[00:00:01] Speaker A: What? Oh, sorry, Jeremy. Not one. You know what that means.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: No, please. I have three kids. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a sec, Kayla. This podcast is not for kids. Content warnings can be found in the episode description. Go ahead.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Om.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of tales from the tabletop. I am your forever DM, lost in the woods until someone please find me. Jeff Lunter.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: And I am your favorite DM, Kayla Williams.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Favorite forever. Yes. Wonderful. I'm so glad you're here, Kayla.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: We are actually co dming a campaign right now. It's a little one shot with our season one characters. And not to brag, but our players were very excited when they heard I was dming again.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: It was interesting seeing our youngest player play two characters because he's never done that before. And it was just like watching him fucking argue with himself was so satisfying. I'm like, oh, my God. Now they know. Now our players know how it feels.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: He was like, is this what you guys go through? And we're like, yes, all the time, bro.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: You don't know how hard it is to transition between four different voices when two of them are the same.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Okay, so this person is talking, and now this person is talking. It's so hard.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: No, this is betosh, by the way. I told you. I told you. It's this person.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Betosh is literally just Jeff's real voice, too, so I find that even funnier because I'm like, are you saying this.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Out of character or no, Baytosh is my girl voice. Fuck. Are they blending together? No.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: We were also kind of Ep. We went a little late on Friday, too.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah, just huge epiness. But we managed to get through Kayla's bullshitty. I loved watching you break down when we were doing so much damage at level 15, and you're like, oh, fuck, time to add more zeros.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: I was like, I did not prepare for this. It's fine.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: It sucks when you're both dming because you can't shit on each other. Like, you can't be like, hey, fucker. Oh, wait, we both wrote this. Never mind.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Got his ass, bro.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Got my own ass. I'm like, oh, God, I can't talk shit about the game.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: I think I did pretty good with like, I was like, all right, well, I was going to wait, but time to bust out cloud kill early.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: I guess you fucking almost murked my NPC immediately and then you guys just blew it up. Yeah, we strong, man. I fucking love high level DND. I thought, look, this is a complete shift from every other episode where I'm like, high level DND is impossible to play, but it's pretty good. Not going to lie, we've never so.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Much shit you can do gone to really experience it. We usually stop playing around level eleven.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: You want to talk about our party composition and how fucking terrible it is?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Listen, I don't want to talk about balanced.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: We have a barbarian, a warlock, two artificers, and two bards. Yeah, and there's a fighter, gloomstalker, ranger stuff, but whatever.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: We were going to have a monk, but I can't have my other character there with you guys.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry. I cut off everyone's favorite characters just to piss them off. Yeah. This is just. I'm so excited for this week because I am going to leave. I'm gone. I'm leaving the podcast for a week. Kayla, I'm sorry. I'm going to go hide myself in the woods and go backpacking and fucking spend the night in the cold, and I'm gonna come back sounding like fucking father nature or father Winter. You aren't ready.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Are you gonna actually have some inspiration when you come back?
[00:04:01] Speaker B: We'll see. I don't know what I'm going to. Wait. No. It'll be January in the next season of Dresden.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: We do so, you know, maybe finally connect with nature. Speaking of the opposite of nature, hope you guys have been keeping up with us on social media. I've just been posting memes.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw you got our account on Twitter banned.
You got us banned for, like, a day.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: I don't know what happened, dude. So I use a social media planning tool that uploads all my shit for me. So I just recorded. I edit it, and then I posted it on there, and I forget about it for a week. I got the notification that the one posted to Twitter failed, and I was, huh? And then I opened it up and it said, hey, girl, we locked you out. And I was like. I was like, elon, is it because I made that Grimes joke? I'm sorry.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Oh, no. Why are you. We're painting a target on our back.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Elon. Let me in, bro.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Papa. Elon, I've deleted my account. Fuck you. You can't do anything.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: It was so freaky. I think it's because I'm using that third party social media tool, and Twitter is, like, extra sensitive because they have no staff. They made me complete, like, seven captchas, and they were hard. Captchas.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Let me guess. You had to do, like, two plus three and, like, seven times one.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Very funny, Jeff. No, I had to use arrows. So what it looked like was it was a picture, kind of like I spy, and there was an arrow above one object and to the left. It would show me that object from, like, a different angle. And it'd be like, which object is it? And I have to scroll through and see which one of the I spy objects it was.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: That's like a resident evil puzzle.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: It literally was a resident evil style puzzle. I was like, damn, y'all think I'm Wesker? It's fucked up.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Wesker can't get in here. I'm the main character. I can log in. Oh, my God, dude, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I get a fucking text from you. Like, Jeff, please, I need help. This is eight times seven, bro. What the fuck is eight times seven?
[00:06:12] Speaker A: But what is eight times 756? I knew that. Okay, bitch. Oh, wait, can you. Can you edit it to where I go back and I say it's 56? Yeah, thanks.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: I got you.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: You're so great.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: I have a few short stories, and one of them is pretty awesome. I'm going to save it for the end. It's very short and sweet. Actually, you know what? Fuck it. I'll start with it. It was our first kind of submitted story, quote unquote, because one of my coworkers send it to me. Like, when you're on the lunch breaks, they're like, holy fuck, you have to read this. And I'm like, oh, sure, whatever. Whoa. It's really good.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Dang. Your coworkers know about us.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I have. Hi. What up? How y'all doing?
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: So this is by user horse brothel, LLC.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: That's insane.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Oh, man. It's perfect because it goes along right with the fucking post. And it's an am I the asshole post? Am I the asshole for not letting my d d players run a horse brothel?
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: The fucking thought process that goes into this, where you created an account just to make sure your players didn't recognize you and named it horse brothel, LLC.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: I feel like they will still recognize it because that's not a common problem to have.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. The first sentence gives it away immediately.
I dm for a party of nine. So, needless to say, things get a little hectic. Like, statistically, you're going to find those players are going to find you. You have a better chance of finding you. And it's so specific. It's like, I have a party of nine. Like, how many people dm for? Nine people other than me. I did that one time with tales from the loop campaign.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: It was really hard. Fucking people.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Holy fuck. Most of them, I just like Adam fucking crash at one person's house. I'm like, whatever. You're all there. So when my party's druid came up with an idea to get them some easy coin, in quotes, I was caught a little off guard. My party just made it to one of the largest cities in my homebrew world. Think waterdeep. And I don't fucking care. Even them saying, think waterdeep. I don't know what the fuck they're talking about, Gail. I'm more confused. The druid asked me if, since there are a lot of people in this city, would the market for people who are interested in a brothel service be bigger? Naturally, I said yes. Assuming he planned on going to a brothel, he instead offered to work in the brothel for a day, assuring the owner maximum profit with a high charisma role. The owner agreed and gave the Druid a room. Very. This is very barred behavior. I'm surprised a druid is just diving in with this shit.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Hey, Halsen exists. I feel like Halsen would do this shit. Have you played Balder's gate?
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Holy shit. I haven't gotten as far.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: You haven't gotten as far as Halsen?
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Who's Halsen? Which one is he?
[00:09:06] Speaker A: He's, like, the first dude you save.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Nah.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Jesus Christ. First has been hotel, and now just. That's why I run the social media, dude. You're going to show all of our viewers how media illiterate you are when.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: The world ends and social media brainwashes you and makes you want to do whatever the person who owns it says.
Look, conspiracy corner, here we are. I'm off of all social media because it's so stressed. Honestly, I'm making shit up. But really, it just stressed me out looking at Twitter, and they knew how to just hurt me because they're like, oh, you like world conflict? So we're going to give you every single thing that has to deal with the Middle east and Russia and overarching, like, corporate overlords fucking everything over. Here you go. I'm like, oh, God, I can't deal with this every day.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: I'm going to be so fucking real. I don't know how to use Twitter. I just post shit on there for our podcast. But I have never been the type of person to go on Twitter and actually look at tweets.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Here's how I know that's 100% right. I logged into our Twitter account because I thought that, like, oh, hey, we're bans. Whatever. I looked at the emails, and no emails yet. I'm waiting for you all. I looked at the emails, saw the thing, and I was like, oh, maybe I should log into the Twitter. And I was scrolling through, and the third video was someone getting shot in the head. So I knew for a fact Kayla was not actually using the Twitter because that just seems, like, artificially made fucking crazy.
I'm not kidding. Someone fucking. It's just some dude being walked through, like, an airport, like, in handcuffs. And then someone was hiding at a booth, a phone booth, and then turned around and shot the dude in the head. I'm like, kayla, what are you looking up on?
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Is that. That's just the shit. They show people who don't have any sort of input into their. Oh, my God, I haven't trained that algorithm at all.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Now you see why I deleted my Twitter. Being showed shit like that every day.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: I'm gonna be so real, guys. If I ever see shit like that on Twitter, I'm probably just gonna delete our.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Oh, well, don't go on it within the next few weeks, because I was trying to see, I'm like. I made sure I was very wary of whether or not I clicked on it.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: That's fucking crazy. Maybe we should have stayed banned. Wait, I got banned and shit like that. Never mind, never mind.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: No bodding. But go ahead and post that.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Follow us on TikTok.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah, follow us on TikTok. Naturally, I said yes to sime planned on going to a brothel. He offered instead to run the brothel for a day, blah, blah, blah. The druid then revealed his hand. This whole time, he planned on using conjure animals in combination with wild shape to summon a militia of horses with the sole purpose of pleasuring the freaks of my city. This shook me to my core.
See, you were on board when I said horseball. You're like, oh, why not? But now where do you stay? Where are you at?
[00:12:01] Speaker A: I didn't think they meant, like, actual bestiality. I thought it was going to be like, oh, I'm going to turn into a horse. We're going to have a bunch of druids turn into horses.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: That's still bestiality, bro. Wait, is it going to be a bunch of druids, horses fucking each other? The thing is that where your head went?
[00:12:17] Speaker A: My thing is, I was thinking of creatures that are capable of consent. Like a druid, wild shaping into a horse.
The druid can consent before they turn into the horse. Right.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Stay out of my fanfiction horse.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: An actual horse can't consent. Okay? That's the problem.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: That's so gross. It's like clerks too, bro.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: It's, like, fucking crazy, dude.
I'm pivoting slightly.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Kayla, 100% horse. Brothel backer right here. She's like, give me the patreon. I'll support you with $50 a month.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Here we go.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: No, dude, you heard it here first.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: I'm turning into the wonder bread guy after almost.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: I'm sorry. Fuck. I laughed because I was like, oh, maybe it's a funny thing. I don't know who the fuck you're talking about.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: That's crazy. If you know, you know, I'm not even going to explain it to you. You'll have to look that shit up on your own, on Twitter, specifically, when.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: You turn 29, you'll be where I'm at.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: That's not true, because you were like this when you were my age.
You've always been fucking dinosaur bones, dude. It's a state of mind. I know what Riz means.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Did you hear the new Doris day track or the Beatles? AI shit they came out with, bro. You know who the Beatles are? That shit was fucking trash, bro.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Did you just ask me if I know who the Beatles are?
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah. That's pretty old.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Read the fucking story, Jeff.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: After almost an hour of arguing with my players, who all jumped on the bandwagon against me, my druid told me he was putting his hoof down and I was ruining his fun.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Not the fucking hoof, dude.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: No, bro. It's like I'm in Gaia online all over again, bro. This is not real. This is not real. Putting my hoof down, motherfucker. He said that if I didn't let him get that bag, he would permanently leave the campaign. Still, I refused, and he stormed out of the room and later blocked my phone number, ending a six year friendship. Am I the asshole?
[00:14:19] Speaker A: What?
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Yo, I'm putting my hoof down, bro. If you don't let me get that bag, I'm fucking out of here. Me and my Riz are flying.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: I want you to role play bestiality with me, my friend of six years. And if you don't do it, that's it.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: How long can we be friends before I go? Hey, let's add bestiality.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: I'd say ten. I'd say ten.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Okay, we got to be going.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: We got seven more behind us.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Six years, not enough. Guys, you heard it here first. Ten years, bring in the beast.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Six years is way too soon. Way too inappropriate. Dude.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Who's the asshole here, Kayla? Who's the asshole?
[00:14:59] Speaker A: I feel like nobody's a winner here.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Didn't we say in an earlier episode, don't play or tell your players no? Never tell your players no. This is one of those moments.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Oh, my God. I can't speak. She was too shocked to speak. The words just, like, aren't coming out of my mouth, dude. My mind is blank.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Just like the wonderbread man.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: I wish you guys could see my face right now. This is fucked up. What do the comments say?
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Let's roll down. Let's see what they say. No. Who the hell gets the idea to run a horse brothel? Edit. Jesus Christ. It's a rhetorical question. The correct response is to feel shame, not look up examples. People are having sex with horses is abnormal and aberrant. I don't know.
Look what you do in privacy. The privacy of your own home. Fuck.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: What you do in the privacy of your own home is perfectly fine. However, holding it over a DM's head that I will leave the table or give me fucking horses. That's it. No, that's too much.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Okay. I could maybe understand, like, oh, it's funny and shocking if the druid turns into a horse and like, ha ha. But the fact that he summoned other non sentient animals is. God, it just makes it too real.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Dude, do I click this link?
Someone said, don't google it, but there is a niche market. And then it's a hyperlink that says, don't click this link. If you want to leave your innocence.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Intact, do not click that link, bro. It's going to be a video of Mr. Hands.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: I'm going to open this link.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Jeff, don't click the link.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: The strange. Oh, it links to a story on vice. It's an article on vice that says, the strange, sad story of the man named Mr. Hands who died from having sex with a horse. Is that who you were talking about?
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. It was going to be Mr. Hans, bro. Don't read it, Jeff. I'm begging you.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: I'm not reading it. That's my next horror story. Here we go, guys.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Oh, fuck.
Anyway, obviously, that's fucked up. Consent is important.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Leave your kinks outside of the table unless it's specifically asked for.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: It makes me wonder what the rest of the campaign looked like where he thought that that would be okay.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: They found their limit, I guess, of being raunchy and rowdy. That's the limit. But you don't immediately get pissed off and just quit the second you're told. No, you found the limit. Good for you guys. Now we know where we can't go back to ever again.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, red card. Red card on the field, bro.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Fucking x right in the center of the table.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: It's like the. Can you edit my voice to sound like it's going through a megaphone? Like I'm at a football game. Flag on the play. Horse fucking.
Go back to first field school.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: See, there was a thing in Pathfinder. Stop. I can't keep doing it. Stop trying to say things as an announcer.
You get one announcer.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Voice edit all of them.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Though.
Back in my Pathfinder days, there was this thing called the book of erotic fantasy, which I think I may have brought up maybe when we were getting ready to play fifth edition and all that. Just, like, fucking around before we started the session.
I wouldn't play a fucking sex wizard or whatever the fuck it was. There's a time and a place. Whatever you do with your partner at home is different. But there's a. I don't fucking think if there's nine people at this table. Here's the thing, right? Nine people at the table, right? You had to look at everyone in the eye after you went out and said, yo, I'm putting my hoof down. I need this horse brothel. Like, the first time you say horse brothel, people laugh like, yeah, that's funny. It's good. No, I'm doing this horse brothel, or I'm fucking. I need to get my bag, bro. That's just the most uncomfortable thing.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: That's it. I'm Kink shaming.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: There you go. I'm not the one that needs to be chased down for calling shadow the hedgehog stupid and unoriginal. Kayla is.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Go after her now for kink shaming. Oh, my God.
I wonder what the other people at the table had to say.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Probably nay.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: All right, so I feel like that was a crazy opener.
Mine is, like, a medium one.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Not going to say how long it.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Is not as bad.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Guys, this is medium. Five to seven minutes.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Strap in. It's like the TikToks that have how long. The video is in the upper left hand corner.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: God, that annoys the shit out of me.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: But hopefully this one calms us down a little bit, because that last one was a little wild. Maybe we should have closed on it anyway.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Bad bro.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: This one is from DND horror stories. Person who posted it is two revolutionary 1293 is about three months ago. The title is DM refuses to give players agency and freeloader makes a bad first impression. Me?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Oh, don't be a freeloader.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: So this is the third campaign I've been in. I joined a game from a Facebook group and came by for session one. The DM saw no need for a session zero. Red flag. He said he's been playing for several years and DM'd several campaigns before.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Everyone's the same. Every single person I played with in this game is the same. Losers. We don't need a session zero before the session.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: We are all messaging in a group about the campaign. It was in a vernas and we won't yet be at level one at the start. Interesting. The DM also insisted that we all make characters at level one and put them on paper, then had us write a backstory for this and explained how we died and ended up in hell. Also, a player we'll call rogue insisted the session be a potluck. I was okay with this. He then asked me if I could drive him to and from the session. I thought, okay as well. Might as well get things off on the right foot. And agreed, even if it was 20 minutes out of my way. So many layers.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: So many layers. Okay, so we got you can't be level one or like it's before you're level one. You're all in hell. And it's a potluck and I need a ride, bro. Thanks.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: And I'm 20 minutes away, so I go to pick him up and he isn't outside. I text him that I am outside, and he says he'll be out soon. 15 minutes later, he comes out, making us late for the session. I ask where his food is. He says, oh, yeah, I wanted to make baked potatoes, but I didn't have time. I burst out laughing at how late he was and that he absolutely insisted it be a potluck only to not bring any food. Oh, well, onto the session, bro.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Can someone, y'all, someone please bring food? I'm so hungry, bro.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Scam of the century.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Scam of the century.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: I imagine he had the baked potatoes in the oven, and then the friend showed up and he was like, fuck it.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: I'm not doing this. Potatoes take how long?
[00:22:10] Speaker A: They do take a long fucking time, dude.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I could see if you've never made potatoes before, how surprised you are the first time. And you're like, what the 4 hours?
[00:22:19] Speaker A: It's a root vegetable.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: I make a bossy and sauerkraut, and usually that takes about two to 4 hours in the slow cooker, depending on what I do with it. But I added potatoes and it almost doubled that shit. I'm like, get the fuck potatoes. Y'all don't need potatoes in this shit. Fuck you.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: That's why you boil them first.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Oh, wait, what?
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Anyway, session one begins with DM talking about a vernus. And that's about it. There was a lot of pauses and slow talking, and he took about an hour to say, we died and are now in hell.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: So he went and explained the whole world and then said, no, you're dead. Don't worry about that.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Honestly. I can relate, though. I had a lot of fluff. I like monologuing a lot. The party gets plopped down somewhere as humanoid blobs. No levels and no memory of who we were. No goal, no quest. Okay, we walk around until we find something. No, we might have traveled 200ft in 3 hours with the DM stopping the game to read something out of a book and go print off pictures. At the end, a swarm of massive bees attacked, and the DM said that they will definitely kill you. So we ran into a cave and the session ended. Not one die from anyone was rolled. I would say things like, I investigated the ground, or what do I perceive? No luck getting a dice roll, so that was terrible. It must get better. I thought, it's not getting better. That's a spoiler alert for you guys.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Oh, God. Okay, this is not looking good.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Session two, go to pick up the rogue. Late again, 30 minutes this time. Didn't bring food. On the way to session, I told him that he's going to have to find his own ride in the future. Session one was like, the first. I rolled the dice three times that game. No modifiers, because not level one. And nothing happened. Session three, I can't believe he kept going. First of all, boring. I'd be like, but session three and four were much the same. There was one combat with chickens from hell me. There was confusion because no one knew how much punch damage we could do because we had no stats. DM said, just use your level one strength. Okay, my strength is eight, so zero damage. I was slapping chickens and it was the only fun I had. That sounds like a band slapping chickens.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: They're just sitting around. God, this just sounds fucking awful.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: You met a group on Facebook, too. Like, this guy has obviously advertised his Dming prowess. This is why we need more.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Cause, like, people like this get away with putting together the shittiest campaign possible.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: It's so hard to find a group, and I feel like if we had more dms less people would force themselves to play with crappy dms like this.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And it sucked so bad. I feel bad for people that don't. Here's the thing is you don't need to be in person anymore so it should be easier. But then people like this.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Pacing is important. On to session four. No weapons, no armor, no equipment. No levels. Few roles. Session five. I was committed to power gaming this mess to make something happen. I looked at the DM and told him point blank, something needs to happen. We need progression. I rapid fired questions at npcs like how do we get out of here? Where do we go? Every answer he gave could be said in 5 seconds. He dragged out every answer to five minutes. Eventually we go to a dragon that can send us back to the material plane. Same thing. 1 hour of talking to this dragon trying to get him to teleport us. Can you do it? Do we need to complete a quest? Do you want our souls? No answers. No roles. I huffed in exasperation at the table and the dragon took this as disrespect and bit me in half. I just nodded and said in a monotone voice, this is fun. And asked if I should make a new character. He said, just wait. And asked how I feel about playing a monk.
I swear. Just give me a sec.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: It's the fifth time we've met. We've spent 25 hours doing this. It's coming.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: He asked how I felt about playing a monk. I asked if it's level one and he said, not yet. I shrugged and checked out. Dude. I don't know how he's stronger than me. I couldn't have stayed. I would simply have to fucking go.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Because it sounds to me like they're in person and taking a lot longer. So this is easily like hour 1718.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yes. So it is in person because it's a potluck. Damn. I hope the food was at least good. They didn't comment on other people's food.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Well, you know, he didn't make any fucking potatoes so probably not that good.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Imagine like showing up to this thing making something every single time just to sit there and stare at the fucking wall. My ADHd could never. Okay, so he's checked out. And then the dragon ended up teleporting the party to the material plane. And me as well. Alive and reformed apparently because dead means nothing. On a beach next to the forest. I go into the forest spider army attacks run out. Is there any islands or boats we can use? No. We walk right. Barren for miles. We walk left and the party decides to just keep walking until something happens. 1 hour of real time with nothing happening and very little input from the DM. It ends with the DM saying, you see a whale carcass up ahead, let's end it here.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: What the fuck? That is my fucking mind. Okay? If nothing's happening, that is a good way to end it. That is like, all right, there's something finally happens. Hope you don't mind wasting another 3 hours next week.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Did he not plan anything? Like, he had to have not planned anything.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: I get that in your mind, you're like, oh, they have to go west to get to the city, or they have to go south to get to the city. And then they'll be able to do stuff. Move the city. The players don't care unless you're giving them like a fucking map. Even if you're giving them a map of the world. WHOOP. Map changed. Oh, you guys thought you were going east or you were going south, whatever.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah, wild, crazy.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: You had a compass. No, because you just came back from the dead. Okay, fuck it. And you're there now.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: I don't mean to dog on him like, being a DM genuinely is hard. And pacing your players and trying to make it entertaining is hard, but you've got someone who sounds like they're being really honest with you to be like, hey, we need something to happen. And I think they've given you a lot of grace. I wonder what the other players were saying are doing, because of course the story is very one sided.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Kayla. I don't know, but I feel 30 now. I've aged so much just listening to this shitty DM so bad.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: At least it's a little bit of a palate cleanser from the last one. I feel like that one sent me so sky high. We need to slow it down with this one.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: We needed to fucking pump the brakes a little bit.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Oh, my God, dude. So this next line is actually pretty funny. After they see the whale carcass, he goes, I thought that was a good time to drop this dead whale of a campaign.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Fucking nice. Fucking got him.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Fucking got you. Should DM. Honestly, I messaged the DM a few days later and told him that I'm dropping out. He was not happy with this and said, I'm the anchor of the party and the only one really engaging with the world. I guess he took my desperate flailing to find any substance as engagement. My thoughts are that the DM did little to no planning before sessions and lied about his experience.
You don't think.
I also think he had a lot of considerable fear for player agency. It's the only way I can explain his refusal to give us any weapons, gear, or dice rolls. I look back on the campaign as being so bad that it was kind of good. I'd call my brother after the sessions, and he'd listen, awestruck at me describing this train wreck.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: It sounds like a Gaia online roleplay forum.
I feel like this dude came from that and then was like, dming couldn't be hard, right? Where you have control over everything and you're just like. You say your character does this and they do it, and he's like, wait, you need dice for DND? What the fuck?
[00:30:44] Speaker A: It's insane to me because to just be puttering around for hours doing nothing in this barren world. Good on the guy for trying to make anything happen. But it sounds like the other players weren't experienced enough because you know how meek new players can be. They kind of just wait for the DM to look at them and ask them, well, what are you doing?
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I get that. There's one thing that we've talked about it before, and even if you're a first time DM, and it's extremely intimidating, let your players help you. That's what we're here for. That's what they're there for. Because the players will come up with better shit than you will.
Nine times out of ten, you'll be like, I had this really cool idea, but until you actually put it into play, it might not be as cool, but the players will make it cool. They'll make it their own, and just. It'll be beautiful. Let your players have some agency.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: If you don't want your players to have agency and you just want to tell a story, write a fucking book.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Just write fiction. Net, baby.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Just write a fucking book, dude.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Make a blog.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: I think I probably. I have such low tolerance for just sitting there and nothing happening that I think I probably would have left before it got to five sessions. This guy is so patient.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: I wouldn't have come to the third or fourth session like, I would have been done after two. I'm like, maybe the first one is a little rough. He's explaining the world. Okay, we get to go into the world in episode two. No.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: Also, now that I'm more experienced and I have more confidence as a player and as a DM, I don't think I would ever play if there wasn't a session zero that's my baseline. If you don't have a session zero, I can't be a part of your game because that culture is not for me. Us playing together as many times as we have for three years, we still have a session zero. If we're swapping campaigns, we need to.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Prepare and be ready for it. Like, hey, this is going to be a different dynamic than what we've been used to. Even though we've been playing together for three years. We've been three years in the same world with the same kind of rules. These are different. This is what's going to change. Be ready.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Exactly. The guy kind of hit the nail on the head. Sounds like he didn't have anything planned. Sounds like he wasn't experienced as he said he was. Because I feel like most good, experienced dms would have a session zero if they had a story worth telling.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: You don't spend the first session explaining the world.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: And then just killing your players so that they don't even go into the world and then not come back to that world for five sessions of nothing happening and expecting your players to remember everything about it. I'm not taking a quiz, bro.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: If you're actually playing, there's the expectation that you're supposed to focus on what's in front of you and the players and how to engage with the world. Session zero is so much more casual. You can just eat some food, putter around a little bit, maybe check your phone while the DM's working with somebody else.
There's like less mental stress because you don't have to focus on nothing. And in person's so hard because you can't scroll on your phone without hurting somebody's feelings. Controversial opinion. I know some DMs really hate dice stacking or like, fidgeting during their game, but I scroll tumblr while we're playing.
Just don't be disruptive.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: If there's heavy accusation and there's like actual plot shit, then I'd be upset. But at the same time, you're allowed to fucking do your little tick. There's a reason I brought a fidget toy for Kayla. Woe was for me, but it became Kayla's session because that's like, I'm literally going to come with a thing of fidget toys for our next in person session next two months.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Just so I don't go on my phone.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: No tumblr. Kayla.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Fuck.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: It's a rowdy day for Jeff. These are going to be a lot of rowdy stories and I'm so happy with this one. This one is from user Jordan the DM.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Hi, Jordan.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: It is entitled hi, Jordan, what's up? Me too.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Hey, Jordan. Hey, girl, what's up? Or boy. Or person.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Hey, what's up, person? So this is entitled Alex Jones soundboard.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Hmm.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: I am just fucking swinging for the fences. All the most raunchy stories I could find.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: I think I'm going to pop a blood vessel.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: This one is short but sweet. Well, bittersweet. Oh, good. Great. They're actually good at writing.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Fuck you, Kayla. Fuck. Why can't I get the good writers?
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Dude, I got shitty writers last time.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: It's okay, we'll trade off.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: I was a player at an in person table being run by a good friend of mine. The DM knew all of us from various walks of their life, and I was excited to get into my first game of D d. Oh, it's a first. Nice.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Famous last words.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: We were even playing Waterdeep dragon heist. Again with fucking waterdeep, bro. Fuck. Fuck you, d d. Source material.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: Fuck you. Hey, Jeff, I have a confession to make.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: What?
[00:35:48] Speaker A: I don't own a single book.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: I sent you a legal copy of the book.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: Not saved. I have not opened it. I do not know shit about the source material.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: It's okay.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: That's going to get me canceled on Twitter.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: It's okay. I'd rather get canceled than see someone get shot in the head.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: So true.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: We were even playing waterdeep, dragon height, super cool urban setting, and our DM had run it a few times over, really knew how to throw some wrenches our way, and made the overall experience extremely enjoyable. Wow, that's not a horror story at all. Only problem was our bard, to preface everyone at the table, was having our first go at D d Barbarian, an artificer and our bard with another guy who showed up for one session. I think at character creation, the bard said that for most of his dialogue, quote unquote, he would just use an Alex Jones soundboard. If you don't know who that is, good for you. Then you may not get the full scope, but just envision an obnoxiously rowd, raspy, unintelligible voice blasting from the guy's phone.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Turn the frickin frogs.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Gay damn liberals.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: The artifacting on your voice, dude.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Sleepy Joe. Like goddamn myself and the other player in the party kind of laughed at the bit, but it grew stale fast. The DM did his best to wrangle him in, but this guy would even occasionally interrupt a story beat or a narration that was going on.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: A total asshead main character syndrome.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Eventually the soundboard was put away, occasionally making cringe appearances every once in a while. But the problems didn't stop there. Remember that he was a bard.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: How can I forget?
[00:37:31] Speaker B: We are double digit sessions into the campaign and he still doesn't know what his bardic inspiration is, what it does, or how to use it.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: That's fucking crazy.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: He knows Alex Jones. That's it.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: Imagine forgetting you have two attacks. Could not be me, Kayla.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: You forget that even in the DMs handbook, where there's monsters and stuff like that, you still forget how to read multi attack.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: It's so true, though.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: There were three heads on that fucking servers. We fought and only one of them attacked every turn.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: Listen, I pressure. Listen, it was 09:00. It was like getting late. So I was like, okay, I'll only have it attack at once so that way they can solve it really quickly. Listen, there was a puzzle, guys, and they were taking a long time to solve it, and we had already been playing longer than we were supposed to. If anything, I was being generous.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: I was being generous and letting everyone finish.
Again, to preface, we were all new players. It's okay if you don't know how every ability works, but this is like his signature class feature. In fact, he had a very loose understanding of most of the rules. Basic action, economy, skill checks, anything. It seemed like he was more interested in being a meme lord or chatting about the latest international politics happening mid session.
Oh, bro. Yeah. The fact that he even brought Alex Jones specifically and then turns around and goes, so, yeah, what about Gaza? Like, bro, we're in Feyrun, bro, chill. We are in waterdeep, not in the US. Thank you. That's just so uncomfortable. That's why as soon as everyone gets there, no banter right into it.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: No above table talk at all, bro.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Like, I get wanting to chat with your budy about the goings on in the world, but he would insist on trying to chat to the DM about what was going on in the latest news headlines or some random commentary from a political leader author. Yeah, that stuff is interesting. Got it. Not even busting his balls on the topics. But during the game where we are just trying to meet up weekly and play a little fantasy TTRPG, where we kill some baddies, steal some gold and have a grand old time. Thankfully, that DM is a godsend and continued his best to wrangle him all the way to the finish line. First campaign was great, love two thirds of my party and had a great storyteller for two thirds of my party. That's also really. We went from, like, extremes of nine people and being like, let's fuck horses, to three people, four people. Oh, God. When he was allowed to tell his story. That is TLDR. We already read the story. I'm not going to read the TLDR. But God damn, bro, that is just embarrassing for yourself.
Save it for the banter at the beginning. Save it for the end. When everyone's packing up and they have no choice but to listen to you. That's when you trap them and say, hey, use squarespace code.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: It is so hard to meet up with people once a week consistently.
Our day that we meet up has to change constantly because of people's schedules, and it's a miracle we can do once a week. And we're remote.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Yeah, we're fucking killing it, and we're in, like, three different time zones.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: So why would you waste your precious playing time by just talking about nonsense?
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think what both of these people like, this dude, and the one from your story with their fucking storytelling and stuff like that, the DM from the last story, I think what they could have benefited from was a website from Squarespace.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: We are not sponsored.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Look, you know how it is when you put the energy out into the world. You have to practice, like us having blame on the podcast. Yeah, I'm practicing ad reads, so be ready, guys. Use code.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: What code would we even do for it?
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Use code forever alone. For your use code.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Fuck you, Jeff at checkout.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That'll go over.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: That'll go over great. With the ads.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: We're practicing to fucking fail.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: I think the idea of a soundboard could actually be pretty fun if you're playing, like, a kinku that can only use sounds that it's heard before. And so having a soundboard to build your sentences together would be kind of cool and novel, but a human who knows how to speak common, like, ha ha, I guess I like the idea.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: Of, you know, how people have the buttons that dogs can push to communicate and stuff like that. Yeah, I like the idea of just having those across the table and you communicate through that.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: Funny.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: That would be fucking cool. Dog hungry.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Level up.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Long rest natural.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: One inspiration.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Thank you, guys, for listening to this episode of tales from the tabletop. We came in raunchy. We came in spicy. We opened up a horse brothel in your town. Coming soon, TM. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We had a good time.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Still not our most chaotic episode. I feel like, surprisingly, yeah.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: We usually bring the ruckus, and today was, like, a six out of ten on the ruckus scale.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: I hope you guys had a great Valentine's Day. I ate so much candy.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Yes. I was wondering why I gained so much weight this week. There it is.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: It's all that candy. All those chocolate covered strawberries.
[00:42:57] Speaker B: Oh, I got Reese cups that were, like, the size of fucking hamburger patties. It was great.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: What's your favorite candy?
[00:43:04] Speaker B: My favorite candy are swedish fish. I fucking love swedish fish.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: That's so funny.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Why? What's funny about it? I'm old too, and I also have strawberry bon bonds that I give people at work. Like, I walk up in my cardigan and be like, grandma has something for you. And I drop them in people's pockets.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: That's so fucking funny. My coworker gives me caramels, and he's like, here, have this. And I'm like, okay, grandpa, look, they're.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: At the dollar store. You can't help it.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: My favorite candy is, I think, sour straws. I love sour stuff.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: I love sour stuff too. Until it starts destroying your tongue and you just have holes for weeks.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: God, I love when I have to take breaks because it burns a hole in the roof of my mouth, dude.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Spicy over sour.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: I will eat until it hurts and my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like everyone, anytime you mention something sour, your mouth, everyone's mouth. Listening to this just had, like, a knee jerk. Like, why am I salivating? What the fuck is this? Like, what is it? The Schrodinger's dog. What is the dog? Guy?
[00:44:04] Speaker A: Schrodinger's cat.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: No. Who's the dog when he salivates for a treat?
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Oh, pavlov.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: That's so funny. That should be the question.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: Pavlovian response.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: What's your favorite candy?
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Hey, guys, if you have A-D-D story, we have these wonderful outlets and means of communicating them to us. One of these is the email. I'm putting the email in Kayla, because I'm the one who checks it. That's all I got. I'm on old man's duty. I don't look at social media, but.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: I'll check those emails.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: So if you have a story and you have a favorite candy, or if you don't think candy is fucking terrible, which I was in that boat for a while. I'm salty over sweet every time. Still am.
Make sure to send us an email at
[email protected]. That is
[email protected]. We'd love to hear you guys'stories. We got our first official story this week from someone. That was the horse brothel one, which I was very appreciative for. It wasn't anyone's personal story, but they found it really funny and shared it with us, and that was awesome. And thank you so much.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: You can find us on social media around the web at tales from the tabletop pod, tales from the TT on formerly Twitter, just because the name was too long. If we're not banned, please find us there. I post a lot of memes, some behind the scenes content from Jeff editing, and then, of course, we let you know when we upload an episode. So you'll never miss one.
[00:45:41] Speaker B: Absolutely not. And if you do, it's okay. It's going to be there forever, and we'd love to hear your feedback.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Thank you guys so much for growing with us and sticking with us with this new adventure we've been doing. It's been a journey, but we're slowly growing. It's really exciting to see. I never thought we would have as many listeners as we do. I thought we'd be just talking into the void forever, dude.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's really cool seeing all you guys'responses and stuff like that and just hearing stories from a lot of the people I know in real life are like, wow, that was a really good interview and that kind of shit. I'm like, oh, thanks. And we appreciate all of you and viewers like you.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you. You can't see it, but I'm making a. Aw, yeah.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: Kayla's making a heart. That could be on our twitter, too, and get banned. Thanks, Kayla. No hearts, no gang signs.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Damn it.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Bye bye.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: Fuck.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: Probably nay.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Fuck.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Ow.
That was so fucking best one I've ever done. That's the best joke I've ever.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: That was so fucking stupid, dude.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: All right, your turn.
