[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to Table Talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: A show where I chat with other creators in the TTRPG space about how they run their tables.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm DangerDanger's, the GM and host of D&D Arc.
[SPEAKER_02]: And joining us at the table today is the host of the interview podcast, Professional Questers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello Chris.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi there.
[SPEAKER_02]: To kick us off, why don't you get started by telling us a little bit about yourself, your history in the TTRPG community and about your show, Professional Questers.
[SPEAKER_01]: can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Chris.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a professional artist by trade, actually, but I am also a big giant nerd.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have been playing TTRPGs for about eight-ish years now when I first got involved.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been wanting to get involved for several years before I actually did.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I worked up the guts to approach complete strangers at a game store and said, hey, can I join your game?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that changed my life to be honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: That set me into a very fast spiral of TTRVG obsession.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here I am today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started with home games and I continued into stream games and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I in the last couple of years have dipped my toe into GMing, which is scary, but I'm getting used to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I am the creator of professional questers, which is a podcast that I run.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a show where
[SPEAKER_01]: I interview people who are involved in TTRBGs about the characters that they play, but the unique part, at least in my opinion, is that after I interview the players, we kind of flipped the script and I interview the characters, the them playing the characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's such a fun take on the interview format.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just out of curiosity, where did the idea of taking that approach come from?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that that's an exercise that some writers will do with their own characters within their own stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know some novelists will try to basically interview and roleplay as their characters to get a better understanding of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: But to do it in an actual interview space for people in TTRPGs, where did that idea stem from?
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, my favorite part about TV RPGs isn't even necessarily playing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just love hearing about people's characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could chat about my characters and other people's characters for hours and hours and hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt kind of starved for content like that in the like the TV RPG podcast space.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a couple people who do it, but it was never kind of the way that I loved to hear about characters because
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not to cast shade, but like, there are podcasts where they talk about, like, potential of characters, or there are podcasts that talk about mechanics of characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love hearing about this sort of human or, you know, personal side of characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, what's more personal than talking to the actual characters?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Characters within TTRPGs are such a personal thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So being able to get to the heart of that and like what makes the characters themselves tick, it is often where a lot of the most interesting content tends to come from.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: I very similarly find myself much more character centric in my storytelling and in my sensibilities than plot centric.
[SPEAKER_02]: I usually have a much harder time connecting to a story concept than I do to a compelling and interesting character.
[SPEAKER_02]: Especially in this kind of setting, you can learn a lot about the person through their characters and through their characters struggles.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's I know Brennan Lee Mulligan brought up a point in one of his interviews that I really like, where he compared it to basically shining a flashlight through stained glass.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is still your silhouette coming through a filter that takes a different shape based on whatever is staining that glass and whatever shape you are trying to mold it in, but it is still ultimately parts of you that are coming through just different bits that are exaggerated and warped in specific ways, but it still all stems from you at your core.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, I completely agree, and that is a beautiful way to put that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's actually something that I think about a lot when I think about how to approach my podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning, it wasn't as much like this, but as I've grown in my interviewing skills, I guess you could put it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ask very human questions, human in a sort of general sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know some people play to vaccines and stuff, but not everyone plays a quote unquote human, I guess is what I mean.
[SPEAKER_01]: But very personal
[SPEAKER_01]: And resonating questions, I try to make them think on levels that sometimes we don't always think about our characters because it is that way of exploring.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you can explore a character even outside of like role play or the game, I feel like that's also a valuable time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And any kind of exploration in my opinion is valuable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you're saying with getting to the human aspect of all of them, in consequential of whatever your character's species or race or ancestry or whatever the TTRPG of your choice calls that they're all variations on human no matter how inhuman a character you are playing, the way that we understand and grapple with stories and characters is as humans coming through that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is again, just
[SPEAKER_02]: your core central humanity filtered through a different shape and appearance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very much so.
[SPEAKER_02]: So getting to the heart and core of that is absolutely the way to go to make a character compelling and interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sure you've probably gleamed a lot out of chatting with other creators in the space about their characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like what kind of lessons have you learned and how has running your podcast shaped your own approach to character creation?
[SPEAKER_01]: It has definitely made me take a second look at the way that I make characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do tend to do that whole like stained glass kind of thing where a lot of my characters are kind of reflections of me in varying ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that might also
[SPEAKER_01]: happen to be partially circumstance because there are character ideas that have had that are very much opposite of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I found, there have been so many varying styles of character building that I get to see how other people go about thinking about characters as a concept and it's been less so influencing and more so finding that in spite of the varying ways that we create characters, there is usually a through line, which is that we almost always use characters to
[SPEAKER_01]: explore something or experience something that we don't have access to in our everyday lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that you brought up that makes me think of an improv lesson that I learned.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did improv all throughout high school and a little bit into college and one of the lessons that I learned from my improv training and from going through and chatting with some of the other performers.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the instructors brought up.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was part of a long form show.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was cast as a character that he was really struggling to connect with because he had absolutely nothing in common with and learned
[SPEAKER_02]: that the strongest characters that an actor can play in that is like most within an actor's wheelhouse are themselves and they're exact opposite.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing that clicked for him with this character that he was playing that he was just really struggling with, somebody brought to his attention.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, why are you struggling with this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, because this just isn't me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, then think about it this way in any given situation that you're in.
[SPEAKER_02]: What would you do?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then do the opposite.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then suddenly everything clicked, he immediately started having way more fun with the character got way more dialed in and connected than he ever had before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was a big eye opening lesson for him that playing opposite yourself tells you just as much about who you are and you can bring that much more about yourself in just as much as playing a character who is identical to you and your sensibilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that is very, very astute knowing that when you play a character, you put some level of yourself into it whether you are aware of that or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is very much reflection of at least a minutia of yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: In my opinion, there's really no separating one hundred percent yourself from your character.
[SPEAKER_02]: very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've given a lot of thought to the characters that I tend to make and play and it wasn't an intentional through line with my characters, but I realized that in as different and varied shapes as they tend to take, I have a tendency to have my characters revolve around the central theme of a reluctance to step into positions of authority.
[SPEAKER_02]: most of my characters tend to manifest that in very different ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's something that I've been kind of grappling with myself of like, okay, trying to unpack that as a person, what does that mean about me that these characters that I play keep circling around this theme and that this is something that I have such a
[SPEAKER_02]: want and desire to explore even if it's not conscious or top of mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the thing that I kind of piece together after like five or six different characters as well as like NPCs within my own campaign that that's kind of the core of what I keep coming back to.
[SPEAKER_02]: To that same extent with you, are there any lessons that you've learned about yourself in doing your character deep dives?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything that your fictional characters have helped illuminate about your own person?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing that just came to mind was I have a reluctancy to think positively about myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that has been something that's been incredibly explored with one of my very first characters who I still play after seven years now.
[SPEAKER_01]: She went through a very rough childhood and a lot of betrayals, which I also relate to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was basically demonized by the people she grew up with and it set her on this track of hating herself basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in this extreme way of playing these really hard emotions, I have learned how to kind of find the things in my life that people who do value me
[SPEAKER_01]: and prioritize them because if all I do is look for the things that make me feel inferior or the people who bring me down, that's all I'm gonna think about myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So why am I seeking that stuff out?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I trying to be sad?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's that kind of thing where it's like, girl, you got problems, you got to address.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be a really cathartic way to unpack a lot of those issues and like not at all relatable that you would be playing a character that feels other and seeks growth through joining a found family and finding community.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know a single person within this community who can relate to that experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you talking about
[SPEAKER_02]: kidding aside, it can be a really powerful thing to unpack those aspects of your own self in kind of a safe and controlled fictional environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, one hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: I find that TTRPGs in general are a really interesting way to approach that to kind of expand it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how much experience you have in systems that are other than I'm assuming D&D five is probably your primary wheelhouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I know actually my very first campaign ever was Ivy, but that campaign actually fell apart pretty fast and the next game that we went into was actually a powered by the apocalypse game of masks and to this day, that is one of my favorite campaigns I've ever been in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to dig into that a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: As much as the characters shape the story, the structure of the story itself can have a big impact on the types of characters that you make and the way the characters take form.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in switching to a powered by the apocalypse system, how has that structure affected character choice and like what aspects are unique about the mask system, for example, or any others that you've played that tend to funnel characters in different ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, like as an example, I know with VV, a thing that people either do or don't engage with, but one of the things on the character sheet is the bonds, flaws, and ideals, which I find is a really important thing in making characters to make them more well-rounded and three-dimensional.
[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of aspects like that are encouraged by something like masks or other powered by the apocalypse systems, mechanically, that get you engaged and thinking more narratively about your characters?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, some of the mask system itself has is that there are a bunch of questions on the different playbooks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And each playbook has a different set of questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Playbooks are like classes basically in masks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they basically help you establish your relationship with the rest of your team.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them are a little like less universally easy to answer because some of them are like, hey, you had a crush on which team member for how long?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, well, what if I'm, you know, ace or something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have
[SPEAKER_01]: In my other masks game that I am currently in we have sort of modified certain questions are like altered them change what the questions are that kind of thing, but they do the core concept behind that is the same of like.
[SPEAKER_01]: it asks you to establish existing relationships with your superhero team so that you know where you stand when you start the game and you know who you're connected to and then as you play it has an actual dynamic evolving mechanic
[SPEAKER_01]: for how your relationships with your team members also changes as the story progresses.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because at the end of every session, you award influence or take influence away.
[SPEAKER_01]: from the different members of your team.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you explain why.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you can't like award influence or give influence, you have to like, I think it's to take a penalty to yourself or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to explain why you're making this choice, what they did or what you did.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is affecting how you view yourself and or your team.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that there's a lot of other systems like that that tend to be much more open-ended in terms of how the characters take shape.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really fascinated by the inter-team dynamics and that makes a lot of sense for a superhero team focused game that the team relationships would be a strong focus.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, that's really interesting to hear.
[SPEAKER_02]: I might have to look into that masks as a system that's been on my radar for a little while as one to look into.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is so fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there any other systems that you've done or that you're looking into that you want to explore?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I played different systems like Tiny Frontiers or like I briefly played the Power Rangers system which was fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are two that kind of stick out in my head and one, the game itself is called necrobiotic.
[SPEAKER_01]: It uses playing cards as a mechanic and I know there are other games out there that use playing cards.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like a super unique concept, but the way the necrobiotic uses it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, you have your core stats and then they correlate to the different card suits and you can play the cards and if they meet or beat the difficulty of the task, then you can succeed but the thing is you can succeed on different levels.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can also kind of fail forward in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the setting is I would call it a less tense survival horror kind of game.
[SPEAKER_01]: It keeps you on your toes with the fact that like you can only have so many cards in your hand and you really have to be careful what you use and how much you use it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you always have options and it really forces you to be creative.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives you enough to have a direction to go with what you want to try to do, but it doesn't pigeonhole you into this specific type of action that you have to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, what do you want to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the corresponding stat that might work?
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have like so much creativity to go with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I really loved about necobotic.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do find that I really like high-risk, high-reward kind of setups and situations.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the sound of that does appeal to me, in creating characters for that, how does that kind of setting and system influence that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know for a lot of more horror-e and more tense and gritty survivalism ones, they tend to prioritize much more primal urges and needs, just because that's the situation that you're in.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm curious what the game does to help set things up in that direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: So with necropotic in the lore, they have very like more specific classes, but basically they have classes and then those classes have basic kind of setting-centric lore behind like what it means to be this particular type of thing, but it leaves it so open-ended that you can be incredibly creative.
[SPEAKER_01]: I played what is essentially like a high-tech neurosurgeon, but in the setting of necobratic, it's basically your trapped in post-apocalyptic Florence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the whole city is run by basically like the bourgeois, and it's like a scientific-based hierarchy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I took that and I ran with it and I said, okay, the direction that I want to go in,
[SPEAKER_01]: is she was not originally from Italy, but was kidnapped and basically brainwashed and raised to be a savant neurosurgeon.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what her whole life was until the infrastructure started crumbling and she started learning the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on a complete different end, though, we had a player who was really into like human rights and things and very artistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she decided to be what is basically a scrapper, but painted it through the lens of
[SPEAKER_01]: being like an artist, essentially, who worked for or was commissioned by members of the bourgeois.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we all, all of us got, you know, contacted by this mysterious dude who wanted to like help us bring down the establishment and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can color them so differently within the same game, even though there was a lot of like setting soundtrack stipulations, still left a lot of room to be creative, and that's something that I really like in any game.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, I'm much prefer more open-ended prompts than more specific ones.
[SPEAKER_02]: Part of this depends on the GM and part of this depends on what the game is.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some that will bombard you with very specific questions about your character, and I don't need to know my character's entire life story.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just need to know the core of who they are, and then I can fill in the details around that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, things that have been particularly helpful for me for our Halloween special.
[SPEAKER_02]: We did a one shot in freely ex alien TTRPG, which they come with pre-generated characters that have a connection to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can make your own, but the thing that the pre-gence do that I really like is they give each character sort of like what you were saying with masks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone has a pre-existing relationship with some of the other characters, not
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone gets both, but they have an option for every character to have a close bond with another character and for another character to be their rival.
[SPEAKER_02]: For a lot of them, it will be one or the other.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a few that have both, but thinking of the team dynamic in that way of having a positive and a negative association with somebody on your team gives you so much room to work with and so much that you can really sink your teeth into within an inner party dynamic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Similarly, I recently played a game not for the show, but just personally played a game of ten candles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh gosh.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the setup for that one as far as characters go, since the game is so mechanically light, and your characters are kind of the only things that you've got to work with because the mechanics are not non-existent, but more or less non-existent, they give you a virtue, a vice, a moment, and a brink.
[SPEAKER_02]: your personality traits basically are your expendable resources there and with it being a horror game that is predetermined to end with all of the characters dying, you are having to use up aspects of yourself as the game is going on as your expendable resources.
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, going off of the character that I played in this, I was a journalist.
[SPEAKER_02]: My vice was cowardice.
[SPEAKER_02]: My virtue was steadfastness, which those two kind of came at odds with each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were the game encourages you to basically come up with virtues and vices for the other characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we basically made a pool of adjectives and then sorted them randomly through different characters.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I interpreted that as my character is not at all squeamish and like doesn't back down from difficult circumstances, but will immediately abdicate any and all responsibility and will hide behind the camera going about it like a Blair witch thing or like a documentary and kind of do not intervene.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my character will never rise to the occasion to do something heroic.
[SPEAKER_02]: because of that vice of cowardice and will prioritize getting the footage and using the camera as basically a shield and a way to keep arms length from ever getting attached to anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: So going off of things like that, your brain is basically your character's darkest moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you kind of set up in advance based on what you know about the other characters once everyone gets assigned their virtual advice.
[SPEAKER_02]: You similarly assign someone else their brink and the brink for me was focused on and prioritize the footage over the lives of everybody else and the well-being of the other people around you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your moment is kind of your character's goal that you're working towards and if you can achieve it when you're gambling for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: then you gain a special extra dice that you can use throughout the rest of the game that gives you a bunch of benefits.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that way of approaching characters I know is something that the GM really lashed onto as like, oh, I love this as I set up for characterization because there's so much you can do with these four attributes and they're open ended enough that you can really shape and twist them in whatever way your story needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned before about really liking like open-ended questions like that and it reminded me of there is a official buff of the vampires there role playing game that uses the unisystem which is not a super well-known system with a detent system, but what I like about the character creation system
[SPEAKER_01]: In honesty, it is slightly limiting because what it does is it gives you a list of qualities and drawbacks and you can you basically pick and choose you choose like a character type and then you based on that character type you are assigned a certain amount of points that you can spend on these qualities and these drawbacks which all have different point values but what's cool to me is that
[SPEAKER_01]: In character creation itself, you can fail forward because when you take a drawback, it gives you points to biomark qualities.
[SPEAKER_01]: You basically take a loss to get a win and the fact that you
[SPEAKER_01]: how that mentality from the get-go in that system also really helps the players in their role-playing because it establishes the idea that like you can be rewarded for doing risky things in this system and you guys need to know that because in Buffy they don't get ahead by just sitting on their asses.
[SPEAKER_02]: One risks are where all of the interesting bits of the story come from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are things in the unit system called drama points.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you earn them by doing things like having a shitty time for your character.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like your character going through a really shitty situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can earn them from helping out another character who's going through a shitty situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can spend them to do things like get a break in the story or add a bonus to a role.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can do some really epic
[SPEAKER_01]: feet of acrobatics or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like so it's again that mentality of like you have to go through a gauntlet in order to come out the other side with benefits a lot of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no reward without risk.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess is the long and short of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that also applies coming back around to character creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You put yourself and your vulnerability out there on the line to learn about yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is reward with risk.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, giving a character flaws tends to be what makes them memorable and interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me think of an interview between the main actress from Daredevil, had an interview with the main actor from the Punisher.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember their names off the top of my head, but where they were talking about TTRPGs and going into D&D.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I know what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen that one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he brought up like, okay, well, why wouldn't I just make my character good at everything?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that being kind of a sticking point for a lot of new people coming in with a very like game forward mentality.
[SPEAKER_02]: And her thing being, well, it's more about telling the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not really trying to win it something the way that you would in a traditional game.
[SPEAKER_02]: And giving your character flaws and obstacles to overcome and things that they are weak in tends to make for a much more compelling and interesting story.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it gives you more to sink your teeth into when you're telling these games of make believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: But to circle back around to your show.
[SPEAKER_02]: From what you've gathered from the people that you've interviewed, is there any one piece of advice or one thing that you've learned that is particularly resonated with you and stuck out in your mind?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there any bit of wisdom or advice that has kind of changed your perception and that you can share?
[SPEAKER_01]: There are.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's actually two if that's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: They both kind of connect to what I've said previously, especially with my own character journeys.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one was from Star, who is the host of the characters without stories podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great podcast, by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that episode, Star Talks about her character's journey with like trauma and familiar relationships and moving forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the theme of that episode was like what happens when you have to say goodbye to a character and how you move forward from that and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, stars advice was that it's okay to have trauma, but pretending it doesn't exist is not going to serve you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to make your life better or okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to, in her words, figure that shit out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is something that hits me on a very visceral level because of, you know, I feel like no one has zero trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you live with a lot of trauma in your life, you have to be able to process it and address it and understand it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, it kind of eats you alive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, very much so if you never deal with the sources of your trauma or your issues and you spend all of your time avoiding it, you can never really recover from them.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to be able to face them head on to be able to get past them.
[SPEAKER_02]: In many cases, in some situations where safety is more a concern, survival should take precedence.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in terms of like getting over and being able to move past negative incidents in your life, you have to be able to really unpack and grapple with the things that happened to you in order to not be ruled by them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the second piece of advice is something that my good friend David said in episode three.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the character that he played was this, you know, bombastics, swashbuckling, debonair, like pirate rogue, Kenku,
[SPEAKER_01]: And he gave me this piece of advice, and this was in character.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, with regards to life, be bold.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't give a shit what others think or say about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Say, fuck it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing this my way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you might stumble along the way, and that's something you'll have to face, but go for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: or you definitely won't get what you want and that is very relevant to this whole risk reward thing that we've also talked about and it hit with me because of all of that like self-esteem stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: that I talked about beforehand.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are the things that really stuck with me from all of these interviews so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are more to come that I've not been released yet that are also very profound.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I learned a little bit from every single interview that I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I get that a hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's very good advice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Confidence is one of the most powerful gifts that anybody can be given and one of the strongest things in any particular person's toolkit.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be hard to come by depending on the type of person that you are.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but that is
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the fundamental lessons that the improv camps that I went to and the improv training that I had really tried to hammer home is the willingness to take risks builds that confidence and that courage comes from embracing the things that make you nervous and doing them anyway because making safe choices are boring choices.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a funny way that they would present it, but one of the big lessons that was a required module in the improv camps that everybody had to take as their first one is hammering in the lesson that nobody cares.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's not untrue.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's funny to present it that way, but the point of that being, putting it in the example of your in class, its group presentation and project day, there is not a single person in that class that is paying attention to your embarrassment and your nerves about your project because they are focusing on their own project that they have to deliver.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you fumble in the delivery, most people in most circumstances, it is not even going to even be remotely on their radar because everyone is going to be focused on the thing that they have to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: We take up so much less space in other people's minds and focus than we think that we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the consequences of embarrassment
[SPEAKER_02]: are a lot shallower than most of us would expect in most circumstances.
[SPEAKER_02]: So being able to get past that and kind of internalize the thought and idea that if I screw up here, nobody cares because they're too worried about their own screw-ups.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I might as well try.
[SPEAKER_02]: The words I might as well, that is one of the most powerful sentence builders that you can have in living a more confident and proactive life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I completely one hundred percent agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, to circle back around to your show, you said that you've got some upcoming interviews that you're really excited about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Between your interviews and your projects, is there anything that you can or are willing to talk about that is upcoming on your docket that you want to tease?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure how much I can say yet, but I will be doing my very first guest role on an actual play podcast soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's exciting, but I have been very busy the last couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: I recorded three interviews in the span of like one week and I have two more happening in the next week.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's going to be content coming at you from all angles.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just such an absolute range of energy that I get from the characters and the players and the next few interviews that are going to be released are all absolutely stunning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to interview Jeff and Pastish from the stories told again.
[SPEAKER_01]: podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I just interviewed their GM.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm I'm Buds with Austin.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fun small world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So pasties is just a party in general.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jeff was very fun to to interview.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in like a stark contrast, I have another phenomenal interview that I just did with a Kindle obscure character that explores the toll that war takes on
[SPEAKER_01]: the psyche of a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a much more serious in tone episode, but it is profound and evocative and thoughtful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, it's honestly probably one of the episodes that I'm most proud of at this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm excited to get that out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That sounds awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited for those episodes to come out.
[SPEAKER_02]: For the ones that are already out for anyone who is a new listener or someone unfamiliar with your show, who would be checking it out for the first time, is there any particular interview that you would point to start with, something that you consider either the strongest episode or the best overall representation or a particularly good on-ramp, where would somebody who is just freshly starting, where should they start?
[SPEAKER_01]: I would recommend starting with episode three, which is with my dear friend David of the Noob's Knockouts podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: He plays, like I said, this like bombastic, debonair, bravado filled swashbuckler can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: who also has his own, you know, demons and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: The episode itself was really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives a good idea of the format of the show, but it's also a very fun episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives a good variety of like serious notes, but also humorous ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I recorded it, it was definitely my favorite, and I was very proud of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have to say two date now, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like the episode with Star that I mentioned before because it is probably the most serious one that I've released so far and the most introspective and it gives a really good taste of the more thought evoking episodes that are going to be coming in the future as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want an idea of, you know, the adventure and the silly, but also the serious and the somber, those two episodes are really good places to start.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's episode three and four.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that basically comes to the end of the questions that I had for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there any other miscellaneous things that you would want to add any topics that you'd want to touch on that we haven't gotten around to yet?
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything else on your diet that you would like to get to?
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing that I just want to kind of touch on as a side note is that I've also explored the idea of NPCs being characters in their own right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had an episode, it's actually my most recent episode, I've said five where I talked to a friend of mine about how NPCs are when they become super established in the story and they become, I guess, technically the term for it is BMPC, but it's essentially when
[SPEAKER_01]: The DM's character is so involved that they basically just are a PC at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: They become the DM's character.
[SPEAKER_01]: The DM becomes a player as well as the DM.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to, let me put it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a forever DM, you're not a forever DM because it means that you have made enough NPCs that have affected your characters that you have played, whether you knew it or didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is my solid stance.
[SPEAKER_02]: To take that much more literally, within D&D arc, I've done that for several of my NPCs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will have given them an actual like player character stat block in helping to form and shape what the character looks like and kind of help give them a bit more dimension.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now some of that
[SPEAKER_02]: was out of necessity, but it does really help to approach with the same toolkit that you would build a player character with to approach NPCs in the same way, it helps give them some of that extra weight and gravity and dimension to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are three characters in particular that I've made that I kind of had to give them a stat block.
[SPEAKER_02]: We did a special that was going to be a patron exclusive but then ended up being important to the plot so we released most of it as part of our main feed where I did a side story playing three of my NPCs as player characters while one of my players kind of flipped the script took over in GMed a side story and
[SPEAKER_02]: It gave the three of them a significantly bigger impact and staying power than the otherwise would have.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there is a lot to that for a lot of other GMs not necessarily that literally and for me with a lot of my other characters not necessarily to that extent approaching NPCs like you would a player character for the DM.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is your role at the table.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is your way of getting to play the game and engage with this story.
[SPEAKER_02]: So absolutely a hundred percent valid take.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that's also kind of my way of like justifying to myself, whenever I start to feel like I'm becoming a forever GM, which in reality, I'm not not yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was a time at which I was DMing a lot of games and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm only playing in like two games.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm DMing like five games.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I kind of thought about and I was like, okay, well, I can swing this to my advantage as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can use it as an opportunity to use a character I do that I've had for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: as an NPC and get to kind of live out that character and play them through that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's always been fun for me to think about.
[SPEAKER_02]: As someone who prefers GMing over playing, I do about not quite fifty fifty, but I play a bunch and GM a bunch.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tend to prefer GMing over playing, but approaching GMing from the player mindset really elevates that side of the table and makes that experience that much more fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is why I do it that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as we close out, can you remind us one more time where we can find your show and any social links that you want to drop in share?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I run professional clusters and you can find us me on YouTube Spotify and Apple podcasts and at professionalquesters.com you can follow me at professional questers on Instagram threads and TikTok and also we I do this fun thing for
[SPEAKER_01]: my co-fi supporters.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to support on co-fi for literally any amount of a donation, any number of times, you get access to bonus interviews and blooper reels and exclusive character art done by me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the cool extra stuff that I have if you ever want to check that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that's me.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is professional questers.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is my baby, my passion project.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome, and all of those links will be included in the description.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you one more time for coming on to chat with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: This was an absolute pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had so much fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: And thank you all of you for joining us on this episode of Table Talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one more time, everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Danger Dan Jersey's, the GM and host of D&D Arc.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is Chris, the host of Professional Questers, and this has been Table Talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I hope you enjoyed what we brought to the table.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Table Talk, created hosted and edited by myself, Danger Dan Jers, with artwork by Jordan Nelson.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our guest this episode was Chris, from the professional questers podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Links to her work can be found in the episode description.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're interested in being a guest on this show, reach out to us at dndarkpodcast at gmail.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our theme song in Outro was created by Jeremy Volucci.
[SPEAKER_02]: Check out more of his works on Instagram at Jeremy Volucci underscore wreck of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time we have a guest take a seat at the table.