Episode 14 - Eclipse Showdown

[00:00:01] Speaker A: What? Ooh, sorry, Jeremy. Nat one. You know what that means. [00:00:06] Speaker B: No, please. [00:00:07] Speaker A: I have three kids. [00:00:08] Speaker B: 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. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to another episode of tales from the tabletop. I am your moon dm, Kayla Williams. [00:00:59] Speaker B: And I am your blind Dm, Jeff Lunter. You know, you would think it's because of the eclipse and everything like that, but no. Sorry, Kayla, I hate to tell you, I did get in a car accident, and glass went into my eyes during the eclipse. [00:01:11] Speaker A: I'm so glad you made it, though. [00:01:13] Speaker B: I'm dead blinded. Honestly, I'm so glad I'm here. I had to shuffle my way around. They said it's only temporary, just like the eclipse. So I was blind for four minutes. I'm back, guys. That was a roller coaster. You're welcome. [00:01:24] Speaker A: I'm so proud of you. You know, I kind of set you up there to be the sun in a cute little, like, yin and yang moment. But I'm glad you took it to the worst possible place you could have. So great job. [00:01:36] Speaker B: I didn't want you to have that in the nicest way. Look, I like you. You're a great person. I'ma steal all your jokes. [00:01:43] Speaker A: Did you see the eclipse on Monday? [00:01:45] Speaker B: No, I was blind, but, yeah, I did, actually. [00:01:48] Speaker A: All right, my bad. [00:01:49] Speaker B: Yeah, Kim's family came over, and I had two dogs over, and my cats were not happy. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Were you guys in the line of totality or. [00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah, Ohio, baby. That's what we is. Northeast Ohio was right in the line of totality. We got that shit for four minutes. People started lighting off fireworks. When it started getting dark, I'm like, what are y'all doing, dude? Like, okay, I guess human beings, they're celebrating. Celebrating not seeing anything. Like, oh, it's dork. [00:02:13] Speaker A: My brother is dork. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Is dork out. Woo. Like, people are cheering and shit. [00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I called off work and drove to Indiana so it could be in the line of totality is pretty sweet. [00:02:24] Speaker B: God, that's dangerous. Indiana's disgusting. Sorry for anyone that listens to Indiana, but y'all are gross. [00:02:30] Speaker A: Indiana's kind of crazy. I mean, I grew up going there every, like, spring, like, around Easter time, so I'm used to Indiana. Yeah, I've got family out there. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Oh, God, I'm sorry. [00:02:41] Speaker A: I know. You know when you have family a little bit everywhere, you kind of get desensitized. I've never been to Gary, though. I won't. I won't go to Gary. Sorry if you live in Gary, but also sorry if you live in. [00:02:51] Speaker B: Fuck you live in Gary. Also fuck you Gary, Indiana. You gotta have family in good places like Colorado or Vegas or la. Like I do. Yeah, and Florida, but Florida doesn't count. Florida's disgusting. I hate Florida. [00:03:03] Speaker A: Florida. [00:03:04] Speaker B: I hate Indiana and Florida. Lowest two states on the totem pole. [00:03:08] Speaker A: I love Florida beaches. I don't love Florida. Everything else. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Ew. I tried to bring home a seashell and it smelled so fucking bad we had to throw it out of the rental car. Disgusting. [00:03:20] Speaker A: Dude, that's crazy. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Florida's nasty. Florida's filled with like, the nastiest people on the planet. [00:03:26] Speaker A: We're really, really alienating a section of our viewer base, aren't we? Huh? [00:03:32] Speaker B: Hey, but when I come to Florida and I go to Disney, I love it. Like, when I'm there, boy, do I love Disney. Yeah, Disney's great. I love the Star wars shit. I have my lightsaber hung up. Well, I'm gonna have it hung up on the wall when we move. But so fucking excited. [00:03:45] Speaker A: Last time I went to Disney was before they built all the Star wars shit. They were starting to, but, you know, I had a whole trip to Disney plan, but that's when all the anti trans stuff came out, so I canceled it and got really sad. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Oh, God damn it. [00:04:04] Speaker A: So my story's gonna be a little bit different this week. It is a part of a thread. Somebody asked Reddit, hey, D and D players or not D and D players, rpg players. What is your worst game master experience that you've had? And there's a bunch of little stories in here. Read through some of them. And I just picked one from Mike Mars 1225. It's from eleven years ago, so it's. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Kind of like, oh my God, what the fuck? That's when Reddit was actually active. That's wild. [00:04:33] Speaker A: I've been digging, I've been digging. [00:04:35] Speaker B: You've been digging through the archives, trying to be original. I'm telling another rpg stories. [00:04:39] Speaker A: Yeah, this one's actually not about dungeons and dragons. It's about the masquerade, which I. Oh, yuck, yuck. I've personally never played it, but I've heard really good things. [00:04:48] Speaker B: The only thing, I had a group of friends play it before I joined with them, so anything before I was there, yuck. [00:04:55] Speaker A: Oh, so you're just selfish, I see. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm selfish. No, I'm just kidding. I've heard some good things. I looked into it. It seems interesting. I would love to play a sexy vampire, just like, real life. I want to be a sexy vampire. [00:05:08] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:05:09] Speaker B: Honestly, I lied. I want to be Dracula. I want to talk like. Like. So then people think, oh, this dude's from Transylvania. No, I'm just an asshole that took up an accent. [00:05:20] Speaker A: I watched Renfield, and I've never been the same. [00:05:22] Speaker B: What? Oh, God. Speaking of fucking awful horror movies, have you seen the five nights at Freddy's movie? [00:05:28] Speaker A: You mean good horror movies? Yes, I saw it. [00:05:31] Speaker B: Literal dog shit. [00:05:32] Speaker A: Whoa. [00:05:33] Speaker B: The worst thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm like, they needed to hire a fu. This must have been done during the writers strike, because they definitely had AI write whatever the fuck this movie was. [00:05:42] Speaker A: No, they had. [00:05:42] Speaker B: It was terrible. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Scott Cawthorn. Cawthorn who? Scott Cawthorn wrote that shit? [00:05:48] Speaker B: Oh, the guy who wrote the game. [00:05:49] Speaker A: The guy who made the game? [00:05:50] Speaker B: Yeah, the guy who needed Matpat to flesh his lore out for him before he could actually make some semblance of a story happen. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Listen, listen. He's a bad. Like, I don't. Scott Cawthorn is his own problem. [00:06:02] Speaker B: But, I mean, there's a reason there's no audio. There's no, like, voice lines in the games. Dog shit. Dog shit. Fucking. It felt like. Like they were. I don't even know, like, was terrible. Yeah. And they had Matpat do a fucking. That's just a theory reference. And I'm like, okay, that's a great time. [00:06:23] Speaker A: There are teenagers behind me going, hoar. Hoi, ho, ho, hoi, hoi, hor. [00:06:28] Speaker B: What the fuck? [00:06:29] Speaker A: And then what? During that one scene where, spoiler alert, this girl gets bit in half, they went, whoa, is that the bite of 87? [00:06:39] Speaker B: What year is it? It's like, literally, it felt. I don't know who the movie was for. Cause it would definitely not. [00:06:45] Speaker A: It was for me. [00:06:45] Speaker B: It definitely wasn't for adults. It was for maybe 15 year olds, like, the ones that were sitting behind you, because, like, there was definitely too much gore to show to a little kid. [00:06:54] Speaker A: I love garbage movies. Like, like. [00:06:56] Speaker B: And then, like, there was the point where Matthew Lillard came out of the fucking, like, springtrap suit, and it was always him the entire time. And Kim looks at me like, oh, my God, I can't believe that. And I looked at her, I'm like, it could have been fucking Scooby Doo for all I care. I've lost all interest. So at that point, I was gone. I'm like, it could have been Scooby Doo. And I still. I would have believed it just as much. Like, fucking, like, comes out of the suit. [00:07:20] Speaker A: You are not a connoisseur of, like, bad movies. You have no appreciation. [00:07:24] Speaker B: I love a bad horror movie, but this was, like, the writing on it was so bad. The acting on it was worse because they. They were given scripts that were dog shit. Like, I get that. The. Eventually it's revealed the police officer is a fucking whatever. But anyways, I was like, whoever fed her her voice lines. And we're like, hey, we're your acting coach. Get. Fire em. Get him the fuck out of here. Go back to writing video games and. What's his name? Scott Cawthorn. Yeah, I think purple, man. Get the fuck. Go back to writing video games where people don't talk. Thank you. [00:08:00] Speaker A: That's so funny. [00:08:01] Speaker B: And that's my hot take. [00:08:02] Speaker A: Can I get back to reading my fucking story? [00:08:06] Speaker B: We didn't have any banter in the beginning. Here it is. [00:08:10] Speaker A: You could tell Jeff and I will purposely not talk to each other all week to the detriment of the podcast, because we just start fucking saying shit. [00:08:19] Speaker B: We get so fucking angry about terrible movies. [00:08:22] Speaker A: I always try to get him to talk to me a little bit before the podcast starts, and he's like, all right, I've got my blanket on. Let's start. [00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't talk. I just go. I go, go, go. I save my stories for the podcast. Kayla, we're friends, but all the shit that I. [00:08:36] Speaker A: Our relationship is transactional. [00:08:40] Speaker B: A relationship needs an audience. [00:08:42] Speaker A: This is a long one. And it's more about how a derail, how I derailed a campaign. But the GM, being rather dickish, was the reason I derailed it in the first place. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Oh, so it's not an, am I the asshole? It's off of what is the worst story you've had in rpg? [00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, what's the worst game master you've had? [00:09:03] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Yeah, I like it. I'm liking this. [00:09:06] Speaker A: We are playing a game of the masquerade. Well, our GM was the special kind of GM, the type of GM that tells a really good story and gets you really sucked into them, but at the same time has a bad habit of railroading the plot down your throat. My problem, I think. [00:09:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where you try to railroad the story and hope that players do it, and if they don't like it, you keep going. [00:09:29] Speaker A: And then I cry. [00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:32] Speaker A: Regardless. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Such a toxic DM. [00:09:35] Speaker A: Regardless. This game went on for quite a while. So long, in fact, that whenever me or one of the other PCs leveled up. He just entrusted us to adjust our skills appropriately, which we did, instead of peering over our shoulders as we filled in the dots of our new disciplines and whatnot. I feel like the DM shouldn't be looking over your shoulder unless you don't know what you're doing. [00:09:58] Speaker B: You know, I trust all of you. I trust all of you to ask questions, too, if something's going wrong. [00:10:03] Speaker A: Like, uh, we've also been playing for three years. [00:10:06] Speaker B: That's true. [00:10:06] Speaker A: So I guess that's different. My character was a gangrel, independent, whom had made it very, very, very clear that he did not like the prince our party was taking orders from. Even though I only said this when we were out of earshot from the prince and his thugs, the GM still portrayed the prince as though he knew I didn't like him. This meant I was always the one who was put in shit situations. And basically, our GM was trying his best to get me killed every step of the way in the cheapest ways possible. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Oh, what? You don't like my NPC? You know what? If you guys didn't like Haru, I would have had you nuke you guys. Sorry. The pc that you stole, not this version of Haru. [00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah, let's talk about that. [00:10:49] Speaker B: This is an OG version of my players discovered recently that a lot of my NPC's are stolen from other people, including villains, which is the villain they're facing right now in our little five e adventure. One shot thing that we're doing. But, yeah, it's crazy that authors and DM's don't come up with original material 100% of the time. That's wild. [00:11:12] Speaker A: I do. No, every time, bro. It all comes straight off the dome. Yeah, maybe. [00:11:19] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:20] Speaker A: One of them was from a book. I just. [00:11:22] Speaker B: You literally had Scooby Doo in your last campaign, dog. I'm sorry. [00:11:25] Speaker A: Well, you guys were playing Scooby Doo. Oh, I was playing Scooby. But, yeah, that was the only time I bought a module because I didn't want to fucking write the whole thing out for you guys. Cause I wanted to give you guys puzzles. [00:11:37] Speaker B: And that's the one that fucking left, was the one. We just turned around and left the mansion. You could have had the doors locked. [00:11:46] Speaker A: All of you owe me a fucking dollar. Cause that module was $7. Okay. [00:11:50] Speaker B: And we played it for 2 hours. Oh, no. It was like 4 hours. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Felt like five minutes. Anyway, fortunately, luck was on my side for the entirety of the game, and my character managed to survive and became very high level. I guess you could make the argument of when you don't like somebody, even if you haven't told them explicitly, they get the vibe. But it's a game. I don't know. Do you roll in vampire? [00:12:10] Speaker B: The masquerade, I'd imagine. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you roll blood dice anyway. [00:12:14] Speaker B: You roll. You roll to suck. [00:12:17] Speaker A: Shut up. [00:12:19] Speaker B: I suck either way, no matter how I roll the dice. So it sounds like a great game to me. [00:12:23] Speaker A: Fast forward to the end of our campaign. [00:12:25] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:12:26] Speaker A: There are riots going on throughout the city. News crews are everywhere filming all the action. The Sabbat are going batshit crazy, and there's this huge turf war between the Camarilla, whom I, as well as many of my fellow PCs were begrudgingly forced to side with by the GM and the anarchs. All the while, the prince of the city is sitting pretty atop his tower, safe from all the danger. That's where I want to be, honestly. Well, remember how I said that the GM was entrusting us to take care of our leveling up? Because of this, my character was able to reach protean level eight without him or the other players knowing. For those who don't know, this is the level in which you can transform into a mythical beast. Griffin, let's fucking firebirds, sphinx, etcetera. [00:13:12] Speaker B: That's sick. [00:13:14] Speaker A: That is pretty fucking cool. I think it's like a skill tree system. [00:13:18] Speaker B: There's like a. I'd like the skill tree system. I was about to say if everyone kind of becomes the same thing eventually. [00:13:24] Speaker A: There is a video game that uses this system. I don't know if the video game came first or the system came first, but people play it offline as well. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm pretty sure the system came before the game. Cause the game came out within the last two, three years. [00:13:37] Speaker A: Really? It feels way older than that. [00:13:39] Speaker B: All right, keep going. I'll check it up. [00:13:41] Speaker A: Okay, look it up. Google it. So the turf war is getting intense, and I decide to finally reveal that I have protein level eight and transform into a motherfucking dragon. The GM gets wide eyed, looks at my character sheet, and sees that everything is indeed in order and gives me the go ahead. Then I look at him and I ask, are you really sure you want to do that? The GM says, I mean, the news crews are going to see you and the Camarilla is going to get pissed, but you can if you want, which is the most dm thing of, like, you can do it. [00:14:15] Speaker B: But that's also, like, he's so pissed that he got caught. Like, he's so pissed that he's like, that he got outsmarted and he's like, fucking, I guess, like, you can. Here's all the bad things that could go wrong because that just seems like a very, like, hmm, I guess. I mean, that news crews are gonna see you do it and they're gonna get pissed. [00:14:35] Speaker A: I mean, he's still letting him do it, though, at the end of the day. You should have seen the shit eating grin that was spread across my face when he said that. First thing I do after transforming is fly to the top of the prince's tower, smash one of my claws through his balcony window, and rip him out of the building. All while news helicopters are flying around me. The GM starts flipping out and is like, what the fuck are you doing? Question mark, exclamation point. Question mark, exclamation point. And I reply with something I've been wanting to do for a long time. [00:15:08] Speaker B: That'S cinematic as fuck. Yo, that's so good. [00:15:10] Speaker A: That's pretty sick. I mean, I would be shocked as well, because I would just be. I can imagine myself in that scenario looking down at all of my prepped stuff and being like, um, yeah, just. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Roll with it, dude. That's all you have to do. Just roll with it. Be like, okay, well, he's gonna try his best, but I. You're probably gonna succeed. [00:15:32] Speaker A: Tears rolling down my face, the GM tries to have the prince talk me out of killing him, since we both know the prince had little to no combat skills. He starts off with saying that the Camarilla would kill me and that this is a serious violation of the masquerade, to which I say, look around. We're on live television. Everyone around the world is watching a dragon perch atop the tallest building of the city. Your masquerade is dead. [00:15:58] Speaker B: Oh, shit. [00:15:59] Speaker A: That goes hard as fuck. [00:16:01] Speaker B: That is hard as fuck, dude. Oh, my God. [00:16:04] Speaker A: That's pretty funny. I got a little bit of goosebumps. Not gonna lie. That was pretty sick. There was a little bit more banter, but I got bored and ate the prince unceremoniously. As soon as I did that, the GM flipped his shit and started screaming. Why did you do that? I told him that if he hadn't been a complete dick to me, then I might not have killed him the first time I had the chance. Then the GM throws his hands up and says, well, this whole campaign is fucked. And then he just got up and left. And that was the last game of the masquerade we played together. In a way, I'm kind of happy about it because it couldn't have ended on a higher note. [00:16:42] Speaker B: That is, without a doubt, fucking incredible. I love that for them so much. That was just. That's beautiful. That's the player got everything they wanted out of that. And I'm. [00:16:52] Speaker A: Oh, it's a very. Just end, I think. [00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Also, like, here's the difference between experience, veteran DM's, and, like, DM's just starting out. You got to adapt to that shit, your campaign. I have a feeling like most players will be okay with you being like, okay, give me a few minutes. Cause now I need to prepare. Like, I need to change something around a bit instead of flipping up and be like, whoa. I think that those are the moments where you get the good DM's and the great DM's. That's the dying line. Like the hard line in the sand. [00:17:24] Speaker A: I think there is nothing wrong when a player upends your story. Also, if you work with somebody for a long time and play with them for any extended amount of time, you can kind of get a sense of how they're going to react to a situation, surprises like that, that just changed the whole game state. I don't think anybody would be upset if you just said, okay, I don't have anything prepped. Let's take a break. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Everyone go pee. Everyone go get a beer. Or even be. Maybe shop at a dive bar for an hour or some shit. [00:17:57] Speaker A: Or even just end the game session there and be like, hey, guys, I need a week to write something new to prepare for this. Can we just pick it up next week and play some other games today? In the meantime, since we're all together, I don't think there's anything wrong with that because it does take a lot of prep, and I understand the frustration of losing. Kind of like, the general arc you understood. Cause that changes literally everything. He wasn't lying when he said the game was fucked because it was kind of fucked. [00:18:25] Speaker B: That does. Yeah. If the whole thing is wrapped around that one character, I don't know. Yeah. Give the players in that moment need to give their DM the time to, like, prepare. Because I'm thinking, like, what's coming up in our campaign? Like, the next session of our campaign, and, like, they're going, you guys are going through that carnival or whatever with all these, like, different dark rides and blah, blah, blah. Well, spoilers. There's gonna be a dark ride next session. There's just all these different things that you guys are going through. And, like, there was a moment where you guys could have just not gone in the haunted mansion, but because I was like, there's a spotlight shining on it, and it was very clear that this is where the plot was going. Everyone read on, picked up on that immediately. So I guess I'm lucky in that. But if you guys didn't go there. Oh, well, just another part of the thing is what you have to deal with. So I think there's. There's a level of preparation. Like, they're always. There's. Sorry. There's a guy flexing his dick outside with his car. Hold on. There's always a moment. There was someone revving their engine way too fucking loud. [00:19:18] Speaker A: I don't think the string of words you said mean what you think they mean. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Someone flexing their dick outside. Hold on. That's what I said. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Say it again, but slower. Nevermind. [00:19:30] Speaker B: What was I saying? Fuck. That dude's big dick distracted me. [00:19:33] Speaker A: I think I remember. Fuck. I think I remember. [00:19:37] Speaker B: My favorite thing about this podcast is we're like 14 episodes in, and there's still moments, but we're still so fresh and new that I could just throw you off balance so easily. [00:19:47] Speaker A: It's just you have this. This quality, this way of speaking, this man, this way that just gets to me. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day about the podcast and stuff and about you being the co host and everything, and I was like, yeah, Jeff is great. I feel like he is kind of like a twin flame for me. Or just like, you meet somebody who is very creatively compatible with you. [00:20:14] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:20:15] Speaker A: And it just fucking works, you know? [00:20:18] Speaker B: Hey, don't. Don't fucking compliment me anymore. Thanks. I'd appreciate that. [00:20:22] Speaker A: I'm only complimenting you in terms of what you're able to do for me, you know? [00:20:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's. I love that we have very. We've made it explicitly clear what our relationship is on this podcast during this episode. Like, mine was like, I won't tell you anything until the podcast. I will leech off of your energy. Thanks. This is a good. This is a good back and forth. This is what podcasting is, everyone. You know what? Even you two can make a podcast based on Reddit stories. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Just being fucking stupid. Eventually it'll transform into something different. We'll see. [00:20:54] Speaker B: But, like, a great DM, you know, a great DM will plan a, b, and c instead of just a, and then blow up when a doesn't happen, because b is nothing. [00:21:06] Speaker A: That's true. I think I remember specifically saying for the last session, that I DM's time, because Jeff and I have been trading off this past set. We're doing adventure. [00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:18] Speaker A: I said, I think I need to build a stat block for the devil because I'm pretty sure Tony is going to try to fight him. For real. [00:21:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's where, by the way, guys, if you have another DM in your group, I would highly recommend co dming a little session for your players because this has been great. I've been like, I have all these resources for Kayla, and she gets all this music and gets all these set pieces that are so beautiful. And, like, every. Every bit of music you chose has been so perfect for, like, making things, like, more dramatic. And then of course, I'm like, sitting. I'm like, what the fuck do I want to do with this floor? And Kayla's like, yeah, do this. Like, awesome. This is what you guys need. I would highly recommend a creative. If you ever, like, if you're. I mean, sure, dming by yourself is great. We all have huge fucking egos. Don't you dare question my dming style. [00:22:06] Speaker A: But, you know, co writing a story has been a lot of fun with you. I think we kind of started our creative journey together with this podcast, and this seems kind of like the natural progression of things, of us writing a story alongside each other, you know? [00:22:21] Speaker B: And this is where we transition. At your local game shop near you, you can find our co written adventure path, the seven floors of hell. And we can't call them. We can't call one of them christian hell. That's. It'd be bad. [00:22:34] Speaker A: It's called he double hockey stick, bro. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Kayla, you know, I want to talk more about five nights at Freddy's. Real quick. Can we just point out, oh, my God. Awful. Like, people are gonna be so pissed. [00:22:51] Speaker A: About this episode, they didn't even fucking talk about anything. I don't give a shit about who these people are. Read the story. [00:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah, what the fuck? I don't give a shit about PETA, but it's terrible. Not a good movie. I turned to my partner while we were watching. It's like, oh, my God. He did all good thing. He practiced all that running in the Hunger Games. Cause he fucking gunned it for those little kids. I'm like, this is uncomfortable. Like, this grown ass man chasing after a six year old at full sprint. I'm like, what are you gonna do when you catch him, bro? Like, what the fuck is happening? [00:23:22] Speaker A: You're not a connoisseur of bad movies like I am. I loved it. I loved it so much. [00:23:28] Speaker B: I love. I love bad horror. But that was, like, bad, right? I don't know, man. Like, bad horror has a certain flavor to it. That was a movie that was trying to be more than bad horror and completely failed. [00:23:41] Speaker A: Well, bad horror isn't like. Or bad movies in general, I'd say, aren't as successful if they're trying to be bad in a funny way. They have to be trying to be good and then fail. And that's the magic. You have to capture that lightning in a bottle. I think it was so good. But I've been a huge fan of the game series for a while, too. In a very dorky way, I'd say. [00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's okay. I mean, Matpat literally made the series. Made the series possible 100% with his theory videos. Of course, Scott had to put them in because he's like, you're the reason my games exist. You're the reason they have anything. After the first one, I literally cried. [00:24:21] Speaker A: When Matpat said he was leaving the Internet, dude, there were real tears. I think I messaged you guys too, and I was like, they hit the Pentagon. [00:24:29] Speaker B: Are you sure it's not a theory? So my story comes from the d and d subreddit. I have a bunch of short ones because I haven't. I'll be honest with y'all. I haven't been doing shit for the podcast for three weeks. I've been lazy. [00:24:45] Speaker A: But all I've been working hard making bingo cards. By the way, the bingo card is on our twitter as we speak. [00:24:53] Speaker B: Oh, shit. Yeah. Holy fuck. I forgot about our bingo cards. [00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I know you did. I was very happy we didn't have them. [00:24:59] Speaker B: You didn't give me the bingo card at the beginning of the session. We were supposed to play during the show. [00:25:02] Speaker A: No, it's fine because the bingo card isn't done as we speak, but it'll be done. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Oh, it's gonna be done on Tuesday. So next episode, we can all play together. [00:25:11] Speaker A: We'll play together live. [00:25:13] Speaker B: This is from user Global Snow 8996, and it is entitled DM banned me from playing as a cleric because I'm not religious. Irl. [00:25:24] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:25:25] Speaker B: Title says it all. But to be more detailed, BG three has piqued my interest in D and D. I've always been a casual fan, but never really had the energy to learn and play. After playing the game, though, I'm convinced. Okay, sorry, I just read that all fucking terrible. But it's okay. We haven't done this in a while we say that every episode, my friend is a seasoned player and has a group of friends that have ran a campaign for six to seven years and invited me to join to try it out as a guest character, I was stoked to play and rolled up a cleric. My favorite class to play in BG three. That is the saddest sentence I've ever read, dog. Cleric is your favorite class? [00:26:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Garbage. Don't play spellcasters. [00:26:09] Speaker B: Uh, warlocks are fun, but then you get two spells, and then you. It's done. You get eldritch blast. That's it. [00:26:15] Speaker A: Talking about blowing your load early. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Yep. [00:26:17] Speaker A: Am I right, ladies? [00:26:18] Speaker B: I learned the rules. We've all been there. I learned the rules as best I could and made a short backstory for my character with a quirk that she is always saying prayers, thanking her goddess, and has rituals that she follows dazedly that follows daily Jesus. Cliche. Cleric stuff. I thought. I mean, that's basically. That's most of it. [00:26:37] Speaker A: I get under wanting to do cleric shit, too. Cause of shadow heart. [00:26:41] Speaker B: I get it. Yeah. Shadow heart is bae, but not the bae. Karlak is bae, obviously. [00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:48] Speaker B: That was until the DM asked me if I was religious IRL. I said no and thought that it was a weird question to ask. The DM then says that I was appropriating religious culture and that I couldn't be authentic to my character because I don't believe in any real life religion. [00:27:05] Speaker A: What? [00:27:05] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Like, motherfucker, okay. [00:27:09] Speaker A: I play a tiefling, but I'm not fucking purple in real life. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Listen, dude, I play a bard, but I don't have 25 STD's, so the fuck you gonna do? [00:27:20] Speaker A: I thought you were gonna say you couldn't sing. [00:27:22] Speaker B: Well. Oh, yeah. My bad. I can sing, so that's why I didn't go for. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Oh, my bad. [00:27:28] Speaker B: Revolver. Revolver on Spotify. If you wanna listen to our music but listen to Jeff's band. [00:27:33] Speaker A: They're pretty good. [00:27:34] Speaker B: Don't do it. They're all right. We're all right. And I argued that this is a fantasy role playing game. I can play whatever I'd like to play, within reason. He accused me of being toxic and bans me from playing cleric and makes me roll up a human fighter. Bleh. Fuck, man. Blegh. That's the nast. So gross. Human fighter. Come on. [00:27:54] Speaker A: What in the milk toes? Well, they're not a fighter in real life. Aren't they appropriating fighter culture? [00:28:01] Speaker B: I think they're 100% appropriating. Fighter culture. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. As a fighter myself, far from what. [00:28:06] Speaker B: I actually wanted to play because it was easier for a first time player. I mean, that's not wrong. But also, Battlemaster fighter is really difficult for a first time player. That's a lot of mechanics that you don't have that you're not used to like. Hello. Is this normal behavior from DM's? I wasn't trying to appropriate any specific religion. Just what I had seen and absorbed from BG three. I was super stoked to play for the first time, but this left a very sour taste in my mouth. My friend just shrugged it off and said it was the DM's style. Do people take roleplaying that seriously? Should I stay away from cleric for that reason? There's a few edits in here. [00:28:45] Speaker A: What? [00:28:45] Speaker B: What do you think? Would you be. Look, Kayla, I need to be honest with you. I don't even watch kung fu movies. I can't be a monk. I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to delete your character and my character. Cause I doubt you do either. [00:29:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:29:00] Speaker B: So do you run up walls? Loser. [00:29:02] Speaker A: There's obviously a sweet spot, right? Because even though it's a fantasy game, we've talked about it before. Racism and stuff like that doesn't have any place in the games that we play. Everybody's a little bit different. So I understand if you want to explore those themes in a mature way. I would not play any characters with, like, real life connotations of something I don't have an experience to. Obviously, if I just had a really great conversation about it with a person at. I did an eclipse, one shot with Kyle David Perry. Shout out to Kyle David Perry. Again, I think this is, like three. [00:29:40] Speaker B: Episodes, third episode in a row. We gotta stop. We're obsessed with our Brendan Lee Mulligan. [00:29:43] Speaker A: They did a fantastic job. Of course. They had a good friend of theirs at the table who is a person of color. And they were discussing. I forget how we got on the topic of it before we started playing. We were having some discussion back and forth. They were saying how they liked the idea of, like. Of course the DM has to play black characters and like, characters of color because they exist in the world or the player themselves who's playing like, a black character, like a jamaican character. You have to play their family because their family, of course, isn't going to be a bunch of white people. But if you're a character yourself, not necessarily making stuff that has connotations to the real world. It was a really interesting conversation. But when it comes to things like religion, that are very subjective, objective and stuff like that, especially fantasy religion, I think the concept of religion is not something that can be gatekeeped whether you're religious or not. If you were trying to make fun of a specific religion, I could understand, but it's fantasy. General idea, concept of religion. You know what I mean? [00:30:46] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:30:47] Speaker A: It's like, to me, that seems very silly, but I'm also not a generically religious person. It seems like a very christian viewpoint from my perspective, to be like, ugh, I'm being persecuted. [00:31:00] Speaker B: I felt a little dirty bringing in christian hell into our campaign, but it worked out really fucking well. And you did it so tastefully. And I could see, like, people getting upset. But also, we're not, like, there is no religion in, like, unless the DM allows it. I guess the base, like, game of D and D doesn't have Christianity as a religion. There's no real life religion that connects the two. It's like you can. You can do whatever you want. Like, if I want to be a toad man, I want to rib it all around and shoot spells with my tongue. Like, I can do that doesn't mean. I don't know. That's so weird. It is sick. Gets very close to the character I'm playing in my cheating campaign. But yeah, there's so much that goes into just the idea. Like, I don't know why you would really connect the two. There has to be something going on. Like, either there's incredibly religious, and they're getting offended by how you look at religion and how you are interpreting the religion of the campaign. There has to be something deeper. And you don't just shut, like, unless you're giving a reason. I don't know. There's part of me that's like, don't fucking do this. But if it really offends someone and they don't feel comfortable talking about it, then I get that too. But there's. That wasn't here. So actually, there's still more to this. So maybe I want to hear what. [00:32:16] Speaker A: Other people's opinions in the comments are as well. My initial reaction is that it's silly. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Mm hmm. They locked the post so people couldn't comment anymore, which is wild. Edit one loud and clear. This was not normal. I won't be returning to the table. I've seen some folks saying that he was justified. If I was intentionally being offensive, which was never my goal, or that there might have been some religious people at the table who would have found it offensive. I genuinely wanted to play my tav from BG three in a d and D setting, and I always chose the cleric blah blah blah option and conversations in game and just wanted to roleplay that in person at a table. Also, I 100% get that playing as a fighter probably would have been easier for me to play for the first time. I was just told that if I understood BG three spellcasting, it's fairly similar to how I would play on table legitimately. Had no idea if I was set up for failure from the get go that the last part completely out of your, like, don't just be like, oh, yeah, I should have played fighter free because it's my first time experiment. You don't gotta, like, even if you like, I would even allow people to homebrew if they're like, I have this really, really cool idea. Okay, well, let's build it together if it's their first time. But also talking about, like, yeah, the people being religious at the table would have found it offensive. This is a game that has religion in it. It's not real life religion stuff. It's all fake. It's all, like, made up religions. They're not real. So why? If you're connecting the fake religion to your real one, then it's on you. It's not the game. You're just playing with the resources that you're given. [00:33:51] Speaker A: And I know dungeons and dragons doesn't have the best rap for being. [00:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Politically correct for getting started. Yeah. They are not the most politically correct. Go hate drow. Why? Because they're dark skinned and live underground? It's like, no, that's not a valid reason. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Okay. I kind of made the assumption that it sounded like a christian take. That may not be true. I can understand how it might be offensive to kind of masquerade mimicry practices that you see on the outside. So you don't necessarily have the context for how those things really affect the religion and the role playing aspect of it. But at the same time, I'm like, it's not. All religions have an overarching theme of dedication to one thing or the other, and they have daily rituals that they do to make them feel closer to whatever it is that they believe in. And I think the average non religious person can kind of relate to that in some way because we all have our little rituals that we do that make us feel connected to either ourself or the world around us. So I think it's kind of lame. They weren't, like, mimicking a certain religion's practices and kind of bastardizing them, you know, like mimicking a certain religion's type of prayer or whatever. It just seems silly to me because in that context for dungeons and dragons, you can't play anything that you don't have personal experience with. And to kind of speak on the. Maybe a fighter would have been easier for them. I think that everybody's gonna have to play a spellcaster for the first time eventually, you know, playing a fighter is not going to give you a better sense of being a spellcaster, even if you've played the game before. The first time I played a spellcaster, I was like, what the fuck is this? [00:35:39] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:41] Speaker A: It was so frustrating for me, and I was only playing like a bard. I can't imagine doing something where you have to prepare spells and shit like that. You're gonna have to do it anyway. [00:35:51] Speaker B: I would say that wizard is the most difficult class to play in d and D 100%, because you don't get spells. You have to learn them from spell books and prepare different spells every day and hope that they get used. [00:36:03] Speaker A: Like, it's a very difficult class to play. Stork, dude. [00:36:06] Speaker B: Yeah. You literally have to be as nerdy as the wizard in order to play a wizard. I'm just kidding. You play wizard if you don't want to. Like, you don't have to be nerdy, but still, you can do whatever the fuck you want in D and D. But that's definitely. There's definitely. I feel like cleric isn't that difficult to understand. Like, I get confused by spell casting, but their spell casting is mostly buffs and heels, and it's like, well, I understand that. Like, that makes a lot of sense to me. If you play something like a wild magic sorcerer, like, I'm playing for our in person session like that, that's a little tougher. Like, there's different mechanics and sorcerers in general have metamagic feats and all that other fun stuff outside of being wild magic. So I get that there's a lot of difficult levels, but you play what you want to play. If you feel like if you didn't have people whispering in your ear, telling you that cleric was too difficult, would you play it? And if you felt like that's the thing you wanted to play, find a dm. Find a table that allows you to play it without having a religion. That's just such a weird. Such a weird hoop that you have to jump through. [00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Join a discord community online. DND is where it's at. [00:37:14] Speaker B: Even in the. I'm looking at the d and d subreddit. They even have, like, things for people to join. Games. There's so many people out here, like, just wanting to dm a lot of them for free. Some require payment, like me if you want me to dm your campaign. I actually saw that there are people that make careers out of dming. I know you talked about another podcast previously, but I'm like, that's wild. Like, writing stories and making things interesting and like, I. There's Kayla. I have a secret. I have a secret I'm gonna share. I cannot do long campaign. Like, if I'm sitting down at a session with our. I think we've talked about this before. We're like, two to 3 hours is our sweet spot. Like, that's where we can be with before we just drift off. I love the campaign I'm in right now. But we went for 7 hours and I was fucking dead tired the other day. Oh, my God. And, like, I couldn't imagine dming multiple campaigns and having to put on that air. You are everyone in the world. 100% just everyone in the world. And you have to role play that all the time. It's just. It's exhausting. [00:38:25] Speaker A: But still. Dme if I, like, maybe this is a lot from coming from a player's perspective, but I would do all day sessions every time if I could. I love living in the world that we've built for each other. And maybe my opinion might change if we started doing stuff like that. But we did longer sessions when you came to visit last year, and I just ate that shit up. That was so fun. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was because we hadn't done it. Like, we. It was our first time actually being in person. Like, the session I have planned for you guys in person in the next few weeks, which. Our podcast will actually come out after that trip, which is gonna be wild. [00:39:03] Speaker A: Yeah, we're gonna have to record some. Some backlog. [00:39:06] Speaker B: We'll record in person. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:39:08] Speaker B: Wouldn't it? What if we did in person? [00:39:10] Speaker A: It's gonna be so much harder to edit. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we're good. I'm not doing that. But nonetheless, I. Yeah, it's just. It's a lot. It's. It's a ton to work with. And you shouldn't be, like, stuck just because people tell you to play a different class and just because one person at the table is like, uh, you're not religious enough to do this. That's bullshit. That's Dm. Like, D and D is the most gatekeeping gamer community on the planet. That doesn't need to be another tick on their fucking record. It's just so bad. [00:39:41] Speaker A: What did the comments say? [00:39:43] Speaker B: Uh, let's look at some comments here. And someone's like, is this normal behavior from the DM? Dude's like, not at all. This sounds like a terrible situation. It seems like the DM has it out for you for some reason. I would be wary of it getting worse. Someone's like, it's not even normal behavior for an average human. DM has issues. My guess is that the DM is religious and dislikes atheists. I can't think of any other remotely rational explanation for this bizarre rule. And someone talked about, I met a guy once that ran a game where everyone is a christian cleric, and they went around and hunted wizards. He was very religious IRl, and it was strange hearing him describe his game. I guess to each their own, that would be. [00:40:16] Speaker A: He wanted to recreate the crusades dog. [00:40:20] Speaker B: This man is a fucking crusader dog. Andres Brevik over there. [00:40:24] Speaker A: I just like it for the history. [00:40:26] Speaker B: Also Anders Breivik or whatever fucking awful person. Kayla, don't look them up. But, yeah, disgusting with the fucking crusader nerd. Get out of here. [00:40:40] Speaker A: Thank you all so much for joining us on this week's episode. I hope you got bingo. I actually don't know if I'm gonna have. It's gonna be a generic bingo card, so I don't know if there's actually, like, a winning thing just from today's episode. But whoever gets bingo, you get street cred. [00:40:59] Speaker B: Just a little thing. Bingo cards require you to have multiple versions of the same card. [00:41:08] Speaker A: I think I'm gonna throw up, actually. [00:41:11] Speaker B: So, yeah, hopefully you got bingo today. Awesome. DM's awesome. We could even make a bingo card. I love it. I'm deciding this for you. We could even make a bingo card that's like, our. Hell no. Our mannerisms and things that we say. Nah, that'd be mean. [00:41:26] Speaker A: In the same way that I ask Jeff to add random, like, sound effects. He asked me to just make social media content on a whim. [00:41:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How does that feel, Kayla? It doesn't feel great. It hurts. [00:41:40] Speaker A: It hurts so much. I haven't posted on TikTok in so long. I'm going to be mass recording some videos for you guys soon, and we'll. [00:41:46] Speaker B: Have in person videos coming out soon. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Yes. [00:41:48] Speaker B: So that'll be interesting. [00:41:49] Speaker A: You'll actually be able to see Jeff's face on our social media for once. And not just mine. I know I'm very pretty to look at, but, you know, Jeff also has a beard. [00:42:00] Speaker B: All right, finish the fucking podcast. [00:42:02] Speaker A: If you have a story you would like for us to share and overanalyze and talk about our personal lives over, send us an email to talesfromthetabletop. Podmail.com. Talesfromthetabletop. Podmail.com. Find us on social media. We use Twitter, we use TikTok. We use. Not Pinterest. We use Instagram and Facebook. [00:42:28] Speaker B: Pinterest, what would we put on Pinterest? Gayla? [00:42:30] Speaker A: I would just pin inspirational pictures of people with horns and different D 20 artistic pictures of D 20s with smoke behind them and on, like, a velvet tabletop and stuff. [00:42:46] Speaker B: Just this mood, just aesthetics. [00:42:48] Speaker A: Yeah, just aesthetics. It would be nothing in terms of, like, what the podcast actually is. We are tales from the TT on Twitter, and we are tales from the tabletop pod on everywhere else. Please follow us. We post a little bit of bonus content there for you guys. We do memes and behind the scenes content trying to do it. So every Friday we have something, at least behind the scenes for us. Getting Jeff to send me pictures of his messy desk has been tough, though. [00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah, you got one. That's all you get. [00:43:18] Speaker A: That's all you guys. [00:43:19] Speaker B: You get cat pics, you get packs, hits, the piff sometimes. Yep. [00:43:24] Speaker A: Pictures of Jeff's cats, pictures of me. Just me saying funny things to you guys. This week has been a lot of fun. I'm hoping to, you know, we're trying to get into a good spot so eventually we can pitch our podcast to a network. Once we get on a network, oh, boy. Things are going to ramp up. [00:43:45] Speaker B: Or not. Don't expect the quality to change. [00:43:48] Speaker A: I think our quality is actually pretty high compared to other podcasts of a similar size. [00:43:53] Speaker B: That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. [00:43:56] Speaker A: You ever hear a podcast on their third? It's a very popular podcast with, like, 100 episodes. You go back and listen to, like, their third episode. That shit is garbage. [00:44:06] Speaker B: Oh, my God. It sounds like they're gargling marbles the entire time. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Yeah, go back and listen to MBMbam's first episode. I fucking dare you. Thank you guys so much for joining us. I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun talking. [00:44:18] Speaker B: To Jeff and talking to you, Kayla. Don't talk to me for another week. Bye, guys. [00:44:23] Speaker A: Bye. [00:44:24] Speaker B: It's so great seeing you. [00:44:25] Speaker A: Bye. Fuck you. Fuck you, Jeff. [00:44:35] Speaker B: Ow. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Ow. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Right on your stomach. [00:44:38] Speaker A: Gargles I'm hungry. I haven't eaten today.