[00:00:33] Speaker A: What is up, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Tales from the Tabletop. I am your forever DM. Jeff Lenter.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: And I am your sickest DM. Kayla Williams.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Yay. You may have noticed that we are a week late, but you know it's all Kayla's fault.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: If you have anyone to blame, not my fault.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: We told you not to lick the seats on a Chicago subway, but here you are.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: But they're so colorful.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah. They look like literal lollipops. It's crazy.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Obligatory apology for sorry I'm sick, sorry I was sick. Sorry I sound like shit.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Take a shot for every cliche we do in this podcast. That all podcasters do.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: We got to get them all out of the way now. I didn't think it would happen so soon.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: We're already episode five, man. We've been doing this for not a long time. If you look at the consistency, we're basically experts. We're basically experts. We know everything. We're still in our fucking blanket for it. It's experts, but yeah. So we have been doing a ton of work. You may have seen us if you've seen us on social media and stuff like that. We'd love to hear about it, but yeah, we've been pumping out so much, and Kayla is just doing an incredible job. Even though she was dying, she's still been doing really good work with all this social media shit. So if you see us out there and if you're coming from there, hey, nice. Welcome.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: How's it going?
[00:01:56] Speaker A: You enjoy the podcast?
[00:01:57] Speaker B: It's all me.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's all Kayla. I don't do shit. I only edit, so, you know, editing is hard, though. Yeah. To each their own.
All right, so we're going to get into this first story here. I am so excited because these I like the idea of a long form campaign, like, where you've been playing with a group of people for years, and you could just have characters resurface.
I think a lot of DMs fall into not being able to come up with more voices. So recently, I had a voice that everyone was very familiar with in the last session of our campaign, and everyone's like, oh, it's this.
I'm just not I don't have any other voices.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Jeff has three voices. Okay. He has sniffling snobby little goblin.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's me.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: He has an old New Yorker man. Hey vogue and Woman.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yep. Woman is just a higher pitched version of my own voice. It's like, a little bit softer, and I can't really do it here, but.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a woman.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Hi, it's me, woman character.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I'm like, yeah, that's a lady.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: I'm not going to take offense to not being able to do Woman, but I can practice, I guess you're going to see me in the shower. Well, hopefully you don't see me in the shower, but you're going to hear the fucking oh, my God repeating over and over, just practicing my female voices. But honestly, that's like a good. No, fuck it. DM tip of the episode. Practice your woman voice in the mirror.
If you're feminine, practice your masculine voice. Like easy.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I think when I DM, I typically don't do voices all that often because I'm like, I cannot keep up with it.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: You can't keep track of your voices.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: I think last time I did it, I was doing a voice and I was like, all right, that's what it sounds like. I'm going to talk normally now.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: You just give a little preview of what the voice is and then you're like, okay, that's it.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: And get it in your head, guys.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Oh, God, that works a lot. That actually works so well. And I'm stealing that.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, appreciate it.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: I'm no more voices from me.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: If you do a voice that's like, hurting you, but it sounds awesome, you can just be like, all right, phoning it in. They sound like that.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: And that just happened a few times.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: And then you can occasionally hit people in the face of saying something out of pocket in the voice and then it's funnier.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Easily. This story today is posted by user imaginary underscore draft underscore 13. It's on the RPG horror Stories subreddit.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Reading usernames is so funny to me because these are things that were never meant to be read aloud, ever.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Exactly. They're like, oh God, I already saw I'm sorry. I looked the first sentence, I saw a grammatical error and I almost had a Kayla moment where I just it's.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Always funny when it happens to somebody else.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah, whatever. The title of this is new DM made my character from the previous campaign into a washed up loser and hers into a legendary hero. Off the bat, I love the idea of hilarious. Like, we are all playing together, but fuck you. I'm the DM. So my character is the best character. I'm the main character.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: I've been seeing all these TikTok memes about the DM insert character and it's like, yeah, this door is actually unpickable so your rogue can't get in. But you know who can get in? They're like who? Jeffrey. He skateboards down the hallway coolie. And does a kick flip and then kicks in the door with his awesome powers.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: I feel like you're calling me out. Look, I did insert myself into the campaign, but that's because I ran out of characters and I really wanted my cat in the campaign.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Honestly, best character. I don't think you are annoying about your NPCs. We force them to come with us. I think one of our favorite NPCs that my player character actually ended up marrying, she was never supposed to join you guys.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, honestly, I had her as well. I technically had her as the cleric just because you guys were a very unbalanced party. And then she was supposed to disappear and never come back. But then it was just like, oh, okay.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Everybody loves her.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: I used my feminine voice and everyone fell in love with her. Oh, no.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: I have been part of a four year long campaign which I really enjoyed. That's it. That's the one that fucking broke me for a second looking at it. Enjoyed it's.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Not so fucking easy, is it?
[00:06:45] Speaker A: There were three other players on the table in the DM who was really amazing, just like me. My character was a fighter who had become addicted to a drug which had ragelike effects with a few other buffs. But he had started to lose his mind towards the endgame. The entire arc of my character had been to conquer his addiction and give up on the drug. And after the final session, I had said that he would go to be treated for the addiction before marrying one of the NPCs.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: That's really nice.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: That's a really sweet and roundabout story.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: But that's very well rounded. Like, their arc came to an end and it's not quite finished. So if you wanted to do some extra little epilogue stuff, you could or revisit it later. That's really sweet.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Oh, they will, trust me. But the thing that gets me, that's a hard subject to broach because you're like, okay, let's just add drugs into the campaign. See, I don't mind killing children, but when it comes to DMing, yeah, I mean, everyone has a knee jerk reaction to children dying, even if you don't want kids.
But yeah, it's just like the idea of an innocent just falling. You're like, oh, well, fuck, I'm going to immediately want to jump on this. But that's also a very dangerous subject to roach as well. So it is very interesting that they dove into the drug aspect because I've introduced drugs.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I wonder if they've experienced with it in their own lives and they were trying to, in a safe environment, explore that narrative. Not like assuming their life or whatever. But I feel like a lot of people do that. Yeah.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. It is very scary to think that a lot of the characters you play and a lot of the things you do in a DND campaign are kind of like you venting your life out and trying to make sense of your own thoughts and feelings, which is I think we mentioned this in a previous episode. DND can be very therapeutic. Like, you can sort through things that you didn't realize were a problem.
Maybe even if you're not conscientiously making that decision, they're just like, boom.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that DND is just another art form of storytelling. And I feel like writers have been doing this since forever. Like, people who make plays, people who write books, people who write poetry, they're just exploring different facets of the human psyche. And although DND isn't always that deep, it is a fun way to safely explore these topics and kind of attack them from an angle you may not have thought of in your own know, I personally play neutral good a lot of the times, like, good leaning and, like, characters who have their own sense of moral justice. My character, Cambria, she killed a lot of people. She killed a lot of people.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah. The most of the campaign, you were in a war.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: She didn't even fucking think twice about it. Her character style was very much like, I know what is good, and if anybody is bad trying to get in the way of that, then some people don't deserve to live. And that's cool for the most part.
She would try to assess the situation before she went in guns blazing, but she would also go guns blazing. And it never burnt her. Never.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Oh, no. Yeah.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Never.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Why would it? Everything you did was perfectly fine and within your character's boundaries. Why would it?
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, she's happy.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: She's happy. She was frozen for 200 years, but she's happy now. Anyways anyways, the DM wanted the new campaign to be in a completely different world. And one of the players, Helen, offered to DM a short game set 20 years in future. In her short game, she decided that instead of getting treated, my character had started taking the drug again, had tried oh, God.
Had tried to have sexual relations with the NPC who's supposed to marry and her character had kicked his ass and had now married the said NPC. Not only that, my character now lived in the slums and was feral, while hers was one of the legendary heroes. And somehow the rest of the party had been completely indifferent of how my character ended up.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: What?
[00:10:56] Speaker A: That is so fucked. Like, already. Just like, no, you completely ruined the relationship you were building as players in the campaign just because no, why and.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Without talking to that person first is fucking crazy.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: You don't have control over your player characters. I'm sorry. As much as you want to. If you start eliciting control to the aspect of you controlling everything that the players do, it's no longer a fun game for anyone. And people might be too afraid to.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Tell you, but I feel like that could have been cool if they tackled it from, like, oh, what if we did, like, an alternate universe type of story where it's like, everything went wrong, like a what if situation. But to be like, no, this is canon now. Everything you work towards building this beautiful story that had a really optimistic ending, fuck you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you're controlling a character's fate, it does help to kind of bump into players like, hey, this is what's happening to your character.
We've made mistakes as DMs in the past, and I did make the end of the second season a thing that's, like, your characters are now. This is it for them.
But eventually you and I figured out how to make things work, and I did surprise you with the whole, oh, yeah, your character has been alive this whole time kind of thing, but I know, but at the same time, if you're deciding, it definitely helps to have players, like, getting in contact. And I've made this mistake, like I said, getting in contact with the players to be like, okay, well, what do you think would happen to your character in this situation? Even if you're narratively trying to build up a thing that's unexpected and gut wrenching and stuff like that? I feel like the only time a player character should die is when they are the ones that fucked it up. And I've changed my course since probably, like, episode one. But dice rolls should be the ones that determine the player rolling the dice should be the thing that determines what kills them. Or if I'm like combat, like combat obviously out of player's control. But when it comes to narrative stuff, if the person's like, I want my character to die or I want my character to go back to taking drugs.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems particularly sinister because I feel like you don't craft a story like that that's optimistic, unless well, I have no idea about them. But for me personally, I have experience with addiction in my family, and so the idea there's already this stigma around addicts, and I might be getting too deep into this. It may not even be that deep, but there's already a stigma around addicts that they're a lost cause. They can never get better, they'll never overcome this thing, and that they're tainted because they started in the first place. And to kind of reinforce that through her storytelling feels particularly nefarious.
Yeah, it feels icky. Like he had this whole thing set up where it was optimistic he was going to get better on his terms and he was going to get married. And it just doesn't make sense unless something happened, like they're trying to set up.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: If the player agrees to go with it, then yeah, that's fine. But you don't just decide, like, oh, 20 years. Obviously things change and I get to decide, no, that's not like you can control NPCs, not fucking players.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: And it doesn't make any sense for the like, the way they described it in the beginning is that the NPC was down to marry, but then all of a sudden he tries to get physical with her and she beats his ass. That doesn't make any sense in the context we were given originally, because why would they be down to marry them 1 minute and then kicking their ass the next minute? You just wanted to do that to rub salt in the wound.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: It's almost like the DM had a problem with the player. Interesting. I was pissed as I had been playing that character for four years. Not only me, others were surprised as well and even said that she was writing a fan fiction. She got pissed off and started saying how no one minded when the other DM told the story how he wanted. I was too annoyed. So I left the call. And apparently others also left the call after arguing further with her. She had tried to be controlling of others characters ever since she had joined, but no one besides me had a problem with it before this. I think it's just because of the negative treatment of their character, of being like, yo, I don't care what progress you are making with your DND campaign or whatever you were doing with your character's arc. That shit ain't going to fly here. That's kind of fucked up.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah, fuck you. You're the worst. I'm the best. Suck my dick.
My story is not as. Like, I felt like that last one was a little gut wrenching for me because it felt particularly icky. Mine is an am I the asshole? Posted to R DND. It says, am I the asshole? DM keeps killing my character off, and it is by do reputation, 5990. It's a fairly new one about three months ago. Hey guys, I've been having a bad experience in this current campaign I'm playing. I'm playing a now level eleven lizard folk cleric who I've really enjoyed playing so far. He meshes well with the party and his spells come in handy pretty often. My DM doesn't like him so much though. It's nothing extreme like banning spells or nerfing my abilities, but I'm beginning to notice a trend during combat.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Oh, no. Why are all the fucking villain like, why are they all targeting me? Oh.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: I don't understand why you play with people you have beef with.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah, what the fuck?
[00:17:09] Speaker B: In my personal opinion, if you don't.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Like someone, don't play with them. What the hell? Why would you force yourself?
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Character? Get over it. I feel like as a DM you need to just suck it up sometimes people are going to play annoying characters, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I feel like the second you just relax your butthole and let them have fun, you will start to have more fun yourself as a DM.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Second you stop. Parkering, you're fine.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Exactly. Like, loosen up, baby girl. Life isn't that serious. A few sessions ago, the party was fighting some undead in the crypts beneath an abandoned city. There was a group of zombies that swarmed us, led by a powerful skeleton warrior called Murham. The Murham was wreaking havoc amongst the party pretty equally, scoring some strong hits on the barbarian and monk. God, I miss playing a monk.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of things I miss about DND, like as we're playing through Dresden and stuff like that. But also there's so much more that Dresden can do. Like magic. I don't know. I'm biased. I like both.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: I'm very biased to five E because it was my first one and I favor it a lot. And I just love playing monks. Dude, if I could play a monk for the rest of my life, I think I'd be happy.
No thing just hit.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: No thing just hit multiple times.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: I used destroy undead to get rid of the zombies. And as soon as I did, things changed. The Murham started targeting only my cleric and nobody else. Even when the monk was more open, and even when the barbarian triggered an opportunity attack, the Murham only attacked me and ended up killing my character. And the party had to revive him. And when they casted revivify, the DM made them roll against a high DC to succeed, saying that my soul was far away from my body and not eager to return. Anyway, they rolled high and I came back.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: See, part of that makes sense. The idea that the DM switches who they're targeting to the cleric, because the cleric is obviously the most destructive force against them.
But the idea that the DM's like, fuck you, I'm going to change it to a high DC. Yeah, wait, hold on.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: I think the opportunity attack thing is bullshit because they should just take that. And if you're thinking about in terms of the rules of the game, this one makes sense. I'll give them that. Like, okay, whatever. The undead are going to attack the cleric, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But for the DM to be like, oh, your soul is far away from your body and not eager to return, isn't that up to the player character whether or not their soul wants to return?
[00:19:46] Speaker A: And the whole point of revivify is if it's within a minute, the guidelines of the Reviving are in the spell.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: You grab that shit and shove it back in their body. I don't fucking care.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: We're not rule junkies whatsoever. We are the opposite of that. But when it comes to spells and stuff like that and people start to debate and argue with that, and the DM is clearly making decision that they don't want that player to come back against what the spell says.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: I think changing rules to make it harder for the player characters only works if it makes a lot of sense. Narratively. I think the DM is held to different standards that the players are, so they should be sticking to the rules. And if the players are like, oh, but this would be cool, then yes, bend them. But you yourself can't make things harder. Unless the players aren't having fun with how easy the game is. And even then, it's your fault for planning an easy campaign.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah, make it more difficult. Increase the HP.
One of my budies was telling me at work, I was trying to think of what could happen with a level 20 campaign and how you can make that more interesting versus, oh, we all are fighting gods and blah, blah, blah. My budy was just like, Add zeros. I'm like, oh, okay. Instead of this thing having 200 HP it now has 2000 or like some crazy shit like that just to make things a little bit more difficult. Or like instead of rolling plus five, it's plus 50.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: I think it's also funny to do the reverse of that, of like they are these godlike beings, and you have to make them roll. I think the McElroy brothers did something like this where they have to roll to look normal.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Oh my God, that is such a good idea.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: So, like, you're holding a can and you're like this super strength barbarian, and you have to roll not to fucking crush it in your hands because it's so weak, because they do an undercover thing where they're just civilians. I think that would be so interesting.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. I love that.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Okay, now it gets a little bit spicier. So that first one was a little bit more realistic, and now it gets a little bit spicy.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Let's hear the spicy.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: After that, there were some more combats where the enemies grouped up to only attack my cleric, ignoring the rest of the party members. I got frustrated about this, so I talked with the DM, and she said that she's just role playing the enemies in a fair way. She said that reasonable enemies would only target the Healer and take them down.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Hmm, I get that. Here's the thing. The way it looks, at least just looking at from a DM perspective, it almost seems like all these things are connected. Like all the enemies they're facing are connected. Maybe it's not. But if there's a Big Baddie who's sending all these people after them and they realize that one person in the party is stronger or doing way more than anyone else, it would make sense that most of the enemies would just try and target that person.
Then you would just have to change your tactics a little bit.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: My thing is like, yes, maybe they will target the Healer, but wouldn't they want to target the people doing the most damage to them? It doesn't matter if you kill the Healer if you're just going to die before you get to them.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Maybe it's because I play MMOs and shit like that and like wow. Arenas where you're focusing the Healer or whatever, whoever has the keeping people alive aspect.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: And in my mind, you have to think of the intelligence of these creatures as well.
Is every single enemy you encounter going to be able to suss out that the Healer is doing the most?
[00:23:30] Speaker A: But maybe there's one person that just is smart enough to decide that, and they go, okay, here Dumb, Murlocks whatever. Or God. I mean, wow, dumb whatever. Goblins here is a picture of who you need to attack.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe they don't specify that everything's connected in here, but I see your point that maybe the Big Bad is kind of like masterminding it. That would make a little bit more sense. But they told her that they felt singled out, and she just laughed it off. Next combat, a wizard killed my character. Again, this brings us to the most recent session, where a fight against The Monk's story arc boss ended up with me dead. The boss only targeted me once again.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Oh, fuck off.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: He got revived for the third time and is reconsidering being with the party. Now, if he keeps dying over and over again, what is the reason to stay and continue on this journey? Am I wrong in thinking this, that I'm being targeted?
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Talk. This might be the only am I the asshole post that's not them ultimately being the asshole.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: I know you judged them too soon, Jeffrey.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Look, look, I'm just going I was like, okay, this kind of makes sense, and I was on the DM side for a little bit, but the idea that the character isn't even involved with this story, they just happened.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: The monk's boss. Why wouldn't it just target the monk?
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Yeah. What the fuck? Obviously, they're going to target the monk. This is just yeah. No, that is a fucking nightmare.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: There's no context to it, though.
It seems like they were type of misfit adventuring party that was smushed together and they're just traveling. I could understand if that the Cleric was an important person to The Monk and that they wanted to hurt them, but they didn't say that anywhere in here.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Got you. I am looking at some comments, and there's people that are being rules. Lawyers are like the big thing, though, the DM is missing is it only makes sense right now for that undead to know what kind of damage and healing he can do. It's just, like, random. I don't know.
I was on the DM side. I get it. But that is fucking awful. Everything about your decision there was fucking terrible.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Where is the fun? I understand challenge, whatever, but it should only be challenging for the sake of fun. I feel like people forget that this is supposed to just be a game for fun.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: This is a game, bitch. Figure it out.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: I could understand if someone came to you and was like, I'm feeling frustrated over this, but it would make another player's experience bad. But it's like, no, it hurt nobody for you to just not blindly target the Cleric.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Exactly.
The fact that everyone notices that you're doing this means that there's some kind.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Of problem with it, and they're reviving him, like, three times. It's very lucky that his character hasn't just straight up died.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: I'm surprised they have revivify outside of the Cleric. That's pretty impressive.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes sense. It seems like this DM is, like, out to get him, though.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I tried. I tried to be on your side, brother. I tried to be the devil's advocate, but you're a piece of shit.
All right. Surprise, motherfuckers. I got one more. We're coming back.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: We're shaking it up. Someone told us our episodes were too short, and now we're lengthening them.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: We're lengthening in them with shorter stories, but they also breed discussion. This one is from user substantial Stay. Five zero forty six. The title of this story is Player Google's Enemy Stat block during Fight. As a DM, how would you respond? This kind of just says it all, but I like the context of it a little bit. For context, the player was a circle of the moon Druid and saw a swarm of sturges curious about what they do and how to beat them. He Googled their stat block to see how he can beat them most effectively, if they have weaknesses, et cetera. He argues that because he is a Druid and can turn into this creature, he should automatically know its stat block. He is able to know the stat blocks for other creatures he turns into. I was excited to throw this unknown creature at him and see how he would respond, and I was disappointed that he kind of just spoiled the reveal of its abilities for one motherfucker. Hold on. Just because you can transform into something does not mean you know every single thing about it.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Also, I feel this might be an unpopular DM opinion, but I feel like Druids that have the wild shape and shit like that, there should be a limit on what you can't just be like, I know what this is because I ran into it 20 years ago, or some bullshit. There needs to be some role.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: I think it would be very interesting narratively, too, that if the Druid didn't know everything about this creature, to kind of turn into them and copy what they're doing and kind of learn that way, like a trickle down effect that could be so much more interesting.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Hey, player, there's a better way to go about this motherfucker.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's like, oh, well, great, the surprise is ruined. But I feel like we don't necessarily have this problem in our own campaign because we have our player, Tony. He has been playing D, D for a long time, and he just kind of knows what monsters are when we send pictures of them in the chat. And so he technically knows what they are and what they can do, and he gets really excited. But he still role plays because he knows his character, doesn't know what they do, and he does a great job of that.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah, he specifically sent me a book of different monsters and stuff like that that I really enjoyed, that I used for the third season because powerful, crazy, fiendish, terrible creatures would be running around the world because of what you guys did in season two. And I liked that he gave this to me, and every time I would throw a monster up there, he's like, Motherfucker, I know what that is, you son of a bitch. Just seeing that reaction was. Like I like that. I don't mind people knowing what things are. Don't expect every player to be completely clueless like Kayla, but a little bit. Like, knowing a little bit, but not being like, oh, it's a werewolf in Zwek to Silver. Like, your character doesn't just know that. Or maybe if they do roll for it.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: I know everybody's like, wham, meta gaming, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But meta gaming wham?
[00:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: It'S annoying. It ruins the surprise for other players. I feel like I harp on this all the time, but it's like, what is fun?
It's got to be fun for the DM, too.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Yeah, to some people. Yeah, we've talked about that before, where the DM needs to enjoy what they're doing on top of the shit that you guys are doing, because the DM puts a lot of work into the world and preparation and stuff like that.
I don't think we've talked about this on the podcast, but how you structure a story. I don't know if it was, like, an elitist thing I mentioned early on, but I did talk about I want to talk about just the idea of planning your story, where it's like, okay, I plan events rather than locations, so it's easier to put an event in wherever the players go to versus this city has this. And that's how I first started doing it. Where I'm like, this city has this, when they walk into it. But it helped me a lot when I switched over to this. It doesn't matter where they are. If the setting kind of changes a little bit, it can still work. So another DM tip. Look at that. Two DM tips.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Wow, you guys are getting so many little nuggets today.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Little nuggets.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Jeff, you're so generous.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: I am great. It's almost Christmas, but yeah, I'm thankful for my knowledge.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: And speaking of Christmas, it reminds me of the fucking people who would love to ruin their fucking surprises. The people who go into the attic and look at what their Christmas present is before fucking Christmas happens.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Couldn't be me.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: I hate that so much. I'm like, Let me surprise you.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Look, when you're fucking 29 years old and you're looking through your presents, bitch, fucking something needs to change. I'm sorry. Something's got to give.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: I got my partner his gift early, and he's very much the like, well, you could just give it to me now. I'm like, Then what are you going to get on Christmas?
He's like, well, you already have it. Just give it to me. I'm like, no, it ruins the magic anticipation. If you had dessert every single day, it wouldn't taste good anymore. Let your players have a little bit of dessert as a creature. And I think the wild, shape thing is bullshit.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I know everything about a creature because I can transform into it. No, you just can become that thing. You can pick up on its senses. And stuff like that. But I'm aware the idea that you're transforming into any type of magical creature and then immediately know what's going to kill you is horseshit. Because you don't know what you're weak to. You don't know what like, motherfucker. You don't discover your allergies until you fucking get tested for that allergy.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: And those creatures sorry, I didn't know.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: I was going to shit my brains out every time I drank milk until I did it.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Oh, glad I waited for that one.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad you let me talk on that one.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Those creatures know how to do their shit is because they've been doing it since they were born. You grew up in this human, elf, whatever body druid you are. So you know all that shit. But it's like a giraffe is born and they don't know. Like, they can't even run right away.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: That begs the question, like, if you're transforming into something for the first time, are you even able to walk? You go from having two legs and you're going to be a giraffe. How the fuck do you know what you're doing?
[00:33:20] Speaker B: I think it makes sense if it's an older druid who's been like, wild, shifting, shaping more often, because that makes a lot of sense. I think that could be so interesting of like, you see a creature for the first time, like these weird little monster things, and you shift into it and all of a sudden you don't realize that it's got this weird anatomy that you don't know how to use. And that could be so interesting. Taking time, observing the creature, trying to figure it out. Like, maybe they capture one.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: I'm going to play a druid that preserves history by becoming like things that are extinct.
Ran into this. That would be such a cool idea, wouldn't it?
[00:34:04] Speaker B: That's so sick.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Look at that. We're geniuses. We can be players sometimes too.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Oh my god. And they work in a circus.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Yes. And they're like, oh, look, here's this dodo that is dead.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Or see the rare blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, no, this druid has traveled the world. When they hear that something is endangered and they learn everything they can. Oh my god, look at that.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Look at that. See, this is what happens when I'm at work. And this is why I carry around a little black notebook, because I have random ideas that pop into my head. Like, you know, I was talking about the idea of like, oh, Level 20. Everyone's like gods fighting each other. I had an idea of the Level 20 campaign where you're doing a heist against the gods. Of course you're like godlike powers at level 20, but you're still not a god. And I like the idea of just like I had this everyone look, if you're a DM and you have really cool ideas and want to embellish your stories in different ways, or you just like, oh, this would be really cool. Carrie, write it down. I'm in a position where I work. I can't have my phone out while I'm working, so that's why I write it down. But just like, make a little text document, like, oh, cool fucking idea. Boom, here it is. That's how I do my DMing, I'll be completely honest, is I listen to different types of media and I get ideas from that and I'm just like, oh, that would be really cool if I shifted this to be like this. Most stories and some of the best stories are just copied from other people.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, even if you don't have a group yet, you will find your people. The internet is so big and I thought I was never going to find a group that I meshed with. But then I met my friend who introduced me to Jeff, who introduced me to the whole party. It's just been great. And I feel like Jeff is such a great creative partner for me and we bounce ideas off each other all the time and it's just great. You will find your people, just put your ideas out on the internet and like minded people will find you.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Exactly. And your RPG horror stories so we can read them on the podcast, please.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: And then make your own podcast with your idea.
Keep it cycle.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: So in addition to this, in my campaign, I've given him some abilities that make him extra powerful. But I informed him I'm giving similar buffs to his enemies. I don't want him looking up the enemies, then getting annoyed that I've altered them. Some enemies, I look at what inspires them, then I change their abilities entirely to make them more unique or to fit a fun situation. What would you have done here? Should Druids be able to know stat blocks of beast enemies they've never turned into? I think yes. No. If they don't know the enemy. If they've never run into it. No. Fuck.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: If they've never turned into it before. Absolutely not.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Like, oh, yeah, I'm going to turn into it for the first time now and know everything about it. You don't just know how to run immediately.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: And I think the DM is well within his rights to change the stat blocks and make it more interesting.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: We homebrew everything.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: I'm looking at the comments and literally the same guy that commented on your story commented on this one too.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: I'm like, really?
[00:37:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Regular user, it seems.
What are the comments saying? What's the common opinion? What are we thinking?
[00:37:15] Speaker A: You say, hey, don't do that. Someone says, Basic social skills save the day.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Damn, that's crazy.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Someone's like you clearly expect too much from the type of people who play DND. All right, come on.
That is fucked up.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Let's take a step.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: We don't share his opinions on this podcast. Anyone can play in DND. Anyone can be creative. Anyone can. Even if you're uncomfortable, even if you have not the best social skills, you can be an exceptional DND player.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: There are certain personality types that just don't mesh, and it's all about finding your people. There are people out there who love to just play it strictly how it is. Book, text, that's the law, everything, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And if that is your type of fun, you can find people like that, I promise. But stop trying to make oil mix with water, because these two type of people, unless they make a compromise, it's not going to work.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Well, everyone, thank you for listening to our wonderful episode again. I know Kayla's gonna she actually I'm proud of you. You haven't said it the entire episode, but you can say it again now that I'm sick.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for putting up with my fucking froggy ass voice. Cut to all the coughs that Jeff edited out of this episode.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: I'm not doing that. For the love of God, I'm not doing that. I don't want to.
It's like giving oh, God, that's so weird. Can you imagine? Just like, someone like I'm going to that part of the episode only to listen to coughs over. You know what? Whatever you're into, man. Whatever.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Not with me.
Not to.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you again for following us and giving us we've got a lot of five star ratings on Spotify, and I am very surprised, and I appreciate all of you.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: We thought and only one of them is me.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Yeah, two of them are us. But the rest of you guys, you guys are all wonderful. We're also on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, although I don't think Google podcast is a thing anymore, but we're trying. We're distributing as much as we can. And for the people that are here, thank you. We appreciate it.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Kayla, talk about some of the wonderful stuff you've been doing for social media. I mentioned it very early on, but.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: In your sickness, you have been working in a fever. So I have a plan. I have scheduling all this good stuff. So you're going to be seeing us pop up a little bit more on social media.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Unfortunately for you.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Unfortunately for you. I think it's good, though. Jeff and I are going to post some behind the scenes stuff.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: If you wanted to see our wonderful studio setup, we already have that.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Just DMing tips.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: A lot of DMing tips. We had, like, two this episode. We had, like, three or four. I'm not trying to discount your opinions.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: I don't want to just post, like, blind promo for our podcast. It's going to be actual shit on our social media. So I'm excited for that next week. Can we talk about that?
[00:40:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we could talk about next week. We're going to be having a guest on the podcast.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Going to be exciting.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: We talked about it early on where we wanted to bring on guests that have their own stories, like DMs that have their own personal play experience and stuff like that. Obviously you wouldn't be a DM if you didn't have your own experiences. But still, I like the idea of just dragging in other voices to talk with us.
It's not going to be a consistent thing. We'll just be bringing people in occasionally, special episodes.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: We love to hear ourselves talk, but it's nice to break it up every now and then.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we got a lot of cool things in the pipes. Or what is it called?
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Locked and loaded. In the chamber.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: There you go. In the chamber. Boom. So you want to promote our social media?
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Twitter. TikTok instagram. YouTube. I think that's the main four we have.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: What are they on there?
[00:41:07] Speaker B: We are going to be Tales from the Tabletop Pod on all of those social medias. Twitter's a little bit different.
Twitter is Tales from the TT because someone took Tales from the Tabletop and Tales from the Tabletop Pod was too long. So we're a little bit different on that one. But everywhere else, Tales from the Tabletop Pod find us on your favorite social medias. We are re uploading our podcast to YouTube with you. Don't have to listen to the whole thing, but I worked really hard on a little graphic that plays during the YouTube videos. So if you want to see some of my artistic skills.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Yeah, we have a lot of closed captioning and like transcripts and stuff like that available. A lot of accessibility options that we're working on for people listening to the podcast and stuff like that. So a lot of cool things in the pipes. I'm excited.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Please check out our descriptions. They give a little tidbit. And you can also find our email in there to send your own tabletop horror stories to. It is
[email protected].
[email protected]. Send it there, we'll read it. If you want to put your name in it, we can.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: We'd love to hear your stories.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: It would be a lot of fun.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: It would be better to hear from you guys.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: Maybe eventually we'll tell our own.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Thank you for listening.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Thank you guys. Bye.
