Fandom of Fandoms Podcast
Fandom of Fandoms is a podcast that dives into the worlds that fans love most — from galaxies far, far away to magical schools, epic quests, and everything in between. Each episode spotlights a different fandom, exploring its history, what makes it special, and why people are so passionate about it. We’ll chat with real fans, share wild stories, and invite you to geek out with us, one fandom at a time.
Fandom of Fandoms Podcast
Roll For Initiative: The Guys Talk Dungeons & Dragons
Step into the enchanted realm of Dungeons & Dragons as we explore this beloved tabletop role-playing game with our resident Dungeon Master, Ben. What began as a niche hobby has evolved into a cultural phenomenon that continues to captivate players worldwide.
Ben guides us through the fundamentals of D&D—from character creation and dice mechanics to the three pillars of gameplay: role-playing, exploration, and combat. We discover how this game offers infinite possibilities compared to video games, as everything unfolds through the collaborative imagination of those gathered around the table.
The conversation takes unexpected turns as we discuss the cultural renaissance D&D has experienced in recent years, thanks in part to shows like Stranger Things and streaming sensations like Critical Role. Ben shares personal stories from his campaigns, including a memorable heist gone wrong and the challenges of improvising when players inevitably derail carefully laid plans.
Whether you're a seasoned player with shelves of painted miniatures or someone who's only heard of D&D through popular culture, this episode celebrates the enduring magic of collaborative storytelling and why, after over 50 years, people of all backgrounds continue to gather around tables, roll dice, and create unforgettable adventures together.
Links!
https://critrole.com/
https://www.youtube.com/dimension20show
https://www.instagram.com/dndspeak
https://www.instagram.com/thefantasticemporium
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All right. All right, gentlemen, welcome back to episode four, Phantom of Fandoms.
Speaker 3:Yes, we are. I was about to say episode three, but I forgot. We clarified that last time.
Speaker 2:I really hate it honestly, Like why don't they give a space to put a trailer on Buzzsprout or whatever it is that we're using? But yeah, that's, it is what it is, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, Nick, what have you been up to the last couple weeks?
Speaker 2:We're going to start off with me.
Speaker 3:Hold on. First of all, we've got to introduce our special guest.
Speaker 2:We've got a special guest today Chewy. I don't know if the camera can see him. Chewy's hanging out. Chewy's my dog Ben's going to watch him for the week while my family and I are on vacation. He's hanging out with us. If you see anything on the camera or hear anything that's weird going on on the microphones, that's going to be the reason why so there we go, there, you go On command.
Speaker 2:Appreciate that. So yeah, we got Chewy here as our special guest. You want me to talk about what I've been up to for the last week.
Speaker 1:Please do. I'm dying to know.
Speaker 2:Actually it's been two weeks, yeah. So last night I'll just start with that I went and saw Superman. Oh, yeah, so it is literally release day for Superman, as we're recording right now. So that's pretty awesome. But yeah, was able to go out and catch a 10 o'clock showing, which is kind of late for me. Now that I'm in my 30s, I feel like finishing something around midnight.
Speaker 2:I'm surprised I stayed awake for it. I do have some thoughts, but I want to keep this spoiler free because I know you guys are going to want to go and see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I'm gonna go this weekend um, I have.
Speaker 2:I have unpopular opinions, I think, because it is widely celebrated and loved and I'm not gonna say I don't hate it, I'm not, I'm gonna put it there, but it doesn't like it's got. If you look at rotten tomatoes, it is rated as like one of the top, if not the top, superhero movies. Uh, to come out ever. And I just don't think that it lives quite up to like I mean, it's good, but it's not like man, this changed my life, like I'm gonna remember this forever. Good, um, for me at least, but that's that's my opinion, I think. Uh, it's, it's very different. So you know it's.
Speaker 2:It is nothing like the schneider verse okay, well, that's, that might be a good thing, actually a lot of people feel that way but it's almost I I to to its detriment to me, because it's it plays like a satire somewhat in some ways, um, to me it's almost like you know. James gunn really wanted to make it into a uh, I don't know like it was. It kind of turned into the the 70s superman which you guys are familiar with right.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's kind of goofy right, yeah, a little bit, yeah, okay and it's, it's just a lighter tone in general and everything like even the coloring is probably, from what I've seen, too brighter and just like, yeah, yeah, for sure and that's a big thing.
Speaker 2:But like it, it's just, it's goofy. I'll wait like I want to hear your guys' thoughts once you actually go and see it, if you agree with me. But it is definitely very light on tone and I would, in my opinion, too light. But that's, that's just me and maybe that's because it's such a a one 80 from you know, the dark man of steel, to what we have here. But there are a lot of good things about it too.
Speaker 2:It is a lot of fun there are so many good parts to it that it's fun, it's enjoyable.
Speaker 1:Well, in the last 15 years we've only seen Superman in that dark tone, so it's probably kind of a weird, like yeah, jarring experience.
Speaker 2:Are either of you guys familiar with Superman and Lois the show, the streaming show? I jarring experience anyway. Are either of you guys familiar with superman and lois the the show streaming?
Speaker 1:show I've watched, like two episodes I think nothing for me.
Speaker 2:I know of it, but yeah, it's very good, at least I think so. I don't know what your opinion was of it, but I I really enjoyed it. That, to me, was a was like really, really solid superman. It's a lot different, though. That's like an older superman, so gotcha um, but yeah, so we don't have to live there.
Speaker 2:But yeah that's, that's what I did last night and then, uh, really, the last couple of weeks before that, not not a ton, just kind of hanging out, you know whatever. Um, lots of of things going on for my family during the summer and just we're went to the pool a lot. So that's been nice, gone to several pools actually, because that's been how we've spent most of our time during the summer. And yeah, what about you, michael? What?
Speaker 1:Michael, what have you been up to? Yeah Well, I just wanted to give an update on cause. I mentioned last episode that we're in the nesting phase.
Speaker 3:We're working on projects.
Speaker 1:Um, we've made no progress. So the baby room, the baby room is still full of boxes.
Speaker 3:Uh but.
Speaker 1:I did get a that uh hanging out church, uh volleyball, as always um avoiding the heat. So, yeah, good couple of weeks. What about you, ben?
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, I've told both of you guys, but yeah, I've been at the church, at my church, for like 40 hours this past week, probably like helping set up a new board and video system, and so that's been fun, exhausting at the same time, and just like it's a lot. But uh, yeah, looking forward to it, everything is sounding good so far and yeah, it's good, not as good as this podcast nothing sounds as good as this podcast.
Speaker 1:Believe me oh man.
Speaker 2:Well, today we are talking about dnd, dungeons and dragons, so that's kind of exciting. Um, I'll kind of kick us off. I guess, really, michael, we'll talk to you. Uh, well, I was just gonna introduce our topic, but, yeah, do we want to go ahead and hit and we'll go into the. To the intro why not? Sounds good, let's do it. Where's our, where's our intro music? There it is sounds pretty good. Welcome to fandom of fandoms, the show where every single episode, we are diving into a different fandom and talking to people who are passionate about it. I am one of your hosts, nick, and this is my co-host, ben, and our producer, michael. And uh, today we are talking about dungeons and dragons, so let's go ahead and dive into that. Uh, we'll start with michael, because we always like to start and see, like, what's the? What's the background that we all have in this? Michael, what's your background with dungeons and dragons? What do you know about it?
Speaker 1:my background with dungeons and dragons is stranger things yep I don't know why I'm laughing, I think just because we talked about it. We brought it up a couple times yeah, so it's just kind of like a funny joke now um doppelganger, doppelgangers, um demogorgon's a good guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly, exactly um, so anyway, yeah.
Speaker 1:So no, no history, no background. I was not into it as a kid watching Stranger Things it made it look like cool and fun and you know I could definitely feel the nostalgia you know for D&D, from that, from that show. But I have so many friends that are into it I mean, you guys are into it, friends from church are into it so I've been exposed, but I don't know any of the content.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you another question then. So, like, when you think of Dungeons, Dragons, what do you think of? Like what comes to mind for you? Not anything, or like what?
Speaker 1:No, I'm not joking, I think of Dungeons. Dragons, the two individual entities yeah like castle dungeons and then dragons, like that's literally all I can think of. So I have no context.
Speaker 2:Okay, we keep on exposing Michael to new. This is going to be the new show here where we just go and we talk about things that Michael doesn't know anything about. We're going to tell Michael about it. My background is I have played in Ben's group.
Speaker 2:He is our was well for me at least I've played in a few in a couple years, but he was our dungeon master, um and uh, yeah, so that's kind of my basic background of of what's going on. Like I've played, uh, we had a I don't even know how long was the game going on, for we had three, four um, our first, our first campaign was probably three and a half four years and then we started a second one, and that's kind of when you kind of phased out and we like transitioned ourselves into something else entirely.
Speaker 2:And now we're even on our third campaign with kind of that kind of that same group, but okay yeah, so I I've played, um, I'm pretty familiar with, with some of it, but I have nowhere near the amount of knowledge of lore and things that, uh, that ben does, and that's why he is our expert here tonight. Um, you know gonna be talking to us about the, the in the inner workings. How about that?
Speaker 3:of dungeons, expert. With an asterisk I mean again like dungeon mastered, though for many years now again like discount yourself. Okay, but if I'm, if you're expecting me to sit here and read off, like the spell, components of fireball, well, well, fireball's easy. But some of the other ones like, yeah, I'm not going to sit here and be able to do that.
Speaker 2:But well, yeah, I know enough. You're very familiar with it and you designed Encounters, so you are our expert, you are the most well-known expert in this room.
Speaker 3:So there you go, and again it's my chosen category to talk to you guys about, and again it's my chosen category to talk to you guys about. There we go, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, on that note, I mean, why don't we just kind of dive into, maybe, a fandom overview? So you know, nick and I let's say we're new to the fandom, as we always do. Yeah and yeah, take it away.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, so Dungeons Dragons is what's called a tabletop role-playing game. So it's a board game of some sort where, again, like the role playing comes into it, where you know, like you, the person, are expected to be a character yourself and like dive into it more than just like rolling a dice and seeing and like moving spaces on a board, like there's parts of that, but like outside of it there's like your personal component, where you are going to become part of the story, personal component, where you are going to become part of the story. Um, unlike like typical board games, there's one person who's kind of like the what the dungeon master, the game master, as some may call it instead, and they, um, like they're the ones who design the encounter, put everything together. There it is. I told you I was gonna talk again and again for those of you.
Speaker 2:The other elephant in the room, yeah, I got lightsabers and I posted on it on instagram. I wasn't. I meant to say something about it earlier now it's like interrupted. But now I feel awkward, not at least like getting it out and playing with it for a second right, that would be oh it's not gonna, oh it's off.
Speaker 3:I was gonna say yeah. I was gonna say, now you're gonna have to turn it on again. Yeah, I'm not gonna turn it on, we'll just leave it how it is but yeah, I got luke skywalker's lightsaber.
Speaker 2:We'll talk more about it later. That's fine, I'm gonna put that away.
Speaker 3:We'll close with that exactly.
Speaker 2:We'll close sorry, you were talking about just the, the basis of of dnd yeah, so yeah, and it's also so.
Speaker 3:Dungeons, dragons, also been around since like the 70s 1974, is what we got down here by uh, gary, is it?
Speaker 3:guy gags and dave arneson yep, yep, yeah, so they evolved it from other like it. They're like, uh, war games were really big back then, so, like you know, controlling factions and stuff like that. And then they kind of split it off into like what if you were playing just one person instead of like a whole army? And so that's kind of like where it originated. Um, yeah, we were talking about like the game master, again like kind of different from normal games, where they sit outside of the players and they aren't always a person in the game. There are all the other characters that aren't the player characters, which is like if we were playing right now, I would be the game master, you guys would be player characters, so you guys would only be in charge of yourselves, your own armor and inventory and actions that you want to take, that sort of thing, and I would kind of build out the world around you guys that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So then, okay, so world building. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about the format of the game?
Speaker 3:yeah, so, uh, the game itself takes place in I like to call it three different phases. There's the role playing phase, which is it's in the name and that's. You know, you're going to be in a town talking to someone trying to buy things, or you're going to be trying to get information from a character about whatever your quest is, or you know shakedowns, that sort of thing. Let's see, uh, let's see. Then you got the exploration and adventuring phase, which is, like you know, trying to unlock a door, open a chest, um, climb this building. You know very specific things like that and those where, like you know, get into some more of the rules as to what you can and can't do. And then there's the combat, which is it can take a while sometimes, but like my favorite part of the game okay, yeah, nice the combat, yeah, yeah which is when you get into like as a yeah, you're actually physically battling an enemy yeah, there's strategy and fun things involved with
Speaker 2:that you definitely get into into detail with that as well. That's, but that is I personally. That's. My favorite part is getting into a good encounter and having those those cool moments where you know you're playing this, there's different parts involved, but you got like you're role playing your character and everybody's being their character and trying to act in such a way that their character would act and uh, yeah, trying to to go through those, um, those combat scenarios as that character.
Speaker 1:So well, speaking of character, and so is there, because you said you kind of create your own are there parameters on what your character like? Like, could I be anything that's up to?
Speaker 3:Okay, so this is part of why I do like Dungeons, dragons and other tabletop RPGs, so much is. It's infinite, like the Game Master. Dungeon Master defines the world, so, like you could come to me and say whatever you wanted to be, and it would be up to me to say whether or not that would fit in the environment. I'm building.
Speaker 2:Or like, yeah, like I mean up to me to say whether or not that would fit in the environment I'm building. Or like, yeah, like I mean there's a lot of power for ben. Honestly, I mean again power.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how dare you um no, uh, so yeah, like there will be. Yeah, if you come to me and say you want to be like a time traveler from the like present day, like back in the other times, I can say no to that because it wouldn't fit for whatever reason.
Speaker 3:Or like I could like not want to define those rules about like what you do and don't know, and like like give you extra powers and stuff like that. Like I could say no, but like again, like there's. There's supposed to be a balance between like giving the player kind of like the freedom and some of the things that they want, but also making it work within the rules and like the world that that person is building yeah, because your, your world, has its own like context and limitations and whatever, and so you can't have a character that lives outside of.
Speaker 3:That sounds right yeah, and I mean, and you can, you absolutely can, if the dungeon master is okay with it, like, and they can come up with that story as to why they're there and what they're doing. But you know, again, it's, it's that balance of, like, the player character versus the dungeon masters, where, yeah, you don't want either party to be too controlling or too like strict, but you also want like the rules help bring the game together and yeah, yeah, very cool we're kind of going into what you were just asking about, like the.
Speaker 2:Could you be anything like there are some parameters like within the, so I just kind of give some background. There's been different editions of dungeons and dragons here, so currently they're on fifth edition, right?
Speaker 3:dnd one technically. Uh, what did they last year? They released a new rule set. New edition okay yeah, and there's some controversy around it, like some people love it, some people hate it, but that's been the story of every single edition, because the fifth edition came out in, I think, 2014, and, um, yeah, there's been some controversy as to whether or not people like that one over old ones and yeah, so it's all just personal preference. And again, like up to the dungeon master shoot.
Speaker 2:I would love to to pick your brain on that a little bit. We'll come back to that here in a minute, because I I wasn't even aware that the that the new edition uh had released. So there we go. That's something that I learned tonight, but I do know that that is, you know, the, the main classes and the types of characters that you can be and all that are kind of within the, the dungeon and dragon lore. There is kind of like I don't know how to put it like it's it's yeah and again.
Speaker 3:So a lot of that depends on. So there are different settings that like so wizards of the coast owns dungeons and dragons. So they have different like books that they publish that have different settings, different worlds that you can play in, like the. The raven loft is very gothic and dark, creepy. That's where strahd is and the strahd is a vampire lord ah yeah, and so, yeah, very dark and creepy.
Speaker 3:Then you've got forgotten realms, which is very classically classical fantasy. And then there's I mean, I can't remember ever on or uh, there's also like a very spacey sort of one, like just again like so different environments that you can play in, and of course, again the dungeon master can come up with their own yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Where would the demogorgon live?
Speaker 3:what environment classically, he's well, he doesn't okay, wow he looks at a different realm.
Speaker 2:Actually, yes, he is, he's a, he's a demigod, yeah he's a demigod.
Speaker 3:Um, so yeah, michael, not. He doesn't look anything like stranger things. First of all, he's a two-headed monster think of like two baboon heads on top of a very skinny, tall lizardy thing I was just thinking about that the other day oh my gosh good one.
Speaker 2:Oh my word, oh yeah, so yeah, and he's yeah like funny enough, michael, because my real intro into dungeons and dragons kind of came from stranger things as well, like that was where I think it brought it into the zeitgeist a lot, and and yeah it did.
Speaker 2:A lot of people were interested in it during that time. So, um, when I made my first character, when we played through this first campaign together, um, I was a warlock and as a warlock, you have a patron, um, and that's the patron god. Basically, that's where you get your powers from, and my patron was the demogorgon okay and the lore that I created for my character. So that was kind of.
Speaker 1:You know it's so funny because you mentioned like D&D coming into the zeitgeist. You know, so to speak, it's funny how in my adult years I've seen these really nerdy like kind of fringe fandoms, really honestly like becoming popular and becoming cool, you know, whereas I feel like when I was a kid like and maybe I'm just cynical- or I'm misremembering, but I feel like I remember kids getting bullied for like loving these types of things Absolutely, and now it's funny how the culture has shifted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like, ooh, you know, like something like Stranger Things, can make it popular and cool.
Speaker 2:We've got a geek culture, a nerd, nerd culture, whatever you want to call it, and that's it's. It's living up to that now in this culture. I would say, you know, it's funny, we, we really brought it up throughout the last several years, but it has kind of. Here we go chewy, here we go, dogs bothering. Michael's got an allergy so we're trying to keep the the dog away from michael a little bit thank you oh gosh, michael's so good at working this soundboard, I'll tell you what You're a master.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, yeah, but anyway. But I agree with you. It's yeah, culturally there's been this kind of shift.
Speaker 2:A little bit, yeah. So I'll be interested to see like what happens kind of moving forward. Is that still going to be the thing? Is there still going to be like this?
Speaker 3:I don't culture that nerd culture that's bringing things like dungeons and dragons and superheroes and all that stuff into. Yeah, I mean comics. Yeah, I was gonna say, like the past 10 years, comics and comic book characters have been so big and so cool for most people I mean largely because of the movies, but still like, yeah, liking those things is not nerdy anymore yeah, yeah, let's come back before we get too derailed.
Speaker 2:So I want to talk character building, since I kind of talked about my character a little bit. Um, could you talk to us a little bit about just the way that the character building process works?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean. So again, like uh depends on whatever world you're playing in. But but like, we'll just start with the basics, where you pick your race. So, are you going to be human? Are you going to be a little halfling or a gnome or an elf? Like, what sort of race do you want to be? And then there's, what class are you going to play?
Speaker 3:So those are like, there's like Nick said, he's a warlock, there's barbarians, there's wizards and sorcerers and paladins and clerics, and we can go into many, many more. And so you start to pick those things and you also pick your background. So, like, did your character come from nobility? Did your character like, have they been a street rat and like begging on the street or like pickpocketing or you know what? What were they doing before our story starts, sort of, and those sorts of things, kind of build out stats for your character. So you have, uh, strength, constitution, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence and charisma are your six stats. And like, yeah, so, depending on like your, your race, your, what you want to be like in terms of like a sword fighter or whatever, like you build out these stats and those help determine, like, when. So ultimately, we haven't talked about the dice at all, which the dice are a huge component and for our our youtube uh watchers, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Uh, we, we have a whole setup here on the table. So there we got, we have dice, we have some of the characters we have. It looks like a world, like map here. So anyway, sorry, keep talking. Yeah, no you're good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the dice we have like I said, we haven't talked about the dice like help determine the game and they add some, uh, randomness to the game which, like, some people might be frustrated by. But, at the same time, like like any game, you know, there's dice to roll or chance things that happen. And so, yeah, when you want to do something, you roll a dice and you add a modifier depending on, like, your stat. Like, if you're really strong and you're trying to break down a door, you get a bonus. If you're weak, though, you get like a negative to your role.
Speaker 3:And so then there's, like, what's the difficulty challenge, which is what the, the dungeon master, like, has in their mind or written down, like how hard it would be to do that thing. And so there's a number that you need to hit. Sometimes they share it with you, sometimes they don't depends on style, dungeon master, but like, yeah, like, if you're trying to break down this door and it has a difficulty of 20 and you roll a 17, you need to have at least a plus three to your strength to be able to do it, otherwise it doesn't open, like everyone's favorite subject, the math part of it, the numbers together yeah, yeah, some of us love it though.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's cool I this is.
Speaker 1:This is enjoyable because for me, like I'm not a writer, I don't know how to write characters, stories, but this kind of gives you an outlet to create a creative outlet to come up with these characters and kind of shape them how you want to.
Speaker 2:So I see the appeal already well, let's move on to our next segment here, but before we do that, let's take a quick break. And we're back from take a quick break and we're back from that really quick break to take Chewie outside so he could pee. It was wonderful, okay, no, let's go ahead and get back into it. We are in the why this fandom means so much to our guest, in this case Ben. Why don't you tell me, or tell us, I should say, why does Dungeons and Dragons mean so much to our guest, in this case ben? Why don't you tell me, or tell us, I should say, why does dungeons and dragons mean so much to you?
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 3:So I mean, like nick, you know that like I love board games in general and those are like one of my favorite things to do and talk about.
Speaker 3:And this takes it to like a level beyond, like a board game where, um, again, you just have so much flexibility and like it's infinite in terms of replayability and where you can go and what you can do, and uh, so there's like there's social aspects of it, it's cooperative, like people like to think that dungeon master is like the enemy sometimes, but the truth is like we're all working together to tell a story and so the dungeon master is just in charge of the conflict sometimes, and so it feels antagonistic but at the same time, like it's what makes the story. Um, yeah, so along with that like again, that's like you said, strategic stuff for me as like a dungeon master especially like there's creative outlets to it, where you know I'm coming up with the world and encounters and characters and stuff like that to populate it with, and so that like gives my brain like some of that creative outlet that I enjoy so much. So, yeah, a lot of that stuff definitely feeds into it.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Speaking of, you know cooperation and this is obviously a kind of like a community type game. You know what is the local Columbus D&D scene. Like you know, have you made any new friends through D&D? You know had connections with fellow fans, like kind of talk about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I don't know about like the D&D scene. I can tell you like, as far as I know, like it's it's like we were talking about earlier. It's big a lot of places right now, just in general, and among friend groups especially. Um, one of my favorite things to do, though, honestly, is to teach people the game and like to play with new players just because, again, like getting them into the rules and their characters. Seeing what they come up with and do is always just so fascinating. So I've definitely met some people through, like, um, our one friend, sam, who will probably be on a later episode. She loves for her birthdays to do a a one shot, which means, michael, that means, instead of a continued campaign, you're sitting down for just one session, okay so like a dedicated like three or four hours that like we're just gonna play this, this one story, this one part of the story.
Speaker 3:We're not gonna like keep going after that necessarily like so. It's a defined time which has its own perks and tricks to like make it work. But like I, through doing like her birthday one shots, I met like a ton of her uh, more like people outside of my normal friend group through her like and stuff like that. So there's a lot of fun things like that where you get to meet new people that's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sorry, no, go ahead no, I was just gonna say my first experience ever with dnd actually came from this, this idea of connection, because that's kind of what it is. So I had somebody that invited me and said like, hey, we've got a, a group that meets together. Do you want to come with us and play dnd? And I'm like, well, I've never played before, but you know, sure I'll come and I'll show up and kind of learn a little bit about it. That was my first experience. It was like kind of like a one-off thing. They had their own uh campaign going that I kind of just like jumped into and played a random character and it was mostly combat. It was fun just to kind of learn some of that and, um, have some fun with it a little bit. But that was my first like venture into was through that connection of just like people like they. They in general I would say most people that play dD want to get other people to come play D&D with them.
Speaker 3:That's the general idea. Yeah, and again, yeah. It gets hugely cooperative and social and like, yeah, you just want to bring people in, like it, and yeah. So what were?
Speaker 1:you going to say Michael, I was going to say so. Hearing you talk about that, I just had this idea pop in my head. Perhaps, if the podcast gets big enough, we should have a Phantom of Fandoms listeners. One shot, that'd be fun.
Speaker 2:Like meet up somewhere, do a D&D night for whoever, Because people are going to hear this and they're going to think wow, D&D sounds amazing.
Speaker 3:I want to try it out. So, yeah, yeah, if you're in the columbus area, you're interested, you want to join? Hit us up, uh, on our socials or through our email and we'll try to get something going I would love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like random people coming around to do like a one-shot campaign, that could be a good time. I know it'd be fun.
Speaker 1:Well, in your personal opinion, ben, you know what is. I mean, you've said some things but that resonate with you. But what do you think it is about D&D that resonates with adults so much? Because I think when people hear like Dungeons, dragons, fantasy, like it kind of sounds like, oh, maybe it's for kids, like I think that's kind of the natural thing you'd think. But yeah, why, as an adult, do you think like it just resonates so much?
Speaker 3:I think it's an outlet and especially like, if you're in like a weird funk like and depressive, it's an escape into a, a world on your own. Like again, like you can be someone else you can. Like you can be an eight foot tall goliath warrior like that can smash a rock with their bare hands. Like that's not something that you can get here. So, yeah, it's, it's something to escape to and and again, like for me, again especially the joint storytelling is just it's such a unique format that, like you don't really do anywhere else other than like a role playing game like this.
Speaker 2:Why that? Instead of like playing a video game, do you think Like? Do you think that it's mostly the same people that are into the, you know, dungeons and Dragons that are also getting that escape from playing like? Role playingplaying games as well, or do you think that there is a different thing going on there?
Speaker 3:I think it hits on some of the same things, but again like and you see it into some of the bigger, like mmos, like world of warcraft or even like final fantasy 14, like those were like yeah, like it's matt, like large groups of people and they can like kind of alter the story a little bit, but there's still like rigidity to it in that sense, whereas this, like it's completely reliant upon the people sitting around the table. You don't have to. There's no like console, there's no like developers that have pre-programmed things. Everything's happening live and like right here. So again, like it's it's all joint and you have no idea even the dungeon master has no idea where it's gonna go.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of reactions going on for that. Because you, you just yeah, no, absolutely I agree with you there, because you never know what's going to happen in a dnd session. It can go wherever the the group wants to take it.
Speaker 1:We have certainly had some oh yeah some instances of that in our group as well well, I think too you said, like the people around the table. That's what's attractive about it to me, because I'm kind of a people person, like I'm not really I'm not much into video games. Um, I know, with video games you can obviously play with other people and there's a lot of community there.
Speaker 3:But I think being in person, you know, around a table with other people, like that, that sounds attractive absolutely so yeah, and again, like, especially during the pandemic, like so we were, we had our game going before the pandemic and then it hit yeah and we tried. Like there was a huge boom right around then of online services to play Dungeons Dragons, we tried it once or twice. It relied on video cameras and shared screens and stuff like that for digital maps.
Speaker 2:I thought it was cool honestly.
Speaker 3:It is really cool For me. The thing I missed the most was just being around the table. Not to mention technical glitches and stuff like that that would get in the way and disrupt it being around the table. There's something special about it.
Speaker 1:Speaking of disruptive things, what is your biggest pet peeve as a dungeon master?
Speaker 2:You stole my question.
Speaker 3:I guess I should have labeled who's with who. That's all good, no, um, the problem that I usually run into is when a person isn't like invested in what's going on and again like because it is like a joint thing and you can just tell when someone's checked out, or like and that's how I got kicked out of the group no, but like but again, genuinely as and again, especially as the dungeon master, and think of it as, like you know, you're a teacher, nick, and, like you know, talking to students who are just like staring at something else and like, completely not like in your discussion or whatever, like that.
Speaker 3:It's just like one of those things we're like okay, like I feed off of you guys and like if I'm not getting something back, and like it takes away from the experience of not just me but the other players and, yeah, those that's and again like it's supposed to be a casual thing, so like there's there's boundaries to like figure out and and things to work with. And again like it's supposed to be a relaxing thing too, so you don't want to be super strict. I'm like, hey, no phones, we're gonna sit here and talk to each other and I might, I might do that.
Speaker 3:I mean, I feel like I'd be the type to be like, well and there are dungeon masters and people who run games who do that and it's just again like so, yeah, we're gonna talk about like, yeah, getting started in dungeons and dragons in general and like that's one of those things where, like, every table is going to be different, every group of people, like the dungeon master sets a lot of the tone, but at the same time, like all the players, like if they're super goofy and just want to go do the most random things possible, some people might not like that, like some people may want to go just kill stuff and like that's okay, that there's a space for that, and so it's just about finding that right balance in the right group of people and the table and so yeah, there's again like infinite possibilities, infinite types of groups and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:If you're doing a long-term game, that can definitely make a difference there, especially if you've got different members of the group that want to do different things and have those Right right, that's where I think some of the you can have some breakdowns, I guess in communication for sure, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So yeah, if you're out there and you've tried Dungeons Dragons once or twice and like it just wasn't right for some reason, then it might. It might have just been the people you're around and that's not to blame anybody, but like it, it takes the right dynamic for each person to figure out what's best for them yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like I keep on saying that word, but yeah I say it's true, I say for sure, for sure, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Uh like, that's right, like uh, it's our favorite word on fandom of fandoms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's give us um. So this is a good question here. I think it was michael's originally, but I think we took this and we're going to make it into a continuing segment when it comes to just any fandom, the elevator pitch okay, oh yeah if you were trying to convince somebody to get involved with dungeons and dragons, what's your quick, like two to three minute pitch that you would give to them?
Speaker 3:okay, yeah. So if you like just telling stories and just escaping from the real world and just like sitting around a table with a bunch of people and laughing and having just like the most interesting times, going places that you never would have imagined dungeons and dragons is for you. You don't have to get bogged a bunch of people and laughing and having just like the most interesting times and going places that you never would have imagined dungeons and dragons is for you. You don't have to get bogged down and like trying to learn the rules or like I don't know like you can make the most plain character. If that's what you want, you can be a human fighter with you, like the most basic stats or whatever like a human sounds very plain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in the dnd world?
Speaker 3:they absolutely are. When you can be something covered in fur or have horns and stuff like that, like yeah, it's pretty boring, but like they have their place. And if you are, if you play human out there, good for you, but you don't get dark vision, um thank you oh man which that's very much a dnd joke where whenever you like, the dungeon master says like you, so you enter a very dark cave. Every single person on the table says I had dark vision which means you can see like 30, 60 feet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really funny.
Speaker 3:Oh man, funny. So anyways, yeah, so if you are into that sort of thing like Dungeons and Dragons, absolutely can be for you and again, like a lot of it will be finding the right group of people and so you might have to.
Speaker 1:It might take some trial and error, but it's always worth a try. Well, so, yeah, that's great, yeah, um, if so, let's say someone's listening to this now and they think, like dang, I, I do want to try playing a game like how do you even get started? If you're a newbie or just you want to look into it more?
Speaker 3:yeah, the hardest part is finding a group. For sure, and I mean there are, there are apps out there for it. You can do it, like we were saying. Uh, roll 20 is an online platform where you can play it and you can find other people who play it on there, so you don't have to be physically in proximity with them. You can try it online and that might be a safer barrier for you. Um, yeah, there's.
Speaker 3:So it's finding a group is the biggest thing, and every group means a dungeon or game master because, like, really the dungeon, game master, it has to be the only one who, like, knows the rules. Everyone else should have a basic understanding of it, especially when it comes to their character. But, like, you can work a lot with the dungeon master, game master or whatever, without, like michael, we could play right now and you wouldn't necessarily need to pick up a rule book. It would just rely on me to know like I act like the computer in a video game, almost like, where I tell you what you can and can't do and, yeah, define some of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. What's your favorite just off the cuff? What's your favorite encounter scenario you've ever designed?
Speaker 3:Most recently we talked about one shots. And most recently, uh, the, the most. Yeah, I think I ran a one shot, maybe about a year ago. That was a city of doppelgangers, which doppelgangers are shapeshifters and they can, you know, like look like different people and things. Um, but the, the trick was like so these people were going to a city to figure out like what, something weird had happened.
Speaker 3:We don't need to get into all of it, but like so there were really only like 10 to 15 doppelgangers, but they were just constantly running around shape-shifting themselves. They're looking like different people, so that, like it seemed like it was a very busy town and like, yeah, like things were normal and stuff like that, but there was always something just like a little off about them.
Speaker 3:They would forget things or like yeah, like say things that were just odd for a person to say in general, because these are like monsters that aren't exactly humans and stuff like that like so yeah, like it was just fun to like try to figure out how that works and like try to give the characters like subtle clues to let them figure out that something weird was going on, but like not be so overt that they're like just going to pull their swords out immediately and just cut people's heads off, like hey some some groups are like that, anyway there are
Speaker 2:some groups like that oh, that's funny, that is great. Well, let's talk fandom culture. I mean, this is my personal favorite segment because we get to talk about, like, just some of the things that are outside of um, just like the understanding of the game, but like the bigger, wider fandom that exists here um, so I know there's a lot of like. I mean, so, so many people that play dnd, so many different accounts and things like that, talk to us about some of your, your favorites, I guess, when it comes to, yeah, the fandom culture yeah, so, um, the biggest for me is critical role.
Speaker 3:they're kind of like the they, they and dimension 20 are probably the most the biggest names in dungeons and dragons like out there in pop culture They've got.
Speaker 2:Critical.
Speaker 3:Role has their own animated show on Amazon. They have a second one coming out about their second campaign too, that I'm excited for.
Speaker 1:What is that show called?
Speaker 3:Legend of Vox Machina.
Speaker 2:Did they finish it or is there going to be another season? There's going to be another season coming out.
Speaker 3:They're supposed to announce soon when it's going to drop, drop, but they're also working on, like I said, their second campaign season as well.
Speaker 2:Gotta move on to the next one before you finish the first one. Hey, people are calling for it. Amazon gave him a contract. Why not like yeah, hey, I can't, I can't follow them. Yeah, I'm just waiting patiently, or impatient. Yeah, so the next season michael.
Speaker 3:these two uh uh, critical role and dimension 20 are what are called real play or live play streams, streamers where they record themselves sitting around a table with each other playing and so like yeah, like it's especially like during the pandemic gained a huge following.
Speaker 2:Like they were on.
Speaker 3:Twitch for a long time. Um yeah, um. So those, those are the big things out there, and there's plenty of other podcasts where people play. There are plenty of other live streams where people play. There are plenty of other live streams where people play and other and thousands of people go to watch them play and it's it's crazy but, like, also pretty cool because again you get to see that joint storytelling of different characters people come up with and yeah, well, I'm sure too, if you're a dm, you probably get a lot of inspiration from, like you know, watching these different game plays, and you know, yeah, I've ripped off a lot
Speaker 3:from other things I've watched and seen like, yeah, but you guys don't need to know that but, now the world knows yeah, it's fine, and I don't think there's a dungeon master out there who doesn't pull something from oh, I mean yeah that's for sure.
Speaker 2:The impressive part for ben is that he has actually watched so much of critical role. Uh, have you watched all?
Speaker 3:of it or just no. I I've kind of fell off halfway through campaign three, which they finished recently, just because I I got so far behind and then, like had to, I hit a gap where I like wasn't able to listen for a while and then when I tried to get back into it I was like I don't remember anything.
Speaker 2:So I like tried to start over and then that became a slog and yeah yeah, but no, I've listened to the first two campaigns at least twice each, so and, to give you an idea, each individual session that they do is like four hours long oh my god, there's a hundred episodes of each campaign at least. Yeah, I tried to start and I got a little bit into I can't remember which campaign I started with, um.
Speaker 2:I think I've listened to a couple of them and just like it's it's hard, like it's a, it's a long one to try to like, stay with the entire time and I'm a person that likes audiobooks too and like, does that sort of thing, and it's man it is.
Speaker 3:I mean, a huge part of it is for me with my job. At least when I started listening to it was my job was monotonous enough that I could like put something like that on and be able to pay attention to it while still working so it's just good background noise and good yeah, especially, especially when it gets into combat like you can like.
Speaker 3:combat can take a long time because each each round of combat, each person gets a turn during combat. That each round of people going around the table doing their action is supposed to be six seconds in real life, oh, and so, like that can like one round but that's like 10 minutes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, One round can take like 10 minutes or so because like people are like oh, could take like 10 minutes or so because, like people are like oh, I don't know what to do and so like right thinking and strategizing and stuff like that. So it takes a little bit of time. But like yeah, and so that's like definitely a good spot during those, those podcasts, where you can be like okay, I'm not entirely paying attention because I don't need to listen to their thought process necessarily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what about any anybody outside of critical role and uh, dimension 20 that you're, you know you want to highlight that has any kind of good content for? Yeah, for dnd.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, I follow a bunch of accounts on instagram that like are constantly giving me, um, just like inspiration and uh, I'm trying to make a one. There's like the wonder emporium or something like that, where someone who like is creating art and we'll tag them or something. But yeah, um, uh, they're creating like weapons and stuff like that, like for you to use in your game. Or there's one dnd speak I follow. That's like here are like six backgrounds to a story that you can like use as a launching point and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So like little things like that that are especially great for dms yeah yeah, I'm also super into like, as you can, if you're watching like miniatures in the game which aren't okay aren't required, a component you can play completely without them. But, like, for me, there's just such a cool part of like things they can go by and paint and like work on. So miniatures are huge for me and there's a bunch of people out there who's super into like painting them and like giving tutorials and how to paint them and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So wow, yeah, so these that you have here on the table, which, I'm sorry to our non-YouTube listeners, Come and listen on YouTube.
Speaker 2:I guess Watch us on.
Speaker 1:YouTube. So did you paint these? I did yes, oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go Round of applause for that Love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're very. It took a lot of practice but yeah, it's fun for me to just sit there and like again like I can put something on in the background and just do that.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that sounds like therapeutic. You know like I can see how it would be.
Speaker 2:I was, I was. They had a couple of different paint nights. I know that when I'm painting I would need a big canvas. This is the small little intricate details. I just get frustrated, yeah.
Speaker 3:For, for for reference in the game, when you're playing, especially with miniatures. One, a one by one inch square is supposed to be five feet, so again, like, okay, so like, these small guys are only about one inch wide and about an inch and a half tall or so, like so they're they're tiny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha nice, very cool. Um well, ben, do you have a clip for us to watch?
Speaker 3:I don't know, oh, um wow no, no, well, okay, well, I what I was gonna do and we'll see how this goes.
Speaker 2:Is so there's a I don't know? Oh Wow, I'm just kidding, oops, no well, okay.
Speaker 3:Well, what I was going to do and we'll see how this goes is so. There's a clip out there of Debra Ann Wall, who's big in the D&D scene, and Jon Barenthal, who you guys would know from Walking Dead, and he's the Punisher, and he's a big actor.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So they were on a show together and I think it's john barrenthal's podcast, but they're on a podcast and he was talking to her about dungeons and dragons and the. The clip is great and we'll link it, um, but it's like her talking about dnd to him and again, like very new to the whole world, and he had no idea. And she said to him like well, do you want to play? And he said I don't know, like I'd be interested sometime and she's like no, I mean like right now, and so that's something that we can do. So, like one of the things I was going to ask is michael, like if, like nix, played a couple different characters, but michael if you're going to play a character.
Speaker 3:Do you have any idea what you would want to be in general? Oh gosh, but like, and again this is this is me as a dm here to help you so like yeah, yeah, do you want to be more like a magic caster? Do you want to be, uh like, more of a, like physical, tough warrior? Do you want to as a mixture of both?
Speaker 1:I, I think I'd want to be a sorcerer and that's probably because my love of harry potter as an adult.
Speaker 3:Well, so here's the question. Okay, there's, there's three different magic classes there are sorcerers, which means you're born with magic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want that okay, well, because there's also wizards, where you learn magic like you.
Speaker 3:What's your nerd that's?
Speaker 2:harry potter, exactly that's what I was like. You're a wizard, michael.
Speaker 3:Um, no, um and then there are, yeah, warlocks which, as nick talked about, like get your gift, your magic from some other worldly being yeah, I, I want to be born with it. Okay, honestly great, yeah, so yeah you're a sorcerer okay, okay great, um, let's see, nick, where should we start?
Speaker 2:and again like this I didn't plan any of this, so you can see we're going I mean, I the only thing that I'm familiar with there you've got the map of water deep laying right there, so that's a so water deep in in forgotten realms.
Speaker 3:Fey run um is like the capital city, almost like it's the biggest city uh it's the new york of that world essentially. But obviously a little smaller Buildings aren't skyscrapers etc.
Speaker 2:But okay so let's see, I know, man.
Speaker 1:My adrenaline is pumping right now.
Speaker 3:Okay, this is going to be very similar to something that just happened in my actual game, but it'll be interesting to see how you go about this Again, so I will help you figure out what your character can and can't do, and I'm telling you what. I'm going to lean over and grab a d20 for you. The d20 is a 20-step diet and that'll help you determine if you succeed or fail at something oh sweet, I'm out there, all right all right for our non-youtube watchers.
Speaker 1:I've got the dice in my hand.
Speaker 3:Thanks for that update um okay, so you're out in market one day. It's a big bustling market. There are stalls everywhere.
Speaker 1:Can it be a farmer's market? Essentially it is.
Speaker 3:All markets in this world are essentially farmer's markets.
Speaker 1:Stalls everywhere.
Speaker 3:There's fruit and vegetables. There's people selling things they made like bags.
Speaker 1:Focaccia bread.
Speaker 3:Sure focaccia bread. You're the best type of dnd player. No, okay, so you're out in the stalls. What do you think you'd be looking for? And at a farmer's market? Focaccia bread I honestly.
Speaker 1:so I'm just gonna give a quick side note. My wife and I go to the worthington farmer's market every saturday. I mean religiously we go, and uh, we started walking there and now the weather's, you know, bearable, and there's a, there's a stand, they have focaccia bread. That's just unbelievable it's. We've gotten it multiple times and you know we're trying to kind of watch our diet now, you know, with the baby coming, but I've got a last few weeks, but Okay man.
Speaker 3:Well, here's the thing In this world.
Speaker 1:you don't need to worry about calories or carbs or anything like that, like craving right now. Oh my, what's it called? How do you say focaccia bread? Focaccia bread, like with a p pho, no pho focaccia.
Speaker 2:Have you never heard of focaccia bread? Okay is that really weird? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I guess it's kind of a trendy hipster thing, I guess, but like yeah you guys are always cooler than me, so I don't know anyways. Okay. So you're out looking for some focaccia bread, you're at a baker, um, and you're haggling with this guy. He's um mid-50s. He's a little bit, a little bit heavier, he's got, he's balding a little bit. All right, I can give this to you for three gold. What do you think? Heck, no.
Speaker 1:I'm giving you half. You didn't mean one and a half gold, no one. Half gold, half.
Speaker 2:He's going to cut it in half. I'll give you half.
Speaker 1:I'll give you one.
Speaker 3:This is what we do. You roll a persuasion check. What you're going to do is roll a d d20 uh sorcerers would have a high charisma so like you know, go ahead and roll, we'll see what you get. Here we go. I'm gonna say add two. Oh well, heck, you got an 18. So plus two puts you at a what's a non-natural or dirty 20, um. And so you finally relents all right, all right, it's a, it's days old anyway, so you can have it for a gold yeah.
Speaker 3:So as you get out your purse and you go to get your coin purse and you notice it's missing, Uh-oh. And you remember a couple minutes ago like someone bumped into you. So what do you?
Speaker 1:do I enact revenge? Okay, I'm going to find this person and their whole family. Wait what is Liam Neeson's monologue in Taken? You have a very particular set of skills yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay great Sorcerer skills. What do you do with the bread, though? Are you just going to take the bread? Oh, I'm going to eat it, well, but how are you going to pay for it?
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no, no, I'll come back for it. I'll ask them to hold it for me.
Speaker 3:So, okay, I'm going to have you roll a history check or an intelligence check to see if you can remember what this person looked like that bumped into you. Okay, all right, here we go. What'd you get? 15. 15. Pretty good, okay. So you seem to remember they stood out to you because they were what's? A tabaxi, a cat person, so like six foot tall humanoid figure, but with like fur and claws, and you know the face of a cat, and they this one particular look like a leopard, so like tannish, with spots and everything like that, and you don't see a ton of them around here.
Speaker 3:So it shouldn't be too hard to find. Okay, so what are you going to do? You're going to retrace your steps.
Speaker 1:Are you going to go ask some people?
Speaker 3:So I'm going to retrace my steps and as I'm going along, you know, if I pass a particular booth, a vendor, I'll say I'll ask them if they've seen that person and then until I kind of make my way back okay, so you start to take, uh, you retrace your steps and, like, this is one of the first stalls you stopped at because you were, you were looking for this focaccia bread but you go back to the place where around where you bumped into him, which is in front of a fruit stall, and um. So you lean over to talk to um the, the vendor there, and they're a lizard person, and um yeah you ask them? What do you ask them?
Speaker 1:I ask them is there a lizard person?
Speaker 2:right you speak in parcel, yeah, yeah amazing oh man, there are, there are language barriers in.
Speaker 3:Oh you say, yeah, this is something where we would get into your background like okay, would you have known that language or are you just saying something really insulting to this vendor and I? Didn't know it. Okay, so they point you down, like they happen to have a quick conversation with you, and they point you down an alleyway and they said I just saw them duck down there and you turn to look and this person you catch them out of the corner of your eye, go down an alley and they pull their hood up and just go around a corner.
Speaker 1:What's the move? I think at this point I would need to explore, as a sorcerer, what my, what spells or things I can cast, because if I had a freeze spell, I could freeze them in their tracks.
Speaker 3:I would do that. I like how you're making the wand movement Great.
Speaker 1:For our non-YouTube listeners. Yeah, there are plenty of ice-like spells.
Speaker 3:And again, my mind is going blank right now. But for the sake of it, let's roll and see if your spell is effective as you're trying to catch them right around the turn of the corner.
Speaker 1:All right, here goes my roll. Oh that doesn't look good. I got an eight. Eight, I got eight.
Speaker 3:Eight I got an eight yeah, and you'd have modifiers to add to it and stuff like that again, depending on stats, which we didn't take the time, clearly, to come up with, and stuff like that. But like this, one happens to miss and so they go around the corner and so like, okay, for now we'll stop, because we could again.
Speaker 3:This could go on, we could keep going on but like so, yeah, it's now you got to figure out what you're gonna do. You're gonna run after them. Are you gonna try to get people to help you? Like. So, again, like we've just barely scratched the surface of what you can do could go into combat if you got the person.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, that's what I want?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's right that's right. I can already tell you you're a murder hobo, aren't you?
Speaker 2:so murder.
Speaker 3:Hobos are people who just uh cut first.
Speaker 2:Ask questions later so he'd be a the fighter, or the yeah, what I was my second campaign there.
Speaker 3:Hulk smash everything Nice.
Speaker 1:All right, that was great, ben, that was great.
Speaker 3:That was barely anything but yes, like I said, no prep work.
Speaker 2:He's just going off the cuff man. That was good, Nice. Well, let's dive into a few more questions. I know Michael and I both took some time and sent you some questions beforehand that we kind of were considering asking you.
Speaker 2:I know, Michael's been asking some of them as we've been working our way through the episode here, but one of the ones that I was like really, I thought of this question like this is so good. I wonder if Ben's got a good response to it and it was if you could run a one-shot with characters from any fandom, who would be at your table?
Speaker 3:Dude, I like that. Yeah, so I saw, I saw this question and I had a long hard think about it and I'll tell you the first thing that come to mind is not that I want them around the table, but the cast of Always Sunny in Philadelphia just like we joke at it we joke at our table that like.
Speaker 3:That is essentially what happens every time and you were a part of it, like for a while they were running a scheme where they had an orphanage and they were using orphans to like scout things out and they were also trying to like that was wild, yeah, there there's a bunch that they used with like just trying to get business, and again like very shenanigan based and very like yeah, this is how we're gonna make money and stuff like that, like yeah, I felt like we were playing like a, like a simulation game where we were just trying to buy a property and have people work for us and run a business our
Speaker 3:underground spy network yeah, and again as a dean, as a dm, you can't ever prepare for stuff like this like that, like right never in my life did I think I'd be trying to figure out the logistics of running an orphanage for my party and like, yeah, what all that entails and yeah, so that's good yeah, um, but then the other cast that came to mind I think would be hilarious to be on the table with and I could see how each player would play, would be, um, not the cast, but the characters.
Speaker 2:How I met your mother I can see exactly how every character would play. Marshall would be funny, marshall would be funny.
Speaker 3:Ted would be way too rules lawyer-y but like you're okay with that. Uh, lily would just love everyone and everything and probably just like or she could go the opposite and just get bloodthirsty that could either or robin is probably also there yes barney is just going to be your classic bard, which bards and dnd michael are notoriously the uh, the wooers they're just there, they're just there to sleep around with any character that they can yeah that's funny what?
Speaker 2:okay, thank you michael, we should not give him access to the soundboard but honestly, I love it because I more, more sounds. Michael I, I am cheering you on while ben is trying to tear you down, but oh man that's good. Now, uh, another one that I was thinking too, and maybe this might be something that happened at the table that I was I was present for. But do you, do you have a really good nat 1 or nat 20 story?
Speaker 3:I think, my favorite for those of you that haven't played, maybe we should. Yeah, if you're not familiar.
Speaker 3:I'll let you, oh, okay, so yeah, again, when you roll the die to see what happens, it it's a 20 sided die. So 20 is the best you can do, so natural 20, a one is the worst you can do natural one. And so the 20s usually means that you're usually again up to the DM, up to what you're about to try to do, usually mean that you're going to succeed and usually, like the DM or whoever's going to embellish it and make it bigger than it would normally have been if you were just successful. So, like the one of the ones that I remember most is probably the first session that we had that went off the rails, where you guys were trying to track down someone who vandalized a bunch of things, a bunch of art, and you ended up at this guy's mansion the governor's mansion wasn't the governor, just just a noble, I was just a noble, yeah um, but like so okay, first of all, I had zero, like I did not have the, the floor plan to this hat, this mansion planned out or anything.
Speaker 3:And he was like, oh, we're gonna stake him out and we're gonna break in because, first of all, because first of all, they went up and they wanted to talk to him but it was like nine o'clock at night and they're like we demand to speak to this guy and the his guards are like no, like and so I remember parts of this story.
Speaker 2:So I I want to see what your memory of it, because I remember the like, the actual like what happened a little bit. Once we got inside it was chaotic, yeah, but yeah, so.
Speaker 3:So first of all like first of all, the whole party was mad that they weren't just gonna be allowed in to talk this guy and like no, like he's not gonna say he wants to talk to a bunch of strangers at nine o'clock at night when you're trying to interrogate him about a crime, like that's not something that happens, um, but anyway. So then they decide they're just gonna break in and like approach him and like restrain him and talk to him and try to get answers right away, and so they wait till like the pitch black of night. They watch the guards and so nick and one of the other party members split directions and go around different sides of the building and they go to just knock out the guards. Nick used a spell I believe was probably eldest.
Speaker 2:Blast. Yeah, because you were a warlock. It was a warlock, and that's a thing.
Speaker 3:By the way, eldridge blast warlock, that's what you do, yeah and then the other guy was a fighter and he had a shield that he threw at someone captain america style and both sweet both nick and this other guy rolled nat 20s on their hits no way so instead of just knocking out the guards.
Speaker 3:They killed them like murder yeah, again, they had, they didn't have the intention to, but within that 20s, just like, oh well, you straight up, like destroyed this person and so like again, just that whole night was just one of the catalysts for me, and like how much I clicked with dnd just because, again, like I had zero of this planned and like yeah yeah, you rely on the dice to tell so much of the story and just be like, oh well, that's obviously going to be successful and it's going to be like more than they intended because it's going to be funny and like we're going to have a good time with it and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, so that that whole night again, like just culminating, those two Nat 20s like get inside, like it was good.
Speaker 2:We were successful. We met our goal and interrogated the guy. I feel like it was even just, it wasn't I?
Speaker 3:think we were treating it like it was a major plot point. I think no.
Speaker 2:It was a side quest, absolutely, and we were like oh, this is a main guy, like this is really important stuff it was literally a town you're passing through and you heard that like, oh, somebody destroyed this stuff. You're like I'm gonna be part of that let me insert myself, I think our assumption was, ben wouldn't tell us that they destroyed this thing unless it was important. We need to go figure out what's going on here. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally get that. Just world building, yep, wow, that's awesome. Oh sorry, go ahead. No, you go ahead.
Speaker 3:No, I was just going to say that kind of answers. One of my other questions, which was like, have you had to scrap a whole session? Yeah, um, based off of, like, where the players went off the rails. I, I have learned as a dm that I do not need to over prepare, because anytime I over prepare something, I will sit there, like you, look at this map in front of you. I will sit there and figure out like you know, there's hundreds of buildings here.
Speaker 3:I would figure out, like, what 20 of them are, which is a lot, but like um and you guys would visit two of them maybe so like to sit there and over prepare. Yeah, there's some, there's some benefit to it, but at the same time like why should I put that much time and effort into figuring it out if you guys will never see it?
Speaker 2:yeah, what are you using to figure out, like, when it does go off the rails and to a place that you never even intended? I mean, are you trying to bring the, the players, back in, or are you? Are you just trying to make it up? And if you are making it up, like, how are you able to just like make up this story off the cuff if it's just completely away from what you intended?
Speaker 3:it to be. It really depends on the context, like if it is like a major plot point and I'm trying to get you guys there so that we can like proceed, then I will find a way to connect it. Yeah right, get you guys there so that we can like proceed. Um, then I will find a way to connect it. Yeah right, otherwise I'm all. I'm all here for the improv and just like seeing where you guys take it and yeah, it seems like there's a ton of improv like oh yeah throughout.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, that's cool absolutely yeah, I was.
Speaker 2:I actually put that, that question out on. Uh, so that question, I just asked you if anybody had like a good chaotic story that had to do with like just people, the way the dice rolled and what happened. Most chaotic thing that happened, I think I put it on threads, um, and somebody told me that they had a player roll multiple nat 20s and befriend a a dragon that was supposed to be angry at them.
Speaker 2:Yep, all of a sudden friends, so that's probably supposed to be like this big encounter, yep, and turned into something different. So that was kind of funny to hear. You just don't know. I think as the DM, to me it sounds a little bit stressful, honestly.
Speaker 3:It can be.
Speaker 2:How am I going to know how to respond to?
Speaker 3:all of these different stimuli. Well, that's another reason why I enjoy it so much is because it gives me that like practice, almost that improvisation and just like, yeah, it's a muscle that I don't get to flex often and it's a cool place to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's so you, I mean, you're just tapping into all your creativity in that scenario, like with you know the improv, and like the unforeseen circumstances, and yeah, that's awesome. Well, you go ahead.
Speaker 3:I know we do keep doing it.
Speaker 2:Sorry. We should have probably planned it better as far as who was going to ask the questions.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to so to be honest, I talked a lot last episode.
Speaker 2:I was intentionally trying to like I'm going to back off and like not talk as much so no, it was great. No, I think we're. I mean, we've got plenty of questions we could ask.
Speaker 1:Do you want? To ask another one of our questions, or uh, kind of bring us to a close, michael. What do you think? Where are we at? You know, I think, I think we're, we can about wrap it up.
Speaker 1:Uh, we've gone over a lot of topics. I feel excited about dnd now, which is hopefully the. The result of this episode for a lot of our listeners is that they kind of get excited about it. Um, yeah, so ben, what? What kind of in closing, to wrap up the episode, would you, would you want our listeners to know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, like I said, there's just so much variety to it. In general, you can find little things inside Dungeons Dragons to enjoy, whether it's the combat and just getting to take your rage out and killing things or if it's just being a different person or a different character and getting to explore a little bit of acting, almost, or the improvisation, or trying out out new voices, or whatever it might be like.
Speaker 3:There's room for it for like just about anyone and um yeah you'd be surprised how many like celebrities play and how many um options there are, because, like, even we've been talking about dungeons and dragons, but again, there's like other tabletop rpgs out there where you can play inside of the world of, like, avatar, the last airbender or lord of the rings, or you can play and there's there's a, for sure, a star wars one and there's like, yeah, there's, you can find probably a rule set or an environment to play in of any of your favorite worlds. These are like homebrews that people have like created.
Speaker 2:There are some official ones, I can't remember what the star ones.
Speaker 3:One is called off the top of my head but, it's officially published and you play on the worlds that you know in Star Wars and there's real rules. They're again outside of D&D, so it's not going to be the exact same.
Speaker 2:So you're talking just tabletop, adventure games in general, yeah, tabletop in general, yeah, gotcha yeah, because there's another, it's a large genre, yeah because there's another similar one out there called Pathfinder.
Speaker 3:That's also very popular and very fantasy oriented, but again like you can. There's so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, wow, that's awesome, very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that brings us to the end of Dungeons and Dragons. What's next for the podcast, michael, I'm going to let you talk about that, since you're up next. Both Ben and I have had our chance. Tell us.
Speaker 1:Give a little bit of a preview. Oh, definitely so. Uh, next episode in two weeks, we're going to be talking about Lego, which is, uh, one of my big hobbies just throughout life, and uh, yeah, we'll talk about, you know, fun Lego sets. Uh, you know, the fandom in general and what I love about it, all that good stuff. Um, so I'm, I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to, I'm going to put together some, some fun stuff. I'll bring some sets for our YouTube watchers. Uh, you know, maybe some like old school vintage sets and then some newer ones and, um, yeah, that's my preview. Nice, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, that that kind of brings us to the end. I think it takes us to the outro, right? Do we ever get those on the board? Probably not. We can, we can bring us. We're professional, you know. You know, if michael can find it, anybody up to anything interesting, like the the next, uh, couple weeks here, while michael's looking for see this, he's doing his producer job, right now, so hold it for just a second, michael, anybody ben you up to anything?
Speaker 3:nothing special other than walking watching your dog, so that's gonna be real interesting and I appreciate that greatly.
Speaker 2:No, he was my backup, so I I appreciate you being here for me.
Speaker 2:Um, now we're going on vacation, going to gatlinburg, so I'm gonna have a good time with my family and then, uh, my sister and her family and my parents, and so it's gonna be really awesome. We are getting the same cabin that we had last year, sweet um, and it it's just a really big, beautiful cabin, has its own pool and jacuzzi with it as well. So that's fun. We'll probably hang out there a lot of the time. But we were kind of trying to figure out, hey, what are we gonna do, you know, in in town and those sorts of things. There's a uh my my sister-in-law was talking about either you guys been to a brazilian steakhouse before?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, I have not. I've been wanting go, but I just haven't had the pleasure.
Speaker 2:We should have a fandom of fandoms. Road trip to go to Brazilian Steakhouse.
Speaker 3:It'd be so good. I'm not busy right now, I don't care.
Speaker 2:No, there's apparently a Brazilian pizza place that's similar to a Brazilian steakhouse.
Speaker 3:They just bring around different types of pizzas you get to try. Yeah, like a brazilian. They just bring around different types of pizzas you get to try if you haven't done it before that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:So, uh, same basic thing. So I'm sure we're gonna do that and I'm probably gonna gain 10 pounds, but that's my thing it's vacation, man. Yeah, yeah, I know it's the name of the game, michael. What about you?
Speaker 1:man you up to anything yeah, we've got uh, we've got a baby shower tomorrow. Uh, friends, baby shower, yes, my in-laws will be in town, and then we've got volleyball this week, ben and I uh church small group, so just kind of the usual stuff all right yeah, it'll be great well good deal.
Speaker 2:I'll look forward to talking to you guys again here in a couple of weeks, uh, because obviously I won't really be able to see you much. Well, normally we record on mondays, so we would have we're it's friday now, but uh, I wouldn't see you guys this next monday, so I'll see you the next time that we actually go to record, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah sounds good. All right, gentlemen.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us on this episode of Fandom of Fandoms. If you had fun, be sure to follow us at fofpod, on Instagram and threads, and at Fandom of Fandoms on YouTube. Make sure to leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps new fans find the show. Lastly, if you've got a fandom you want us to cover, shoot us an email at fandomofpodcasts at gmailcom. Until next time, keep being passionate, keep being curious and keep being a fan.
