Speaker 1: Oops, It's all bars. Oh, welcome to the barbecue, where
the cast and creators of Oops All Bards grill each
other about the most recent episode of Oops All Bards.
Except that is not actually what we're doing this week.
Just to recap if you have not caught the last
couple of bardbecues. We are doing things a little bit asynchronously,
So we recorded all of season one of Oopsall Bards.
We finished by January of twenty twenty four, maybe it
was December twenty twenty three, and we had barbecues recorded
up through episode eight, and then I went and had
a baby, and when I came back from having a baby,
we realized that it was a little late to try
to record any additional barbecue episodes. We do have a
barbecue four episode twelve for our finale. We recorded it
immediately after recording our finale episode. But for episodes nine, ten,
and eleven, we needed to be a little bit more creative.
So episode nine you cut our conversation with Ross Curry
and Ashley Banks. Episode ten got a kind of behind
the table conversation that we had about some classic D
and D tropes and our barbecue. For episode eleven, we
are going to be talking with Eddie Delaney or Eddie?
Do you prefer Eddie or Edward? I know you as Eddie.
What do you go by professionally?
Speaker 2: Eddie is usually wanting to default to it's a whole thing.
I'm Edward John Delaney, the fourth you sure are? Yeah,
and it just it depends on what house I'm in
at this point. You know, at my grandparents' house it's
little Eddie. At home, it's it's Eddie, and my dad
becomes ed and it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, while you're on mic, then, Eddie, why don't
you introduce yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, already introducing a lot more about myself. Yeah,
I'm I'm Eddie. I I've been giving credit for naming
oops all bards, which a badge I will wear proudly.
I've been designing games, I guess in technically a professional
sense for the since for the last like thirteen and
a half years. We're including the day job there, and
been playing games my entire life. That's where I'm at awesome.
Speaker 1: So listeners, Eddie is part of the home game that
you've heard me and Ross talk about quite a bit,
and a good friend of mine and Eddie is also
not just the person who came up with the name
Oops All Bards, but he has done all of the
design for oopsal Bards, our beautiful logo, our character illustrations.
So we'll talk about that in just a minute. But
before we get to that, Eddie, i'd love for you
to just talk about how you got into tabletop role
playing games.
Speaker 2: Ooh, so games in general. As long as I can remember,
we've been like my family was a board game house.
There was always Monopoly, always Risk. My grandparents had like
a very old copy of Trouble around the house. Was
like vintage Monopoly, Vintage Trouble at their house all the time.
And there was a point where every Christmas my dad's
Sanna started getting a board game for all of the kids.
That was kind of our shared gift, and I still
have some of them. So games have always been a
part of the background of my life. And tabletop stuff, magic,
the gathering and D and D things like that all
kind of came int at the same time. In high school.
I am the child of a parent who leaned heavily
into the Satanic panic. Don't do these things, Go do
boy Scouts, And I did boy Scouts, and that's exactly
where I picked those things up. Order the arrow retreats.
You're hanging out in a lodge. What are you doing
tossing your bags? And it's in the tent and hanging
out in the mess hall playing D and d U
till three in the morning.
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, I love it. So it didn't
work out exactly the way your mom thought.
Speaker 2: No, no, and she was. There was a moment when
I had to reveal that to her, and I think
I broke her a little.
Speaker 4: As the producer, I have to jump in here real
quick and I need to This is Nate by the way.
People you know this, but I got to ask of
the shared Santa gift board games, favorite one.
Speaker 2: The one that stands out that I think we as
a family had the most fun with, is one called
wise or Otherwise? Oh, I don't know that one, and
I well, I've heard I've only seen it outside of
my like familial house once in a board game cafe,
just sitting there Like I didn't. I thought that was
something I imagined as a child. But you're given a phrase,
a common idiom from around the world, and so I
you know, obviously in twenty twenty four. You can look
back and say, there are ways this could get problematic
real fast. But yeah, in all honesty, the way it's
precently you know it's it actually turns out pretty well.
It's a lot of fun, can get very funny. It's
again everywhere around the world. You're given the first half
of a phrase and the country of origin, and everyone
has to fill in what they think the back half
of the phrase is. They hand it in and it's
real fun when you're the age range is four to
whatever my parents were at the time. Lots of lots
of family fun with that. One runner up is a
game called Showgun I think, which is one of my
dad and I played. But yeah, that one I won't
go into. But games that I've never seen anywhere else
but were a part of the delating household awesome.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. So on the topic of games that have
never been played anywhere else, Eddie, you are a game designer.
In addition to doing the graphic design for Upsall Bards,
you design games. Can you talk a little bit about
some of the games that you put out into the world.
Speaker 2: Oh? Wow, broad question. Because I work with game design
for my day job, I won't mention the company, but
I work in an for an ed tech company and
have for over thirteen years now that produces a bunch
of games and ebooks for kids ages two through eight,
but we're kind of expanding there, and so in that level,
I've been designing a bunch of mini games that are
very simple, easily reskinnable, with a focus on education for
young kids. On the other side of that, for I
want to say, though past ten years, I started working
with a friend, Chris sweet Apple, to help him design
Drucords and flag Ins, a very simple drinking game role
playing game system. I thank you, thank You's I need
to put it out there for free for the people.
But a later discussion after I talked to Chris about it,
it's been long enough, but we started working on that together,
me providing mostly graphics and a very willing test audience.
Then we start worked on a game called Big Red Button,
which started out as you're playing different countries during the
Cold War and you have different values and everything's represented
by T twenty and involved into this board game with
a fictional alternate universe nineteen sixties esque countries, which was
a lot of fun to come up with I wound
up doing a lot of the flavor work, which is
kind of goes into my history later on and why
I think I kind of fizzled on it because mechanics,
that's not fun. Let's do the art thing. But from
there things changed with the nature of the business and
the interest waned, and eventually I was kind of a
one man show at Strange but True Games, and it
was a lot of me cranking out expansions and little
characters and things for Drunkards and Flagons just to keep
the brand name out there, and me creating and releasing
PDFs of almost entirely untested games and you know, what
have you. But it was just it was more about
if I'm having fun making it, why stop? And once
it stopped feeling more like a job, I stopped.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I can tell you that as somebody
who's played Drunkards and Flagons, it is so fun. So
you ran a campaign where we were all we all
played Sentient Foods, and the the that I will remember
of the sessions that we had, I will be burned
into my memory forever because it was just so good.
Was Midnight in the Olive Garden of Good and evil
when you're when you're uh, you know, I know that
I had to come up with a lot of place
names and character names and that sort of thing for oops,
all bards. Where do you take inspiration from when you're
when you're doing when you're going through that creative process.
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, anything in everything. Sometimes it is bad word
play that comes to mind. Sometimes it's like, oh, I
remember the German word for this, Let's let's take kind
of take that and then add umlauts to an English
word that's expelled. I don't know, I've I've got another
massive world building project that I've been working on and
it's mostly just for me, and there's a lot of
place names that I have to come up with. And
sometimes it's like it sounds good in my head, let's
let's write it down. Let's just toss these letters down
on the page and figure out how it's actually pronounced later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's that's the big binder that you carry around, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a Alden Heart. Yeah and almost two
hundred and seventy five page monstrosity of a personal project.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Eddie came into our home game one day
and just like so, my my family basically just dared
me to come up with a game. So it's a
it's a you build the world, but it's also like
an entirely new gaming system. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, so the world started before that, okay, But it
was kind of more of a person an exercise where
I'm like, I've got so much, you know, as as
creatives as we do, We've got you try to fall
asleep and suddenly, oh, all of the ideas are out
there right now. Yeah, and I can't fall asleep, but
if I get up and write these things down, then
I'm not going to be able to fall asleep more.
So it kind of started off as well, let me
just burn off creative energy. Set this up as well.
If I'm going to do little modules for a role
playing game, let me create a setting. Here are some NPCs,
here are some problems that might occur here. And it
got to a point where I'm like, oh, I've named
a lot of places in continents. Maybe we should, I
don't know, start kind of keeping things consolidated in a
Google doc. And that turned into well, maybe I should
make some maps to you know what I have now
where it is turning into well, now I've got a
separate binder of short story ideas and half baked like
one shuts for a bunch of different systems. So it's
just the sprawling creative process at its best and worst,
sitting in two binders. The Bardi b Q heads back
to the grill right after a quick ad break.
Speaker 1: So let's actually talk about something that is near and
dear to all three of our hearts, which is ADHD.
Speaker 2: Woo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I completely understand you with that, the idea
of like, I have so many different ideas that live
in so many different places, and will will I do
something with them? I don't know. Maybe someday, maybe I'll
get back to it. And sometimes it's something that I
thought about like five years ago, Like now I'm ready
to really focus on. When you are working on something
that is going to be public facing versus when you're
working on something for your own personal edification, how does
the way that you come to it from that ADHD
perspective change.
Speaker 4: Edification? I like it.
Speaker 2: Ah, if I ever decide to start a political podcast,
I never will I have a name, but I'm gonna
park on that url. Okay, that is stalling because that
is such a good question. So my public facing work
now is all stuff I do with my day job,
which means I kind of have to focus on it.
So it is a lot of using the few strategies
I have to kind of aim the hyper focus as
it were, in a particular direction that needs to be
taken care of. And fortunately my job has a lot
of those where it's a lot of small, little nitpicky
things that are all important where I'm like, Okay, this
is nice, this will be good for my brain for
two hours. But when it's something that could it's well,
there's a lot of stuff that I do just for me,
like the ailed and heart thing that I mentioned, and
that has been almost entirely for me, and that's kind
of when I feel like working on it, And that's
a lot of the time, which has been kind of
nice and different and weird. But anything else, Jill, you
said it right, It's like it's more about like, oh,
I'm ready to work on this, Like I've got so
many things I started. I used to have the system
of got to work on it, the on a Google doc,
print out, make notes, keep the notes, enter everything in,
print out a new copy. And so each game is
its own historical binder because I may want to look
back and now and I never did, and one move
just pulled everything out of the binders and got rid
of it. But there's so many things I've worked on
and jump back and forth on, and it's it's more
about like, if I reach a point where I'm not
having fun working on it, then I don't think the
end result is going to be something that people are
going to have fun playing, And so if I'm enjoying
making it, then it's worthwhile until then I put it
away and don't feel bad about it. I think people
with ADHD are very likely to kind of beat ourselves
up because we don't finish something. But it's not if
it's not like you know, you're you're paying your bills
and you know the house isn't on fire, you're you know,
you're taking care of yourself, then that's fine. Anything else
can you can tuck it away for later for when
you're ready to work on it. You paid bills, you
need the the auto pay does, and.
Speaker 1: You don't. You do not want to see the pile
of an open mail sitting on my dining table right now?
Speaker 2: I laugh because of yeah, little piles everywhere. I don't.
Speaker 1: Yes, little little piles of everything. But you know that's
that's not where Nate is showing us his little piles
on his desk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm looking at a closet right now that if
I open it up, it's full of all the things
I've set aside for I'll sort that into a file later.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have to figure out how to get dopamine from
sorting things into files.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. If I find out, i'll.
Speaker 1: Let you know. So. Yeah, So I'd like to kind
of take things back to Oops All Bards, because you've
been such a really a very important part of the
process of the creation of this show, and our audience
doesn't know anything, really like they've seen your work, but
they don't know about this. So I've told the story before,
I'll kind of tell it again. We were sitting in
our home game and we were talking about kind of
unlikely scenarios in D and D and like what would
make weird party compositions. And I play a Bard in
that game that we're in together, and at some point,
Eddie you just said like, oh, you know what if
we did, like you know, Oops All Bards, And I
was like, yes, that that is a game that I
want to play and that is a podcast that I
want to make. So that was I mean, Eddie, do
you remember this conversation bad than I do?
Speaker 2: So the way I remember it is I feel like
somebody else thought, what if we might I think it
might have actually been you, Jill, who said what if
it was all Bards? And then I think somebody somebody
tossed out that idea we are kind of nod and
thought that would be kind of wild, and I think
somewhere I thought, oops, all Bards And it was one
of those It's like that episode of Seinfeld, one of
those castanza moments where everyone starts laughing and I'm like,
you know what, I'm just gonna pack up and go home.
I fit my peak, thank you, good night, I'll see
all next time. I did not, but it was that
kind of vibe. I'm like, all right, well, clearly I've
I've landed something here, even if it's for our table here,
which happens with all of us because we have as
as we've back of the table energy.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, we've talked about that on another barbecues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which yeah, yeah, it's I'm glad to see that
has spilt over in various ways into Oops all Bard
the magic of that table.
Speaker 1: Yes, it turns out that I guess Oops All Blank
is kind of like peak millennial humor because we all
remember the Captain Crunch oopsal Berries commercials from the eighties
and it's just like implanted in our brains somehow. But
when I gave you your your design brief, I wanted
you to keep that actually that cereal box idea in mind,
like it is such a distinct cereal box, the All
Berries Cereal box, the Captain Crunch box in general. But
beyond that, I said, like, we're in a world that
is not steampunk, but it has like some kind of
fantasy elements but also some modern technology and go. And
I think that the idea you came back to me
with was so it's like Cheers but also eighties cereal
And I said, yes that I'd love to know Eddie,
like what got you to that point and then like
the process that you went through and coming up with
some of the design for oopsal Barts.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just I just love Cheers, man,
That's just one of my favorite shows. So that logo
is always top of mind. And sometimes you want to
go where everybody knows your name. I feel like it's
a theme of a good D and D table. So
for some reason that was just kind of there. And
I don't know that that logo that was seventies eighties
vintage bar chic. I don't know basic word association bar barred.
I don't know if there's again the musical connotation of cheers.
It just felt right somehow, not.
Speaker 3: Quite typical steampunk modern fantasy elements, nothing with castles, nothing
super serah, but something just swirl enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think you sent me a couple of
concepts and I said, you know, I don't want to
do like standard G and D red and black, because
the first one that you sent me was red and black.
And then it was like, cool, we'll just go with
the collection of the circle box basically, and and that's
what we did. So then we had this beautiful logo,
and then it was time to start building out the characters.
So what I did was we did our first recording
of Actually I'm not even sure. I don't think it
was our actual recording. I think it was our session
zero where I sent you notes and I said, this
is how all the characters are. All the cast have
describe themselves, knock yourself out. What was your creative process
like after that point?
Speaker 2: So it was. I mean for a lot of them,
it was pretty simple. Some of them needed at a
little clarification to get to things just right, but it
just made sense to do, like, Okay, let's go Hannah
barbera Saturday Morning cartoon. I'm of the millennial sweet spot
where I remember Cartoon Network being there was that shift
where the WB was the dumping ground for old Hannah
Barbera WB owned cartoons, and then they ship whatever Cartoon
Network was before it became that, and it just became
all the old vintage cartoons. So all the stuff that
was made from one or two companies, a lot of
it becoming cereals all other products itself. That was That
is kind of the vibe that I wanted to really
aim for, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was a really collaborative process too. You know, I'd
sent you the initial descriptions from everybody and then you
sent drafts and I was in love with everything right away.
I was like, yes, let's do this, except that I
also wanted to make sure that the cast was happy
with how they were represented. And I know that like
for instance, we went back and forth quite a bit
on bell. Yeah, your original concept art for Belle and
what we wound up being with. I think that's probably
the biggest difference from start to finish. So when you're
in an iterative process like this and you've got me
giving input, Ashley giving input, what was that? What was
that like for you? And how did you feel about
kind of having your initial idea I wouldn't say completely rejected,
but very very changed.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: I mean, like most artists, I take I put, I
take all of my work personally, but I did get Honestly,
I do get a little salty sometimes, and that's something
I'm personally trying to trying to work on because it
is not a personal attack on the quality of my work,
but more or less, uh, somebody else advocating for the
vision of something they have actual ownership over, which is
their character, somebody they're going to live in. So in
that regard with keeping once I kept that in mind,
it's kind of like, no, I need to make sure
these people, you know, feel like, what what is going
to represent them on social media? What will be the
what might be the only public facing image of that
character is something that they want and feel comfortable with
and envision for that eighty spin off cartoon that is
heavily promoted by.
Speaker 1: The serial, right, And I think that we're all we're
all really happy with with what what we wound up with,
and and we're gonna we're gonna have a lot of
fun when we get to season two, because season two
is gonna have a very different feel to it, which
I'm not gonna not gonna spoil anything right now, but
we're gonna we're gonna have it's going to be very different,
and I think that we'll still be able to be
in like exist in that kind of hand of Barbara
style universities. It's it will work, but we might be
shifting a little bit more toward like Scooby Doo than
Flintstones or Jetson's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from what you've told me, I've got a kind
I've got a couple of ideas for a couple of influences,
but I don't want to reveal those lest we venture
into spoilers.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no spoilers. I think although when
we get to the the episode twelve Barbecue, I think
I might actually have have spoiled what is coming. But
you know this is this is our non contiguous recording schedule.
Speaker 2: That is.
Speaker 1: And also I was very pregnant when we recorded the
season twelve barbecue, and my brain was just a pile
of mush.
Speaker 2: The bod BQ continues right after these messages.
Speaker 1: Going back though to the design like this was, it
was really a collaborative process. You know, you and I
were working together, and we were working with the cast,
and then we were also I was sending you notes
to like, hey, can you send me everything but I
needed in a different size for whatever platform, and then
sending things to date so that they could get them
up on the various podcatchers. But that that bit of
collaboration there, I think also really speaks to the nature
of D and D itself, or of role playing games
in general. And you have also in the games that
you have been designing over the years, You've had some
that you've done solo, some that have been more collaborative.
All which is to say that there have been multiple
points through your gaming history where collaboration has been either
more important or less important. And I'd love to know
where your sweet spot is.
Speaker 2: It varies, it depends on the project. Like I to
take this back a little bit to another creative endeavor.
There was a podcast I helped start, and I would
I can't. I'll shout it out, pot of wonder. It's great,
it's even better now that I've left. It was all
for scheduling. It was all for scheduling reasons. But I'll explain.
You know, it became a joke. I came back for
a couple episodes here and there with a soundboard with
clips from things that we said on the show, and
one of them was one of the the principal members
of the cast saying Eddie now. And so if I'd
toss out something wild and there was a little bit
of a pause, I just got to press that button,
Eddie now. And so I know that my brain works
a very even with other ADHD folks, and a very
different speed and direction, with a different kind of chaos
that kind of either can't sometimes vibe with other people
and sometimes is kind of best left into two very
large binders to be worked on their own. So and
that was kind of something I came to when I
was working primarily alone with the strange but true game
stuff like it was great just kind of being able
to wildly pump stuff out, but without having other people
to kind of check and edit and say, well, let's
kind of take this back, let's play test this, let's
actually see what other humans say about this before you
export it as a PDF and upload it to are
squarespace site. It's always good to have that other, just
at least one other voice in the room to take
it back to something that's come out recently to I'm
gonna go eighty full adhd here some of the you know,
some some movies I love the it's all about the
editors behind them. Like the original Star Wars. That first
edit was an absolute mess, and it took his wife
at the time to say, George, honey, please you go
sit down. I'm going to make an actual movie out
of this. And very recently with Furiosa, George Miller had
his wife as the editor, who's a documentarian and she
doesn't like to be bored by things, so and she
was also somebody who'd say, no, George, we're not funny.
It's always manmate named George who need their yeah, who
need their wives to step in. I'm noticed I can
think of.
Speaker 1: Another George who really could use a wife as an editor.
George R. R.
Speaker 2: Martin, Oh, yeah, you're going to finish.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have your wife, but does need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah they need wife energy. Yes, say in the
most trophy sense, but still yeah. It's just you need
somebody in the room, regardless of who they are in
relation to you, to tell you now, and that's okay
to hear. No. Sometimes it's as a creative who gets
a little salty when somebody says no, change it. I
trying to work on it, but we every creative needs
voice telling them now.
Speaker 1: And I totally agree, and I think for me that's
one of the things that's been really fun about oopsal
Barts because, as you know, as our listeners know, Oops
Barts is it's a homebrewed campaign, like it exists within
the four Walls of D and D fifth Edition, but
the world is homebrewed. The characters, the you know, a
lot of the characters are still playing within the mechanics
of five y the species of the class, but a
lot of homebred elements the characters, and then the world
is homebrewed. The adventure itself is homebrewed. And I didn't
have an editor to dial back and say, Jill, no,
But what I did have was a cast of six
parts total five parts at any given time, who if
they didn't like the direction that I was trying to
take things in, would take things in a completely different direction,
which I think is really the beauty of something like
a TTRPG. Are there any moments in your gaming career
that you can think of where you've had one of
this kind of either as a DM that like the
surprise and delight or the absolute chaos and fear of
oops my players have decided to go in another direction,
or any moments where as a player you've been able
to kind of take things there and really had a
lot of fun with it.
Speaker 2: I'll start from the DM perspective. I don't have much
traditional it's always if anytime I've done like a regular game,
it's always been like a one shot. I have no
experience with a full campaign. I've mostly DMed drunkards games,
and so that is all chaos. I come with an
outline and nine times out of ten it's gonna be
all right. Well, suddenly we're in this volcano that I
have nothing written for. Okay, sure, there are a lot
of people and one of them looks like a rabbit
with a machine gun, and he talks like Sylvester Stallone. Cool,
We're gonna run with that for thirty minutes because that's
what everyone wants. Like there was one one time I
was staying with a friend and he decided, Okay, I'm
gonna have some friends over tonight. Is it cool if
we play drunkards. I've got zero things planned? Oh nine people.
This is usually meant to cap out at six. Cool,
We're going to do a split party game. I'm going
to be standing the entire time and gesturing like I'm
conducting an orchestra, an orchestra of trunks in this living room.
And oh, the host has passed out because we're in
Louisiana and hit one of those drive through daggery places
beforehand meat. But hey, also, well we're coming together on
the big Bat and this is clocked at two hours.
Exactly how did this come out? Well? So, yeah, sometimes
you don't know if you're actually going to stick the
landing until you're actually standing up right with your arms
in the air. As a player, though, one of my
formative D and D experiences, like outside of high school,
came back into it in college. Was invited into a
game by a guy named jud who is I think
one of the v model DM of DM's kindest, kindest
human being I have ever met, welcomed me into a
game without hardly knowing me. But I knew other people
in the game, including a guy i'll call t I'll
come back to him later, But this was a Chud
was a DM very welcoming of homebrew stuff and ideas
and would quickly come up with all right, cool, here's
how we're gonna do that. And I had an idea
for my first dummy thick boy character who preempted dan Town.
It was an Ebroon campaign for D and D version
three point five, and there is a race in Ebron
called Shifters and you could choose, I think between bear
and there were a couple other options, but it was
where people where Wolf was one of them, and maybe
there was a cat person. But I said, you know what,
it'd be fun to be a moose, Like what if
I was a guy who could shape shift into a moose?
And he's like, cool, all right, you know what, We're
just going to use the rules for bears your claws
or horns?
Speaker 3: Cool?
Speaker 2: Cool, all right, great, and we ran with it and
it was fantastic and it was a lot of fun.
He leaned too much into the peeing on things, which
was something I cut before I got to dan Town,
thank you. Yeah, yeah, that was just but it felt
right for a moose man. But lots of lots of
fun there and just having a DM who was very
open to that sort of thing proved well. But I
also saw it going wrong in that same game because
t was a war forged who watched too much metal
loclipse on adult Swim in that era that kind of like,
oh it's it's I'm made of metal, so it is metal.
I have an X it is a guitar, but it
is also an ex just left right and center, like
trying to well, actually the d M with the thing.
And there was somebody there who was anome writing a dinosaur,
which was hilarious and everyone loved it. Dinosaur absolutely did
nothing unless it was called on. And he tossed off
a line about like, well that obnoxious dinosaur over there
is what ruined ruined our attempt to storm the castle,
and players just effortlessly don't. I don't think the dinosaur
is the annoying one here. And I've never seen a
room full of d D players lose it so hard.
But yeah, all depends on the DM. Homebrew can be great,
but it can also go horribly if you don't have
the right DM or players.
Speaker 1: The bard BQ keeps on grilling right after these notes
from our sponsors. It's hard to tell sometimes when you
do or do not have the right players, because sometimes
you might be the best friends in the world and
might not be good at being at the table other
and other times you might be relative strangers and wind
up being very very good at the table together. Our
home game has a little bit of both. We've got, like,
you know, you and I have known each other for
a long time, other people at the table, but you know,
there's somebody who came into our game later on who
you did not know as well. And now the two
of you are those two big beefy boys who have
who drive that back of the filarity so much biggy
boys in character, not necessarily in real life. But have
you had other moments where like genuine connections have been
forged through the table for you?
Speaker 2: I think you know with a there's a group of
people I started playing with when I moved to Philly,
and somebody I met I had not met in person,
but I met through old Facebook and Aol instant messenger
in college back when you had to go wow, be
a college kid to have a Facebook account to really
date it. And it was one of those like I think,
you know somebody wanted the two of us was just
kind of clicking around. Who was in a D and D.
I'm kind of drunk in my dorm room. Let's see
if I can talk about NERD stuff with and we
you know, talked on and off, kept kept in touch
over Facebook, and he moved up to Philly from from
Richmond and at one point was was like, Hey, I'm
joining a I'm putting together D and D game with
some cool folks. I know you're into D and D.
Do you want to play? And very quickly things with
that group, like things kind of gelled and you know,
it wasn't it was. It was one of those things.
I think everyone had that kind of tired end of
the end of a Wednesday, like back of table energy.
All that group took smoke breaks and was I think
somehow it turned into as a as a joke. I
didn't have work the next day. I brought a box
of wine and very quickly boxes of wine just started
appearing at concurrent games. It just you know, sometimes the
right group is there and the inside jokes start flowing
and it's just it's nice. I don't know, I just
lucked into a lot of groups I can't outside of
high school and being a part of like those growy
first games as a straight white man in the early
two thousands, where it's most everyone's just trying to I
want to go to the tavern. Is the tavern made hot?
Like you know? After I got past that, I've just
wound up. I'm just associating with really cool people who
have really good vibes and attract fun people. So you know,
it happens more often than not.
Speaker 1: Need Do you have any questions for Reddy?
Speaker 4: No? I just like listening to him talk. Got a
great voice, pal, thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you. It has all It has been used
as an AI voice now for work awesome. Now the
skynet now has my voice. I'm so sorry for the future.
Speaker 4: It's cool. Maybe maybe I've used you for oops all.
Speaker 2: Barts depends on what descript is selling people's voices for
these days we'll see.
Speaker 1: That does remind me, though, because I actually wanted to
ask you about your thoughts on on general AI and gaming.
Because I've talked about this before. I use chat GPT
sometimes as a as a shortcut for oops all bards.
I've used it to help me name places when I say,
like I want to name a place, here's a description
of the place. I want it to be evocative of whatever,
or I wanted to use words from such, such and
such language, and then I often like take the list
that it gives me and match things together. Or I've
had to create stat blocks for me for NPCs, or
not not for NPCs, but for like the low level combatants.
But there is you know, there is some talk that
changes to platforms like D and D Beyond or other
platforms are going to be pushing more of like the
AI d M where you're not necessarily going to have
or need in quotes, big big quotes a human game master.
How do you knowing that AI is something that touches
your work on a daily basis? How do you feel
about AI's role within the role playing game world?
Speaker 2: That is that's complex, because you know, I'm using it
every day. I it's a shortcut. We do use it
for the voices, but there's always some coaching. It's never perfect.
I've had to re record in my own voice several
times because the pronunciation isn't right. And I know these
things are always improving, but in my experience, you always
need a human hand to get it just right. I
on some level, I can even understand the appeal. And
when it comes to tabletop gaming, specifically D and D
and those tools, I can almost understand the appeal if
somebody is just starting out and has no access to
figuring out how to DM, and you know, waiting into
YouTube is a sesspool these days. Yes, so I can
definitely see the appeal of somebody saying, hey, I've got
like three friends who are interested in figuring out this
D and D thing. We've got essentially a chat help
bot to get us started. But if they're the kinds
of people who can get into D and D, and
I've talked to people who are like, I just can't.
My brain can't work that way. I can't inhabit somebody else.
But if their brains do work that way and they're interested,
eventually going to be like I don't like that chat
robot says, but we've been playing long enough where I'm
like I do you want me to take over? So
I think, like with all things, it's good as a
starting point. It's good as inspiration. I know with that
Aildenhart project, I've said, Okay, I'm visioning a thing. I
don't have the time or patients to draw it, but
I need to see what it might look like. So here, hey,
mid journey, here's what I'm thinking. Here's an art style.
Give it to me and it's you know, it's been helpful.
I've kind of built from those and said, okay, well,
this is where the ears and the eyes are, and
this is what it looks like with six legs. Cool.
Now I can go a little further. What kind of
person rides this thing? So it's I know it's very
easy to argue slippery slopes and doom and gloom for
the future and industries. But from what I've heard from
older met artists or digital artists, people had the same
fear when photoshop came around an illustrator and oh no,
it's it's going to completely ruin creativity if you don't
have to sit there with with guah, with gwash paint
uh and and kind of outline everything and be very
patient with it. And oope, see if you've screwed up, well,
if you don't have to start over on this entire
piece of whiteboard, it's you know, it's not it's not
worth it. It's not it's not right. No, I mean
it's if you're doing your job well, you're not going
to have a problem finding a way to get your
your ideas out there on any level, whether it's a
professional level or in a personal creative endeavor. I hope
you ain't stuffed.
Speaker 3: There's more on the grill at the bard BQ coming up.
Speaker 1: So I think those are about all of the questions
that I have for you. All right, one, all right, okay.
Speaker 4: We'll do two things I had already said, the Santa pic.
But let's go favorite game all time and then what
you are currently into now that someone might not know about.
Speaker 2: Oh current game, I don't know. You know, I've been
i'ven't fallen back into Magic the Gathering lately. It's it's
just a classic for a reason. It's been part of
as part of my gaming since high school, and honestly,
like the idea just kind of sorting through all my
cards since then, that's it's been fun to to see
how something changes over three decades visually and aesthetically and
with the technology that was available to make these cards,
and so that inspired an idea for a game I
had where the old premise is you have a pre
made deck, but aesthetically it looks like you pulled from
thirty years of the same game, and there'd be no
booster packs. It's just here's a here's like four hundred
cards that you bought at a garage sale.
Speaker 1: Somebody put together a tarot deck a few years ago.
I saw a kickstarter for it where like each individual
tarot card was in a different style, is meant to
look like it had come from like years of collecting
and trading and I've lost my I lost my death
card and so I'm replacing them from another deck sort
of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that kind of and that kind of
idea is kind of like one of the things I'm
a pretty shedding now about that game. But that's yeah,
that's that's it right now. Although I did play What
Did You Mean for the first time in a while,
and that's fun. Yeah, with some people who had a
small child with them, and we had the knotty cards
in the deck because it was a board cafe. Their
child was glued to the iPad though, so we were full.
It was a lot of like they were leaning into it.
I'm like, should I be saying this these words around
a child? But as for something I'm into that people
might not know about, we're talking games or just anything
in general.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll take anything in general.
Speaker 2: Ooh, I don't know. I've just been kind of doing
deep dives on like different film series, just different like
let me shoot straight through a thing, like I just
finished all the Riddick movies today. Not good on any level.
Pitch Black, fun, fun indie movie and if you want
to stop there, you can, but just it. It's there's
something weird and visually interesting happening in each frame of those.
And I don't know, just turn your brain off and
pretend you're watching FX hungover and it's two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I love it. So I do have one last question
for you, Eddie. Yes, if you could take any feat
from D and D and use it in real life,
what would you take?
Speaker 2: You know, that's hard to answer because considering Dan Town,
my character in our Yeah Home game is takes the
ability score improvement over the feats nine times out of ten.
So the easy answer is I would. I if I
could take some sort of ability score improvement every couple
of years or something, I absolutely would in a very
numeric sense. I don't know. You know, it does speak
to dan Town but also speaks to Drow, a Drow
character I kept building and rebuilding back in high school.
Or just the idea of two weapon fighting. Just being
ambidexterous in general feels so useful. Yeah, I got the
shaky hands as it is, with both hands, but if
I could just use both hands really well, I'd be okay,
just improve my life just five percent.
Speaker 4: When I was When I was a small child, I
was very much ambidexterious. But my parents couldn't teach me
how to do anything left handed, so they forced me
to use my right for everything and kind of beat
that out of not.
Speaker 1: Be were your parents none, but so.
Speaker 4: But here's here's the rub. Then, my little sisters born
left handed. Of course I didn't didn't force her to
change it, but guess what, But guess what, they're both
dead now. So all right, calm down, calm down, I
can make that joke. I can make that joke.
Speaker 1: I know you.
Speaker 2: I know there's a left handed path joke in there somewhere,
but I can't. I don't have the smarts to make
it now.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, Annie Delay, thank you so much
for joining us.
Speaker 2: Oh it's been a pleasure and an honor to speak
to you both here tonight.
Speaker 1: It's been a joy on behalf of the cast and
crew behind Oops All Bards. Thank you for joining us
for this episode of the Bardbecue. Join us in two
weeks for the season finale, Season one finale of Oops
All Bards. Oh my god, We've finally made it. And
then two weeks after that we will have a real
barbecue talking about that season one finale, and then we're
gonna go on a little bit of a break, we
might drop some special content, and then we're gonna have
season two, I don't know, sometime in twenty twenty five.
Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you real soon.
Speaker 4: Oops aal Bards is created, GMed, and directed by Jillian
Ashley Blair Ivy. This episode was produced, edited, and sound
designed by Nate Runkle. Oops All Bards stars Ashley Banks
as Bells Cernameo and Coleman as Clarice Sauerkloud, Ross Curry
as Andrew Carroll, 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.
Speaker 1: Bars Oh, another quality podcast from the porch Room.