Speaker 1: Oops, it's Sol Bars oh one. Hi everybody, h this
is it's Jill your GM. I am really happy that
we're able to get down a bonus episode today. This
is not going to be in story for Upsall Bards,
although we'll certainly be talking about the plot up to
where you've listened so far. And it's not really a
barbecue episode because we're not talking about any sort of recap.
This is just going to be a chance for some
of us on the oopsal Bards team to talk about
D and D. So if you are not caught up
on Oops All Bards, still recommend getting caught up so
that you understand some of our references. But this is
not going to be canon, so don't worry about it
if you're a couple of episodes behind. So that said,
I'd like to let everybody else at the table introduce themselves.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Ashley Banks and I played Bell Surnomo.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm Ross Curry and I play Andrew carrow.
Speaker 4: Hold and I'm I'm a Nate Runkle and I'm the
producer of this show.
Speaker 1: So we're a small group today, but at the table
we have Ashley and Ross, who are both very experienced dms,
and I've mentioned before that this is my first full
campaign that I'm dming. And then we have Nate, who
hasn't played since what three point five No? Two two,
So it's been it's been a while since Nate has
jumped into a game, but natas certainly learned a lot
about D and D from playing with us. One of
the things that has come up a lot while we've
been playing Oops All Bards is the fact that, like,
I homebrewed this entire world, but at the same time,
I'm borrowing heavily. Like I mean, most of you, I
think all of you except for Bell, come from colleges
that are in like official Wizards of the Coast publications.
Although andrek Is College of Tragedy is not a Wizards
of the Coast.
Speaker 3: Is it correct? It is from Darrington Press, which is
Critical Roles publishing imprint. Although the Taldore campaign setting Reborn
is now available on D and D Beyond along with
the Dungeons of Drachenheim at least as of this recording,
there may be more. They've started putting some third some
prominent third party content onto D and D Beyond, So
as of the time you're hearing this at least Taldore Reborn,
where the College of Tragedy Bard Lives is available on
DNA beyond.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we've And then Ashley, you Bell's College of
Dance is not your homebrew, but it is from a
homebrew that you found in them kind of tweaked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found I found several different homebrews, most on
d and d Beyond, some elsewhere, and sort of took
the parts that I liked about different ones and smushed
them together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's let's start there. Let's talk about your
experience with with homebrew in general. You know, Ross, we've
talked about before. You you run a couple of home
games that I plan, and they're all based on modules,
but you still do a lot of tweaking. And then Ashley,
I don't I don't know in the campaign that you run,
like how much of that is is a module versus homebrew.
So let's let's just talk a little bit about like
creating your own world from scratch versus running a module
purely as is, versus doing something in between.
Speaker 2: We both, for those listening, Ross and I both put
at each other like.
Speaker 3: You, as often happens at a D and d table.
When Ashley and I are together, we kind of look
at each other and like, Okay, you taking this? Am
I taking this? Like so yeah, I run two campaigns.
One is actually it's technically a spell jammer game, or
that we have not gotten into space yet. And I
will be the first one to tell you, you know, because
you know, we don't have sponsors here, so I can
fully say, like, I became very disenchanted with Wizards of
the Coast after the OGL situation, which as of the
time we're recording this was right about a year ago,
where in January twenty twenty four, as we record this,
and I went through a deep, a whole lot of
feelings about Wizards trying to retract the OGL. That being said,
so I'm still playing, still running games in based on
Wizards books. That said, I do a whole lot of
modification of my own, not so much with the world
but with characters. I really rework almost all of the
NPCs that appear in my games. But I do find
the hard work of world building. I like that being
taken off my plate so to be able to run
something in either I mainly run in Exam, which is
the critical role world or Ebon not so much forgotten realms,
but having a world already built is something that I
like because that's just one less thing I have to
think about, and I can think about more small or
more niche things within that world, whether it's a city
or characters to focus on. And that's where I put
my quote unquote homebrew energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the campaign that I'm currently running is the
mostly I run one chats, which I think we've talked
about in past episode. But the campaign that I'm running
is for friends of mine from college. And so it
started out it was my first time dming and their
first time playing, and so you know, it's just been
a very slow, long thing. So we're actually running a
Horde of the Dragon Queen. When we started, I wanted
to start with something very small, so we actually just
did some like Adventurers' modules, the Adventurers League modules that
were set in Flawn, and and ran those. And I
actually very quickly, like I knew I was a new DM,
so I was like, Okay, I need structure, I need
somebody to tell me what to do, and I very
very quickly got really annoyed with it because like things
wouldn't be consistent or like things would be explicitly said
and then later on something would happen that would go
against what had already been established, and I just got
so grumpy with it. So I kept I kept homebrewing
more and more, and I made recurring characters. I was like, Okay,
there's no reason why this has to be a new character.
It's gonna be the character we saw two modules ago.
And that's sort of how that grew out. So I
do I for the campaign I'm running, I do you know,
I'm using an established book, but yeah, like the NPCs
are almost entirely different. The hooks are often changing, and
really I'm just just trying to use the world that
already exists so that I don't have to come up
with logical reasons for infrastructure to function.
Speaker 1: Ross you'd mentioned the whole ogl kerfuffle. Sure, and that's
part of the reason that I decided to set this
in a whole homebrewed world, because if things really broke
bad with that situation, it was like, I want to
be able to take as much of this ip as
I could out of the Wizards of the Coast universe.
So can you do like a thirty second or less
recap of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in early twenty twenty three, Hasbro, Wizards of the
Coast's parent company, started thinking about what they're going to
do for the next iteration of D and D. Five
y has been so successful for nearly a decade now,
but you know, companies move on, and Hasbro has gone
through some leadership changes. It's affecting both D and D
and Magic the Gathering, which are the two properties under
the Wizards of the Coast banner. And one of the
biggest things that has allowed D and D to thrive
over the past decade has been what's called the Open
Gaming License or the OGL and that allows third party
creators to, as long as they don't trade on specific
intellectual property, to create things based on the D and
D system. And about a year ago they completely proposed
reworking the license in a way that was going to
put some really wonderful and creative creates who have really
taken what D and D was from Wizards of the
Coast and helped cause the explosion. And this includes you know,
Critical Role Dimension twenty Cobald Press.
Speaker 2: The Adventure Zone, well that that falls under.
Speaker 3: Sorry, this is more on the publishing side, not that
because the Adventure Zone falls under the Fan Creation License,
which is a different.
Speaker 2: Oh, so the books wouldn't have been affected.
Speaker 3: I don't think so, okay, but things.
Speaker 2: You'll learn something new every day, but things.
Speaker 3: Like you know, all of the all of the books
that Cobalt Press puts out, some of the stuff that
MCDM had put out up till that point, would have
been not only would they not have been able to
do it going forward, but like I think it would
have retroactively pulled the license. Someone in the comments is
going to call me out forgetting this not quite right.
Speaker 2: That's okay, that's engagement.
Speaker 3: But the bottom line is Wizards did a big middle
finger to the third party or independent creator community that
had had almost as much contribution to the success of
D and D five E over the past, specifically the
past five to six years as Wizards itself had, and
it was a whole kerfuffle in the community. And I
was very much on the independent creator side of this, I.
Speaker 2: Think are most of the community was.
Speaker 3: And then they you know, they walked it back in
the most cowardly way possible, but that at least they
walked it back. But the upshot of this is, like
I am so much more interested in others. I'm going
to continue running five E, but I am looking forward
to I just got my Shadow Dark book from Kickstarter.
I've got a whole bunch of other.
Speaker 2: Systems vaiting for an excuse to run Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
Speaker 3: Uh, there's the kids on Bike system. There's so many
systems up. But the upshot is, yeah, you know, we
at this table have complicated feelings. I love I love
dungeons and dragons. I have complicated feelings about five Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Bardi b Q heads back to the grill right
after a quick ad break, So so yeah. So all
of that, that's a long way of circling back to
why I decided to set this in an entirely homebreed world,
because I could have. I could have easily dropped you
guys into forgotten realms. I could have easily dropped you
guys into one of the other campaign settings. I wasn't
going to put you into raven loft straw, like, this
is not that kind of campaign, but I wanted to
make sure that knowing that, at least at the start
and currently as we're recording this, there's no plan on
like publishing any modules coming out of Oops All Bars.
Although if there's a man let us know, I wasn't
we weren't going to come again come up against the
problems with the OGL, but I still felt really kind
of icky, like creating a product that was promoting Wizards
of the coast IP at the time. That being said, like,
the rules of D and D are what they are,
and there are a lot of mechanics and a lot
of creatures and builds that we have all of us
been using over the course of Oops All Bards. And
one of the things that I wanted to talk about
is in the world of UOPs All Bar, it's like
most of the batties that you've encountered, at least so far,
are are humanoids. They're not monsters. They're not monsters. But
at the same time, when in the episodes that were
on the train, you did encounter a couple of like
the classic D and D batties, you had a mimic
that was disguised as a dining table in the first
class dining.
Speaker 2: A hate when that happens, and then you had.
Speaker 1: A gelatinous ooze in the free car. So I'd love
to get some thoughts from you about how how it
worked dropping those into this universe. Or if you have
any questions for me about like why I did.
Speaker 2: That, I can I just say I love When we
were getting rid of the gelatinous cube, the consideration put
into what is the ecological impact, because everybody knows in
an innate way that oozes belong deep in cavernous dungeons,
and and what what could be happening here for the
local flora and fauna. I I guess that doesn't really
necessarily get to but I it's the kind of thing
that I think is really fun about, like pulling a
classic monster, but it wasn't in the classic setting where
you find the class monster, right. I really was delighted.
Speaker 1: By that, and I think I called it. I just
called it a gelatinus oos instead of a gelatinous cube.
But the the idea of like having a you know,
gelatinus cubes do have movement, which I had not forgotten
but kind of disregarded at first when I was building this,
and it was like, oh, no, it can move five
feet to turn so very so when you jump it
out into the forest, there is a chance that it
can it can do some very slow, very slow damage.
This is like classic zombie movies at half speed. Maybe
sort of damage, but I really enjoyed the thoughtfulness that
went into and like the silliness that went into that
that debate the Blob.
Speaker 2: Yes we're gonna We're gonna come back for season two
and be like everybody's talking about this new horror story
that's not and it's going to be based on a
gelatinous Cube that just rolls into town very slowly.
Speaker 3: Both the Mimic and the Gelatinous Cube are so iconic
in the lore, going all the way back. God, the
the Mimic I'm pretty sure goes back to first edition,
gelatin Scube might as well, but Gelatinescub might be second.
I don't know off the top of my head, but
there are such iconic beasties to come across. So both
the Mimic and the Gelatinous Cube are such iconic monsters.
So Jill, I want to ask you, like, when did
you know you were going to put those into the game.
Were there any other like kind of classic monsters that
you really wanted to run from a DM perspective that
either you thought about putting in or that I guess
if you're thinking about putting them in later you shouldn't
tell us, But are there any others that you thought
about in those spots?
Speaker 1: Yes, So I I made the decision to include them
around the time that I decided that there was going
to be a train encounter, or at least I decided
the mimic. Originally I thought that like the freight train,
like you were going to be doing a lot more
or the freight car, the cargo car, you're going to
be doing a lot more exploring of, like which of
these things they's a mimic, because that's the classic, Like
the mimic is the treasure chest sort of thing. And
I decided that that was that was a little bit
too much of a trope, like the trunk that is
a mimic. But I really wanted there to be a
mimic there because I didn't think any of you were
going to expect it because of the world that we created.
It just didn't seem like the mimics quite fit there.
And then I was thinking for the gelatinous cube about
like I knew that there was going to be like
a cage on board to put Gideon into, but then
it was like, why are we putting Gideon into a
ca like if somebody's going to have dug Gideon, do
we need this giant cage for him? Or like can
we just the hog time and haul him off the train.
And then it was like, oh, no, we can use
we can use the cage like as a as a
means of torturing him rather than and like I didn't
want to get super sadistic about it, but the idea
of slowly lowering the cage into the gelatinous cube, which
is a very slow killer because the thing about a
gelatinous cube is that you can push through it, like
you take damage every turn that you're in there. But
if you are in a cage that is inside of
the gelatinous cube, there is no way out unless somebody
lifts the cage up, so you're you're stuck in there.
So there was this kind of like almost Saw type
puzzle to it that I found to be like an
interesting way of approaching this more classic trope. And then
I watched the D and D movie. I rewatched the
D and D movie because I've seen it a couple
of times, and when they have the gauntlet that they
run in the third act, you see both a mimic
and a gelatinous cube. But it was like, Okay, these
are also things that other people who are maybe not
as familiar with D and D, but or I have
seen the movie what I'm stand So it was also
kind of a nod to like, here's the thing from
D and D that like people know, this is a
thing from D and D. So I thought that that
would be a good thing to kind of throw in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, somebody who hasn't played in thirty years. It was
like that moment when Captain America gets the Wizard of
Oz reference.
Speaker 3: You know, I thought you were going to say that
moment from Once upon a Time in Hollywood when Leonardo
screen exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In terms of other classic D and D monsters that
I had had thought about including, and I'll tell you that,
like I've written them out, they're not going to happen
in the rest of the season, so I'm not giving
anything away. I definitely thought about including a beholder because
I think beholders are really cool. They're fun like. And
I also thought about including mind flares in that first
encounter in the stadium, and I decided, like, you were
all you were all too low level to have a
mind flare. Let alone several mind flare but I liked,
you know, because the idea is like you're you're all
being held here and forced to listen to this projection
of Malveaux, and so having a mind flayer being the
one who's like, it's not just that you're being held,
but like it is actually like doing psychic damage just
being exposed to this, And it was like, I don't
I don't want to start a bunch of level four
bards with that. That would be cruel. But I think
mind fliers are really cool and I am. You know,
we'll see if if maybe in season two, I figure
out a way to work them in, or if I
can like at least take some of the attributes of
a mind flawer with somebody that something that I've homebrewed. Maybe,
But they're they're certainly interesting. I will tell you that,
Like they class the classic D and D monster that
I didn't ever think about including was an actual dragon.
Speaker 2: It is in the name, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It is in the name.
Speaker 3: And yet there are and I've seen this in both
campaigns that I've played in and run like there are
somehow seemed to be remarkably few dragons in dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 2: I mean we didn't go into any dungeons this campaign either, So.
Speaker 1: No, no, you didn't. You The closest would have been,
like the closest you would have gotten to a dungeon
krawl would have been when you were at the Alcazar,
if you if you'd had the opportunity to explore the house,
there would have been some dungeony things that would have
happened there.
Speaker 3: So my read on the Alcazar was very like all
I could think of was the game the Seventh Guest.
Was that kind of like what that was?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was possibly going to I was thinking the
Seventh Guest for sure. I think that that's like seminal
elder millennial gaming experience. I was thinking of Clue. I
was thinking of if you remember is it three two
one contact on PBS, they had the like mathematical haunted
house where you had to like solve math puzzles like
yet it was a music video sort of thing that
like I still can see, like if I close my eyes,
I can still see clips of this. I've never gone
back to see if it's on YouTube. I'm sure it is,
but a haunted house or you know, a mystery house,
a dungeon, Like, I am interested in puzzles, and I
thought for an all barred party to put in front
of you with something that was going to like be
a house where there is there is danger. You can
take some damage here. There are going to be things
that can jump out at you, but it was going
to be more about solving puzzles than about actually fighting things.
And then you know, like, I'm glad that I didn't
spend too much time preparing this because we just bypassed
it completely. About BQ continues right after these messages.
Speaker 3: So, you know, because this is a bonus episode, let's
do some thought exercise here when when designing puzzles, how
do you design puzzles for you know, there's always a
little bit of a gray area between the player and
the character. And you know, our table is very heavy
on like I think everyone who sits and plays at
this table is a puzzle solver by nature.
Speaker 2: Ashley loves puzzles.
Speaker 3: Bell No, right, So I'm just curious, like in the
hypothetical exercise, how would you have dealt with that? Like,
how would you have given us puzzles that like, you know,
Ross and Ashley and Anne and Bob and Tage might
have been able to figure out, but that not necessarily
our characters would figure out because Bards aren't always the
most intelligence driven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good question. And honestly, like it's
been so long since we recorded and I planned that
episode that I don't entirely remember how I'd planned it out.
But I will tell you that as as a player,
I've been in that position where like, I know the
answer to this puzzle, like Jill knows the answer, but
my PC probably does not. And there have been a
couple of times where like I've blurted out the answer
to a puzzle and everybody's looked at me and was like, Okay, yeah,
like I got I got it right. But that's that
was kind of out of character. And so there was
that concern that when I presented you with these things,
like something like that would have happened. And so I
think that as I'm as I'm trying to recall back
on this, I think that one of the things that
I tried to do was like create situations in which
one of you might be blinded or deafened, so that
like you just literally as a player, like you you
as a player can do whatever the hell you want,
but like anything that you say or do above table
is not going to factor into what is happening with
the players. I've toed, I tooed with even the idea
of like making some of you leave the table, the
physical table to get through these puzzles. Our friend Michael
who ran we've talked about Michael before, who ran a
D and D campaign that all of us played in,
whose are one of our executive producers. With the court
room there, we'd had a session where and I think
this ross was before you joined and Ashley, I, I
don't honestly remember if you were there, but he had
half of us go sit in his bedroom and put
music on while he had the other half of the
party going through a thing. And then he had a
switch because we both had different components of the we
were split and we both had different components of it's
puzzle that we had to solve on our own, and
it was impossible to get rid of that bleed between
player and character in that case, so he handled it
by keeping the players physically away from each other. You
can do things like that by just dming or text
messaging each other. There are different ways of getting through
that so that you're at least avoiding some of that
like player character interference. But it's not going to be perfect.
Speaker 3: So Nate, you've been sitting here listening to the State,
like you know, I know you played in two We
You've been sitting here list to us being playing five
V like as you've been sitting there, not just from
you know, how how you mix this, how you cut
things together, but like from a play perspective, like what's
jumping out at you, like do you have any thoughts questions?
Speaker 5: Well, one of the big things has been, which which
I don't think I'm alone in this, has been watching.
Speaker 4: It be played on a show.
Speaker 5: Okay, so like instead of just you know, playing at
a table or something like that, like also producing a
show and so you know, just background, I've never once
listened to an actual play podcast, and in leading up
to this, I was about to and then I was like,
wait a minute, I kind of want to produce this
coming from having never heard another actual play, so that
I'm just kind of producing a show like what I
think a show should sound like.
Speaker 4: So well, I'm just gonna say it.
Speaker 5: Were recording this after we've finished the campaign, but I'm
going to go back and I'm gonna listen now to
like because I like now that the influence can't really
bleed in, now that we've kind of created our fingerprint,
I kind of want to go back and see, like, well,
how to go So I guess part of my question is,
let me ask you, let me kind of turn that
around on you. How did it go? Like how does
it kind of measure up against.
Speaker 4: Not measure up?
Speaker 5: It's an amateur production, but like, how is the feel
in relation to other actual plays that you've experienced.
Speaker 3: I have a huge inferiority complex. So the answer is,
you know, I'm always going to have regrets. That being said,
I love sharing a table with my friends and that
is really where the joy comes from. I would certainly
do things different, And as we sit here right now,
I do not know if season two Andric is going
to come back, or if I'm going to come in
with a new character. I don't know, and I would
have done things a little bit differently in the lead
up to the campaign to get more comfortable with Andrek
or to create a different character to begin with. I
do not hold us to the standard of a dimension
twenty critical role any of you know, the big ones,
because we're coming at this from a different experience level.
We all have day jobs. We are not professional improvisers
or actors. And my hope is that by doing this,
folks can folks who like might come from the mission
rejected community who have not played D and D might
get interested in it or a different RPG if D
and D is not their thing, because there are again,
there are so many RPGs out there that are ways
to explore different themes and sit around a table and
tell stories with your friends. So that that's and from
that perspective, I think I think we've been I felt
very good about where we've landed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, do we have the production
value and the planning? I mean, Joe, you did a
ton of planning, but like you don't have a a staff, right,
I don't have a production team that that other shows have.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: But also I didn't get to play in those other
shows and I got to play in this one. So
but from that standpoint, I enjoyed this way more.
Speaker 1: The Bardbeque keeps on grilling right after these notes from
our sponsors. You know, I've there are a lot of
actual plays out there that I love, but I also like,
I never got into Critical Role because Critical Role is
just so intimidating to me. There's so like literally hundreds,
if not thousands of hours of Critical Role. I've enjoyed
Legend of Box Mocking now, which is the Amazon Prime
cartoon series it's spun out of one of the campaigns
of Critical Role. But you know, I've watched several seasons
of Dimension twenty. I loved the first season of Dungeons
and Daddies. I never got into the Adventure Zone, not
for lack of interest, just it kind of passed me by.
And now there are like that's another one where there
are so many seasons to catch up on. It's kind
of intimidating. And I'm really a big fan of Worlds
Beyond Number, but there are so many different approaches to
this and so many different like Worlds Beyond Number has
like this incredible original symphonic score behind it that like
we're just never going to have the budget for Critical
Role is all voice actors, and so like we we
all of us table have done some voice acting, but
we're not you know, that is not our careers. That
is the thing that we do for funzies, So knowing
that and trying to go into this and be the
best that we can be and have as much fun
as we can. I will say that, like, I don't
listen to this nearly as much, nearly as many times
as you have to to edit, but I do wind
up listening to each episode three or four times, and
it brings me so much joy to hear like what
we have managed to pull off over these these last
couple of months. Like we are sitting around Ross's in
my dining room table in our row home in South
Philly and occasionally have to pause because there's a fire
truck or an ice cream truck, or because one of
my cats is having a snack directly behind me, or
my next door neighbor's dog is howling. So we're not
recording this in like a super dry studio space. We're
not recording this even just in somebody's house, but like
in a more remote area. We're in the middle of
a city, and that we been able to pull off
what we have and to make this sound the way
that it does so far, I think it's really impressive.
Speaker 5: Definitely, No, I mean, like you said it, you know,
and I think I said it earlier, I think off mic,
but like, uh, you know, I've lived with you guys
in my ears for the past few months a lot,
and and it is you know, to hear the finished
product and know where it came from. I mean, like
even just from the Role recording to you know, not
just from being at the table, but from the rale
recording to what ends up being released. Like you know,
am I still critical of it? Absolutely because I'm always
going to be like, it's just it's in my nature
to be like God, I wish I could have just
you know, but but if you run it back against
the Role recording, you'll probably be amazed and want to
like give me an award or something like that for
some of the cleanup. And like, like I said, that's
not even like that's not even cleaning it up properly
or right or or making it as perfect as it
should sound. But boy, where it comes from is just uh,
it's definitely a leap.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: My other question is, you know, like you said, I haven't,
I haven't played since since Twoey, But I feel like
I feel like every once in a while, like, uh,
something will come up where I'm just I'm just sitting
back just kind of like, man, they uh, as much
as things have changed, things have not changed at all.
Like it you know, it's kind of like but it's
it's kind of like, uh, you know when you step
away from something and you come back.
Speaker 4: And you start to like, oh, I kind of remember this.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like if you were to go back
and play like the NES Super Mario Brothers right now,
Like it would take you a few seconds, but after
you like you know, you start getting the button combos
down and stuff, you're like, oh, I do remember all
of this, And that's kind of That's kind of what
sitting through this has been like.
Speaker 3: As an old two week player, you will appreciate that
this was probably back in twenty twelve or twenty thirteen,
so it was before five E came out and we
had all said f you to fourth edition. But one
of my very good friends said, like who I went
to law school with, was like, hey, you want to
do a D and D night. I was like, sure, great,
and he was like I'll run it, Like but you know,
my place is small, like do you mind hosting? Like fine?
Jill was going out with some girlfriends that night and
she said when she left, like, oh, so, how long
are you guys gonna play? I was like three to
four hours is a typical session. And so my buddy
Steve was dming, and a couple of players who are
now in our spell Jammer game who've been friends with.
One of them went to grad school with Jill and
his wife. We had a table full of people. Jill
comes back at like we started at seven p Yeah,
Joel comes back at like one in the morning, and
we are not even close to being done. We are
still like nerding out on like that whole that whole
second edition Dungeon Crawl mentality. And Joel was like, you
freaking nerds, I'm going to sleep on the sofa.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't even go upstairs because I figured if everybody
saw me falling asleep on the sofa, they'd be more likely.
I don't want to leave my house. Did we work?
Speaker 3: We played for another hour.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 5: You know, you just reminded me that one of my
memories of playing when I played in high school was
I don't know how many actual campaigns I ever finished,
because I think we would like we would roll characters together,
and we would we would work on backstories and everything,
and then like we would play like maybe two sessions
and we'd be like, do you want to make some
new characters?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that didn't work out.
Speaker 3: That is the thing that still happens. The number of
characters that I have sitting in a spreadsheet with different
builds is character creation. It's one of the it's not
when I introduced Now, when I introduce new players to
the game, I do one shots with pre gen characters, because,
especially if someone has never played D and D before,
it's much easier to introduce by we're getting into the
adventure and will point out what the stuff on the
sheet means rather than trying to like create from a
blank slate. But then once once you've gotten a few
sessions under and get into character creation, it is now
my favorite part of the game is the characteration, which
is why going back to you know, even when I'm
running modules, even when I see an NPC in a book,
I am almost always rewriting. If are going to be
a prominent NBC, I am rewriting their stat block and
coming up with why is this person here? Why would
they interact with the party like that? That's where I
put my home brew love.
Speaker 1: In it's I mean, it's a joke about actors, but
it really is like, what's my motivation? And I think,
you know, all of us at the table are are
or were theater kids. So I think that that kind
of speaks to our love of like how we create
these characters too. I know, like when I was in
high school and I was doing I think it was
probably my first play that I did in high school
where I would have had like, you know, four lines
as a fourteen year old freshman, but it was like,
you know, everybody, I want you to write your character's backstory,
and I wrote pages because it's just like I love
the idea that this person is like very rich life
outside of the confines of the play. And so even
though she only had four lines on stage, like she
was in her in her story, she was a star too.
I think that one of the joys of playing D
and D is being able to build those characters and
create that like rich inner life that sometimes shows up
and sometimes doesn't.
Speaker 3: Sorry to drag this conversation out, but I do think
it's worth again drop this in wherever it might make sense.
In terms of thing about character backstories, I think there
is such a thing as too much like Jill, do
you where did you want us to come from? Backstory
wise in terms of something that fits within your world.
But there's also a value to leaving blank spaces where
if the DM drops something in, a player can go, oh,
wait a minute, I want to link my character that
and grab it and fill in pieces of backstory without
having the fully fleshed three page thing going.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I told you all to come up with
no more than one one page story, and I think
some of you wrote it out and some of us,
like we all, we all had a zoom call each
of us before we started recording to kind of build
out your character. And there were certain things where like
you know, Anne telling me about like her in her inspiration,
which we've talked a little bit about and I'm sure
we'll talk more about in the future, but her inspiration
of like her parents being James Carville and Mary Madeline,
and it was like, you know, and how that fit
into the College of Whispers, and it was like great,
So like knowing that there's gonna be a lot of
political intrigue happening here, like this is what I want
to do with your with your parents backstory and that
was fine, and then I, you know, I said, like,
here are the three political parties, and she's like, can
I write their platforms? And anybody who knows Anne, she
didn't write their entire platform but like an, Anne did
kind of build out like what these parties looked like.
And so it was a conversation. I love the idea
that everybody comes with, like this is an idea of
the character or even the trope that I want to play,
and then we can work together on how do we
make that character fit into the world that we are
existing in. So it's it's a conversation like I want
I want you to have that backstory and that rich
inner life. I don't want you to just show up like, yeah,
here are my stats, and I guess I'll just like
figure it out on the way. Because that's actually the
first D and D campaign that I played in. That's
how I played it, which is like I have a
character on paper I have I know nothing about who
she is as a person, and I had to kind
of come into that and it took me a while
to do that, and I still feel like I never
really truly learned how to play her correctly. Because of that,
but also I think at the same time, I would
have been doing myself a huge disservice as a first
time player if I had like written a novel about
this sort of character that I want to play, like DM,
make this fit in your world, all right, So I
think we're gonna we're gonna call it there. For this
bonus episode, we got to talk about some tropes, and
we got to talk about character in world building. Thank
you all so much for joining us. As ever. I
am your host and game master, Jillian Ashley Blair Ivy,
and we'll see you really soon.
Speaker 6: 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 Belsernamio and Coleman as Clarice Sauerkloud, Ross Curry as
Andrew Harrow, hold Tage, Sinha Das as Cretaceo thunder Thigh,
and Bob Killian as Colonian Stumps. 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 rate, review and
subscribe to Oops all Bards on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or
your podcatcher of choice, and follow us on Instagram and
YouTube at oops all bards. We'll see you next time.
Oops E sal bars oh one
Speaker 1: Another quality podcast from the Portroom.