See it's alms. Oh. Welcome to the barbecue, where the cast and
creators of Oops all Bard's grill each other about the last episode. I am
Jillian Ashley Blair IVY. If you call me anything other than Jill, I'm
going to assume that I am in trouble. I'm joined today by Ashley Banks,
Ross Curry, and our illustrious producer Nate Runcle, who we've decided to
actually give a microphone for this episode. Yes. Yes, So if you
are listening to this, you probably have just listened to episode three of Oops
all Bard season one. If you have not listened to episode three, I
do encourage you to go back and listen to that before you listen to us
to talk about I just, you know, for reasons. So in episode
three, we had everybody who was at graduation who survived being outside of the
dome at graduation starting to head over to Sovereign House that includes a hostage that
you have all taken, a satyr who was put to sleep by his own
allies. We also had on the way to Sovereign House, Clarice taking an
opportunity to send a letter to her family to check in and see if they
have any guidance for her, which led to Clarice's colliding with this Solodora as
she re entered Sovereign House, and there's clearly some hostility between them. And
then we had what was supposed to be a private conversation amongst the politicians and
university officials, and that got infiltrated by Clarice. And also we had Belle
sneaking off to go see if she could find some information out from some of
them, maybe clerks and pages that are there in Sovereign House. Rucus took
the satyr to the bathroom, at which point he learned some interesting things about
the satyr, which he shared with Andrik and Stumps. In the meanwhile,
andrikan Stumps were having a conversation with Clarva Dasham, who was one of the
clerks at Sovereign House and also the person who found the letter that was attached
to the door. And so I think that pretty much catches us up.
I would love to know as we start our conversation, Ashley, you and
Anne, so we had Belle and Clarice were clearly plotting something while the game
was actually taking place, and I would love to know how it was that
you managed to have this conversation. Were you texting under the table? Was
it just eye contact because you know each other so darn well, Like,
how did you manage to decide that Clarice and Bell were going to go rogue?
Here? We? Yeah, it was. There was no texting under
the table, there was no passing of notes. I don't I genuinely don't
know how it happened. I mean, we know each other, We've known
each other for years, right, but it definitely you know, I don't
regularly get telepathic messages from Anne, But in that moment, we both knew
our characters fairly well. We had discussed, you know, them, sort
of knowing each other from growing up, but actually, prior to that episode,
our thought process was that they really weren't particularly close. They have very
different personalities, very different worldviews, very different approaches to life, so probably
a sense of like, I know you, I like respect you and your
deal, but not besties, right, And that was sort of what I
went into went into it thinking. And then suddenly, I don't know,
you know, sometimes you're playing and the characters just take over, and they
just did, and we both just sort of looked at each other and we
were like, oh, this is this is a thing. These two very
clever girls were left to their own devices while their parents were in very boring
meetings, and they got up to Shenanigan's over the years and it just they
we just sort of looked at each other and we were very much yes ending
the whole time. It made me so happy to watch that unfold. And
I really thought that you must have been communicating somehow because it happened so flawlessly.
And then the dice were really your friends there too, because you had
that amazing acrobatics check so that you were able to help Clarice get into the
ventilation system. And the ventilation system was also interesting because up until that moment,
I personally did not know that there was hvac in Uva. And I
love when that happens. I loved was quite a surprise. I love when
in game people kind of create a technology or a character or a backstory of
place, some mythology that makes sense in the moment, and then we have
to figure out how to how to backfail that. So Udabat so far we
know has at least heating, probably not cooling. We will I don't remember
if it's come up. Yet we will find out this is not really a
spoiler, that there are trains in the country. There are the pneumatic tubes
that are being used to send messages. So we have like different technology and
we but you know, but at the same time, like we don't have
television, we don't have phones because it's still fantasy world and so it's fun
having to or getting to really figure out how to insert this technology in a
way that makes sense and feels organic to the world. Here. Weah,
if you combine train technology, which is in itself furnace technology, yes,
plus pneumatic tube technology, which is get something from point A to point B
boom, that's age bac heating, I'm into it. If you have those
two things, I feel like it's not a leap, it's not a very
far leep. I you know what, I'm happy to go with that.
I don't think that you really want to vacuum in your furnace, but that's
okay. But Ashley and Rouse, you both DM quite a bit. You've
got actually quite a bit more experienced dming than I have. So I'd love
to know what your approach is when a character comes at you with that little
bit of technology or backstory, something that you now have to figure out how
to insert into your world, or else you have to shoot the player's idea
down. I will never shoot a player's idea down. Ashley mentioned that you
know, she and Ann started yes ending each other, and that's really what
as a d M, I always try to do what a player throws a
curve ball. It's it's either a yes and or no. But and just
having that open you know, don't be married to your own uh. You
know, we talk about the term railroading in D and D. It's much
better to have an outline than a very specific A to B to see.
You might know big picture where the story needs to end up, but the
way of getting there should always be flexible. That that's the approach I try
to take to build off that to yes and if you will, I will,
I will say that for me, it's about thinking like a pie,
really big picture and then really small picture. Right, so I know the
overall arc of what the big bad is trying to accomplish and what you know
they are doing to do those things, and then I also know the very
specific details of the next shopkeeper that they're going to meet and everything in between.
I'm just sort of making up as I go, but having the big
picture helps me make sure things stay on track overall, and then having those
like very specific details helps me to convincingly pretend like I've had all this planned
all along. Then sometimes they hitch me off guard and you end up with
General Addison's, General Addison Goods, General Goods Store, Yeah and again to
bounce to yes and off of Ashley. I will often throw scenarios at my
players that I don't have an answer to and just want to see what they
do. And when players hit on something that is fun and or makes sense,
it can be one or the other or both. A lot of times
players will do something that's fun that doesn't make sense and we'll have to,
you know, figure out the in world repercussions of doing nothing. But I
don't have answers for all of the puzzles I put out to players. I
want to see what they do. The jj Abrams approach I like it.
I think there's also, at the end of the day, something to be
said for being open with communicating with your players that you're all there to have
fun and you know it maybe doesn't fit as well in something that is being
produced and offered for other people's viewing or listening pleasure. But you know,
I have a game that I DM for my friends that it was my first
game DMING and it was all of their first time playing. And now you
know, we're a few years in where we kind of know, but there
have definitely been moments where they're like, oh, I think we should do
such and such because for whatever reason, they thought that it was a plot
hook and that I was trying to and I just over the table was like,
no, no, I don't think I think that was a throwaway line
that really wasn't interesting because you know, it was the very beginning of session.
I had the combat planned, I had where I thought they were gonna
go, and I just had to be like no, no, no,
I see I see how you got there, but never mind. And they
were like, ah, yes, I think we should explore this cave.
Yes, I think so too. Brennan Lee Mulligan, who does Dimension twenty
and World's Beyond Number, has this story about a campaign that he DMD when
he was very young. I think it was in middle school, and how
it starts with like there is a wedding in town and somebody rolls an inside
check and they can tell that the bride doesn't particularly want to be there,
and that was just kind of a throwaway line, and then what wound up
happening, Well, the wedding party decided to liberate the bride from the wedding
and now the entire adventure is running away from the groom and his henchmen who
are trying to recover the bride. Screw everything else that was planned for the
campaign, because this is this is also he was talking about running a module
and how like this is like now all the module is out the window because
we have to we have a runaway princess, and how he had to basically
homeber the entire campaign from that point. And I know, Ross in one
of the games that you DM that I'm a player in, we had early
on in our campaign, we had an incident where you had kind of told
us like, to the north, there's this one thing you can do.
To the south, there's this other guy, and we were all just like,
let's go to the south. We're interested in that guy. We were
like, I didn't mean to make it sound that interesting. Well, and
we literally had a character's life on the line there, so so ross like
talk us through, like what what you did to course correct us? Yeah,
so that was I was. And again I had brought a couple games
in second edition, but this was my first time, and I played a
bunch in fifth edition, but this was my first time dming in fifth edition,
and I was running the module Frozen Sick which, remember this is early
pandemic times and one of the things that you know, our friends that made
is at the Seaside did correctly, They've had a lot of missteps since then,
was in pandemic. They put Frozen Sick Out as a as a free
adventure for everyone because they knew people were trying to figure out ways to connect.
So I was like, you know what, I would love to play
D and D and this is a good way to do it. I grabbed
the adventure and started running it with some people I'm really close with. And
but the adventure is very It's a linear adventure, not a railroad, but
it is linear in terms of it. You have to recover the cure to
a disease from a very specific dungeon that's up in the Arctic, and they
get to my got to the campsite, which is the kind of the launch
point to then go to the dungeon. But there are a whole lot of
little details, like flavor details that are put into the module because the idea
is this adventure goes from levels one to three, and then there are little
hooks for what you do beyond level three, like, once you complete this
adventure, here are some options for where things might go next. And I
dropped one of those little hooks in there, and one of my players,
who is both player wise and character wise, was not dominant, but it
kind of asserted themselves as the leader of the group by default. Everyone else
was very like, hey, we'll go along with what everyone wants to do.
Someone needs to make decisions, and I'm going to make a decision and
decided to go towards this hook that was intended for them to maybe do after
they completed the adventure in front of them, and I had it was my
panic moment as a DM. I was like, guys, we need to
take a pause here because I have not at all envisioned to this scenario and
Hilda is gonna die if you do. Like I had to say that to
my players, Hilda is going to die if you go this way because the
cure is that way, and that was a big you know, older editions
of D and D were very there were more railroadiates. You go into the
dungeon, you kill monsters, you grab gold, you go back, you
trade it up for better weapons so that you can go into a more dangerous
dungeon, and you know, rinse and repeat. All dungeons have a symbol
much like ski slopes. Very you know, second edition really ran that way,
so I was I was not prepared for that, and it helped that
there was a high degree of trust and friendship among the people at the table
because I just I had to say above table, I was not prepared for
that. I'm sorry, let's let's call a pause on the session here.
Would you mind just going to the dungeon next time? They said, guests,
And from that moment, I have never put a choice. I've never
put options in front of my players since then, where I was not prepared
for them to either to go in either direction. And it's just something you
I feel like every DM learns this the hard way at some point. So
metaphorically, if I'm if I'm following correctly, the module wanted you to go
towards like Pfizer Moderna and then they wanted the ivermectin is what you're saying right
metaphorically, they wanted to go not even the ivermectin, they wanted to go
do their own research. Ah, yeah, there we go. Yes,
yeah, you presented us with this like mysterious librarian hermit character and we were
just curious about what he was all about. Yeah, I mean, I'm
definitely the way that I'm building our adventure for oops all bards, I'm trying
to I wouldn't say limit choice, but definitely kind of point you in the
right direction. So it was like, all right, after all of the
events had happened at commencement, come on, you should all come to Sovereign
House with us. Please come to Sovereign House with us. It is entirely
possible that one of you would have said, actually, I'm going to go
back to my dorm. Like totally possible. We did have Anne take her
Clarice take her little kind of side trip, but it was still she was
still at least moving in the same direct direction as everybody else. And I
know that had like had Chris had Rucus decided like, actually I'm going to
go back to my dorm, and you know, follow followed this butterfly back
to my dorm would be like, okay, well tell me about what you
do at your dorm while everybody else is off going to find out how to
save the country. But I love that that yes, that that yes,
and that we were talking about that element of improv that we find in in
all role playing games. But you know, we're playing something that is at
least five E inspired, So I will say that I love that in Dungeons
and Dragons. I also wanted to mention that episode three we actually had to
record in two parts because of player availability. We got to a point in
episode three it's like that is a perfect stopping point and I have to go
and we had to just we had to. We had to figure out how
to finish that. And unfortunately, when it came time to get back together
to record episode three, actually you weren't available for us. Yeah. I
was in the hospital, and I actually I was in the hospital for quite
a while. I'm fine now, I'm obviously yes, which we're all very
glad about. We hired a medium to record this session, and I remember
I texted when I went in I didn't know how bad it was and how
long I would be out. So I texted Jill and I was like,
Hey, just FYI, I'm in the r NBD. Uh, you know,
should totally be on track. This was on a Monday or Tuesday.
Should totally be on track to record on Saturday. And then Saturday rolled around
and I was like, so, turns out that was wrong. Yes,
And so we had to figure out how to record the episode. Now,
we were kind of fortunate in that this was Bell had wandered off on her
own at that point. Ironically, Bell had had to go to the bathroom
at that point, so we just had like a nice natural pause for Belle
to go empty her bladder from all of that one that she's been drinking to
help her her hangover here. Yeah, and I was kind of prescient because
I actually ended up in the hospital for digestive issues. Yes, so if
only I don't know, I guess the same D and D gods that inspired
Anne and I during that episode. We're also trying to give me a clue,
yes to your GI doctor. Yeah, bathrooms actually play a lot of
action in this episode, which we'll get back to in a second. But
what I wanted to mention here though, is that sometimes when you're playing a
game in the real world, they are going to be times when somebody from
your party is not available and it happens the last minute, and you have
to figure out what are you going to do? Everybody has a different approach.
Sometimes the GM or DM will say, I'm just going to play this
characters and as they'll hand it off to another character, So you've got two
sheets and in front of you that you're trying to balance. Sometimes it is
just like this person wandered off into a store and we don't actually know where
they are, so we're just going to move on through and hope that they
catch up to us. We had the benefit of because you had naturally gravitated
away from the party, we were able to actually finish recording that and then
really pick it up at the beginning of episode four, which we will be
launching soon. Well, my question is, actually, Nate, for you,
as the producer on this podcast, you are the person who gets to
slice, slice and dice all of this audio when we have to do that,
knowing that you, as of this recording, have not finished editing episode
three yet, how are you handling because we had to do this a lot
with episodes one and two. How are you handling getting these insertions and edits
in in a way that still makes it sound like we're getting the organic,
actual play experience for our our audience. Well, you know, uh,
you know, the challenge has been it's not really all that difficult now that
we have everything formalized, but like, uh, from a behind the scenes
standpoint, we kind of changed our recording process in between some of these sessions.
So the only issue has been trying to marry two different sessions that were
recorded in two separate ways and making them sound like each other. And the
way we've done this is to just bury it under music so that you do
so that you don't recognize it. But no, it has it has been
a definite, definite challenge because, like I said, you know, some
of the stuff that we recorded bled through on everybody's mics, So even making
some of the edits are next to and pop without sacrificing everything that's going on
completely. So it's just been a game of like, okay, well,
what if I just kill everybody's MIC's here and you only hear one person's mic
for a quick second and then I quick switched to another person's mic to pick
up the tail end of it because someone looked away from the microphone and now
they're looking at a different microphone. And then it's it's really just been like
a shell game of like, just do you know where the ball is?
You don't? Good, because then I'm doing my job. Yeah, And
we did completely change the way that we even mic everybody after the first recording,
which is interesting when like when you send me the raw footage and I
can listen back to it, sometimes I can hear those things. It's like,
oh, I guess we can't cut that because that got picked up on
somebody else's mic. But it's it's been so interesting, Like I haven't had
to edit audio since high school, really, so it's been so interesting to
me to be part of this process too. And see, like when we're
recording, I'll just be like, all right, pause, Nate, this
is where I'm going to need you to whatever. And we're just making making
that work. But we're still trying to make sure that as far as the
players and the audience, it still feels like we are playing this game in
real time. Yeah. And the other thing is, and this is something
that like I still have to get better at, but like I try to,
I try to properly record in my notes while we're making changes where different
things are so that I know, Okay, you know this is session one,
this is session two, like you know. Then and and then kind
of fragmenting it out that way so that I at least know where I'm looking
for this stuff, because you know, before I started doing that a bit
more of a challenge. Yeah, yeah, that recording for our first episode
was that was quite a challenge for all of us, But for us,
we used very little of it. Yes, well, actually we used a
lot of the first episode that we recorded the second episode at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, And then yeah, we scrapped a lot of the
second episode, which we talked about in our last behind the scenes episode.
So for anybody who missed that, go back and listen to what we had
to do there. But while we're throwing back to episode two, Episode two
is where we found ourselves with an unconscious Say, uh, then I think
Ross, you Andrik decided that it would make sense for us to use him
as a hostage. You didn't carry him back, Greck has carried him back,
but I think that the decision to take him as a hostage rather than
just leave him there was your decision. Yes, I don't think no,
Andrek was definitely nothing. It was hostage, like a bargaining chip type.
But this definitely seemed like an opportunity to gain information, particularly in a game
where we are all bards. You know, no one is going to uh,
you know, slash and dash their way through a problem. Uh.
But it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to gain a knowledge about
how this operation was set up. So I didn't think. I don't I
didn't think we brought Golf back, who we learned was Goff. Uh.
I don't think we've brought him back with at least I didn't with the intention
of, hey, we're going to be able to trade this for you know,
the whereabouts of the despot. But I did think we were going to
get information from them, which did turn out to be the case, right,
And so in our last behind the scenes episode we also mentioned that I,
in my haste while we were recording the uh the encounter and episode too,
misread the character sheet and thought that this was character with twelve hit points
instead of a twelve armor class, which is the reason that he dropped unconscious
and that you were allowed or able to take him back to sovereign house with
all of you, which meant that I then had to create an entire story
around why this satyr with what seemed to be pretty powerful magical abilities was so
weak in constitution when by the time you encountered him, and so I had
some time between recording episodes three and four to figure that out. And it's
unfortunately that Chris couldn't be here with us, because Chris, Chris as Ruckus,
was really the one who started to find out what was going on with
Goff and kind of start to not necessarily befriend him but show him enough compassion
and empathy that you were, as a party eventually able to gain his trust.
And Ross I'm curious because I'm sure we recorded that you're like you,
I knew you were going to throw a sad orphan at me. I know
you planned this all along, So I'd love to know, Yeah, just
how how did you receive the information that you got from Golf and his backstory?
You also learned a very important you know, we talked about the DM
lesson earlier of not putting choices in front of characters if you're not prepared for
them to take one of them. You also learned the very important DM lesson
of if you give a character a really good voice, no matter how unimportant
that character is, your players are going to latch onto them. And Gof's
voice just made my heart melt and I was like, we're in on the
sky. It also made sense character wise for Andrik being a tragedy bar when
you get this orphan who has this story to tell, that that was going
to resonate both from a sympathy perspective and a you know, the the whole
deal with tragedy bards is recognizing And I'm trying to be careful in the way
I say this, because I don't mean this in a toxic or way that
could be construed as encouraging going into really dark places. But you know that
there is a lot of power in tragic stories and the empathy and that the
strength that you can draw an overcoming adversity is really the power that that that
Andreich leans into. So this was its darkest before the dawn. Every clod
has this overwining other weather related metaphors absolutely, which is very much the lane
that that that I've taken with Andrik, so like it was. It was
a happy coincidence, I think, but it worked. It made sense both
for both me as a player who like I'm going to make Jill keep doing
this voice, and character wise it made sense for especially once Ruckus came back
and said, guys, you should take a look at this to the extent
that he was able to with his dark buttons correct, but it made sense
on both a player and character level. When you can get when you can
get into a situation that makes sense both for you as a player and as
a character, it's the best part of playing. Okay, I think we're
gonna stop things there. Thanks so much to the cast for joining. Thanks
to you for listening. Join us again in two weeks for the next full
episode of Oops All Bards, and then cheo eks after that for our next
bard wecue. I have as always been your host and game master, Gillian
Ashley Blair Ivy, and we really appreciate you listening. See you soon.
Oops All Bards is created, GMed, and directed by Gillian Ashley Blair Ivy.
This episode was produced, edited, and sound designed by Nate Runkle.
Oops All Bards stars Ashley Banks as Bell Cernamo and Coleman as Clarice Sauerkloud,
Ross Curry as Andrek Harrowhold, Chris Kleinecki as Pooched and Ruckus, Bob Killian
as Kilonian Stumps, featuring Paige Clinecki as the voice of the bark Buttons.
The Oops all Bard's theme song is by Bob Killian with additional lyrics by Jillian
Ashley Blair Ivy. Oops all Bards is executive produced by the porch Room.
We are part of the porch Room Network on Spreaker Prime. For more information,
visit oopsalbards dot com. Thanks and be sure to subscribe two Oops all
Bards on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your podcatcher of choice. We'll see
you next time. Let go Well, we're sure you can guess. Oops
it's all bars. Oh one