[00:00:31] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to Tales from the Tabletop.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Hey, bitches, what's up?
[00:00:38] Speaker A: I am your cutest DM Kayla Williams.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: You were mixing it up every time. I don't know what to do anymore. And I'm the forever DM jeff. How's everyone doing?
[00:00:46] Speaker A: I gotta keep you on your toes, Jeffrey.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Exactly how else will I be able to edit this and think that there's like some kind of consistency to this podcast, but there's nothing. I love it.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: No consistency at all. So it's out.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah, the podcast finally is out. We finally dropped it a little bit of housekeeping. We recorded those episodes that have been out, the first three episodes probably, what was it, june and July or something?
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Months in advance.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: So now it is November.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: It is my birth week.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: It is your birth week, yes. And today is my anniversary. We love to see it.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Everything happens in November. Anything that's worth happening.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: All the good things happen in November.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Thanksgiving, my birth.
That's about it.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: That's it. Nothing else. Okay.
But yeah, we're back. We haven't done this in a while, so bear with us. We've heard a lot of you guys'feedback, which is awesome. We love feedback. There's an awesome little email address. You can send some feedback to Tales from
[email protected]. We didn't have that set up on the first episode, so I had to cut and paste you saying it later on. So we're professionals.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: We're so professional, dude.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: We are really good at this whole podcasting thing. But yeah, we've heard you feedback. We're going to work on a little bit of stuff, but we're always glad to hear more. If you have anything, just go ahead and email us there or DM us on our stuff. We're doing this right at the top, but we'll definitely do it at the end as well.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: But yeah, it's really exciting. I was really nervous. Jeff messaged me and he was like, what if we just drop it now? And I was like, yeah, okay.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: I felt like Halloween was the perfect time to release a quote unquote horror podcast.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: It ended up being so good, and the title and everything was so perfect. It was a little weird releasing them because we didn't get any feedback for the first three episodes, right? Because we just kind of recorded those and we were like, what are we doing? Oh, is this okay? What direction do we want to go? And now I feel like we have a much more solid plan. So it was a little cringey being like, okay, well, the second episode is out, but I can't do anything different. And it had been long enough where I'd forgotten what I said.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: You forgot all the stories you said.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: It was like I was actually listening to a podcast. I was like, I fucking said that?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Wow. These stories are fucking crazy. People did that?
[00:03:10] Speaker A: That's insane, bro.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: I kind of love the simplicity of that. Just like, going back and be like, wait, this is pretty good. This is a good podcast.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah. We've got no more caught up for us now, so I'm going to have to unfortunately remember everything I say.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And it'll haunt you for however long it takes to help us out. So as you can tell, we're doing things on Tuesdays. It kind of just happened that way. So we might stick with Tuesdays for a while, but that's a lot of housekeeping stuff. Let's listen to some stories.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: All right, so ladies first.
I actually picked a short one this week. Shocker. I know.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Literally every week since the first episode, you were like, yeah, I'm going to do a shorter one. And it always ends up being the.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Longest story because something about reading a shorter story just doesn't feel as fulfilling for me.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah. If I can see the comments as soon as I look at the page, then I'm like, wait, this is too short.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Also, I'm so sorry to everybody who wanted to hear the update from that episode. One story, I no longer have it. I could not tell you where it is.
A lot of people were coming up to me and they're like, hey, I can't wait to hear the update to that story. I definitely want to hear what the DM had to say. I guess you and me will never know.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: No, it's probably for the best. I mean, considering how much of a train wreck it was. I can't know. Honestly, I'm glad that that story has ended. In our eyes, it probably hasn't never coming back.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Today we have a brand new story.
This one is an Am I the asshole? Post it's from Temp anonymous three three.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: I do love pulling from all these different sources. Just like, am I the asshole? Is it from a different subreddit?
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Or it's from am I the asshole? There's also, like, Tabletop or DND horror stories. There's Am I the devil? Which is like, reposted. Am I the asshole? Post it's a little bit.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: It just gets worse. Like, am I the devil? If it's like, oh, wait, no, you're more than an asshole.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Usually the Am I the devil posts are posted by somebody else who screen grabbed the original post and was like, look at this fucking guy.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: What is this world we live in?
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Some of them have to be rage bait. That's just it. How could you be so unself aware? But I also feel like I know people like that.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: So you say it's rage bait. Do you mean, like, people are purposely difficult in DND settings just so they can post a story on Reddit later.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Or no, they lie on the Internet.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: For fun, like you and well, yeah, lie. Well, I don't lie. I tell the truth every D D session.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: I definitely am prepared for tonight's session.
Okay, this one's called Am I the Asshole? For not letting this girl join our DND group. Feel like it sums it up right there. We can already kind of guess what's going to happen.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I feel like he's probably going to be the asshole because his excuse is, oh, she cried like the girl from the last episode we posted.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: It is so much worse, my friend.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: This happened a few years ago, but it's important to what happened to me earlier. I know this girl, late 20s. We'll call her Melody. We were coworkers a few years back and we have some mutual friends since we're both gamers. Recently I started seeing this guy who is very into playing poker, blackjack, and other card games. We're nothing serious yet. It's very new. He invited me to game night, but I'm not exactly the casino card game type, so I asked around to see who can teach me. One of our mutual friends said that Melody is actually very into poker and blackjack in other games. She actually used to play with a group regularly and is pretty good. Our friend says that he thinks she counts cards, quote unquote, whatever that means.
How do you not know what card counting is?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: So it goes from blackjack in poker to DND?
[00:07:08] Speaker A: No. So this is kind of like what happened today and then they'll tell like the D D part comes in later. So it's a little bit of a revenge story.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: So we'll get there. We'll get yeah. I don't I genuinely don't know how you don't know what counting cards is.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: I mean, look, you live in Chicago, so of course you understand what counting cards.
You're the criminal, man. You're the fucking criminal capital of the world, okay? Of course you know, you are part of the mafia. It's confirmed here right now. I'm probably going to be forced to edit it.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: So I reached out to her, but she laughed at me and told me no. When I asked why, she said it was because I wouldn't let her play D D. She said I was an asshole for, quote, unquote, excluding her.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: I'm part of A-D-D group with my co workers. We've been playing together for years. When Melody was working with us, I told her about the group one day because she wanted to hang out, but it was game night. A few days later, she asked if she can join. Per our rules, unless you are formally invited by a veteran member who is also willing to mentor you, you can't join.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: So I told her that that's an interesting rule. I get it, okay? I've learned DMing with you guys and just DMing in general how much people want to play. As soon as they find out that you're a DM, there's like people that will come out of the woodworks that you didn't even know knew what a tabletop RPG was that will beg you to DM. I kind of get that. But at the same time. I don't know. There just seems weird to me that you're like, it is an invite only kind of club. Fuck you.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: I hate the word veteran member because obviously, if you're a new person, it is a lot easier to have someone mentor you. And I get it that a lot of the times, it's a lot of work to kind of help somebody learn from zero. So I think in that sense, that their time should still be respected because people will literally pay people to be a DM.
You put in a lot of work, and the players would put on a lot of work to teach you. If you're learning from zero, I feel.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Like it also relies on the DM. If you're not good from example, we've done, like three or four different systems. Well, actually, we've done a lot more systems than that, and you guys typically understand it fairly well. First session, of course, as things go on, like we're learning with this new campaign we started, we're learning the system together, like, as a DM and as players. And that kind of envelops the story a little bit. We've done Monster of the Week, and we're able to do a session, multiple sessions right after we learned it. Like a week after we learned it, because we go week by week basis or we've done, like, the Pokemon Five E thing. If a DM is not good at explaining the rules, that's just a bad DM. It's a bad example of what to expect from this campaign. If you're expecting your players, of course I understand you're pissed off and you don't want to deal with new players and have to reteach every two weeks. You should be willing to if you're not a good teacher. I don't know.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: You really just said, if you suck, just say that.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: If you suck, say that.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: So that no, if the DM sucks, be honest, girly.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I don't know the idea of a veteran player versus, like, if you're a bad DM, you're a bad DM. If you can't teach players a new system, if you're not giving a helping hand to a player, excluding them because they're new, you're a bad DM.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: I see that point. But you also have to think about kind of certain people will take advantage of you too, though, if you're like, their mentor and teaching them how to play. A lot of the times well, maybe not a lot of the times, but there are those people out there who kind of take advantage of that and make you, like, the keeper of their character sheet. And they'll be like, Well, I don't know. What does it say? I don't know. What's my strength modifier? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they're not actually playing the game in a logistical way. They're kind of just role playing. And even then, a lot of the times, new players role playing is not.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Good because they're scared yeah, I get that. I think maybe because I see the example you're giving, because we do have a player in our campaign that for most of the Fifth Edition campaign we did, they were just like, what's my character sheet say? And they weren't really relying on their own skills. Eventually that faded away, and they were able to do that kind of stuff.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: But bless their heart.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, bless their heart. We love you still if you listen. But either way, we still love you. Well, if you don't listen, fuck you. No, I'm just kidding.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah, fuck you.
Yeah. I think all that to say we're coming at it from a very reasonable perspective.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: That's because we're reasonable. DMs this person's.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Fucking whack. So they say they rejected her, and then they go on to say that I told her that I don't think DND is the game for her. She can barely handle understanding how her paycheck is calculated. And DND requires a lot of calculations and is heavy on memory.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: All right, this is all out of pocket.
This is all so bad.
That is beyond gaming with this person. You just dislike the person.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Haven't you ever heard of lying? Just lie.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Why the fuck would you lie? Bro, you don't have to because you got to realize you still have to go to work with this motherfucker the.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Next day, you said, I just think you're a dumb bitch, and I really don't want to play with you stupid.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: As fuck, and I don't want to deal with your stupidity. Thanks.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: I just think you're fucking you could come at it from so many other ways, right? You could be like, I don't really want to be a mentor to anybody right now, because I just want to focus on playing the game. I feel like that would be so much more valid, and they probably would have understood, but you were just like, no, I think you're stupid. D. D has so many calculations.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Like, if you don't understand look, the majority of my campaign does not know how to do math, so raise his hand. I'm not gonna just yeah, raise your hand if you can't do the math.
I'm like, Jesus Christ. Maybe I played too much Yu GI oh growing up because you had to calculate life points and shit like that. But anyways, I don't just that is way too personal, and that is beyond you. I don't want to teach you it's. You a dumb bitch. I don't want to have to deal with you asking what two plus two is. Sorry.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: It's so fucking funny because they say that she literally counts cards when she plays poker.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: There better be only four cards.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: And they are like, It's just so many calculations. My brain is so big. You can't possibly fathom how many calculations.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Counting cards is not easy.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: It's not hard or not hard? Fuck.
It's not easy. There's also, like, risk calculations. You have to think of in your own head as well. And the fact that Op didn't know what card counting is makes me think that they're dumb. This movie is stupid. You're stupid.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: What? Just because I don't understand Lord of the Rings or Inception does not mean I'm stupid.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Okay, she was pretty upset, but I held my ground and suggested she asked someone else to mentor her, but she never found anyone else, so she never got to join. And then she found a different job a few months later.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Wait, what? They made her quit?
[00:14:45] Speaker A: I don't think they made her quit.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Okay, but if you're not even feeling welcomed by your coworkers, I would probably because they're like, you dumb bitch. You can't even calculate your paycheck. That is absolutely, 100% their fault.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Understanding the IRS has to do with not being able to play Dungeons.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: And do you know how to do your taxes? No. Then you can't play Dungeons and Dragons.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Impossible. Oh, you didn't select zero instead of one? You can't play with us, girl.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Well, sorry, girl.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: So coming back today. She is holding that grudge against me and refuses to help me. She even told me to, quote, unquote, have fun on your date, sarcastically and hung up, as she should.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Know what, queen.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Why the fuck should she help you if this you wouldn't help her. That's so silly.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: I think we came to this meta realization on the second episode where you realized that, damn, the people that come to Reddit are usually in the wrong.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, this one doesn't come across as rage bait just because it seems a little grounded. And they were trying to be like, no, I was reasonable. I just didn't think D and D was the game for her.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: So it's an am I the asshole post where he's just like, am I an asshole for doing being an asshole? And it's very clear that I'm the asshole, but can someone give me validation and tell me that I'm not?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: They really don't think that they are the asshole, and that's the funniest part to me.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: And they're trying to get validation for being a shitty person, and it's God.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Hold on. I need to adjust my dogs.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: For anybody wondering, we're both recording under blankets because we don't have I have hardwood floors, and so does Jeff.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Until we get a professional sound studio like you said you had at your fucking library.
Yeah, no, it's not happening. So we record under dog blankets until we actually get we're going to keep.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Recording under our comforters. There is an edit. Oh, they go, fine. I'm an asshole. You can all shut up now.
And for the record, I'm a woman. I looked up counting cards, and it's nothing more than adding and subtracting values of cards. It ain't nothing special. So stop trying to make it seem like she's some fucking genius. End post.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Holy fuck. The rage that's gotta be the best.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Fucking edit I've ever read.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: They didn't get the validation they were desiring on Reddit and were immediately just.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Like, fuck you, fuck you.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Fuck all of you.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: People in the comments were assuming that it was a guy because of the amount of misogyny coming off of the post. Internalized misogyny is so real. And the fact that they tried to downplay card counting is so fucking funny.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: It's just adding and subtracting.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Kind of like Dungeons and Dragons bitch.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
What? Calculations in Dungeons and Dragons are more complicated than adding and subtracting.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: It's funny too, because it came out a year ago and DND Beyond definitely existed.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: DND beyond existed like ten years ago, man.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: What the oh, yeah, because even they said a few years ago is when they turned them down for playing DND.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, they're the asshole. They absolutely deserve all the hate that came towards them. Or not. You know what? Don't go to Reddit if you don't expect people to disagree with you.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: I would highly recommend reading the comments.
It's very validating. I'm the type of person I have to read the comments on everything I'm like before the video is even over half the time I'm in the comments. Like, what's the vibe? What are we all saying? I need an opinion I can attach to.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Isn't it just adding and subtracting a bunch of low two digit numbers? There's an exact comment. It says that oh, I love that.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: It's so funny. And then someone was like, dear God, I forgot the basic multiplication and division.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: That was great. Oh, I didn't realize this, being a Muppet fan, but this is from user Kermit the Scott. I love it. Great username. I 100% already love this story. So question for DMs. This is for you, Kayla, and for me. Just us. No one.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Just us.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Have you ever made an NPC so universally hated you couldn't use them anymore? I'm going to start with you. I know there's a whole post here, but I have a lot of NPCs. This is so that have just been I'll let you start because I've had a lot of fucking characters that I've introduced you guys to.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: I haven't really made too many NPCs. A lot of the one shots I've made for you guys, I've typically tried to keep it pretty contained. But I'd say the PC I made that you guys hated the most, well, I don't know. Everything I do is universally loved and adored.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I don't know what it's like.
You did a good job of making us all hate ourselves.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: That's so true.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: For something that we didn't even do in one of your one shots.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah, so one of my one shots that I think is in my opinion, from what I've heard, it's your guys'favorite that I've done. Yeah, it was all like, conceived in my mind's eye. I threw you guys in, like, a dungeon. But basically I don't even remember what his name was. I think it was Robbie.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: I played I called him a different name completely.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: You called him Red, I think, because so it was a memory loss. One shot. Everybody lost their memories. They were trying to figure it out. They were slowly getting their memories trickled back to them. And I was playing this character that was, like, kind of a red herring. He's being specifically suspicious.
And to spoil it for everybody, jeff's character didn't trust Robbie at all because.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: I was forced to play a barbarian. I say forced, but you gave us a number, and I guessed barbarian. Having just played a barbarian the week.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Before, I had all of the characters that I made on, like, a number scale, and I was like, okay, roll a D four, and we'll see who you get. And Jeff rolled the barbarian. I was like, you did this to yourself.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I literally played a barbarian the week before. I was so upset.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: And so the character was very suspicious. And then you guys kind of caught on that he was the one who trapped you in this magical world of your memories.
And it turned out he did it on accident because you guys had left him to die in the real world. So he cast a spell that trapped all of you guys in this memory realm.
You guys were like, yeah, we're the good guys. This guy's fucking evil. And then you realize that you guys were all, like, dicks to him. And I gave them memories specifically of them being mean to him.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: So you made the PCs universally hated. You didn't make any NPCs universally hated.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah. My favorite thing is to make the PCs hated.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Make us all question ourselves.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Right? Because I know my players like to play heroes. We don't really do evil campaigns like that. And so, because you like to play heroes, I thought it'd be so gut wrenching to kind of make you because everybody thinks they're know.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Of course they do.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: What was the line? I think one of our players asked because they had found out that Robbie's mom had died. And that was the whole reason he wanted to, was because I had been making you guys roll for memories to see what you remembered. And she was like, Can I roll to see if I remember Robbie's mom's name? And I had her roll. She rolled well, and I was like, yeah, you can remember? You can remember not fucking asking him? So you don't know her name?
[00:22:31] Speaker B: You never.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Oh, she was devastated. It was so great. I think everybody hated me at the end of that.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Why would you do this to us?
A lot of my villains are very well hated for good reasons. Okay? I want it from you. Who's your least favorite villain that I've created? Like, that you've hated and Detested?
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Fucking fedora, man.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Oh, wait. Was fedora, man. Why can I remember fedora, man. Which one was fedora, man?
[00:23:01] Speaker A: I don't know his name. I just know how he made me feel.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: What was it? The guy that was like a little by lady?
[00:23:07] Speaker A: He was the dwarf who was like, malady. He wore a fedora, and I cut his hands off.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Look, that was a purposefully, hated character because it was all the stereotypes that people just grossed out by. Just like, the Malady guy that has the free hugs at the con sign even though they've banned it in the last ten years. He's like, I'm going to sneak this in here. They can't mess with me if it's on my hoodie. Like, fucking yeah, they can. Yeah, that was a good one. I forgot you cut off his hands. There was a lot of fucked up, but I liked Loki.
The best murder you've ever committed. So, yeah, Malady guy purposely hated. I didn't use it's. Not that I couldn't use them anymore. I just didn't because you guys fucking.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: I fucking cut his hands off, and then I cut his head off. And then he came back to life. And then I cut his head off again.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, he did come back to life later on. It was great.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: He was a good like, I was so pissed. And then he cast a spell on my character that made their intelligence like, one.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Oh, God, we've done so much in my campaigns. Now it's all coming back to me. I have to look at my DM notes. I'm like, who is the fucking oh, okay. When I first started DMing for Fifth Edition a few years ago, I made this character who, long story short, was supposed to lie to the party the entire time for what I thought were good plot reasons. They were adventuring together and eventually, hopefully, be redeemed. Yeah, that never happened. First time, my players immediately cast him out after learning the truth, then tried to kill him when he reappeared later.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Get his ass.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Get his ass. Fuck that guy.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Second time, I played this guy, and I toned him down significantly from his kind of dickish attitude. This time, a completely different set of people were immediately suspicious of him and conspired to ditch this guy as soon as possible. Holy fuck. We're learning that it's very hard to make a hated NPC conspicuous. Like, goddamn.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to see what is toning down was the first rendition him, like, twirling his little mustache, being like.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: And then the second edition was like, the mustache is gone, but he has a goatee.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: An evil looking goatee.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: The third time, I put him in the game again with a new set of people. Initially, they didn't really have any thoughts about him at all, but within, like, two sessions, they were at his throat for reasons I just don't really understand.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: That's so fucking funny.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: I love it's. Just like a play test for multiple groups of people. And they're all like, you fucking they're.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: All, I fucking hate this guy. Fuck this guy, dude.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Like, you're wanting him to be a terrible person. You're wanting him to lie to the party and everyone fucking caught onto it real quick.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: My thing is my favorite thing to do if I have a sneaky NPC that's infiltrated the party, you have to have someone in on it. I think that's what I did.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: We did a good job of having a player character infiltrate the party on our first season. Like Flynn was a spy the entire time, but then just gave up on being a spy because they're like, wait, I'm seeing a lot of fucked up shit from this side. So that was a fun reveal. I was like, oh shit, I don't know what you guys are going to do to her.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: And it's so interesting because we had been through so much together already. There's ways to do this character correctly. And I think it sounds like they might be DMing in a space where it's like there's a rotating door of people that doesn't sound like they are just like all his friends. Right?
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: You got to know your players a little bit better because I can't throw shit at you that's even remotely suspicious because your character is always going to.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Be like, I'm alert now.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: I stab him with my knife. That's also a gun. And then I shoot him.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: No, I didn't. Homebrew. That class this time. Not with you.
I kind of like that idea that you have where you're like, a player needs to be in on it.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It makes it easier though.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I think we've talked about DND being just this collaborative storytelling. So why are you taking the burden on alone?
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Exactly?
[00:27:27] Speaker B: There's a huge difference between starting DMs and DMs that have been doing it for a while. And you start to realize that the stuff you come up with will never be as good as what the players come up with. You'll come up with an incredible story. It'll be well written and everything like that. But what your players do in that world is always going to be better.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Especially if I'm playing.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, okay. There's a certain dynamic that switches once you switch that off and you start being like, I know everything too. They are very helpful and they will help they know just as much.
It'll make your DMing so much better.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: And for the most part, your players want to succeed and be good at what they're doing.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: If you have a player that's just playing it like a board game and is just trying to win every time, that's not interesting. You have to fucking ditch that player. I'm sorry. If it's your fucking significant other asshole boyfriend who you're like, I think it's.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: A good idea if it's your asshole boyfriend.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Everyone likes my boyfriend outside of DND, but he's a piece. Of shit in DND. I didn't know this was going to happen. Bye, babe.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And break up with him.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Well, okay.
I think if they're great well, this isn't a fucking relationship show, but if they're great at everything else but the DND, yeah. Break up with them.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: It's a deal breaker for me. It's a no from me, dog. Send him through the trap door.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: The full context here is that he was the personal bodyguard of a caravan master's daughter. The guy was their employer and was very secretive and mysterious and, of course, protective of her, naturally, which I thought would play well with the overarching themes of mystery and intrigue in the game, but ultimately just led him to being enemy number one, who was either the target of physical violence or needed to be removed from their path yesterday. So hated was this man. When one of the parties with this experience encountered an NPC with the same name, they almost flipped the table because they were ready to metagame an encounter just to ice him before he was even able to speak or be described to them naturally. I can't even use his name anymore. Anyone have any stories like that?
[00:29:43] Speaker A: That's wild.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: That's wow. Okay. Fucking Christ. Kermit, I'm so sorry.
You tried so hard. Honestly, in the end, it didn't matter.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining us for today's exciting episode.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: We love to see it. We're back and we're listening to your feedback. We love it.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Thanks to everybody who's listened so far. It's been such overwhelmingly positive on our end. For all our friends and family who have been listening, hopefully we get some randos in there. I'm going to start advertising a bit more.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised. Like, I looked at Spotify and we have five stars from multiple reviewers, and I'm like, Kayla, did you just make a bunch of different accounts?
[00:30:30] Speaker A: Hey, Shish, we said we weren't going to talk about that.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Oh, shit. Okay. Oh, never mind.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: That was me and my 20 Spotify accounts are going to leave.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: That's a lot of money because I don't think you can vote in free Spotify, so good. Goddamn.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Goddamn. Yeah. So if you break it up to where you get Spotify Duo or Spotify family, it ends up being cheaper amongst the 20 accounts.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: So there you go, guys. Start your own podcast and upvote yourself.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Exactly.
It's been fantastic, though. I'm happy to be recording again, excited to be back here with Jeff. We're going to keep going, and we're going to be spreading ourselves out a little bit more amongst social media. So TikTok YouTube the like. We just got to get the logistics ironed out for that.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: We already have some behind the scenes footage of our fucking little setup that's just so atrocious, but it's charming. It's got a little bit of charm once we actually have a full studio set up. I'm going to miss my blanket over my head.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I won't.
If you would like to share your story with us, your TTRPG horror story, please send us an email at
[email protected]. Again. That is Tales from
[email protected].
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Or if you hated us and you.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Really disagree with anything, send us death threats. That's also the email you can send.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: It to, but please just the email, because if it's anything else, I'm going to be worried.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, just sensitive, okay?
[00:32:07] Speaker B: I can't handle it.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: He's so sensitive, guys, please be nice to him. I'm actually the only one who reads the emails, so that's why I can handle the death threats.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm too nervous because I'm like, oh, great, what's going to happen? What am I going to see? Today is the day we get sent our addresses in the email.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: I keep Jeff on his toes. Enough already with my death threats. Okay? So give me some ideas to that email. In the future, we are planning on having some special guests on as well, so we have that to look forward.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of experienced DMs we've been in contact with or just unexperienced that are just like, we really like the show and we have a horror story, so we'll see what they bring to the table. I'm excited to get a few people talking with us so we can all just enjoy this wonderful world in this positive, positive world of DND. No strings attached, no mathematician, no complicated.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Math, no card counting, no nothing. Just the morality police.
All right, guys, once again, I am the cutest DM in your life, Kayla.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Williams, and I am still forever DMing. Please help. I'm trapped. I am in a dungeon and Kayla won't let me out.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: But bye, guys.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: You just hear chains and like, oh.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: The wolf is me.
