[SPEAKER_00]: So kill every monster season four male bag.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did we ever establish a pattern for who reads the first one?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you read the first one?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I read the first one?
[SPEAKER_01]: Go away for someone else to read the first one?
[SPEAKER_01]: It will be waiting a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then let's
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just go one from everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we don't feel like we got an episode, like that of it, then we'll loop back to the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eric from the Discord asks, what's the timeline between the DM notes and an episode?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there some of the DM notes?
[SPEAKER_01]: Discussion pre-episode and then cut in?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you wrap the episode with the gas and then immediately switch to the DM notes after they've left?
[SPEAKER_01]: The answer is up to several months.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's nice that they think we're that organized.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing is, like, I feel like a lot of this stuff to get new comments out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need some time to sit with what we talked about and figure out what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the best way to do that, frankly, is Arama always gets an edit to me and the guest before we put the episode out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the timeline is how long it takes for me to edit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the time is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a ROM will get the edit done.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will take a listen to it to make sure a ROM didn't like misplace an audio track.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every now and then.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once we've both heard the episode relatively recently, we'll go in with sort of a fresh mind and be able to comment on like one what actually happened in the episodes.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll remember it, but also we'll have fresh brains.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, something else to say again.
[SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to not just running through the episode again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I think there were a few kind of earlier on where we were on a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had a better rhythm for a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we would record them like right after.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, for a while, the DM notes were just your written notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which like, I don't know how much people were getting out of those, but if they could read your handwriting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, fuck you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are going to be a doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that kind of doctor.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was also just like the further in we got, the more it was like me fully pre planning those sessions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of started not landing right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had too many things where we like talked to the guests and then like started to pivot on the structure of the episode and then really, oh well, my fucking notes are useless here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it just ended up being something where the AP kind of falls together in a conversation between usually you and the guests sometimes all three of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were no real other notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the DM notes became more of a
[SPEAKER_00]: Discussion about how the episode came together and also some other stray thoughts we may have had on either the creature or just the ideas we talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we need that we need the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've mentioned it a couple of times now, but the number of sessions that have just been like
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we legitimately, you guys can all go back and try to figure out which ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think one or two of the written notes straight up was like, I didn't know what we were doing until we recorded.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just wrote some notes up afterwards to fit the proper aesthetic, because I felt obligated to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was sort of like, I didn't know what we were going to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had to talk through it and then by the end of it, I'm left going like fuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got the better episode out of that, but now one of my supposed to, I guess, I guess I just lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't really make for a helpful thing, but no, these do.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could to see your pretty face and also mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it works out perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how the answer is up to a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Up to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Generally speaking, though, we will have at least listened to the episode in the past like a couple of days before we record him.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or we'll just forget everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember yesterday.
[SPEAKER_01]: A little alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we did in the last recording.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alex, also on the discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there any monsters you would ask the guests to run again?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that you've had a feel for them in play.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know your answer to this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you go ahead and disappoint me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes there are.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about it and it's going to be vampire and it's going to be the vampire from the new book and it's going to be a patron only thing that you will see well patron and apple podcasts only thing that you may see in the next couple months depending on whether or not I can get Dylan to agree with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the whole point.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the rules for the main field.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to have a larger conversation because I have a thing that you want to do with the vampire is not a kill every monster episode and the actual thing you want to do is sort of unrelated your structure get into a kill every monster episode because that's the easiest way to get it done.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you and I will have that conversation ourselves later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but your goddamn mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the answers, yes, there are episodes I want to go back into and re-record.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because I don't think anything got done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think all of our episodes were very successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also think that there are other ways to look at some of the monsters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plus, I would like to touch on some of the changes in the new book, but not in the main feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the main feed is a five-e feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll remain a five-e feed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Part of it, for me, frankly, is audience management.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we set up an expectation, or when we create the room for an expectation, it tends to grow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when we do a dragon episode, I want to set that there and be that's the dragon episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're done.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we get a good pitch, yes, strictly speaking, we talked about black dragons so we could do a red drink and we'll see how it goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you go in there and go, oh, well, that was just the black dragon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we got to do four more.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, well, ever once in a while, we get someone, what are you going to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if no one ever shows up with a good pitch, never.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the same thing as we do in three dragon episodes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I've been trying to squeeze the mince that you'll shut up about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did black dragon.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did the dragon turtle, which is technically an actual dragon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've done covalves, which are also now dragons.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not out yet, but I also did a blue dragon in the draw episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you saw the blue dragon answered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to fucking talk about more dragons because they're not interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, unless a guest has a good pitch.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but that's, that's what I'm trying to get at is generally speaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There might be, and I haven't looked at it yet because I'm not paying for that fucking book.
[SPEAKER_01]: But generally speaking, everything I've seen out of the new monster manual is the same or worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's no really speaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have told commentary like,
[SPEAKER_01]: We went over the stat block for the vampire.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did it's the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically functionally there's like one thing that shifted somewhere that like because of a mistake in rules wording.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think made them like stupid powerful or there was one ability you couldn't get out of anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, that was a functionally.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the mine a flare.
[SPEAKER_00]: They messed up some of the text of the mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there's little stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But otherwise, they're like, they're functionally identical to the way they were off the hook.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only thing they're changing is lore and the way that they're changing the lore is not putting it in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Agreed.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've mentioned that one recorded the cobalt episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the cobald in the five-E monster manual there's an entire page of nonsense and some of it sucks and some of it's fine and some of it's just talking about the existence of a globet which no one needed to know about, but it's there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the twenty twenty four edition there are eleven sentences.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they take a lot of good stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know how you know that's not enough sentences.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you can count them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I look at nearly any entry in the five the original five e monster manual and I go like I'm not gonna do that and look I grew all of this however I watched sinners and then I talked to a million for two hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why I'm saying you don't want to kill every monster episode
[SPEAKER_01]: you want an excuse to talk about vampires and do a vampire thing and I'm willing to bet if you broke off from this idea that you want to do a new five a new five a kill every monster vampire episode we could find a better idea that would scratch that itch and unlike the new edition of the vampire be fucking interesting will okay we'll go over this more detail by later our stop bringing it up okay
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's your kids don't need to see us arguing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, one of us does and no, we'll probably never do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mel, we're gonna keep pulling from the discord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mel asked, are there any PC classes you feel fit the format of the show, the best or the worst?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm gonna say first off, the worst is the rogue, which feels counter-intuitive, except that the thing that a rogue does, well, the rogue does two things, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: One goes against the spirit of the show because it makes it too likely for you to succeed.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of your characters are purpose built with the monster in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have expertise, you can fuck the entire AP because those will be the skills you're going to roll.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to mention a back step, which could just take the thing out of the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, because you won't have a back step.
[SPEAKER_01]: because you're a single rogue.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might get it off once.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at that point, that was my second thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was you're going to fuck up the entire AP by making every single, you sap the tension out of it if we know that you've got like a plus nineteen to some shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you either will
[SPEAKER_01]: bullshit your way into a bunch of sneak attacks, which will just suck again, because you cranked your damage output in a way that makes the fight less interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you won't have a way to get your sneak attacks off, in which case you've hamstrung the character.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: On all those accounts, I'd say the close second is the paladin, because I can solo the monster if I'm lucky.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, that's why I think the paladin is one of the better options because- Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: That is only relevant in the combat, and generally you only throw out a pallet in for the really, like, big monsters.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can say pallet in for the lich, which could have been an dangerous play.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the lich is also a glass cannon.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you had enough damage output that this fight with what is functionally a wizard wasn't going to take forever and be kind of stupid.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, like the Lich has moves where they could have dropped you in a heartbeat.
[SPEAKER_01]: You pulled the pallet in out to fight the dragon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, with Austin, like objectively the correct choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the pallet in has a lot of places in this show where it's the only reasonable option.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one else was gonna last.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to have a character with a shield and with that feet where they could hide behind the shield and completely protect the shield you made.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that wasn't made up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the actual feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how the shield feed works.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you roll against a breath attack, you get a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think maybe, oh, it's the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Rogues pretty high up there too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we hardly just agree with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think Bard might be Bard is also a similar thing where it really relies on the existence of a party.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not handing out inspiration to fuck all.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, fun when I'm trying to be ridiculous on purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are times where it's thematic, the parrot in episode you did a bar, and that was correct, but also you didn't do really anything in that episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, the cool shit I did was the cards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which correct, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that fight, the way that we set up that AP, you needed to be kind of inept, and having you be this shitty musician that that line up perfectly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But nine times out of ten, yeah, the bar's wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, a great musician, because I wrote that amazing performance world, just sucked at everything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: That adventure, which go figure during the fucking bar band isn't rocking the adventuring lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_00]: His adventure was I need to stumble home drunk.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he had to go nine blocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all that works.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's here?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your pick for the best then?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh best.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they were better, I'd say Ranger, but because Rangers did not suck, they would be better class.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because they're not, I think, honestly, just the plane fighter, because I have a chance on some of the roles, but I'm going to mainly fail them, but in the end, it's a good combat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: because they're just a fighter.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have weaknesses against flying creatures and some other things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think mainly just the story of fighting a fighter with a handful of like utility magic items tends to go pretty well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, having the fighter against the triant was great, having the fighter against the werewolf was great, ended up not being a fighter at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anthony from the discord, which AP surprised you the most and how it turned out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Rock Chasa.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that one surprised me the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not expect it to be that epic.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think a lot of them kind of like catch off guard on sheer scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's got damn it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Karen with Connie.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I expected it to take some turns.
[SPEAKER_01]: I expected to be role play heavy to just sort of like
[SPEAKER_00]: emotionally antagonize you into tears was really not and just have you sort of walk away from it going like I guess I have to be a better person like I did not call that one no and straight up drove me to tears I was actually cry during that episode no surprise it's Connie but yeah that was quite not where I expected that one to go yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to go there's any other ones that really surprised me.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of them, a lot of them, it's hard to think of because there is always some degree of surprise, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're not, we don't know how these are going to go going in.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's sort of the point of D&D, right, role-playing games in general, you roll dice.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, they do have sort of,
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a, there's a confidence interval around it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like, it's gonna do something like this, like the mimic.
[SPEAKER_01]: We couldn't have called the exact ending, but also it was very within parameters for sort of what you anticipate going in.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a lot of twists and turns.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of fun getting there, but you called the ending.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would think, I think another one is the mind-flare, just how epic the ending of that combat was.
[SPEAKER_00]: That played out so well and came to such a nice button.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I would have seen that coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I definitely didn't see it coming in the werewolf because... Yeah, that was a very fun thing to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's really the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think even the mind player, like, I couldn't have called how, like, dead on that was going to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, when we said, what if your kidnapped and we do sort of a haunted house vibe?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We usually walk into these with a little bit of a target and all of our guests are so good at hitting a target that when we call what the episode should be ahead of time, there can be no surprise in that they're going to fucking obliterate any instruction I give them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been surprised with how well the guests know that's never been a surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cole asked, is there any monster you don't think would make for a good episode?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell him things half the book would make for a good episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where I've kind of turned around in that I know that there is always a guess that will make a monster make a good episode, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we've pushed it into season five, but we have a recording for just fun guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: which in the monster manual, our traps are literally just patches of mushrooms that can kind of fuck with your day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got a really solid, like, I really enjoyed that conversation and that AP was fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was great up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like granted, I haven't heard it in a while, but like, I'm really confident that that episode is gonna turn out nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like looking at it, it shouldn't make it that episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's one of those things where like,
[SPEAKER_01]: When someone comes to me and says they want the monster, I become confident that we're gonna get a good episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, if I flip through the monster manual, there's quite a few where I'm just gonna go like, no, that sucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: The piercer will not be a good episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep pushing for like, there's a handful of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the cloakur fits into it too, where I'm just like, let's just do an episode that's just dungeon monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Monsters that don't have any consequences that don't have anything really going on that only exists because Guy Gax at one point was like, ha ha ha ha, this select date is actually a fella.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: What if we drop the tarp from the ceiling, but it eats you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The cloaker isn't even that because it's specifically is written to, no, I'm thinking of the dark mantle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: The dark mantle that just sits on a hook.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then if you put it on like a cloak, it'll bite your face off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's worth the money.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's worth the money.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should do an episode with just those monsters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: One day those monsters would not carry up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be a bad episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, be a bad episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Except that one day someone's going to shop and go like, do you know what I'm painfully passionate about?
[SPEAKER_01]: The dark mantle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm going to be like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, I wouldn't have asked you to be on the show if I didn't think you were gonna make a good call on this, so fucking fine, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Might be our shortest episode ever, but let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-oh, and it'll turn out fucking great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there may be monsters we think will make bad episodes, but we've never hit a monster that's made a bad episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I could, I'm not going to, because I'd have to pull up the list, but we could go down the list of monsters we've covered.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a good handful of them where I'm like, that episode should have sucked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, and we've had to talk about the purple worm where you've, like, S is not going to be good, but we'll find a way to make it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, we'll, we will find an interesting conversation to be had there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think the purple worm will make a bad episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a boring monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a bar monster, but it's a straight-up monster.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll swear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That, like, yes, it's a worm.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has a whole lot behind the mouth, but the only useful part for the monster is the mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the point of the purple worm is to get one of the party members swallowed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that, oh, there it's got to get out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a reference to anything culturally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, there are other, like, famous big worms, but like, this isn't comparable to Dune.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a trumber's creature.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more so a trumber's creature, but not even really that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a trumber's creature was meant to be kind of a horror issue, and this is the thing that you're supposed to be able to kill with a three-foot long piece of metal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, whereas the purple worm kind of can't kill it unless you're at a big enough level and that that boy, it's not that much of a threat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because it doesn't do anything interesting aside from small.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're getting into the purple worm episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll save that for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so Craig on Blue Sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do Dylan or Ram feel conflicted about featuring monsters who central-stick is that they basically can't be killed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the Tarask, the Litch, Angels and Demons, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: for a podcast titled Kill Every Monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: So no, because fundamentally the title is a little tongue-in-game, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: how often do we really kill the monsters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Originally, what I titled this thing, in my head, I had a different show in mind, which is, and then the title stuck, because the title was kind of ironic in the way that, yes, we do kill every monster because it was literally the monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's, less monsters got killed, less arombs got killed, everything, things started resolving peacefully occasionally.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just all onto it because why would we rebrand?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: RSEO is already down the toilet if I just keep.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, a lot of the monsters that wear their stick is they can't be killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the fundamental things there is, yes, they can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: A Lich can't be killed unless you get the factory.
[SPEAKER_01]: like there is an interesting little thing there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Angels are like anything extra planer can't be killed unless it's on its home plane in which case it can be killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even then the fact that they are regenerating is the story, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a whole, like, I think the Tarask is the only one that sits poorly to me in that it is the epitome of the guy Gaxian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, fuck you players.
[SPEAKER_01]: How dare you get powerful and level up in this game that I suggested we play and that I ran for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is about getting more powerful and leveling up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, the Tarask is mechanically uninteresting and just a giant fuck you to players.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not a problem about it being
[SPEAKER_01]: unkillable.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's probably about a being a boring design.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if there was something unkillable, actually unkillable in the book, like I like if there was a good like if there was like if the God above all was in the books, unkillable, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd still find that interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would find it interesting simply because like
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the fundamental tenet of games.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it has stats, it can be killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment you give it stats, people will figure out a way around all of the silly little abilities unless you are writing it in such a way that it's like, yeah, and this thing can't be killed when it's dropped to zero hit points instead one of the player characters dies because fuck them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: In which case you enter into a new thing of like, how do you design that in a way that like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how do you make this not feel like utter horseshit?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think that Dungeons and Dragons could do that, because they designed a bunch of stuff that's pretty normal and straight across the board and still feels like bullshit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, if you could be done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it could be done.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we'd find a way to make it interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not to mention the fact that like, let's be honest, this is not a dungeon in Dragon's show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this isn't just a show about the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a criticism podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are here because they are not doing the best job designing some of these monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did do that and they did a bad job.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would frankly be a goddamn playground for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can get a boy episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get to go like, hey, so this monster fucking sucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're still fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want the name of this writer.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we read it to an unkillable monster that was written with like playground kid rules, it's like, no, I've got all the flowers.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would absolutely have a field day with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chris, on the Discord, has asked any plans on another multi-guest or multi-part episode, Alah, Abelith, or Drow, if not what monster that you haven't covered yet would be the perfect one to have set episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually the multi-part episodes are because we've got on too long.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I don't want to keep it episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have multi-part episodes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just accidentally do them sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as larger cats, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think some people face something, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime we feel like probably for the purple worm episode, it'll be a couple people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It, it, it have to be because this, the other consideration for a party episode is,
[SPEAKER_01]: does the ability of the monster call for a party, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of raw challenge rating, we could have done the abolition one on one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: But all of the abilities of the abolition lend themselves to a party so that you can do some fuckery.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if there wasn't three people, how do you mind control someone?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, rich didn't choose to use those abilities on principle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good for you, Rich.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he wanted to and it was a one on one fight, you've you fucking destroyed the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's over.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's over real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once the purple worm swallow someone.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, we could narrate fucking forty five minutes of you trying to claw your way out of the stomach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could do the most frightening part from nope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we really wanted to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just taking a look through here to see what else might warrant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like on raw size, like a chimera may be, but those are relatively low challenge, like we could do it one on one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe a storm giant if we, but we've done giant.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like even more so than the fucking dragons, like we talked about giants, the concept is what if big man?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, fuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not doing six episodes of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Death Knight could be a good one.
[SPEAKER_01]: For a party, if for no other reason, then just sort of like the almost power-rangers he vibe of like one slightly bigger guy in a silly suit fighting five people in silly suits.
[SPEAKER_01]: not saying that we should go that route for the AP or that's fun though.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, even just like less goofy, like that is the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is coming up against this big sort of hellbound night with the adventuring party and having this person who is big enough that your fighter runs at them and they backhand the fighter across through and the cleric starts panicking, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of have to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, then other episodes like the drought where it just made sense to have more voices and therefore we had more people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So well, there's things like that that could come up as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That one was the same number of people as usual, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So still three people, but we should.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stepped up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but we did shift it around in terms of, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: live and Austin both played PCs for that one and I played the monster as opposed to one of them playing the drought one of them trying to kill the drought and me playing me yeah otherwise though like I'm I'm flipping through this real quick and I'm not seeing a whole lot that really like immediately calls out to me as
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting for a multi-party situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also really steps up both the recording time and the production time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we do try to avoid that one possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vremoraz, maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shield Guardian, but Shield Guardians really, again, it's another goal.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an object.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if that's even going to be an interesting episode to flip back to another question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, to be a holder probably should have been one, but it played out great as a one-on-one.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing is I think we found really interesting in on the beholder to make it work as a one-on-one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Umber Hulk is another with a hypnosis ability, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Might require a secondary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or we've also done a couple where we just record a couple NPCs and just run with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reduces another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: That easily could have been just, I thought, like, that should have been multi-person, just for the sake of allowing someone to get petrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it also played out so well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, especially for Nicky, who's, like, such a fucking sweet person, like, running that character in that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was someone petrified at the end in that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to pay off the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes that takes a party, but most times we can do it one on one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it just depends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably, but maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, back up to Eric on Discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me see here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you had a most frustrating episode?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the subject matter from DMD that was kind of okay, give me a minute, type of dumb frustrating or creative ideas for the AP work coming like normal, re-recordings, et cetera, drag and turtle.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the most fucking turtle was painted in the ass?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that wasn't anyone's fault except ours.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've probably told this story before.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was another one where we initially recorded it as like a full party.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gave everybody full license to go ball so the wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was made to stake for our show, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: We was a great fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a great four hour AP.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was it?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think
[SPEAKER_01]: Dylan straight up played a bear with an axe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, sin played a celestial warlock who I think was used to fight the turtle refused to fight the turtle and was married to the celestial patron.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And while he came in and was like, I'm just gonna play monkey delufe fuck you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, all great choices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a lot of fun, but like, it very rapidly sort of degraded, which ignore the implications of that word into a home game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it runs a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fundamentally unlicinable.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all just got so wrapped up and enjoying the fact that we got to play with some of our friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, it just wound up being a silly goofy fucking beer and pretzels game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which would have been fine, but it didn't focus on the monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't focus on the monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody was pulling so much spotlight because they had such funny, like goofy ass ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: it just it didn't land and then of course we ran into the problem of like one straight up to social anxiety of like having to go to people and be like hey listen guys this was a hundred percent on me this is not on you I fucked this up and I have to re-record the episode you were on I'm so sorry if I did not get on the re-record sorry which is just gonna try to play this one straight so that I like eliminate the variables and we can get a clean one and then trying to schedule with lies uh... he's like
[SPEAKER_01]: On both ends, we just had life coming up, just chaos, scheduling became a bastard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it legitimately took like a year and a half, maybe two years between recordings to get that were done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had that was a two-year-old deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, that one done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And ended up being great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just, we were right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just was frustrating, getting there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the only one I would really call it on, because otherwise, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: The subject matter is always like, that is what we are getting into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I recently was talking to someone that hopefully we're going to have on as a guest where they brought it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, hey, this is the subject matter we're asking you to speak on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's a bit of an ask, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're asking for emotional labor and like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Frankly, D&D fans are pricks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anytime we have a guest on in the subject matter gets rough, we're putting someone in the line of fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, just I want to be completely above board.
[SPEAKER_01]: I recognize this is what we're asking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't want to talk about that and don't want to get in that fight, fucking fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, everybody goes in with their eyes open.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's read the monster manual before they show up on the fucking episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: We always get the discussion part to everyone early so they can listen to it and go, oh, maybe I shouldn't have said that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But otherwise, we have some brilliant people and sometimes it takes like tossing a couple ideas back and forth before we hit the AP idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've never been frustrated.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it always sounds like a good conversation feel of like, what if we did this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I've even started off with like this straight up like, hey, this is a bad idea, but this is our starting point.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just the zeroth level.
[SPEAKER_01]: What if we just did a standard as adventure walks into a dungeon?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been real married to ideas that when we get into that room, they're like, well, that's fine, but, and I push hard for, but then in the end, go, you know what, you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a better idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me retrak my, let's go with that instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ross Monster was a good example of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where we both came in with ideas and Zach was like, what if we did this?
[SPEAKER_01]: And we just went, nope, nope, that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we actually did first push back like, okay, but how would that work?
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a collaborative situation of just like I like that idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: How would it work, though, convince me that this will make for an episode and not just a great session if we would run it home?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, and how can we keep this under an hour and a half?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's always the fun game is like, that idea is awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Going back to the beholder, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The other Zack came at us with that idea, and I was like, that is awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to scrap about two thirds of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, because we've got to get this done, Zachary.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have that kind of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're in fucking Australia.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of us has to go to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Technically, Zach's in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, technically, Zach, I guess has the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, what we had to get that done.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's sort of where that one sits.
[SPEAKER_01]: A great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alex asked, the AP usually follows the conversation and then the conversation usually veers around what would you do differently or better.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever considered using the better monster for the AP?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think sometimes we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We debate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're a perfect example.
[SPEAKER_00]: We definitely use the ideas we had for the better monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: We use the ideas and the improved like lore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that will often be the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of it, because they, we have to run it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just heard the stats in the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kappa and Gangar, where we straight up invented monsters and could have the improved version before we saw the cards in the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it isn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm pretty sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kappa wrote that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I thought never mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they might be a capa in a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I can become a capa came in with is what the one they wrote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you're right for the Pokemon episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to write that out to write that ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like I said, we a lot of the time you wind up going through and like all of the ideas we're pitching for improving the monster would require designing that monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would have to fully design the monster, which like you could conceivably do, but we do a one day recording.
[SPEAKER_01]: Generally speaking, sometimes if you know availability, but generally speaking, we record the discussion.
[SPEAKER_01]: do a quick break, maybe have a quick conversation, record the AP.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to eat somebody's entire fucking day with all right, cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we recorded the discussion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now let's sit down and fucking design an entire monster from the ground up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then run the AP afterwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just wouldn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, sometimes do like let a music ability that we thought would be cool, something that would be like a quick and dirty solution.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, we're not gonna redesign a monster for the episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just not practical.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't practical.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be a neat idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't have two days to record.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and also frankly, I've reached a point where I was annoyed with Dungeon and Dragons when we started this show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have very much reached a point.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you tell me like, hey, working this system some more, I don't want to do that most of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to engage any more than we already are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, alright.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mel on discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've mentioned before how Dylan had to take the casting reins away from a wrong early on.
[SPEAKER_00]: What other key aspects of producing the show have had dramatic changes since you said you started making it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ha.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the one, the one major one is the DM's notes, which I mean, we sort of talked about already.
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise,
[SPEAKER_00]: Not really much.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, my editing's better.
[SPEAKER_00]: We switched to reverse side.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are just technical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're small things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, some of it has become a little bit more of a mad scramble because my life got real busy towards the end of this fucking degree, which hopefully will be done soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're far less ahead of things than we were.
[SPEAKER_00]: But right, we're not the year ahead, we once were.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not really in how we do things.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think largely we kind of hit a good stride in terms of overall structure.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only nature change aside from aromas not allowed to come to me and say, we're going to get this guy on and when I go, why he says hot?
[SPEAKER_01]: Please don't bother us.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: You sent me a couple people where you were like, hey, I met some folks at JenCon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a couple of people who I think would be really cool for the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you sent a list of just like, found presenting sort of folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, yeah, here, because I know I'm not allowed to cast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I legitimately told you like, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to fuck these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not allowed to catch men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: My fundamental objection is not present here, so I will trust your judgment.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the only really thing you've taken away from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose the other thing that's changed is that you set me down early in season one and was like, arom.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a show about the guests.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not about your special little boy you've designed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are not the main character.
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot because we've told that story before.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, I had ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had to really matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: which we're going to come back to in this whole vampire situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what we've changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've kind of gotten to a really good flow.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know we're at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got better at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know it to expect from each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: And otherwise, I think we just kind of have a rhythm in how we make it now.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think we've sort of hit what producing this show needs to look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cole has a question that's specifically just for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Feel free to get up on your high horse and I swear to God, if you see, say the word vampire, I will jump through this screen and throttle you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any characters you've played that you want to play again?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's definitely ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I wish I could remember his name, but I love the little quarter.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're always awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the little cobalt from, oh, is it a guy with the methods?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it was the one from the Gathias trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: As said, there was also another place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was that guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that a cobalt?
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe a goblet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of the two.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to play them the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, because they are the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are totally the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk to unnamed guests later in the next season about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, that is one of the ones where it's ended in a space, sort of a nebulous space of like
[SPEAKER_01]: They showed up in the Goltheias episode, gunning for the whole situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: They came back evil in the unicorn episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be nice to do sort of a three-act thing, but also the same sort of issue we always wind up on, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: To do that, would require setting you up for a success, setting you up for a given ending.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I don't want to have the guests in like that, especially given that like some of the guests listen to the show ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them listen to a couple episodes before we record.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them don't know us from a fucking hole in the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not
[SPEAKER_01]: going to be like, hold on.
[SPEAKER_01]: A rum has a special little boy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really would love to use your episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trap up a narrative that we just sort of ambeantly accidentally created like fucking three years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the answer is I love most of the characters I make and what I play them again, sure, because I like the little character I made.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be easier to say the ones I wouldn't and right off the bat the guy from the people episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a bad bad man and I felt bad in the moment in some of my choices, what I was just like, I need to be worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: You
[SPEAKER_01]: You created a guy where evil was the one note.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, it's not he was going to do the bad thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter what, it's not fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it didn't feel good to play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't write for the story, but I found it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing though.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you play a lot of scumbags, but you usually play a scumbag where like it comes from somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy was evil because we knew that was the brief.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just leaned into it hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like you said, we're stuck in work for the episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have no complaints.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that isn't fun to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when there's a fun story to tell with that, so why bring it back?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when I was like burn the end, you all looked at me like Jesus or I was like, okay, I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's supposed to feel like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I wouldn't want to touch that guy again.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, I don't want you to play any of these things again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want you building out your fucking connected worlds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I desperately do and you stop on whatever you, whatever, whenever I put up the single little sprout of an idea about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I actually
[SPEAKER_01]: There's only one where I feel the obligation to do that, and that is getting Alex back for a third AP, because that is another one where we like very explicitly like line that up for, well, I say, we rich on a fucking whim decided that I have to do a third part to that narrative.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it hasn't come up to it for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, maybe we'll figure that out, maybe we won't, we'll see how it goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if Rich says so, we have to.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the law.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's where Rich sort of fucked me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you Rich.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to make that abundantly clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is in no way a real complaint.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the practical consideration I have to make.
[SPEAKER_01]: And otherwise, I love you dearly.
[SPEAKER_01]: He fucked me because those are thematic.
[SPEAKER_01]: in like a very like conscious ish way, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like is the flump and it was an old one warlock.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like leading that into the ableth really sort of made sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then we started getting these like wave motifs in this water theme going.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he goes like, yeah, there's a bigger thing deeper down that's water and shadows.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like
[SPEAKER_01]: in the monster manual.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I use that is going to fit that brief?
[SPEAKER_01]: And because now these are characters who have abilities fit in the level progression.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it has to be stronger than an apple.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's stronger than an apple.
[SPEAKER_01]: It still hits a water theme and still hits a old one vibe that can pay off this warlock story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it to Leviathan?
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't a fucking Leviathan arom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a crack in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, right, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, that's not as powerful as the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's more powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's some new, figuratively more powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still have monster manual open here, give me a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose the mic did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even that, like, crack in, like, gets a whole bunch of layer actions, challenge rating, twenty three.
[SPEAKER_01]: Immunity, the lightning, bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from non-magic weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yaddy, add a gada.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that I'm looking at the crack and I'm like, it's the cracking, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the giant squid.
[SPEAKER_01]: It bites boats.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the anti pirate campaign weapon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone comes in to play the crack and again, I'm not going to be like, hey, actually, we have, I got a buddy of mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Loves in China.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, it's a bit much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's up what we have to do something because, well, let's say we don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we don't because it was season two and we're going into season five now.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is true.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one's going to call me on that except for the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the lives and to guess right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the ten, I want to remember any of them because I'm going to, I'm going to give you this reminder.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet again, this show isn't a fucking democracy.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not, not even for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, probably not.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Eric, on Discord, have you or Dylan ever done or considered doing third party content for something like DM's Guild with your monster edits?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, technically, we have already done third party content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally did, did we publish the gang hurt all?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you did?
[SPEAKER_00]: We did publish the gang hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gang hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gang hurt was on the main.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we like, I think I was interpreting this as like for the podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I'm like, maybe we skipped this one because that's.
[SPEAKER_01]: driving you back into the danger direction like okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's begging you to talk about the thing that I'm saying don't talk to them about it because you make us beholden to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eric on discord, what's a favorite thing you've done in a game that you've played in a favorite RPG session that
[SPEAKER_00]: I have one hit point left, it was barely able to kill the BB-EG moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know exactly what this was, and it was recently in Alex's Curse of Strott game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alex first was with fantastic take on the game where we're all playing people
[SPEAKER_00]: From Barovia, not people who walk through the mystical mist and got stuck were playing people who were raised under this oppressive regime, and have decided to rise up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that makes it a really fun game.
[SPEAKER_00]: But wonder, but the guy I'm playing is named Vahki.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Vahki is a fallen paladin of Helm, because Strad captured him after a failed assassination attempt, kept him in his castle for a year, tortured him, and then eventually just let him go out of like your pathetic and just tossed him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the entire time he was in there, he managed to forgive his jailers except for Strahd.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was never going to forgive Strahd.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he forgave everyone else because he saw that they were just under the control of Strahd and Helm didn't like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Helm was like, no, you should get revenge on all these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all part of this bad system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, no, they're just
[SPEAKER_00]: victims and you know it's no fair to you know it's it's it's it's just not fair to treat them the same way and so hell walked away for me and I became a fallen uh... uh... paladin and when i was searching for some way to both find my path again and hurt strad i came across his horse
[SPEAKER_00]: Busiferous who also can't be blamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're a nightmare, but nightmares are made when you whip the wings off Pegaside torture them and turn them evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in a lot of ways, just like everyone else, this is straws fault that Busiferous was turned evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: but he became friends with this horse and bonded with it and was able to steal the horse away from strud.
[SPEAKER_00]: So later when we're in his castle kind of poking around at a level where we shouldn't be poking around, we end up in the teleportation room with all the little teleportation rocks and then strud just walks the fucking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing we can do and we're horribly out, you know, out.
[SPEAKER_00]: just outgun.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had just had fights up until this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're drained anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in a last ditch attempt, I told one of my party members to get ready with one of the rocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I dropped to my hands and knees behind straw and summoned the horse and the horse.
[SPEAKER_00]: went to kick strad as my friend tossed a transportation rocket, and because the horse rolled a natural twenty, it worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: That we said strad as far away as we could.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then third to each other was like, holy shit, what do we do now?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was one of the best moments I've ever played at again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's terrible, we're like, it's ridiculous, but sometimes the dice let you tell a story, that's ridiculous, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm gonna give two of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: One was also a Strahd campaign where I just, they played it all the way through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Topped about them, played it to the Hilt.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got there, they fought Strahd, they smashed the extra heart, they got all the magic items, and they fought him to, not even to a standstill.
[SPEAKER_01]: They fought him to the point where his turn rolled around, and if the palette and attacked,
[SPEAKER_01]: I die, like basically no matter what.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has multi-attack, so like the odds of him missing twice infinitesimal.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I had my attack action.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went after the cleric, and I dropped him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I picked the cleric up by the throat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just said, hey,
[SPEAKER_01]: You did great.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the most entertaining thing that has happened in Barovia in centuries.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in recognition of your good works.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will really soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you need to stand down.
[SPEAKER_01]: and if you're so confident that you could kill me you can try but what I will promise you is if you swing that sword at me I'm going to snap this man's neck and it will be your fault so do you want to try or do you want to leave
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was the most depressing ending to occur as a strad game I've seen so far because they literally took the unconscious like healing body of the cleric strapped him to the back of a horse, slapped it on the ass and sent it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: the row of the party basically like disappeared in the night was just like I'm I don't trust that will actually get to leave.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be I'm going to find somewhere else to be and I'm just going to lay low until I die and the fighter decided
[SPEAKER_01]: God, we also had a Kenku, I can remember what their class was.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't really matter, but they basically just went home to their family of failure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the fight, the Paladin, just went like, I'm in a fashion.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I looked at him, I was like, you know there was travel time, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You left the castle, you've been gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stride has had several long rests, like he is fine, and you're alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, I know how this sounds.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, it was just everybody went off, had to live their life, and the Paladin died in that castle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that is depressing ending to the game, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But it felt like it felt so on the nose, and it felt appropriately.
[SPEAKER_01]: the win in that one like if you were making that as like a book or a fucking movie right the moment where you shattered the perception the thing the players don't see but that the audience knows that strad for a second made this bargain as a last ditch effort you cracked the facade and strad felt fear yep
[SPEAKER_01]: and he manipulated you to get out of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that was the only thing he had left.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a very straw thing to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, it hit fucking exact notes where I'm just like, this is the way this campaign ends.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was good.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other one would be the time that like, I,
[SPEAKER_01]: I brought Asma Day as into a game, just fully like had the devil appear.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a negotiation between the party, uh, Kellum Vor and Asma Day as.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had him show up just this very, very, like, tall, powerful, like, dark robe wide open, shirtless, six pack shows up, looks around the table at where he's expected to sit.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, a mundane one, chair just goes, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Throne sits down, waves his arm, the meeting table is coated in food.
[SPEAKER_01]: He starts eating and just goes, you can get in on this if you want.
[SPEAKER_01]: I promise you won't be my wife or anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Goes through this entire thing and I can't even remember what I said, but at one point, I turned to my friend who's playing the fighter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just turned to her and I wish I remembered what I said, but I just straight up had the devil propositioner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just, oh, that's what it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, for whatever reason, the palette and was like weirded out like eight a piece of ham and like looked at the bone was like, is this hell ham?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what the fuck do you mean with, by, is this hell ham?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, can I, can I keep like the bone?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you can keep the bone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just turned to her.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like, if you want to leave with a bone too, we can make that happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And watch the moment the role playing suck saying that because like, she and I know chemistry were just really good friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been, it's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I saw the moment where she wanted to fuck the devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the funniest thing that has ever happened to me at a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I should not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had her PC come back in like a one shot I ran years later as an arc fiend and the queen of hell just because that made me laugh.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's excellent.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, this is the other bit of that punchline was I spent the entire thing going like, okay, if I can pay this off, if I can get her to marry as medias.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the entire campaign, as it stood at that point, the reason as Medias was willing to negotiate was it was going to net him a spark of divinity.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were going to kill a god and he was going to take that and it would be enough to push him over the edge into being a god himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If he marries this person who was a noble, whose family owned land on the material plane, the next thing you do is send devils and murder her parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the inheritance goes down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the God of San and Lord of Hell is now the rightful legal owner of land on the material plane.
[SPEAKER_01]: It means he can't be denied space on the material plane.
[SPEAKER_01]: He goes there and if you banish him, that's his.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lives here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just comes back.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't get him out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to burn down the hell.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't get him and then kill as medists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hit a point where it's not just like, oh, as Medaise is fighting for souls, as Medaise is fighting for, you know, this huge extra plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, as Medaise is going to take over the planet now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to watch the digital war.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: And create hell on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a whole campaign to get rid of a method.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was it, was I made one dumb joke, because I thought it'd be funny, saw a little glint in the players eye, and I was like, I got a campaign here, a hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our last question, Mel on Discord.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the monster that you haven't done?
[SPEAKER_00]: And currently don't have someone in talks to do that you're each most excited for.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've hit my favorites for the most part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we talked about the miconids.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the weird little guys who either are or should be more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hit the nothic, we hit the miconids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't really know what more I could want.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, when I look through the stuff that's left, there's a bunch of weird stuff, but it's like, it's goofy weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the zorn.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that'll be a fun episode to record, but guy with extra arms, eats rocks,
[SPEAKER_01]: find.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a lot of the big monsters, we've seen big monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're sacks of hit points without mechanical interest behind them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like
[SPEAKER_01]: What keeps me going at this point is the guess and that the takes they're going to bring to these monsters are going to be fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking at the table of contents right now and it's a big list of I don't give a shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an answer for this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now technically we have someone in mind, but I have an answer for this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait to record the bear episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's so much fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that is a that is a fun and silly bit you have.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now give him a proper answer to the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably purple worm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited to record the purple worm.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no one reslated for that episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I'm thinking about it for the A.P.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we should think about the fact that we could come up with some really good ideas in the discussion angle, because there's not a lot there.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's really interesting things we can do, and also because we can then talk about, again, the worms and dune and the worms in tremors, and there's a lot of discussion possible there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that what I'm excited for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk about the whale and Pinocchio.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the only thing that a purple worm does is it swallows you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yup, we can talk about four.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you have to...