those things still happened. They just didn't happen to them.
And there was a lot of stuff going on in the background that was
happening, and it wasn't centered around Tharbad. Tharbad was a starting point.
It was so those visions that Piper had of the city getting destroyed. I
was going to go through with all that stuff. I was going to go
through with all of that stuff. Okay, it was going to happen.
It does sort of. I mean that that that town does fail. It
is a dead city by the time Lord of the Rings happens. I'll be
honest. When you were asking about favorite moments is like the first question,
and I rattled off a few. I forgot to mention that one, but
that was actually one of my favorites. Was when you did the fake out
of like the dream sequence of Tharbad getting attacked. That was in the moment,
in the moment that it was happening, I was like, Wow,
We've built up all these little side quests and mini stories and melt all these
met all these other characters, and we're building up this potential like revolution or
coup or whatever you want to call, like the working class, like throwing
out these bandits turned leaders or whatever. And I was like and whack,
really just like threw all that out the window. I was like, I'm
just gonna roll the town over with an army of Orcs. And I was
sitting here, like Bravo, laying all that framework just to throw it,
throw it out. There's a lot of guts. Yeah, it wasn't gonna
be Orcs. I was gonna it was going to be the Dune Lendings.
And the premise there was that theod In was going to reinforce, but it
was too late, like the city was already destroyed. So it was going
again. I had it in my head when we did this campaign, this
is going to be Sad. I'm this is not going to be Lord of
the Rings. This is not going to be the Hobbit. This is going
to be or I guess Hobbit is. You could argue I think Hobbit,
especially in the movies, is a little it feels a lot more sad,
I think than Lord of the Rings. But like I think that I had
always intended for this to be sad, So it was like, no matter
what you did, you can't save Ariador. That was kind of the premise.
And they say that in the book. Wow, in the book it's
like and I was like, yeah, that's kind of what I want to
do anyway. I think one of my favorite things about The Lord of the
Rings in the first place is the fact that it's centered so intrinsically around like
such a small group. Like Tolkien has built this world. He's built languages,
places, people and events that are happening everywhere. You have no idea
that Gandalf, you know, thought who you don't have. You have no
idea that he is also a Ring bearer. You have no idea he's a
freaking angel who is there on the behest of basically God. You have no
idea what is going on. It's just about how these people are happening to
live in that world. Like because of that, the way I made Reuth,
the way like you know, dwarves are already secretive, which works perfectly
with how you know, Tolkien has that worldview and all that stuff. And
I don't think that I would have ever brought up the dragon Helm unless I
was pushed into it just because of how dwarves are and just because it's more
about the important thing is how our group and party live and focus on the
task at hand as opposed to the bigger picture. And I think, you
know, I don't know where I'm getting outther than like, I think it
was really well done, just to you basically pulling the right strings in the
right order, because I don't think an end goal or an overarching story,
whilst you know, like we had one, there doesn't necessarily have to be
one that is so tied with the world around them, because in the end,
we're like, you know, a speck of dust in like a like
a desert, right, We're like a planet in the galaxy. Like what
we do doesn't matter. It's all about us, you know. Yeah,
it was really cool. I felt like the if you think about it,
right from the beginning of the original movie trilogy, it's pretty clear. Right
from what is it, like an hour into the first movie or however far
they get before you have like the Council of l Rond where they say,
all right, we have to take the ring to Mortor and throw it in,
and that gives them a very clear purpose that fills out all three movies
right right, And if you watch the Hobbit trilogy, it was the same
thing there. It's like the Dwarfs show up with a contract. It's like,
Hey, we need you to be our burglar. Here's what we're gonna
go do. We're gonna break into this thing and we're gonna get our castle
back. And that sets like a very clear purpose for all three of those
movies. I did feel like the lack of a clear purpose for our group
was making some of the role play feel a little bit awkward to me,
especially around the Farbad section, because I was sitting there like trying to justify
in my mind. I'm like, really, why would this character that I've
designed, why would I stay here in this town? Aside from Gandalf asking
me to look after the Hobbits, I have zero motivation to be here in
zero connection to this town. But the whole curse sequence with Piper instantly solved
like every problem that I had in terms of character motivation conflicting with role play,
and it added what I felt was a very badly needed unified purpose that
would give us a give us a goal that would carry us all the way
to the end of the campaign. I think it was for Whack to capitalize
on that opportunity and recognize, hey, this is a good direction for the
story. Was the mark of a true professional who's been doing this for a
while to recognize that, hey, this is what the story needs and roll
with it. Because that instantly made everything so much better no things I'd tried.
We talking about Whack, whacked it okay, quacked it okay too.
I think also, like the I think that the curse direction shift was actually
quite earned by the journey that we had been on at that point, Like
we kind of needed to get to know each other and build relationships with each
other. So even though I feel like we definitely were a bit aimless at
times in that in the Tharbad Sequences and slightly after that, it was kind
of, you know, like there wasn't anyone coming to knock on the door
with a Gandalf room to be like, here's here's this item, here's this
thing you need to go do. So we we had to, well we
didn't have to, but we created that as a group ourselves, and I
feel like through the ability that we had to like connect, I mean,
like you know, Piper would never have been even known to do that,
you know, in the first place, if there had not been such a
such a build up of like connection and stuff. But I have to be
honest, like I I did not know that the curse was real. And
hold on, I'm gonna highlight something for you. I just want to show
you this shrug. People may not be able to read. I'm just gonna
flash it on screen for a second. Just following up on that here highlighted
my notes. Is it mirrored or is it facing forwards? I just highlighted
one line and Owin believes he is cursed and it affects his mentality constantly.
But whether he's actually cursed or not is up to the I have that written
ince it's day one. So the whole not knowing that the curse was real
thing. It's kind of funny, the curse. Whenever I design a character
for any of these, and it's been the same on every show that Table
Story has invited me to so far, I always like write a character with
a strong foundation, but I always try to give them at least one personal
issue that will act as a personal quest that needs to be resolved, and
then once that's resolved, I can then focus fully on following whatever the main
story was to the conclusion. And in this particular case, the curse was
meant to be like my isolated, small side story, and I figured it'll
get resolved halfway through and that'll be my character breaking free of his past and
can now focus on whatever is the main quest. So having a turney into
the actual main quest kind of threw me for a loop. I was not
expecting that, and in a way, I realized, now I got Piper
killed, which yes, we were talking earlier about like returning home and feeling
unable to be home. I thought of and to win going back and telling
how the curse was lifted, and then just everybody celebrating him as a hero.
And in his own mind, he's like, but you know, yes,
I had a part in it, but it was Piper that did this,
so, you know, just feeling weird about being back while everybody's like,
oh, the hero and a win and just yeah, feeling strange about
being home. Yeah, I'm not sure. Oh go ahead, go ahead.
I'm trying to decide how much I want to say here if I actually
do want to sit down and do like an audio book style. Please do
that recab. Yeah, I think he should. I think it's a wonderful
project and I think you could do a lot with it. Yeah, I'll
refrain from giving too many spoilers then I'll simply say I'll say this much.
And Dowin does go home afterwards, but he doesn't stay there. Yeah,
he gets home and much like Frodo after his adventure with the Ring, realizes
he has seen too much. He can't stay. He's not the same person
anymore. So I'll leave it at that. And Dowin does go home to
report all of what he's seen, but he does not stay with his tribe.
I did want to say in this sort of combines a lot of what
was just said here, but sort of like with a painting, if you're
too close to it, you can't really see what it is, but as
you step back, you get this really good feel for what that painting is.
This story, even with us starting Gandolf showing up and the Hobbits being
like, yeah, let's do this thing, and you know, the running
into the wolf Man and then Rioath, eventually all these little steps that did
that happened that got us to the dun landings that got us back to thar
about that got us to breathe. That got you know, all these little
steps and all these old things. There's a lot of interaction with the world,
and they they like Wack was saying, we couldn't save it, but
we left our mark on it, even though it wasn't anyone that someone could
turn around a point at every time we decided to help, it was just
to help. But I like the idea that there's these repercussions after the fact.
Also liked the idea that gandallf was very aware of how things are,
almost in a pseudo soothsayer reading the future sort of way. That's just sort
of who his character always is. So he knew that the Hobbits needed to
go along. He knew that, you know, getting up with Strider and
having that. I'm like, how much of the Hobbits though? And can
I okay, I just want to please interject based on what you're saying,
because I wanted to add to it. So I tried really hard. And
I don't know if this game across at all, but my goals with Strider
and with Gandolf were that they were the most affected by this, and that's
what I was gonna say that was the I'm sorry I didn't know. No,
I love that you said that. No, go ahead, please.
My hope was that I was trying to That was whenever I was playing Strider,
I was trying to show his growth, and that was really important to
me because I've always tried to especially when doing the research for the show before
we got started. I imagine like he's growing up over this time. He
left home and he has to go on adventures to grow up and become the
person that he wants to be. And the struggle internally that he was not
good enough for anybody or any of the people that said he was good enough.
He didn't feel good enough. He didn't feel like he was worthy of
their praise or like their or the destiny that was thrown upon him. So
when I was doing all this stuff, I wanted to show growth from Strider,
and I wanted you to see like his inexperience and that these events will
change him and help him become the person that he is destined to become.
And Gandalf as well. I wanted there to be this period of this sort
of growth for Gandalf. Now I didn't get to bring Gandalf in for as
much as I wanted at the end, But so if I could jump,
no, if I could jump onto that actually, so that is where I
absolutely that is what I picked up on to answer your question, that is
what I saw as it being this learning experience for them. And as for
Gandolf, I saw Gandolf seeing the Hobbits as I mean, he knew Bilbo
was strong, but he saw Piper hold on to this curse for somebody.
Can you imagine when he looks at Frodo and he goes, yeah, you
can carry the ring. There was like no hesitation for Gandalf, there was
none. He goes, you have to do it, and you're the only
one that can essentially. Essentially, and similarly with Stride, I love the
idea that this this dwarf and this this man in these three Hobbits, and
he saw how ferociously they fought for people. They did not know what a
wonderful, like heart feeling thing when you do have this sort of destiny thrown
on top of you to turn around and say, well, it's not just
me. Look at they're here. Here are these others that are that are
trying, and they they don't necessarily have that destiny, but they're still trying.
It's lovely, I do, I will digress. The warm fuzzies are
intense. I think it's a good thing that Gandalf didn't show up. Actually,
yeah, I agree until the end. I agree. Yeah, because
Ria's only motive to stay with a party in Tharbad was Gandalf said, keep
the Hobbits safe until I return, and same you too. That was his
only motive. Had Gandalf had shown up, then Riot would have asked Gandalf
to make good hitto the Boggain and left. So yeah, I kind of
assumed that was why Gandalf hadn't shown up, But yeah, and ironically asking
Gandalf to can you break this curse off me was Andwin's true motive for joining
the whole time. I just I didn't have him ask at their first meeting
because he wouldn't want to intrude. And then when Gandalf was saying, oh,
we're going down to Tharbad, in my mind I thought, oh,
okay, I'll act as their guide and incurse some goodwill and once I and
and once I have done them a favor and I get to know them a
little bit, then maybe I can ask this powerful wizard to free me.
That was that was Andean's thought process the whole time. But then but then
Gandalf is suddenly like, I have to leave, and it was like,
but uh wait, wait a minute, Okay, think about it, You're
coming back. You're coming back, right, And so then he did break
it. He did break the curse by bringing the Piper. So very true.
That's the one thing that I always interpreted from Lord of the Rings is
Gandalf never really did things directly. It was always assisting other people to do
those things. Yeah, so like exactly like you said, like he brought
he brought the Hobbits along to help, and that's how he That's how he
did it. He doesn't do it, doesn't just solve the problem. He
he gets people to realize their potential and realize that they can solve the problem,
or that these other friends can solve the problem. I can't remember the
exact phrasing. I want to say it was either from the it was either
from the Silmarillion, or it was from the the other book. I can't
remember the name of it offhand, The Lexicon of Legends or whatever it's called.
I forget I'm sure somebody knows the name of the book. I'm trying
to think of. Yeah, Legendary, I'm thank you, that's the one.
Like some of the Tolkien's other works. In one of those they it
says that the Mayar, like Gandalf, were sent to be shepherds, not
champions, which is why I think it's It shows that Gandalf's nature is to
nurture humans and hobbits to stand up for themselves and accomplish great things rather than
do it himself. He's not there to be the you know, the champion
himself. He's there to shepherd us, you know, the mortals in the
right direction. And I think that came through very well during this campaign to
a whack. One thing about Gandalf in the books is that he would guide
people to do things, but then so many times they just completely absolutely get
themselves without a shadow of a doubt, just completely ft, you know,
like you know, Bilbo and the dwarves and the trolls requiring Gandalf to come
and show up, but you know, the lats to break the rock to
kill the trolls, you know, like them going and getting stuck with wolves,
and Gandalf having to cast fire, and you know by Gandalf's I see
it differently. I think Gandalf just kind of helps. I never I never
saw it as solving the problem because the dwarves and and uh in Bilbo versus
the trolls for example, they're the ones that lasted that long. Gandalf didn't
do anything, really, he just broke some rocks, right, you know,
because he broke the rocks, they survived. He was he never not
necessarily played any of the pieces, just the final move. But the question
was did you have any like Deis x Machinus via Gandalf like planned? Yeah?
I definitely did, so there was There was supposed to be repeated Deis
x Machina events. They were supposed to happen much more often. So ARC
one was supposed to be thar Bad. Okay, Arc one was supposed to
be thar Bad. RC two is so arc one was supposed to be thar
Bad. And then to answer stooge Gr's next question, what happened to the
city and the resistance in the end, sar Bad falls, our Bad falls.
Wow, it was supposed to be the It just gets overwhelmed. They
were over reliant in the wall that was there. They they were in fighting.
They were not prepared to defend the city. They were not prepared.
They don't have a king. They have a bandit captain that is ruling over
the city. Yeah. Is it better than nothing, probably, but it's
not enough to save them. Yeah, it's not enough to stop a siege
versus essentially like gorilla tactics from the Dune Lendings and uh, yeah it fell.
You know, I was gonna do the Theodin and Gandolf uh scene coming
in, but they were going to be too late. That was going to
be the thing they were going to They were basically going to come in and
sort of clean up, but the city had already fallen. Imagine Gandalf being
just ever so slightly too late to any of the major nalogies movies, but
over and over again. Well, so there was there was a lot of
precisely means to so I mean, if he was even like thirty minutes later
at Helmsteep, that would have been a real problem. So yeah, the
whole point was that there's an overarching story that's going on, and there was
a lot of things that I kind of hinted at and did a little bit
of foreshadowing about you were supposed to meet more the Dune Lending leaders and uh,
in turn that was going to lead you to some other stuff. Yeah,
Like I was going to do this thing at Tharbad where they march out
Timber and then the Dune Lendings free Timber like as he's being as he's about
to be like executed. Was the Dune Lendings were going to come in and
basically stop the execution, free Timber and get away. Wow, and then
we have to fight him again. Yeah, you're basically running it. Sort
it would have been the thing leading it would have been the thing leading to
arc two. Okay, because if we have to fight them again, I'm
sorry, Toddles, I'm killing him this time. There's no healing roll this
time. I'm sorry. So I won't talk about one of the things,
like before I look at the rest of these questions, I won't talk about
the plan for the over arcing thing that I was going to do because I
feel I mean, I mentioned dragons and stuff, but I'm not going to
go into details about it because I feel like that was pushed that to the
side. We made her own story. So yeah, so essentially the question
that I like to ask is Whack, can I ask you a question?
And he inevitably goes no. So that's what that was. Thanks. So
Whack was just saying on season two, I've actually wants to keep it a
secret. Wingsabariadoor oh man, No question is for Eapia. I do not
know if this is also from stooge gr but doesn't say who this is Trump.
Do you regret taking the curse at all? No, not even a
little. That was like, uh, yeah, I will admit that.
I was kind of going for more like an Oprah style the curse, like
everybody gets a curse. I was really going for like I love you and
we can release this pain together kind of vibe. I thought she meant to
curse for everyone in the party for a second curse. No, no,
no, I meant like, you know, sit down and you know how
Drew Barrymore. I keep seeing Drew Barrymore tiktoks and her thing. Drew Barrymore
like sits with people, like holds their hands. She like gets like two
centimeters on her face, you know. So I was kind of going for
like a real metaphorical release of the curse, and that's what Piper also was
going for. But here's the thing. Piper inherited. I don't think I'm
that good of a role player. Piper just inherited my like complete reckless,
uh stupidity, and I just, like you know, Beryl Barrel headed through
that thinking like, yeah, this is going to be so good. I'm
going to release this man from his insecurities. I can fix him. You
did hold on, you did real good. The act that was terrible and
mergles just and you are not allowed to I know. I was just it
was just well. It was also pretty It was pretty interesting from my perspective
too, because I didn't know if the curse was surreal. Like I wrote
a character and I was like, yeah, I'm just going to have him
afflicted by this curse. But it might just be a folk tale that's in
his head that he's that he is allowing to affect his mentality and his persona.
But I'll leave the option open that it may also be an actual supernatural
force in case the DM wants to play with it. I didn't. I
did. I did not expect the extent to when she decided to play with
it. Yeah, it was so awesome that you like wag. It was
so cool that you just the moment you were like, and you've seen his
Ghal's ghostly visage. I was like, what have I done? And then
when when she was like when he's asked like, who are you? And
I just I gotta be honest. I embodied Piper, And by embodied Piper,
I mean I just reckless with reckless, Abandon was like, oh,
I'm his family, and and I you know, secured that. Do I
regret it? Absolutely not. It was perfect. I think it was perfect.
I think it was a perfect story for Piper. Obviously I'm sad,
you know, yeah, like she came to the end that she did,
but also as like a fan of Lord of the Rings and also just a
fan of the show and everything, it really felt like an honor to be
able to have like play a character and have that character go through that kind
of arc and go through that kind of story. I felt like really spoiled,
Like genuinely, I was like, oh, I can't believe this is
happening. And even at the end when like we didn't, I can't believe
this is my characters. But even like even like whack like whack, and
I didn't Whack didn't message me being like are you okay if this happens during
the episode or anything. I just knew it was just like a perfect example
of like we just were on the same page about what this character needs and
I can't imagine a better, more inspiring end for her, like she ended
a curse from like an entire line of Bayornings and like, uh yeah it
was. It was amazing. I wouldn't change a single thing. Thank you,
Marins Uh for myer Pip what she needed she needed to die? What
question? Also from sher real is the most silent and mysterious character? Is
there anything that hasn't been revealed about him? Oh? Tons, probably so
much? M his beard size. Oh hello, that's question. H that
was the answer. Oh okay, Oh that was a perfect answer. Yes,
I mean that's kind of him. Yeah, I just wanted him to
do it again. He was nice, all right. Meyer doesn't feel like
expounding on that he has a glass eye. He's saying, I because he's
got a sigh. You don't know that because it's a secret. It was
a yes or no question. He's literally they speak their own language, you
know, like because they can't be helped. Yeah, like they don't speak
their own language. They don't say anything that's about what they're about, you
know, for maybe like Gimli, like giving the names like the Dwarven names
of like specific mountains and stuff like. No, so like, I wouldn't
say it out of character either. I was kind of deliberating whether or not
to give you his age even but I mentioned the Battle of Asano Bizarre and
Dane before, so I figured why not? But yeah, I mean you'll
find out when you find out. Uh huh. The music fucked man like
or Fight for the Secrets or if there was a season two, it would
be this song. Like it's like the opening scene is fucking ruth like running
down a town. I'm like, yeah, arrows going past him ship,
Yeah, like bouncing off a shield on his back, carrying a dragon helm
overhead. I beg, you're wondering how I got Can we the records cracked?
Oh god, I haven't told the cast yet. Costume Oh I'm ready
hold on? Okay for all of the cast. Did you have any thoughts
on who you would choose as the next character if the main one did not
survive? Yes, yeah, yep ye who was thinking? And I talked
about this, No, the character that you were playing, Like, if
your character died during the game, what was the next character that you would
have rolled up? Yeah? Yeah, I was going to make a barding
of Dale like Eastern Trader character. I didn't. I didn't put an extensive
amount of thought into it because I was like, I'll cross that bridge when
I get to it. I'm not going to write up a whole backstory,
but I was. I was going to make a like a kind of an
archer heavy character human based on based on the character of Bard. Yeah,
yeah, Bar the Bowman from the movies. But also because that's like a
primary character archetype in the book is like followers of this guy, So I
was going to do one of those. I absolutely was gonna be an ELF
just to argue with Meyer. Yes, yeah, uh with Meyer. If
I want to play with you, I want to go back and forth with
you, and I know that you would let me do that, so I
would say I did want to go sort heavy ELF. I didn't want to
go a bow. Yeah, we talked about this. I was going to
do Bowl because I really enjoyed the bow play play through, and then I
didn't have to relearn anything and then he was going to be Yeah, and
it would have been it would We were all ready for those moments. You
know, I thought I was dead. At one point, I thought Wanton
was dead, you know, when he got stamped by Timber. If Ruth
had died, and had died first, then he would have been an elf.
He would have been a very like uh, like vapid, air headed
elf, not like, oh my God, but he would have been like
God because Rang. Oh how I got here. I can't even begin to
fathom the Valley Girl elf trope, the start of Clueless, but as get
out Okay, no one in you. I was gonna make it mind it
elf, because so long that happened and else don't mean anything. Okay,
But if one of you guys died first and you were the elves, then
I would have made a hobbit instead. I would have made a shyriff,
you know, like or like what was our goal initially before he got rewritten
into a human. I would have made a hobbit Ranger. Oh cool,
that would have been great. Actually, yeah, that would have been very
cool. I uh. We talked about this before the show got started.
We were a little bit like, this is something I brought up. I
was like, if any of your characters die, you're gonna be off for
a few weeks. We didn't want. Yeah, it was basically going to
be until you get to a safe haven, until you like went back to
Tharbag or you know, you got to Riven Dell or went back to Bree
or something. You were off for that time because we wanted to to the
show today. Actually wait until we get to a say sorry, but yeah,
that was one of the things we talked about. Lonakup all cast.
What do you think about the One Ring second Edition as a t TRPG system
in general and or in specific playing a Lord of the Rings campaign? What
are the strengths and weaknesses healing motherfuckers? But also maybe that adds to the
tension. I don't know. I think got to be honest. Oh sorry,
go ahead, Oh no, no, no, go ahead, please,
I okay, listen, I am not I am I do not touch
anywhere near fair lights. Well, everyone here who actually understands systems, I'm
kind of like, you know, bouncing my way through most of the time.
So I my words are a bit biased, but I actually came to
really enjoy the system. I know that We had our issues with it early
on in terms of like how the mechanics worked. But I feel like,
and I think, really this is about Whack and not the system. It's
the amount of Whack. The amount of Whack, the amount of work that
Whack did to like allow for the system to really function for us, a
lot of homebrew and a lot of like reshifting things around and allowing rules to
like make more sense for us. So I came to really enjoy Wax version
of The One Ring. But I think it's like, honestly, in terms
of pretty orthodox. He filled in spaces that weren't really filled in in the
book. But Whack. Yeah, not to speak for him, but generally
he tries to play a system as close to the rules as possible. Yeah.
I thought like the combat was create like very thrilling. I really cared
about what was going to happen. I do think the healing was a bit
like, oh man, how does anyone like get over anything that happens to
them on a journey? But also how does anyone get over anything that happens
to them on the journey? Yep? Yeah, So my understanding of the
system is that we did not at all play the way it was intended.
I know you said, Whack tis to stick close to the system as it's
written, but no, he didn't. He took liberties, and it's a
good thing that he did, because the way that this system is written,
I don't think actually meshes well with the style of presentation the Table Story often
does, both from the campaigns that I've been in with you guys and also
from just being a spectator watching some of the other fantastic shows that are available
here. I like that shout out to the Table Story. But the h
yeah, thank you, Yeah, I get that ad revenue budget, the
whole the whole sponsorship budget. No, but the style of role play that
all of you do here and then that WHAC and Pbe and Brad have on
their shows, like the really deep character development and story arcs, does it
mesh well with the way that the One Ring book is written. Because this
the One Ring second Edition book features or it expects rather multiple time skips.
It expects that we are covering a much longer period of time, and that
we're not sitting there like dragging out scenes for hours or like forty fifteen minutes
like we had so many times with the Hobbits, which just go back and
forth and talk for like thirty plus minutes, and it's amazing content and it's
great role play and it's fun for the viewers. It's not it's not accounted
for in this book though. This book is like, oh yeah, you
what you know, You do your action scene and then okay, your action
scene is resolved. Now you're in the next town. It's like, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, hold on,
our action scene is over. But it's gonna take us like seven sessions
to get to the next town because we drag out every inch of the journey
and we cover every step, and our characters talk so much, and it's
very roleplay heavy. I felt like the system was designed for more it to
me, it felt like it was designed for a more number crunchy group who
wants to get in there and stab some orcs and then jump ahead to the
next major sequence without being bogged down by so much roleplay. So, if
anything, I feel like our playthrough was not really the way the system was
meant to be played, even if we did end up telling a fantastic story
using the system as a medium, I feel like you watch any other group
play this system, it's going to be very, very different because of how
we approached it. Yeah, I agree. This is Actually Jesse and I
had a lot of conversations early on because I think typically what I like to
do whenever I'm looking at a new system is I really try to wrap my
head around it. Pretty early on, it's one of the first things I
look for in a book is like, Okay, how do I play this?
Because I want to focus on the immersion for table story that's what we
do. And I'm like, when I am evaluating systems for things, I
need to have that in mind. So it's like I want to be told
exactly what is happened when I look at a book for any rules for any
rules system, maybe knows exactly. I'm out, dude, I fucking send
him a book. And his response after I'm like, oh man, this
is so cool. You should totally check it out. I think you'd really
like it for a show, He's like, the rules aren't on the first
three pages. I'm out. I I get so livid when the when it's
like I just want to figure out zero denial. I want yeah, I've
said it before. When I'm like, Okay, what dice do I need
what? Like, how do we do stuff? What are the classic character?
Yeah? I want to look at all that stuff. I want to
see what is the normal role? What am I doing? How do I
do that? It was the most recent one I sent you that was like
lore heavy until I've read so many of them it's so hard to keep track,
Like, God, I don't want that character stuff in the middle of
the book. I well, I love I love lore, don't get me
wrong, I fucking I just like clear delineations. I just like it to
say, uh so here's a here's a good example. Uh right. Uh
They're just like, Okay, here's all the character stuff is here, and
then this is all the information about like the pantheons and blah blah blah,
and like all this stuff is here. I know where that is. I
can just flip to it. I can go there. This is a reference
book. I'm not reading a novel. It's a very big difference. I'm
not trying to read a story here unless I'm like, Okay, let's dive
into the lore and let's figure out what's going on. I don't. I
just want to know how to play the game because I need to evaluate stuff
very quickly typically for shows. Yeah, I think I think they do that
to try to like, you know, draw you in yeah to you know,
kind of like what the mood and I get it. But also I
just wish that all the mechanics stuff that your players need to know would be
right up front. Then you have Laura in the middle, and then all
the secret jam stuff in the back. I want exactly that. I would
like every book to just have the quick rules on like one page. Okay,
and of course you can't get into all the specifics, but like,
here's a normal dice roll. Here's what happens when you role play. You
know this is I just want that in every single book that I read,
and then go as ham as you want on the lore. I love that
stuff myself. I read it all, but like I don't want it to
be hidden. Okay, Yeah, I have a major problem to add on
to what Fairlight said. I concur with everything that he did say. And
the wondering system is really cool, like the stats and everything else is super
intricate. The amount of pointy point of things really does make it matter for
your character and for the group and everything else. But however, at the
same time, like, as Fairlight said, the way it's designed, it's
again it's for a more number crunchy group. They it's Lord of the Rings,
and so the guys who have made the system understand that and understand the
importance of law and fellowship and everything else. However, they took it and
they made that also a number crunchy system, which we never necessarily touched because
we do that organically anyway, and it kind of made it very It was
just different. It wasn't necessary for us in the first place, but it
did make things and the way progression works in general kind of interesting. I
would say that when it comes down to combat, though, combat for me
as Ruth, did feel, and it's my only one hang up is that
combat felt for my character in particular, very binary. I was either attacking
or I was attacking. With Barukhazad, there isn't really or there wasn't really
room for anything else. I could have maybe perhaps done something to encourag disadvantage,
but it made it actually a really good point because that ended up being
tottles as well. I learned very early on that like I wanted to enhearten
people a lot, but unless we were fighting and I think fair Light even
brought it up. We talked about it after one session. Unless there was
a horde that we were fighting, it was better for me to actually fire
my bow. It just made more sense. And it definitely was one of
those systems where, you know, if it wasn't Whackgming and it was maybe
a more orthodox approach to the game, then we would have been very punished
by some of the cool choices we were trying to do. But Whack allowed
us to do rule of cool a lot, but it traditionally it would have
gotten all of us killed. It's a system that like does try again to
you know, just make it, tries to take the roleplay element and make
that into a numbers thing that is supposed to be like, you know,
as equal as combat, but combat itself. You know, as you're from
the early maps, there was no movement and everything else. And you know,
if it wasn't for you know, Whack adapted, you know, like
we got to move, we got to do this and that the other to
actually make it more involved. And I think even the makers of the system
kind of ported you know, like a five E to make that to make
it more I guess to make it more familiar. But I don't think it's
necessarily It's not a bad system, but it's it's it's different. So the
way I like to look at it is the way that we play role playing
games. We are a small percentage. We're like the one percent, right,
we don't play it like most groups at home do. There's a reason
that like modules and things are so popular. It's because people generally want to
have all the role play laid out for them. They're not necessarily as creatively
inclined as a lot of the things that we do are. They like to
just have it like this person says this thing, and this person says this
thing, and you know, they'll try and play it in character, but
they're going to remove some of those bits that they might find more difficult for
them. They look at it maybe as more of a board game, you
know, where it's like, okay, let's roll some dice. Oh yay,
rolled high, you know, like I do some damage. Cool,
let's mark that down. That's I think that's the way a majority of people
play. So, and there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah. No, I think Meyer hit hit the nail on the head and
he said that it turns the role play into number crunch in some cases,
because I immediately think of the shadow system, which if you are already role
playing your character as having strengths and weaknesses, and you are also role playing
your character as being prone to temptation, to depression, to darkness, to
mental fatigue, you wouldn't need a shadow system because you're already role playing all
that. But this, but this system takes that form of roleplay and puts
it mechanically on your character as a number. And also the council system,
which I don't think we ever actually used it at any point in the whole
campaign, but for those of you that haven't read the book, there's actually
a mechanic to replicate the council of l run scene from the movies where you
have like your important leader figure and then you have your party comes into basically
beg a favor from said leader. Or you could also compare it to any
of the powerful characters that the party members met throughout both the original trilogy and
in the Hobbit movies, like multiple times they would find themselves coming into the
audience chamber of whoever their host is and having to explain their plight and ask
for help, And there's a mechanic for that in the book where you have
to roll your courtesy to see how good at first impression you make, and
then roll for the temperament of your host and roll for basically, you roll
for a whole bunch of personality things in conversation, things that we just kind
of skip over that because we are actively just role playing it out like we're
having We are having the whole conversation in character, talking it out, whereas
the book is kind of like laid out as if you were just going to
do the whole thing like a dice roll like I walk in, check my
courtesy. I rolled at nine. Okay, that's a great courtesy role.
He's impressed. Now you got to roll to persuade him to help you.
Okay, I roll for persuasion. Whereas we just kind of yeah, I'm
so sorry. That's technically what Inhearton was for. And I remember being like
looking through the book and feeling like, you know, I wanted to play
a Samwise type character that you know, encouraged everybody and was like the Hope
battery, but also through action or just through that like undying loyalty, to
you know, whatever, you know, whatever they decide to commit themselves to,
and then which is family. But the way that the book laid out
persuasion and in Hearten was that persuasion was with words and in Hearton was with
action. But also they added in Hearton is in that arbiter way where you're
speaking to a council. And I'm like, I don't want to do that.
I don't want to give speeches like I don't want to do airborne style,
Like I don't want to do that, and so I had to ask
Whack. I was like, okay, like I want to put all of
my points into something because I feel like that's the way to run this,
you know, play in this system. But I don't want to dump everything
in in Hearten if I can't use it in the way that's like I want
to inspire you through my through my actions and through my undying loyalty. I
don't want to have to persuade you with words. And luckily he let me
do that. But typically that's what Inheartin was for. But yet they'd have
Inheartened roles in battle that are you know, through your action. It was
weird. It was very strangely laid out. Yeah, but I'm really glad
that we did. I do think that the way the system is written,
it favors letting the dice role play for you, which is not really how
I like to play, but it's definitely I think it's really good for someone
who's newer to TTRPGs, who may not find it as easy to write backstories
or stay in character, or if you say things like I'm not a very
good actor, or I you know, struggle, I don't like doing funny
voices or whatever. Well, this is perfect then because it kind of accommodates
for all of that. You just roll the dice and see what happens,
and it kind of takes that pressure off of the player. Although I will
also like criticize the combat for the same thing that Meyer said about it being
binary. He's either attacking with barouke Kazade or just attacking. I now imagine
you're playing the same character. You don't even have bruk Kazad. I'm just
attacking every turn. It's all I ever do. It's the only viable option
for the character build, so it would have been nice to see more variety
of like combat actions. I know that you had things like battle role to
obtain advantages or defend a comrade or whatever, but numerically speaking, in basically
every situation we found ourselves in, there was never any moment where it made
sense for me to do anything other than stab. Hm. Yeah, so
that was that was my biggest complaint. Honestly, it was council stuff and
the battle stuff that was. Here's what I here's what I really liked.
I liked the journey mechanics. I thought that was great. I thought the
concept of assigning people roles and sort of saying you are responsible for this,
and then we do a few different roles to say like, oh, okay,
this bad thing happens, how bad is it? And who is the
person that is the sort of focus for the bad thing. I think it's
a great concept. I love that. Yeah, that's that's a really cool
travel experience. And I just got to point it out though, that the
way it's written in the book, that whole travel sequence you just talked about
is supposed to be like ten minutes. We stressed out like five episodes of
travel, just again highlighting how different the way the system is written compared to
how we actually played it out. It's really good for role play. That's
probably why I like it so much. Yeah, well you had something like
that in Rhyme because we were in this cold, harsh environment. You were
rolling for weather and all sorts of different things. It definitely makes it more
interesting. Travels tough travel is tough to make interesting. Yeah. Yeah,
random trivia m HM. The character concept for and Dowin I originally came up
with from watching The Two of You and whoever else was in the group from
Rhymo the Frost Maiden. Really, I yeah, I was watching most of
the Rhyme play through and at one point while I was watching, I thought,
huh if I played like a frigid survival wilderness campaign, what kind of
character would I make? And I and I sketched up a Goliath ranger who
like hunted in a pack with his tribe, hunted like mammoths and whatnot,
because I remember the mammoths chasing the carriage sequence and I was like, Yeah,
what if what if I had this like whole clan of Goliath to come
out in numbers with javelins and like try to bring down mammoths for food and
wool. That was the original, Like idea that I had for and Dowins.
So then when I when Whack or it was Brad originally approached me,
it was like, hey, you want to do Lord of the Ring stuff?
And I was like sure, and I saw it was Whac and I
was like, huh, you know, I have an idea for a character
break but yeah, it was actually came from watching guys play Ryan. Okay,
speaking of that, I mean, I'd like to ask a question.
It's kind off the back of that. So why did each cost member choose
the characters they chose to play? Like, what was your thought process in
choosing who they were? You know, race name, like all backstor you
know all that. What was your process going into it? I can go
first, sure, I well, so originally, as GM on table story,
we talk about who were thinking about casting and shows and stuff like that,
and I wasn't on the roster for this show in the beginning at all.
I think when Whac was conceptualizing it, it was like I was in
multiple things, right, and there just came a mom moment where I was
like, Mergs is this is her favorite setting in the whole world. She's
my best friend in the whole world. I have to go play a hobbit
with her. And I actually broke a rule and I asked Whac to be
in the show, which I would like never do if the GM doesn't approach
me. I'm not going to say anything because you know, there's only so
many shows. I'm so lucky to be on so many table story things anyway,
but I was basically like, I would please let me be a hobbit
with myrgles and then and Aaron was in it as well, and I was
like, I would love nothing more than to be a hobbit with those two.
And Whac said yes to that. Actually, he was like, are
you sure, because that's a lot for you to do, and I was
like, I will die to do this. And so I already knew going
in that I was going to be a hobbit with those two because they were
you know, yeah, Mergs was like, if I was ever in a
Lord of the Rings game, I would have to be a hobbit. So
yeah, yeah, and I kind of knew that, you know. We
talked about doing different accents and things like that, and then because it was
Aaron, I was like, I think it would be fun to play that
dynamic that we have on Wild RPA with Sparks and Michael, that family dynamic
and do those cybersh accents. So I kind of based it off of that.
So I knew going wig in that we were going to do the Hobbits
and be a family. So that was that's my answer for that. Yeah,
I will jump off of that two of some of the best days of
my entire life. Whack inviting me to this show, and then you would
be telling me that she was going to be on it. Yeah, do
we have the video? Are we allowed to watch that? Do you have
that? Foor? Oh, that's the video of her reacting to her invitation.
It would be in our chat, it would be yeah, but I
have it on my computer someplace. I think, oh, okay, okay,
okay it yeah, Soul, should I say what? I'll wait until
you find it and then we can Okay. So Whack Okay, dude,
I can't. I'll cry again. Whac Like sent me a letter to invite
me to be in the show, and he I think Peeves told me to
open it and record it. Yeah, so I like got I got like
my camera going and everything, and I open it and I like weapons great
emotions like, I lost lost my mind. I was so and was like,
what the fuck did you do to my wife? Can you give me
your hands up first before you do something like this? To be fair,
he's used to it. Now find it? Oh what you found it?
Yeah? Oh my gosh. Oh no, no, this is just no,
no, how was it? The that's just me oy the rings and
crying. Oh, that's just you crying in general. Oh, I'm sorry.
To be fair, all we have to do is put on concerning Hobbits
and we'll get some myrgles tears. Yeah, I thought. I think I'm
a bit inoculated, actually, but who knows. You never know anyway,
So he invited me, and I cried and lost my mind, and then
Peebee told me that she was going to do it, and I cried and
lost my mind. And then I was like, obviously I have to be
a Hobbit. And I sort of knew. I was like thinking of Piper,
and I knew that it was going to be an adventure, and Hobbits
do not typically like adventure, and we were playing three Hobbits and there had
to be a reason for why we would go on an adventure, you know,
And so I was like I think maybe I'll do a took. I
think I'll do like a wander lusting took who is just who just loves the
elves, like I just wanted to play me just wanted to see the elves,
dude. And and yeah, so that that's kind of like where Piper
came. But we we made our characters together, basically, if I remember
correctly, like we worked on them in tandem very closely, which was really
nice because obviously we were going to be playing like a family, so they
knew each other very deeply. Yeah, and that it was just a wonderful.
It was a no brainer to play a hobbit in this in this opportunity
to be in Lord of the Rings and be in this world in Middle Earth.
To be a hobbit is a dream. I think you start out wanting
to be an Elf. When you're like a kid, you like watch It.
You're like, Legal Liss is so cool and hot, So I think
I would want to be an Elf. Arwin's so cool and hot, and
Elf is so cool. And then you turn thirty and you're like, I
would like a nap? Can I be a hobbit? When a garden?
Thank you? Actually, if I could jump off of that since we're just
do all the hobbits at once. Yeah, it was. It was always
going to be a hobbit. There was no question. I mean I looked
at the book at all the other you know options, but the hobbit just
seems like so much fun. I will say, uh, we did sit
down, we did all you know, talk about how we knew each other,
and a lot of little tidbits. But one of the main character,
I guess defining things that I gave Lawnton actually comes from the movie. In
the beginning, when Gandal first shows up, you see a hobbit. He's
a he's a large, older man, and it's when the kid it's run
after, you know, saying you know, Gandalf, Gandalf, and then
he shoots off the fireworks. Right, Okay, So he's a proud foot
because later on you see him at the party and then you know, Bilbo
goes through all the names and he says proud foot, and he yells proud
feet. So I saw this character as someone that was understood tradition and understood
what it meant to be a hobbit, but wasn't really afraid to have fun.
And I love that. I love the idea, and yeah, that's
pretty much it. I probably dragged way more out of that character than was
shown, but I wanted to do that so that that's where Lawnton Proudfoot came
from. If things had have gone differently when Lonton got back, that's who
he would have been, was that man. But things went differently. So
he's just a family member. Okay, I got the video? Is it
okay? If I show it, yeah, I can say okay, no,
no, no one und as long as I'm clothed. I don't remember
in that video, but I would let you know. You I know,
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
Now we know what folder it was saving I couldn't find. I have so
many questions. I'm going to be in Lord of the Rings. Listen,
when the feeling takes you gets too warm, she's like, I'm going to
pass out. Okay, this was amazing. Where did I say this?
Okay, let's make sure I do this correctly. I also just I don't
think there's any like actual recording of the video itself. It's just the recording
of me reacting to the video. If iver correctly. Yeah, so we'll
just pretend that video is happening. Guys, Okay, here we go.
Do you have the original invite? Actually? Do? Okay, we can
watch that after I guess yeah, or first no, sorry, you're you're
already queuing up. You're queuing it up. We'll do it. We'll do
it first, opening everything. Originally, the way that this worked, just
so you are aware of my thought process, was that PB Originally when the
one ring came out, Peebe was like, I would love to run this,
Yeah, I just don't know when the fuck I can do it.
One of the things that's so difficult on table story is to time out shows
and like, you know, we'd love to do a thing where we're like,
you know, we have like seasons like television, and we can be
like it starts at this time and it ends at this time. Can never
happen. We never know how long anything's going to be, like specifically,
it's so hard to do and we have to time it around all these other
things. So when she did that, I had I ended show and I
was just like, what feels good to run right now? Rings of Power
was out Meyer was doing a watch along with Rings of Power. Yeah,
and I was thinking, I was. When you run shows on table story,
you start to be able to do cast math okay, and it's like
you start with maybe one person You're like, who would be good for this?
Well, obviously Myrgles is a giant Lord of the Rings fan. Obviously
Aaron is a giant Lord of the Rings fan. So when I started the
show, those are the first two people I had cast. It was like,
okay, giant Lord of the Rings fans, they have to be the
backbone of the show. And then Meyer, Like right after I had the
thought Meyer, I saw those dms where you were like Meyer's doing this,
Like I didn't even know he was a fan of Lord of the Rings and
yeah yeah, Meyer was like I saw the Twitter post like he was doing
the Rings of power watch along thing or whatever. He had a sponsored thing.
So I was like, holy shit. They they were there, and
I was like, now I need somebody that is going to be uh,
like the good memory person, the backup GM the and I'm like, uh,
and I also want somebody that's going to be able to push everybody else.
That's really important when you're making a cast. You need to have this
like the the the the leader almost is like how do we how do we
decide on where to go next? We need somebody to be like, all
right, everybody shut up, We're going here. That's the only way it
works. It's yeah, otherwise we'd be talking about cheese for three. Yeah.
No, absolutely, I'm happy to follow, never go to late so.
Uh So that's when I thought of fair Light and I was like,
I haven't had him on a show yet. I want to have him on
a show. And then Peb was like, like, whack, this is
going to be one of your defining shows. I am I want to be
on this show. I felt so bad, listen, I felt badly.
I was like I about a week and a half deliberating if I was going
to ask you to be on your show, checking your DM console, and
then I saw that rolling out and I was like, yeah, fuck this,
I gotta ask. Yeah. I'm not sure what the what the reasoning
behind it was, but I do remember you had it was Brad reached out
to me first about the show. He knew you a lot better than I
did. Yeah, right, because he knew you better, so you had
him ask me. It makes sense, It makes sense. I don't fault
you for that was I wasn't going to fault you for anything. I'm just
saying no. It makes it makes sense if if I were going to reach
out to somebody, but then I was like, actually, hold on,
you know him way better you asked. But it was funny because at at
first a I thought Brad was running the show because he like, in his
first DM to me, he's like, hey, you want to just Load
of the Rings role play stuff? The way he phrased it, he didn't.
He didn't come out and say, hey, whax, Steven is running
a Lord of the Rings show. He's just like, hey, do you
want to be in a Lord of the Rings show? Had just been like
no. And so I see that. I see that, and I was
like, yeah, sure, I like Lord of the Rings, I guess,
which also was pretty funny compared to the like contrasted to Merkles the Nerds
enthusiasm. I was like, I guess I could do Load of the Rings
like I loved. I loved the Lord of the Rings paper bag. Yea
meltdown. I'm watching these two. I'm watching these two have a meltdown.
But to me, it was just like, yeah, I guess I could
do some Load of the Rings. I like the movies doing doing the show
has definitely given me a new appreciation for Lord of the Rings that I didn't
have before. But I definitely was nowhere near the level of hype as half
of the rest of the cast. But then, like when Brad messaged me
and he's like, hey, do you want to do it? And I
was like, all right, yeah, sure, When when are you going
to do it? And he's like, oh, it's not me And I
was like, and this is after I said yeah, sure, I'll do
it and he said Then he's like, yeah, yeah, let me let
me give you wax info he's running it, and I'm like, hold on,
it's not even not even not even your running it. So he baited
me into it, didn't tell me exactly what was going on. And then
and then the last, the last thing that he said stuck out to me
and I still remember it now because he knew already what kind of character I
was going to play with that out needing to be told or asking. He
said, all right, have fun lead the people to Gondor. When he
said that, I was like, I was like, you're putting me in
this group to be the Aragorn stand in aren't you? And then as soon
as I got into the group, Pev said the same thing. She's like,
Oh, you're gonna be our Ara Gorn, and I was like,
gosh. And we had started answering a question from the audience and we kind
of got like derailed somewhat. You were asking like where our character motivations came
from? Uh. I specifically was like, I'm not going to play an
Ara Gorn stand in, I'm gonna make like a caveman or something. I
don't want to because I don't want to be compared too strongly to the you
know, the already existing protective time in on that. I don't think you
were ahead. I think I don't think it was either No, he wasn't
because I specifically didn't want to. I didn't. I didn't want to be
budget Aragorn. I didn't want I didn't. I didn't want people to watch
the shows Timeline Aragorn is budget Airgorn right now. But I didn't want people
to finish watching Ashes or even getting like into Ashes and then be like three
episodes in and be like, look at this guy trying to be Air Gorne.
He's never going to be Warrens And what a loser. So that's why
I was specifically was like, no, I'm gonna make like an outlander kind
of a caveman character who might have some of the same qualities be you kind
of range your esque in the sense that I live out in the wild,
but like Aragorn is this inspiring leader of men, And I was like,
I'm just going to make a sulking like caveman kind of much less eloquent and
much more likely to just answer you with a grunt kind of a character,
which which admittedly I failed at because by the end of it, I struggle
to play dumb caveman British characters because like my own personality starts to take over
at some point and override the decisions, like like if I try to play
a dumb character that's going to run into the room even though I know we're
going to lose this fight. If I run in there, it's like these
emergency breaks slam on in the back of my head and it's like no,
no, no, no, no, that's not smart. You can't do
that. And so of course veiled no at all. No compare compare like
the first few episodes to the last few episodes, and and you will see
the difference. What it was going to say you you had something to live
for, whereas before you really didn't. Maybe I will, I will begrudgingly
accept the compliment or or accept it as character growth. But really it was
just my own personality. So to take over the character Shelley experienced the moment
when myrgoles found out that she has something to live. Oh yeah, and
then yes, yes, so you all probably if you want to watch this
should turn on the stream if you haven't done so, yeah, and I'll
leave your MIC's live, so just be aware of that. Okay, here
we go. Okay, starting in five four three two one, this is
the invite that I sent to Marcos uh nas lot ushnas button And now Myrgle's
reaction, Uh, prepare yourself. That's a pretty sick invite letter. Not
gonna lie. Oh yeah, what was mine? Yeah? Why didn't I
get a cool letter? I just gotta ding to react the way that myrgles
does. Oh god, hold on, all right, here we go.
Okay, I'm watching this thing. That whack isn't me. I'm Kingburious told
me to record my reaction. Let's see how it goes. You're realization pause,
what stop as Lord of the Tears already, Well, can't no,
this is what a happy person looks like. By the way, apparently you
look like someone died. You looks and hides a cat. Yeah mm hmm
mhmm. Okay, well yeah, obviously fucking hate you love you bye.
Well yeah it was so good. Oh my god. Okay, thank everybody
for telling me your character motivations, for making your characters. Okay, sure,
what the hell? Mm hmm you never never, the rest of us
answered, Meyer hasn't gone yet. You still needs to answer that, and
I was. I was finishing mine, if you don't mind the like,
if you compare the beginning of the campaign where you have, like I tried
to keep and doing as this gruff like wilderness character that like would half the
time just like answer with grunts. But then by the end of the show,
he's like freaking turned into this warrior poet, waxing poetic at every opportunity.
And that's just because I completely and utterly fail every time I try to.
That's like my third or fourth attempt at playing like a primitive, dumb
British barbarian character. And it's my third or fourth failure at maintaining that stereotype
to the end, because they always end up turning into some sort of well
spoken leader character. At some point, I think I'm just gonna give up
trying and just embrace what I'm better at. Anyway, All right, go
ahead, Meyer, I want to hear yours. I mean when it comes
to RP for me, I mean like I like to do it like golf,
just play it where it lies. When it comes to like backstory and
stuff, I really don't do much with Lord of the Rings because of the
IP and how big it was. I made a concession. I read all
of the Hobbit before like episode one, and I decided, because you know,
I liked during and Rings of Power, that I was going to be
a dwarf. The only other thing I did was like I looked up the
Icelandic for rust, which was Ruth, which is why he's called youth and
why his horse is called Rusty. And I go, oh, wow,
dude, And you were using Icelandic too, that's crazy. And yeah,
like essentially everything else, like all the knowledge that came from you know,
Ruth and you know the Battle of Asmal bizarre, I was pulling and I
was I just did that on the fly as we went based on because I
read I read the you know, the Lord of the Rings books over Christmas,
so I just did it that way. But yeah, I always feel
bad because I feel like it's not necessarily how it's done. You know,
everybody else is like, you know, I like to just roll play on
the fly, I think because I do a lot of it in things like
Wild Darky anyway. But but yeah, he'd be go warm up your food
because we're probably oh, thank you, thank you, think you think you,
thank you, thank you? Like you past did you put it up
the chance? How dare you? I'm not not at all. One of
the greatest lessons that I've learned over the years doing this now for over fourteen
thousand hours, according to Roll twenty is yeah since twenty twelve, is that
you should not be too rigid in anything that you've written. It's much better
to do bullet points than it is to do any sort of hard lore.
You're not writing a novel. You're telling a collaborative story with other people.
So I always advise making cool set pieces or snippets, like things that you
can insert into other areas so that you can still tell the story that you
want to tell, but it doesn't center on you. It centers on the
group. That's just one of those things that I'll always recommend. Yeah,
I mean usually I write a shit tone. I didn't. I didn't do
hardly anything for Lawnton. I really wanted to try that. Outside of us
deciding that we knew each other and seeing the guy in the beginning of Lord
of the Ring, I didn't give him. I didn't give Lawton anything.
Everything was on the fly. Even his parents' names were on the fly.
It was it's freeing to do that. It's different. I love creating information
and sorry and history and weaving it. I love that. But this was
a neat opportunity to just be just a dude, just the hobbit dude.
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna get real deep about this for a second.
I find it interesting because I did the exact same thing. So we need
to hear from Pumpkinberry to see whether how like deep she went with her lore.
But I did the same thing. I picked up my parents' names,
and that was basic. Like I have a document for her and it's just
like her parents' names and nothing else. So I what I like about it
is that the Hobbits are like these characters that are unburdened. Yeah, they're
unburdened. They have a level of peace and happiness in their lives. They
have long family histories and things, but they don't have anything that's you know,
being carried with them, like lineage of like horrible experiences or curses or
you know, the Dwarves have this like the hallmark thing that happened in their
past that you know, forced them into diaspora and just kind of that sort
of thing. So I do like the idea that the Hobbits of our group
came into this with a free sense of wonder and not having anything set in
stone and not being like carrying all of this stuff behind them. And then
our characters who were you know, not in the shot you're in, not
Hobbits, were characters that kind of like had this sort of deep, rich
history in graindon who they were. I think it really suits the I think
it really suits them, to be honest. Idea, I agree, Like
I mean, like when it came to your character, obviously, when when
it comes down to lineage, before your transformation, you gave us like maybe
like seven forefathers, Like was that always pre written or what? No,
not all of them, the like first two generations and the most recent two
generations I already had written out, because I wrote the beginning and the end
of the story, and then I was like, Okay, well, there's
like a hundred you know, three hundred years of blank space here in the
middle, right, and so like nearing the end of the story, I
kind of like I knew that I was going to have him like transform at
some point towards the end of the story, or at least I knew I
was going to attempt it if Whack allowed it. And I wasn't sure when
it would happen exactly, but I'd say, like nine or ten episodes from
the end is where I kind of had this idea. I was like,
Yeah, he's gonna probably transform, and it's going to involve like finally reconciling
himself with all of his ancestors and like basically coming to terms with what he
really is and who he is. And then I thought, you know,
it'd be interesting. I actually there's a scene in Mass Effect where Shepherd names
off from memory every ship that was destroyed in one of the battles. I
forget which one it is, it's been too long since I played, but
I remember like someone tries to put him on the spot and he impresses them
by turning around and immediately like rattling off all these names that he's memorized.
And I always liked that scene from Mass Effect. That was where I got
the idea. I was like, well, what if I just rattled off
my entire genealogy off the top of my head. So I had the list
of names made in advance for that, but yeah, the uh, the
whole family tree wasn't spelled out from the beginning, just like the framework of
it. I try to approach like character story and character creation is kind of
think of it like a painting or a drawing, but I do the important
like the sketch, the frame, the outline is there first and then the
rest of the little details just get filled out along the way. And the
genealogy was one that just got filled out towards the end, from the from
the very beginning, like even like from episode one. I had his is,
his father, mother, all five of his siblings. I had the
tribe of Bayorn separated into nine distinct clans, and each clan that Jesus the
framework I knew, well, I knew at some point. People keep asking,
look, look, people keep this stuff anyway, And I think I've
seen my name highlighted like four times on the twitch chat, so i know
the questions coming up anyway, So I'm just going off script and answering it
right now. I had his father, mother, like five siblings. I
had the history of his tribe written back like five hundred years, split them
into nine clans, and then each clan I have listed a leader and a
champion, like based on I decided that they would they would have like their
chief and then their champion in matters of like you know, if it came
down to a disagreement, the champions would fight. Beyond that, the leaders
make the decisions. And then I had the names of each leader and each
champion for each of the nine clans. And then each clan also I gave
their their specialty of like their role of what they did. So there was
like one group was like the sages and seers, the learned people, and
then they had one group that was the craftsmen and the builders. And then
they had another clan that was renowned as their archers and scouts. So basically,
like these nine clans all had their own distinct purpose and and leadership traits
and all that. So that that was all the stuff that I had from
the start, and then asked, you mean like stained glass, you know,
without the color like Picasso, that I had all this random stuff thrown
in, and then over the course of the adventure, I filled in like
the rest of the detail that was missing. You know what mind maps are?
I have no idea, so no, so I'm gonna so so I'm
gonna show you after we're done, I'll show you something. A mind map
is. Basically, it's not a flow chart. It's just kind of a
visual representation of lots of different ideas and like sort of branching off from those
ideas. It's just it's some for some people, it's easier to see a
visual of bullet points kind of like laid out and the relations to others.
It just when you said this, I'm like, oh, that's kind of
like a mind map, because it's something that I've started to do for shows,
and that's like showing relationships with other characters and you can kind of draw
it in a visual way and just something that I thought of when you were
saying that, Yeah, that's nice, that's just interested in. I think
that's just how my daily life functions exactly that way. But I will say
this, this might be, this might help understand my person more so than
what necessarily I did. Right. What I didn't write is also, I
think, kind of an important part of the process. Like I mentioned the
nine clans and how I had a framework and all that, well, think
of it this way. Seven of those clans have names and specialties. I
intentionally left to of them blank, as I typically do whenever I make a
character, so that over the course of the adventure, if I needed to
adapt some part of it to add on to a story beat that Whac introduced,
or if I get the impression that Whack is fishing for something in particular,
I can say, oh, yeah, that's the eighth clab. Yeah,
just and I will just drop it on the spot. And then after
I drop it on the spot, I just go back into my notes and
then like, all, right, oh, well, this was the eighth
plan all along, and that's not just and it's not just what he just
described. I guess, I guess. I I gm my characters rather than
play them. I don't know, but that's that's like how I. I
have always approached my characters that way, and so far I feel like I've
gotten positive feedback from every GM I've ever worked with on it because the way
that I designed them is specifically put together so that whichever way you try to
steer the story as the GM. Oh yeah, it turns out that's how
exactly how my character was written all along, because because I left that part
blank on purpose so I could fill it in later with whatever the story called
for. A good plan. It's a good plan, all right. We're
getting close to the end of our time here. I want to wrap things
up with questions that that that our cast has. Any questions that you have
that you want to ask each other or me or whatever, if anybody wants
to have a question. I want to know. Okay, this is a
very silly question, but I want to know myrgles wants to know silly music.
Okay, I mean it's not really a silly question, but I would
like to know Lawton and London and Toddle's graph of how much they regretted leaving
the Shire and if they were like, we should just leave this girl behind.
What do we gotta do to get her back? I want to know
how much they regretted going. Definitely not a silly question, but I know
that's why I gotta change it. Well, because the silly question. I
think I could argue that it's a silly question for many reasons, but I
think, well, Pep, do you want to take a stab at this?
I have an idea. Yeah, I I feel like we hinted at
some things during the show and then we left it, and I like where
we left it. That's all okayerect Well, I mean you feel free to
expand on it, but I agree, Yeah, I think that. Yeah,
that's good. Sorry, Mars, I'm so sorry. Set of question.
No, no, because I also know the way that her brain works,
and what myrgles is asking is this, how guilty do I need to
feel about ruining these two characters lives? And I just refuse to fuel that
part of your brain. Absolutely not. That is exactly how I interpreted it,
too. Refuse, do not engage. Also, did Gandalalf give me
an a? Did you give you an a? No? It's a you
know, it's a joke. When you go to therapy and you want an
a in therapy because that's a normal thing to want anyway. That's yep,
cool, Thank you so much for your time. Guys. I'm gonna mute
now and question I. I I do have a question. Are you happy?
That's want in life? I knew was going to answer you that.
Are you happy with with how the show went start to finish? No explanation,
yes or no? Are you happy? Oh yeah, one hundred million
percent yes, mm hmmm jesse mine, Yeah, yeah, wouldn't have it
any other way? Ye. Same. So here's where I say, I'm
going to answer honestly, So, I'm almost never happy with the way that
a show goes, Okay. I always feel like I should have done more,
I could have done more, I could have done better. Always,
I don't think I've ever done a show where I'm like, Wow, I
really hit the nail on the head. I don't think I've ever felt that
way, not once. And it's it's a I think a lot of gms
feel like that. It's just one of those things where I'm like, I
think I could have done that better, or maybe it's the artist in me
as well. But I always think about that stuff. So I always think
I wish I did the I wish I did the first half differently, I
wish I did session zeros for the show where we really got into why we're
doing the things that we're doing, so stuff like that. Am I happy
with the way you all performed? Absolutely? But me, yeah, I
always feel like I could have done better. And that's the GM burden,
right. Yeah. I end up with the same feeling after basically every session,
even the ones that feel like they got about as close to perfect as
possible. I always I was sit to thinking, no matter how close it
was, there's always something to nitpick. So I feel you on that one,
like oh man, I stumbled over that one word exactly twelve minutes in,
Like I got tongue tied for a quarter of a second. I've ruined
the whole performance. So it's it's easy to be hard on yourself. It's
the perfectionism showing. But we appreciate the effort you put in. Whacky did
a fantastic job with it, even if you're unwilling to admit that to yourself,
I'll say it for you. Thank you. Yep. I can't really
say pretty okay. I think it's a beautiful. It's a beautiful piece of
art. It really is. Thank you. Any other questions from you all?
Shinniko seems to have one that they've tried to repeat. We've yeah answer
that one. I still have a bunch of from like the audience, but
I don't think we're going to get to all of them because there's a lot.
There's a lot. I've seen like twenty questions to go by that I
thought I'd love to answer that, but the time is the thing. But
any questions from you all, any other last questions? Okay, now if
that's the case, there's one last thing man, Okay, we got a
gift from Last Socrata and you should all probably turn on the stream for this.
Okay gift mm hmm let me know when that you're already are you ready?
Ready? Okay? Here we go. Well, hello, and this
is a little message for Totals and London. Of course. Nice to see
you back in the shire. No I hear there's been quite an adventure.
Would that be a D and D adventure? I don't know anyway, I
know that you're coming back with Ganda back into the Shire. I'm sure we've
got a proud foot and a thread good of course, and lovely to see
you guys back. Shame that the cousin Piper isn't with you. I take
it Piper took as off on an adventure as Tuks do. Of course,
reached the thirty third birthday. Very special, bustaye for Hobbits. I'm sure
you already know that. Toddles and wanting and I can only wish you're all
the best, and I hope you enjoy being back at the Shire. Don't
forget to get your second breakfast, very very important, of course, and
I look forward to hearing about your next adventure. Lots of love to you
all, all the best and well done and a fantastic adventure. Lots of
love from a full of a took all the best. Nice was that Gandalf?
Yeah? That was that was Gandalf. I just had to break the
mood because she's she's now Piper shook. Yeah. I was gonna say thank
you. I don't know, something special and I'll speak for my two other
Hobbits as best as I can. That's incredible. I love that. I
need that. Please, I want to show people I dis freak could just
come out of his mouth. I sat there and I was like Okay,
so he's talking to us, we just came back. We can't We're not
going to tell him everything, as if whoever this hobbit is that we're talking
to, we can't tell him everything. File and nod and shake his hand
and then go get that second breakfast. Okay. I want everyone to know,
like what a herculean effort I'm currently doing to like pull myself together so
that this doesn't end on like a full dissociate. That's the craziest thing I've
ever seen. I will pro I need like a I need like two to
three business weeks to like, thank you so much for the wonderful gift.
Yeah, thank you. Wow, that was really cool. I don't mean
just last Socratic, I mean to my wonderful cast. Thank you so much
for this wonderful gift. And thank you to our wonderful audience with this wonderful
gift taking us all out on our intro music. Thank you so much for
this fellowship and this wonderful adventure. Everybody hie for now post our questions to
the for the chat and everything in discord. Come hang out our Discord Tablestory
dot TV, slash Discord, and we will have plenty of fun stuff going
on tomorrow with the Shill Show four pm Eastern. We're gonna be playing boulders
Gate three. Make sure to check it out. It helps keep the lights
on here on Table Story and we'll try and answer all of your questions and
our discord. Come check it out and we'll see you next time for another
adventure. So toab you more cheese. Terrible name Edward, all right,
terrible name Hello. This is why Stephen from Table's Story. If you'd like
this podcast, please make sure to rate and review it. If you'd like
to listen to more of our pot you can head on over to tablestory dot
tv for a variety of other shows. If you would like to support us,
you can head on over to tablestory dot tv slash pledge, and if
you'd like to join our community, you can head on over to table Story
dot tv slash discord. Thank you, Joy,