- Fantasy High: Extra Credit! I'm your humble dungeon
master Brennan Lee Mulligan. With me today are my very special guests, Siobhan Thompson and Lou Wilson! (Siobhan and Lou monotoning)
- Hurray, hurray! Holy moly, gang. We're gonna start as we always
do, with a couple of plugs. Remember, guys, you're
watching Dropout Live here on Twitch. Monday and Friday, you got Drawfee. Wednesdays, it's D20 with our live show going back to Elmville and the bad kids. That's coming September
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experience on Dropout. And again, come back next Wednesday for our final talk-back. Our final Fantasy High
talk-back will be next week. And then we're in the live show. - I'm nervous.
- I'm nervous too! - We're going back. Gang, holy smokes! We have just watched here on Twitch episodes 15 and 16.
- Some big ones, dude. - Big fat eps. - We got some thicc 'sodes. - Thicc 'sodes!
- Two Cs on these eps, dude. - Exactly.
- Maybe three. - Maybe three! I'll tell you.
- Talk to me a little bit... Well, let's go in order. We'll do Family and Flames first. - Great.
- Episode 15. We start in prison. There's an escape. The Hangman grabs Bud Cubby.
- Yeah, we got them Cubbys. - Easily, I think, the best returning. - Oh, yeah.
- Of all the characters I expected to get us out of jail, the fact that it's the Cubbys was-- - Were those NPCs that
you made up on the fly on the car?
- Fully improvised. - Great.
- Fully improv. - Unreal.
- So much fun. (Brennan clapping)
I love the Cubbys so much. They're so cute!
- They're so cute! They're tiny little anarcho-socialists! - Yeah.
- Yeah! - I mean, I think "Let's make bacon," is one of my favorite
lines of the first... With this motion. I'll never forget. It's cemented in my mind. "All right, let's make bacon." And then--
(others laughing) Boom, boom, boom!
(Brennan laughing) It was like, yes. I was like, this is what
D&D allows us to do, is to save a family and
then have them save us with guns and violence--
- Yes. - From prison.
- True anti-state violence from a couple of... He had a lit Molotov cocktail
(Siobhan laughing) in his postal worker's bag.
- Yes! - Hell yes!
- Was lit the whole time. - It was lit AF.
- Ooh, lit AF, exactly! - I'm young.
(Brennan laughing) - I don't know if you can tell, but we got a loco-nut here.
- I'm pretty young. - So, after that, you
guys go to the school. You begin to start to unhatch
the mystery of everything. You guys get these papers. We discover that Adaine
is the elven oracle. - Yes.
- That was wild. - Was very wild, and truly a surprise. Which is ironic, considering
she is an oracle. - Well, you gave the first
oracle a lot of guff! You gave a lot of guff
about drowning in that ship, so maybe you being surprised. Maybe that's just how it goes for oracles. - You know, I think it's just like... You get the visions when you get 'em, and sometimes they're not useful. - Exactly.
- Sometimes, you get a lottery ticket, and sometimes you just get, like, oh. You are wearing a green shirt.
(Brennan laughing) Well, I knew it.
(others laughing) - Yes, that was very gratifying, and also, watching Brian
Murphy crack the... 'Cos there were a lot of clues. - Yes.
- Spoilers, spoilers. Spoilers.
- I mean, look. Why are you watching this if you haven't watched those episodes? - I mean, you just watched them. - You just watched them.
- If you're dropping in to this and you haven't? - You're at fault.
- This is the big spoiler. - This is the big stuff, yeah. - So, I had a lot of
different clues around that Goldenhoard was secretly Kalvaxus, Emperor of the Red Waste. There were a couple little
pathways to find that out. The most tedious (Siobhan laughing)
and boring of which were cross-referencing the employee pay stubs with the federal diversity initiative that listed the staff
and faculty by species, where you could look at it, see that Goldenhoard wasn't
on the payroll information, look over and see that
there was no dragonborn working at the school, and there was one non-humanoid. And within all of that, the
fact that you could actually watch Murph crack that in real time? You watch his face as he goes, like, "Something's not adding up here." I was doing a terrible
job behind the screen of just being like, (squealing) they're
about to figure it out! Which is a true joy for me.
- Yeah! It's very fun to get to do an escape room, (Lou laughing)
in real time. I don't know, yeah, it's...
- Extremely gratifying. - It's very, very fun. - I mean, I looked at
those pieces of paper and I saw nothing.
(Siobhan laughing) - I remember they were
given to me for a second and I was like, reading? And I was like, uh-huh uh-huh.
(Siobhan laughing) Whatever, Murph, take this shit and figure something, and look at that. - That's a very Fabian/Riz dynamic! - I mean, it very much was. It was just like--
- Fabian's not gonna look at those pieces of paper!
- Okay, great, great, great. Now, where does my sword go? I don't know. I'm not gonna do the math.
- No! - But of course Murph
is just in there, dude. I do remember hearing off in the corner when he said like,
whatever that key phrase, whatever he said of
like, someone's missing, or something like that.
- Goldenhoard's not on here. Yeah.
- Yeah, I think there was a discrepancy of numbers. There's one more person on this than-- - Yes, there was one
more person on the staff than was on the payroll.
- Yes. - So that was really interesting. This was also the episode where we had the family in flames mechanic.
- Yeah! - We had the rolls for if terrible things were gonna happen to your family or not. And we have, here are the two people that were the most on the spectrum, 'cos Fabian was the first out. No question.
- It was so crazy when everyone started talking about it. - Yeah.
- That blew my mind. From a character perspective, I was like, I'm sorry, what? You just heard your parents are in... Looking back on it, yes. Makes sense that you questioned it. But I was like, a lot
of people who were like, what do you think? I was like, no! Our parents are in trouble. We know, they don't,
let's get out of here. I was like, I have to save my mom and dad. - It's so wild as a DM how many times your evil
little plans are thwarted. And I would say that the more
cliche a villain's plan is, obviously the more ways heroes will have to attempt to thwart it, because it will be so familiar to them. - So, playing a villain
that put a situation out of like, ha ha, heroes! Do what I say, or I'll
hurt the ones you love. That's, like, every movie ever, and it never works. So I was very prepared, like,
I'm about to get whomped. They're gonna do some crazy nonsense. And the fact that all of you, or the majority of the players, were like, "My families? "I care about them!" (imitating speed) And peeled off. Giving Goldenhoard enough time to enact his prom ritual. I was so gleeful. I was like, yeah!
- Well, we cared about those families!
- Yeah. - We care about those families! And it was like, it should work! - Yes.
- It should work! - The idea that I would actively go, you know what, man, I need this HP. (Brennan laughing)
- Yeah. - I don't know. That is the weird, what I think so many, what we all do so beautifully is that kind of losing... Ignoring game mechanics. It is a huge deal to take
all those things away, but it also is like, there's... Come on. What is the unreal logic hole you're threading through
your character's life that they're like, in this moment, my parents? They'll probably be okay.
- I would say in most cases of D&D, that thread hole is people having a visceral reaction to not letting a villain
get what they want. But the credit of--
- Yeah. If everybody's parents had died, the villain would have
gotten what he wanted. - Right, exactly. - Well--
- So... - Yeah.
- And also, with the exception of Adaine, everybody had pretty good
relationships with their parents. - Yeah.
- I mean, the only reason that
Adaine chooses not to do it is because it's very
clear that her parents have basically already abandoned her. - Brutal.
- Yeah. - Truly brutal.
- I mean, emotionally abandoned
her maybe forever ago. - Maybe forever ago.
- As soon as she didn't pass the
entrance exam into Hudol. - Exactly. And speaking of which, so we have this mortifying thing with Adaine and her family that we'll talk about also as it relates to the scene that happens
afterwards in 1.16. But we have you going with Rodolfo, the magical Lyft driver.
- Oh, yes! - That name courtesy of Ally Beardsley. What's up, Ally? - Rodolfo.
- Rodolfo! (Siobhan laughing) - But as you guys head
off to go do that stuff, it was heartbreaking to realize, oh, Adaine doesn't have anyone-- - Yeah.
- To fight for. - And you giving your rolls, I believe it was to Ally's family, right? For Fabian. What was the scene like getting back to--
- Sorry. Real quick.
- Yeah. - Just another line of the season is Kristen's parents. "Do you think these are illegals?" (Siobhan and Lou groaning)
(Brennan laughing) It was like... I think we'd all kind of been like, oh, these kind of seem like bad people, but who knows? Maybe they're just misguided. That was a nice nail in the coffin. - No, no.
- Like, no, no. They're bad.
- Just because they're sweet doesn't mean that they're good. - Exactly. - Ally was playing this character, and they were very clear. They were like, "They
are hyper-conservative "border paladin..." These are not... You know, these are bad.
- Yeah. - And they effectively were like, "Okay, I want this
relationship with my parents "to be like this." And I had this hard time
of being like, okay. If you're going to depict people that are not good, you don't do any favors to yourself by being kind of a polemicist. You don't do any favors to yourself by being like... I always hate when people are depicting
someone they disagree with and make them cartoonish.
- Yeah. - And are like, (groaning)
I'm clearly wrong! - Yeah.
- And it's like, no. If they're wrong, try to make
them as faithful as possible. So, the idea of even playing that scene, I was like, the enemies are defeated. Ally's dad is going-- (Brennan panting)
- Yeah. - And there's this
moment where he looks up, and I made the conscious choice for his facial expression to soften. Because he thought he was about to have a reuniting moment with
his daughter, Kristen. - Yeah.
- He thought he was about, he was like, "Wow. "She came back and saved us all. "Incredible." And he just said the first
thing that came to his mind. I just reached in and I was like, what would he say? 'Cos he's got no context
for what just happened. - Yeah.
- And he said, "What, do you think
these guys are illegals?" (laughing) Kristen...
- It was... (groaning) - Yeah.
- Brutal. - It's hard.
- And the Thistlesprings, in their little tank!
- Aww! - Aw, so cute!
- Yeah. - Yeah. You come to the tree, you'd better be ready to never leave. Yeah, for sure. That was delightful. Lou, when you get to Seacaster Manor. - Yes.
- When did you start to realize what was happening? - I got so... Because you had the whole rolling mechanic where you rolled twice. And I remember I was... I was watching, and I'm
disappointed in myself, 'cos I can tell that I'm uncomfortable with how emotional it all is.
(Siobhan laughing) So I'm smiling the whole time. The whole time, I'm just
sitting there going like... Ooh!
(Siobhan laughing) I had this tiny, weird smile. And I'm like, no, this
is serious and scary! But I remember getting there and as soon as you made me make a... Soon as you made me make a choice. (Siobhan laughing)
With regard to going upstairs or going downstairs, I was like, how dare you? How dare you, let me have my parents. Let me save my parents. Even now, just thinking about it. When you asked me to make that choice, I was like, come on, Brennan! Let me... Everyone else got to save their family! All right? Let me save my whole family. But it was incredible. That whole sequence is... I absolutely love. From yelling at my mother,
to blowing up my father. - Yeah (exhaling). That scene truly was one of my favorite. Bill's death, and the
fact that that was your re-forging of your
father/son relationship, that you had been on the outs.
- Yeah. - And then came back
together in that moment. And him manacled to the bed so that he wouldn't fall down. - Stabbing people in the penis. - In the butt-hole. Shooting them in the butt-hole. What did he say? He said, "You give somebody
one in the brown eye, "and they'll never forget you." - [Lou] They'll never forget you, dude. (Brennan laughing)
(Lou groaning) - And then when you plunged the sword of the
Seacasters into his heart, I can't... It's a miracle I didn't fully lose it. - Yeah.
- 'Cos I was... I was like, (gasping)! But it was perfect.
- Yeah. - Because we had foreshadowed
the whole season. I just didn't realize it.
- Yeah. I mean, it did just
seem like, I don't know. What am I gonna do? Let him just--
- Slowly die? - Yeah, bleed out.
- Succumb to his wounds. - Exactly. It's like, no. My man wants to go out hard.
- Yeah. He's not coughing into a handkerchief. - Exactly!
- (groaning) It's blood! - Not a slow, head goes
back, eyes roll back. "Love you." It's like, no!
- No. - I don't know. I kill him, like he killed his father. The craziest part is to think that Fabian will one day have a son, (others laughing)
and he will be killed-- - Or a daughter!
- Or a daughter. - Or a daughter.
- Daughters can also murder their fathers.
- That's perfectly fair. I actually think Fabian would
prefer to have a daughter than another son. Or no, you know, Fabian will go twice. Two kids.
- I feel like Fabian might have, like, 10 children. - I mean, that all depends on what Aelwyn is thinking in terms of... - You know...
(Brennan whooping) I mean, you know...
(Lou vocalizing) (Lou laughing)
(Siobhan groaning) - We get to the Prompocalypse, where we see the return of Kalvaxus. What did you guys think,
seeing the battle set at first? Were you guys like, Brennan's got something
else up his sleeve? - A little bit. Just because we'd fought other students and whomped them.
- Yeah. - Whomped!
- And... It just felt like there had to be more. And especially since,
I think at that point, we had figured out that it was Kalvaxus. - Yeah.
- There's gotta be more to this guy. We knew about Kalvaxus,
we knew about Goldenhoard. - And then he just, they
got the crown on 'em both. They beheld the glittering treasure. Bada bing, bada boom. Putting that mini on the table was one of the most fun things
I've ever done in my life. - I mean, what a perfectly gorgeous mini. - It was unreal. And, so big.
- Yeah (laughs). Such a macro!
- Yeah. - It's like when you're playing with toys and somebody's like,
well, I brought my toy. It's a very different
toy, and it doesn't fit. It's like adding an action
figure to a Lego set. - Yeah.
(Brennan laughing) - And it's like, okay.
- All right. - This is a whole new level, all right? This doesn't fit. I don't feel like I can defeat this. - Yeah, it was truly wonderful
when that mini came out. Yeah, minis... Shout to Rick Perry and to Nate Villareal, our lead minis painter, yeah.
- They're so good. - Incredible. So, we also in that
episode have the incredible Jawbone/Adaine scene.
- Yeah! - That was so delightful. You know, we had this
panic attack mechanic for the character.
- Yeah. - That had been set up for a
long time, and it was a way of, A) having a hero of the story be someone who has a mental illness, as a way of including
and representing that as being something that is
just a part of people's lives, and something that does not, in any way, inhibit you from being heroic. - And especially when
you're in high school. - Yeah, absolutely.
- 'Cos that's when all of that stuff peaks, I feel like. - Absolutely.
- And you don't have the toolbox to deal with it yet. - Yeah. And especially what the
point of that scene was, which is especially if
some of that toolbox is medication--
- Yeah. - That you need present
parental guidance and initiative to prescribe for you.
- Yeah. - Jawbone is maybe my... I have so many favorite
NPCs from Fantasy High. If I could be one, if I had to
live my life as one of them, it would probably be Jawbone. - Well, Jawbone actively helps people. - Yeah.
- And has seen some shit, and has gone through it, and
has gotten out the other side, and is using that, his
knowledge, for good, in a way that he doesn't need to. - No, he could be very damaged. - Yeah.
- And hurt. And no-one could blame him
for not trying to help. And also, I think it was a
favorite little moral of mine that he was just someone
who needed a break. Which I think is the case for a tremendous amount of people in society and in the world, and America certainly, of, hey, I'm at this
nightclub's selling drugs. I have lycanthropy, I
don't have healthcare. My situation's very bad. I'm in a fragile space, my living situation's probably not great. And it's just you guys being like, we're gonna recommend you
for a job at our school! And it's like, wow! That one lucky break let me... I don't know. I think that a political
and moral belief in luck is necessary for being a
good person in this world. - Yeah.
- Where so much is controlled by factors outside of
your conscious influence. But yeah, that moment where he's like... I think there's a great
artist on Tumblr called Gray Kolla, or Graykolla, who did a beautiful
illustration of that scene. Of like, he just says... You're running from the dragon. You have dragon fear, and he's like, "Have you had panic attacks all the time?" And I remember you at the
table just being like... He says, "Have your parents
ever given you something?" And you're like, "My parents ran away, "and I'm all alone." And I got misty. Like, it's so--
(Siobhan laughing) - I made Brennan cry.
- Not hard to do. (Siobhan laughing)
- It was the most tears I think I'd ever seen playing D&D before, and I was like... This is too--
- It was a lot. - Police!
- This is too real! - It was emotional outside.
- It was beautiful! Now we cry so much at the table. - Oh, my god. Guys, wait for season five. - I mean...
- (laughing) So much crying! - Tears will flow! But there was a... I remember that was the
first time I was like, wow! I mean, I took killing my father very... I feel like it's the time. I don't smile as much any more after that, after being like, no, it's okay to be all the way in. You don't have to remind people at home that Fabian's not me, and I'm Lou! It was a nice moment of being like, we're all the way in this, and that's why we're so great.
- 100%. And I love that. Because in a moral about some people... I love that Fantasy High,
which is about coming of age, depicted healthy ways of having
strife with your parents, and then mending those strifes, and then had other ways of saying, sometimes your relationship
with your parents is toxic, and severing it is the
best thing you can do. - Yeah. - And there are other people out there that will love you and
will be your family. - Yeah, and I think that
especially in the point that Adaine was at with her parents, she has no power to change them. They're set. So, if they wanna change
and come back to to her, that's on them, but there's nothing more
that she could possibly do. - No, and it's not her responsibility to. - No, 'cos she's the kid.
- She's the kid. And in the end, she's
got Jawbone and Tracker that'll take care of her now.
- Yeah. - And she gets to live in an apartment with some werewolves, and also
Kristen a lot of the time. - Yeah.
- Speaking of which, Ally's nat 20 at the end of this episode. - God damn. They are so good at perfectly timed nat 20s.
(Lou humming agreement) It's so truly insane. That's my impression
of Ally throwing a die. - We can't say anything
without it being spoilers, but Ally Beardsley, wherever they are. You are truly--
- Monstrous. - Kissed by the gods, is what I'd say. Both those are true.
- I would kill to roll like they do.
(Brennan laughing) - They're my dice rolling inspiration. - Yes.
(Brennan laughing) - If I have a dice-rolling role model, it's Ally Beardsley.
- A million percent. - Truly, we were talking a few days ago about taking Ally to Vegas, just so that they can
win us a bunch of money. Playing craps, and we
can just bet on the craps as they roll the die.
- That is what we're gonna do. We got some questions from the Twitch. Hey, if you're hanging out in the Twitch, and you're hanging out in the chat, thanks so much! We're so glad you're hanging out! - Thank you!
- So good to see you! - We really appreciate it, you're awesome. OceanEmber, ooh. OceanEmber. That question (laughing) just disappeared. Can we bring OceanEmber's question back? I did not read it. - I think they said most iconic nat 20 of all time.
- Nat 20 of all time. - Oh, that was not a question? - That's not a question,
more of a statement. - Cool.
- Yeah. - Yes.
- And I vibe with that, dude. - Yeah.
- Most iconic nat 20 of all. I mean, you can... It's asking for... And here's the thing. I would've held Ally to effectively restarting the death count. Because going for your fourth death save after you've stabilized to me is going back to a state of injury. - Yeah.
- And now, we're back in it again. So to me, that nat 20 is like... It's just crazy. MadderByTheSecond. Thanks, MadderByTheSecond! Where did the inspiration for Adaine having anxiety come from? A lot of us wanna know.
- Oh, my goodness. Well, I certainly have
no experience with it. (Lou laughing)
So I truly pulled it out of the ether...
(Brennan laughing) No, I (laughing)... As many of us have, have my issues with mental illness. I had a really bad time in school with depression and anxiety to the point where I dropped
out of high school for a year. It was bad, I had a bad time. I recently got diagnosed with ADD, which is probably where pretty much all of those
problems came from. I went to pretty high-stress,
high-pressure schools, and I just could not
physically do the work. - Yeah.
- And I just... I'm dyslexic as well, and I just got so... And that got diagnosed really late, and I just got so much, "You're so clever "and articulate and good
at talking in class, "and you have all of these good points, "and then you don't do your homework. "I don't know what to do with you. "What a disappointment." And if you hear that you're a
disappointment enough times, then you're gonna think that
you're a disappointment. And I think that in playing Adaine, I kind of got to reclaim
that a little bit. (Lou humming)
I'm very grateful for her. For that. That I got to replay
those roles, you know? - Yeah. I love that. I think that's wonderful, to explore those things in D&D. 'Cos it is like a... It's a wonderful piece of inclusion. It's a wonderful place
to explore those issues in this heroic context.
- Yeah. And people have panic attacks, you know? - Yeah.
- That's a real thing. People have normal, good, healthy lives, and also are anxious.
- Yeah. - And I don't think that it
makes Adaine any less heroic, and I think in many ways,
it makes her more heroic that she's doing all of these other things and also is constantly in terrified fear. - Yeah. - Which, you know. Anxiety isn't a constant
state of terrified fear. - Right.
- But it's just so there, present, below the surface. And it's almost about how much weight is on the see-saw of like, oh, one thing can tip me over. Instead of for most people, it's like, maybe 10 things will tip you over. - Yes, for sure.
- Just that balance is off. And, like I said, she's 15, 14, 15. - Yeah.
- You don't necessarily have the toolbox then to be
able to deal with that stuff, to be like, this is my body. I can control this. I can take a moment of calm.
- Yeah. - Mostly you're like, oh no. This thing has taken over my body, and I have no way to stop it from destroying me.
- Yeah. No, I completely agree. I had a panic attack earlier this summer. - Hell yeah.
- And I'm sure a lot of people in the--
- It's so fun. - It's great. It's great when you're like, something is happening
to my body and mind. Let's just hold on.
- Yeah. - Let's just ride this
out and see what happens. ChanFree. Thank you, ChanFree. I know we are all wondering, what would've happened if Ally didn't roll that natural 20? ChanFree, you know who
was asking that question (Siobhan laughing)
as ferociously as possible in their own mind during
that exact moment? Me! I was! I was the one who was wondering that. The honest answer was, at that point, Fabian had Adaine on
the back of the Hangman. - I was about to reach into her coat and try and pull out a health potion, which wouldn't have worked.
- Which would not have worked. Yeah.
- Too valuable for the things--
- It's too valuable. So I don't know what. I would've just been driving
around, avoiding dying. - Probably would've been
escaping from the dragon and I think, in all likelihood, what would've happened would've been, Fabian trying to escape. As horrifying as this is, there was a very real potential for a total party kill. Which would not have been, necessarily, a very satisfying story.
(Lou laughing) But there is a certain point
at which you have to go, okay, the dice have spoken. This is what's going on. There's also a potential that I might've found some other way. If Fabian had gotten far enough
out of town, for example, or found the Thistlespring tank... The issue would've probably been that we would've taken the combat off of the prom board, and just into theater of the mind. Which would've been kinda wild. - Yeah.
- But that was... Basically, it depended
on Fabian surviving. That's the answer to your question. - Wow, again, Fabian. One of the most important characters. (Siobhan laughing) That's so weird to hear. I don't think I ever would've
thought to leave, though. I think I would've just
been driving around. - In circles?
- Trying to figure out how to get my friends up.
(Brennan exhaling) - There would've been a healer somewhere. I mean, we're on a campus
of an adventuring academy. There's healers. There's wizards.
- Yeah, for sure, for sure. - Had Jawbone already
run in by that point? - I think he was in
the mouth at the point. - He was in the mouth.
- Oh, right. - To keep him from using the breath weapon or something like that.
- Yeah. To keep him from biting
people, that's right. So, maybe Jawbone would've
run out and done something. It was looking bad. EmRiley16. Thanks, EmRiley! Siobhan and Lou, what
about your characters is least like you?
(Lou humming) - That's a great question.
- Yeah. I would say, actually, my family. My family are much warmer
(laughing) than the Abernants. Which is a really low bar.
(Siobhan laughing) - Not a very terrifically warm family. - No.
- You could give a hug and win just like that, dude.
- Yes, yeah. My family are... You know, have our
conflicts and differences, but are much nicer to each other. And I have got a little sister who I'm very, very close with. - Lovely.
- Yeah. So, that's, I feel like,
the biggest difference. - Yeah, playing them was very, it was very fun. We put that concerto music on. Playing this unbelievably posh... "Oh, Adaine." Very elven. It was so funny because there's a lot of things
you do for comedic reasons that then you go, oh,
these people are monsters! - Yeah.
- Where you know, he's like, "Honestly, Adaine, I do try." (Lou laughing)
And you're like, this guy is the worst!
- The worst. - The worst!
- Yeah. I mean, I certainly went to school with a lot of people whose
parents were like that. (Brennan shuddering)
Yeah, horrifying. - No good.
- Yeah. - I mean, the easiest
answer is just body type. (Siobhan laughing)
I don't have this. This is not in my caliber. My body, I don't have
all of those muscles. I don't know. It's weird, though, 'cos I feel like a lot of the... I think Fabian and I are
confident in the same... I was going to say confidence, but I think me and Fabian are confident in the same way of like, it's all show. If you were like, "Hey, shut up. "Tell me your truth." I think Fabian and I would
have similar reactions of just being like--
- Wha-what? - But yeah, I think between body type and I'm nowhere near as rich as Fabian. Fabian's, like, in appearances, everything that I wanted
to be in high school, which was rich and hot.
- Yeah. (Brennan laughing)
- There you go. That's the part.
- Oh, yeah, the rich kids. - Yeah, I was the rich, hot kid, dude. - Oh, yeah these are our two--
- We were the rich kids. - You were the rich kids! That's right, that's absolutely right. I love that. And I love, it was very funny, too, 'cos you did have a
nouveau riche versus... - Old money.
- Old money... - Yes.
- Attitude. Which was very, very funny. GeekAct2625 asks, would you consider doing a Dimension 20 campaign or side-quest with a Strong Female Protagonist crossover or similar setting?
- Oh! - My web comic. Well, I'll tell you what. Before I did that, I would
finish Strong Female Protagonist. To everyone that reads the web comic and is waiting for an update, myself and Molly have
been incredibly busy. I've been working at CollegeHumor
and doing Dimension 20. Molly's been writing for
Disney shows and killing it, and releasing books. Go out and buy Molly's
The Witch Boy series. It's incredible. So, we are very sorry that
we have not gotten a chance to return back to SFP. We are going to. We are going to, it's just about finding that mystical, magical window of time where that can happen. That being said, I would
love to do an SFP crossover. I would love to do... I've had a couple little things where we know some of the people. I don't wanna say nothing, but... If anyone here's ever heard of Starstruck, written by my mom, Elaine Lee. That's--
- Name drop! - Name drop! Go check out Starstruck. Incredible, groundbreaking, revolutionary graphic novel series by
Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta. That's always struck me as, if I could ever play a
sci-fi tabletop game... If not in Dimension 20
then somewhere, somehow, that would be cool as hell. UniGoatJJ. Thanks, UniGoatJJ.
(Lou laughing) German for one goat. - [Siobhan] (laughing)
Absolutely incorrect. (Brennan laughing)
So many levels of wrong! - I'm doing a reference
to an ancient SNL thing where Jimmy Fallon says unimog, German for one--
- Ancient? That's not--
- From the dawn of time when Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon were co-anchoring Weekend Update... - [Siobhan] 1999! - What was slash is the
deal with that one student that stayed in the gymnasium
throughout the whole fight? - (laughing) Oh, yeah! The one that's eating
the food the whole time. - Yeah, I'm glad you asked.
- Maybe he could've healed us. - Yeah, what if he had just had a sixth-level Mass Healing Word? - Heal, heal, heal!
- Absolutely. That student was secretly the elven oracle. She never died.
(Lou laughing) She was hidden, disguised.
- Well. (Lou laughing)
That's how I found out. All right.
- That's how you found out. - Okay.
- Ah, no, that's-- - Demoted!
- No, some things are just as they appear. There's no secret mystery
to who that student was. That student's name was... Jem... Peppercorn.
- Jem? - Jem Peppercorn, J-E-M, Jem Peppercorn. And they are a type of earth elemental that only eats once a year, and they have to get all the food in in 20 minutes for the whole year. - There you go!
- There you go. It's canon, that's canon.
- Are you satisfied with that answer?
- That's canon. - Are you?
- Canon! - Canon.
- Canon. - BardInTheYard. BardInTheYard?
- BardInTheYard! - Get in, get in the dang house! - Come inside, bard!
- Come inside! - There's 30 to 50 hogs out in that yard. - Exactly!
- Get in here! - Yeah, get in there!
(Lou laughing) Thanks, BardInTheYard. Bren-Dad, Siobhan and Lou, what was the first... People call me Bren-Dad.
- That's cute. - That's what that is.
- We got it. - We got it.
- Yeah, did you not get it? - (spluttering and stammering)
I'm trying to help! - We got it!
- We all got it, dude. - We're smart.
- Woof. What was the first D&D
adventure you played, and how have you evolved the most as a player slash DM to
what we're seeing now? - My first... I think that it's actually
the same campaign setting. 'Cos we're both playing with Brennan. - That is not true.
- In Aryll. - I mean, it is not my first.
- Oh, yours is-- - That's my first with Brennan. - Oh. So, yeah, we were playing a 3.5 campaign for a long time that we
just changed over to 5e, 'cos every time we went back... We only play now every
two or three months, and every time we would dip back into 3.5, we'd be like, what is this? What are these things mean?
- Yeah. - What is this grapple? Will save stuff? I don't remember.
- Fortitude, reflex. - That game is me, Emily, Murph, Zac and then a couple of our buddies, Travis Halwig and John Wolf, and I play a ranger. I play--
- Half-elven. - Half-elven ranger
called Rhiannon the Giddy. - Good name.
- She's not giddy at all. She's very serious. But the other half of her is a Kildarian, and they're very conservative. - Stoic.
- Very human. (laughing) Very racist, mean people. - Yes, correct. They're nasty, gothic,
Transylvanian style... They're like, deep, thick
forests in the mountains full of wolves and people are
not trustworthy in Kildare. - Everything's slightly
twilit all the time. - Twilit, exactly. - It's very fun.
- It's a hoot. And then, Lou, what was your first game? - My first campaign, which I don't think we've
ever really gotten into... 'Cos it's probably, it's so crazy. 'Cos it's probably even before. Whatever I was playing was before 3.5. My elementary school was
very new-agey and hippy, and once a year, they had
these things called options, which was essentially an activity that was offered up by a community member, whether it be student or parent, to give to the kids of the school. And so I took a D&D option when I was in fifth grade.
- Oh, wow. - So, in fifth grade, I played D&D. I know I played some kind of fighter. I didn't have powers. But I played some kind of fighter, and I tell you I've
changed, evolved immensely. 'Cos what I do 100% remember is that in my very first D&D session, we were showing up in a town, and I asked if I... I remember some bad stuff happened, and I hid in a barrel. And then once the bad stuff passed, I got out of the barrel, and I asked the DM if I could get a job. (others laughing)
And I got a job at a bakery. - No fighting at all! Just a sweet boy.
- For my first ever session of D&D--
(Brennan laughing) I had a job in a bakery. - The idea of some monster, some dragon passes overhead. You pop out of a barrel and go, "I need to get a job."
- That is exactly-- - "I gotta leave this
adventuring life behind." (Siobhan laughing)
- 100%! - Everybody else went on an adventure and you were like, waking up at 5 o' clock in the morning? - I remember it being a whole thing. It's coming back to me. I don't remember all of it. It was moments of him narrating them going and talking to the king and him being like, "You
guys need to deal with this." And then me being like, well, what about me at the bakery? He's like, "You did an okay job. "You got paid one gold piece." (Siobhan laughing)
I'm like, yeah! - One gold piece for a
day's work in a bakery? What is this, the Capitol? My god, this economy is shot! - So, I've changed a lot. I don't get menial labor
when danger's afoot. - Maybe season seven.
- Maybe season seven, dude. - I honestly would die to play that. If you just split the time
evenly between people. (Siobhan laughing)
It's like, okay. We're with the other five
people for 25 minutes, and then we cut over for
five minutes and we're like, an order's just come in.
(others laughing) A woman wants eight raisin cinnamon loaves and she wants them by tonight, and you don't have the ingredients. - Roll for yeast proof.
(others laughing) - Under-proved, overworked.
(Siobhan laughing) That's amazing. My first campaign that I ever played in, I was 10 years old. My mom put up a notice for D&D groups in October Country in New Paltz. I swung by October Country. I was back home, visiting family. We swung by October Country,
and I bought two dice. I bought some dice from
my first little game shop. It was lovely. But, I put up a notice there. My mom, when I was 10 years old. And I went and played
with a bunch of these very generous with
their time 20-somethings who were willing to take in a kid who wanted to learn, which was very-- - Sweet.
- Kind. Very kind of them to do.
- Teach the children how to learn to play. - Teach children how to learn to play. And I made a bard, and they were like, "That's a hard class to
play, and it's not fun. "You should be a fighter." And I was like, no. I wish to sing.
(others laughing) I wrote a bunch of songs and rhymes, and I was making up stuff. And I remember, I immediately did a thing that I have always done
when I'm not careful, that makes people mad, which was read into things too much, and it makes DMs mad if you do it and they don't want you to. So there were fire giants around. I was a first-level character
in a thing with fire giants. It was crazy. But my character said
something where it was like, it was this thing where there were huge barrels
of kerosene everywhere that would explode. And my character was like,
these giants are planning war. Why else would they keep so
much of this flammable liquid where anyone could find it?
(Lou laughing) We must warn the king! And what it is is, the DM just
wanted barrels to blow up. There was no world-building logic to it, and they just got pissed that
this little kid was like, there's enormous holes throughout all of the world-building here! I'm going to resolve the
logic of them on my own dime! And my character got turned into a frog by a gorgon.
- And then rocks fell on you. - Then rocks fell and I died. Rocks fall, everybody dies. CutestKitten2. Thanks, CutestKitten2! For Siobhan. Knowing that you're a big theater fan, are there specific people
who serve as the inspiration for Misty Moore?
- For sure. She's definitely a mishmash of people. Elaine Stritch, obviously, is one. Bette Midler. Ooh, god, Patti LuPone. There is an incredible, if you wanna listen to a real
fun, insane theater interview, on Alec Baldwin's old podcast, that I don't think he does any more. He interviews Patti LuPone. And it's just two Long Island snobs trying to out-snob each other, and they spend the whole time talking about doing David plays. David Mamet, of course, but
they don't say David Mamet. They don't say Mamet plays. They say, "Oh, I had to do a
David play in Williamstown." "Oh, David! "Oh, is it doing a David
play at the Public." "Oh, I love David!" It is truly an impeccable piece of drama. (Brennan and Siobhan laughing) And yeah. I mean, there's so many
incredible old Broadway legends. Carol Channing.
- Yes. - For sure.
- You can't do New York... It's one of those great
things where I think doing a New York story, I
want to be very cognizant of, let's not just do the New
York that tourists see. Let's do the New York... Real people, real communities the actual people that live in New York. But then it's like, but also, a huge percentage of New York is the New York that tourists see. - Yeah.
- And it is the... You can't really do
New York without having that one old, old, old
rich lady, who's crazy. - There's so many old, rich people that are crazy in New York City. - It's wild.
- They're so old, and so rich, and so crazy.
- You cannot walk... If you walk up Central
Park on the East Side, you cannot...
- Oh, the amount of hats. - Huge hats! - Just so many different flavors of hat. There are two more influences
that I just remembered. - Yeah.
- One is Ripley and Skinner Live at Town Hall. Fantastic. Just like a fun live album of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner just out-divaing each
other, which is great. And then when I worked at
ABC Kitchen in New York City, there were these three
women that would come in, who were just sort of doing
Liza Minelli impressions, it felt like?
(Brennan laughing) And they would wear these fabulous hats, and there was a lot of this. - Yeah (laughing).
- Ooh. Doing that naturally takes, I feel like, just years of training. - Truly.
- You just have to be like, no, no, I know that my body
doesn't want to do this, and everyone is looking at me, and is confused, but this is... Who I am. - Bring me water, bring me bread! (Siobhan singing) - Yeah, just an exhausting
amount of being on at all times.
- Yeah. - Constantly.
- I love it. KiffyArts. Thanks, KiffyArts. If Fabian had chosen to go
after Bill Seacaster first instead of his mother, what would've happened to his mother? In fact, what would have happened to Bill? I'm gonna answer this in two parts. The first part is, in no world does Fabian go after Bill before he goes after his mother. - Yeah.
- Yeah. Not under any circumstances.
- It would have been the largest betrayal of character ever. - There are certain things as a... 'Cos a lot of people, people
love to ask what if questions about campaigns, like,
what would you have done if this? And it is funny because I do advocate a lot for improvisation and being like, you've
gotta roll with the punches! The PCs are gonna do things
you never anticipate! That's true. But something that doesn't
get said sometimes is, there are also things that, I've been doing this for long enough, that I can just bank on.
- Yeah. - Fabian's gonna get his mom. Right? There's a thing that
bounced around the internet of me talking about, somebody being like, "How did you know "that Adaine was gonna get a magic book?" And I was like, 'cos if you
mention there's a magic book, who's not gonna get--
- Steal that magic book. - You've gotta steal that magic book! - Gotta steal that magic book! - In terms of what would've
happened story-wise, in the logic of the world, is that Hallariel would be dead. - Yeah. - They would've busted into her pod? - And then you would be dead, because your dad would've killed you-- - Yeah.
- For going after him instead of your mum.
- So, Cathilda would be dead, and Hallariel's sensory deprivation egg would have been smashed.
- Cathilda, your real mother. - Exactly! My actual provider.
- Yes. - Your actual provider. Right, sir, kippers! That's the question. AsonMBryant1. Thank you, AsonMBryant1. Question for Lou. Fabian has some things in
common with his father, but is also quite different. How do you picture
Fabian as a mature adult? - Great question. I mean, it feels like maybe a more, even more muted Bill Seacaster. You still have this adventurous spirit, but how actively that is enacted, I think you just wouldn't see it as much. He would still have all
the ferocity and confidence that he had as a younger man. But in terms of the actions
and choices that he makes, I think they would be more
reasonable and thoughtful with regard to those that he loved. - He's like a second-gen Kennedy. (Brennan laughing)
- Exactly. - Bill Seacaster is the bootleg era. - Yes. - Then you went to a good school, and-- - Exactly.
- You got that accent. - I might run for office.
- Yeah. - I do feel like Fabian
would be like, high up. If this were our world, Fabian would run a company, but not because he earned it, but because he just got put there. - Somebody asked him to, I feel like. - Exactly. - "You just seem so confident." - But he still, like, crushes it. - Right, right, right, right.
- He didn't earn it, but he's still good at it. - Well, that's the funniest thing, too. I feel like you see this a lot. Weirdly, I was thinking about it because we're talking about
old rich ladies in New York. I used to do catering there, and I remember going to
these catering at parties where there'd be big benefits, and you would see these couples that would be old captain of industry men, who were kind of pug-faced and all like, robber baron type. Like, "I made my fortune
by murdering the poor." - (laughing) Yeah. - And then you would see
their beautiful trophy wives, for lack of a better term. It's a term that I'm not a fan of, but you know what I mean? There'd be this beautiful
woman on their arm that they had married--
- I mean, that's how they're treating them. - Exactly. But you'd see these beautiful women, and then you'd see their daughters. And I would talk with
my friends and be like, look at the daughter of the
guy who's running this benefit. And you'd be like, the most beautiful woman in the world who has these sharp, predatory eyes. You're like, ooh. You got the dad stuff and the mom stuff and I think that to me is Fabian to a tee. All of the refinement and
charm and class of his mom, with the undying ferocity, and I will literally reach up and grab the sun out of
the sky of Bill Seacaster. - It's that famous George
Bernard Shaw quote. A beautiful woman came up
him at a party and said, we should have children because they'll have
your brains and my looks. And he says, yes, but what if they have my
looks and your brains? - (laughing) Right, yeah.
- You know. - Exactly.
- I misquoted that. But...
- Exactly. (Siobhan and Lou vocalizing) - You get it! You can look it up, you have the internet. - No, but I feel very... I think that's... But also, Fabian is not as
much of a loner as Bill was. - No. I have friends.
- You have friends. - And you don't have to be the boss. - Exactly. - You don't have to be the captain. - I don't have to be the captain. - I love it.
- Yet. - Yet!
- TempestTrina. Thanks, TempestTrina. Siobhan slash Adaine's thoughts
on Fabian's rescue mission he wants to do for Aelywn. Would she join?
- Absolutely not, under any circumstances. That truly is maybe the one thing that will tear us apart
as a friendship group. (Brennan laughing) That is our Captain
America: Civil War moment. (Brennan laughing)
(Lou groaning) - Where half of us go with me and half of us, ooh!
- Go to undermine you from doing it.
- Yes. - Because she's objectively bad. - Yeah, I know.
- I, yeah. You know, but you just want... I get it. - She's like my dad.
- She's also extremely hot. - But I can have sex with her. (Brennan laughing)
You know. - No, I get it.
- But, but... Is she all the way bad, though? - No, yeah, she is. She's fully, all the way bad. - Is she?
- She's irredeemably bad. - If you feel like she's
not irredeemably bad, go ahead and get in the comments. - If you feel like she
is irredeemably bad, say, "Siobhan is right about everything." - Go ahead and just put
the letter A for Aelwyn if you think she's good. I'm gonna get a lot more because-- - Come on, man! Come on!
- I made mine easier. - We're gonna turn the tide! - Democracy's about logistics, baby! (Siobhan growling)
(Lou laughing) SamuelWolf. Thank you, SamuelWolf. Did you ever expect Dimension 20 to be as successful as it is? It not only got me into D&D, but I stated DMing because
you guys are so inspirational. - That slaps!
- That's great. - I'm so glad you're doing this game. That's awesome!
- Yeah. No, we had no idea. We were playing like, I mean, we're having a good time. - Sure.
- I'm entertained. - Yes.
- Will anybody want to watch this? Who knows?
- Yeah. - When you asked me to
do this, I was like, I'm sorry, people do this? (others laughing)
This is a genre? We're not pioneers in trying to convince people to watch three hours of people talking?
- Yeah. Well, people watch three hours
of people talking famously, and they have for thousands of years. - Yeah.
- It's just a new type of-- - We are the Greek gods of our era. - No, you'd be really... Well, first of all. Thank you for your--
- Yeah, no. - Your suggestion that we
are as successful as it is, which is implying that
it's very successful. I think that... Look, this show is successful if people keep wanting to watch it, and we keep getting to make. The only bar on this
pole vault for me was, can we keep coming back
and doing more of it? And you guys have made that possible. - Yeah.
- From the bottom of my heart, I will never be able to
thank you guys enough for watching the show. The fact that I get to
play with my best friends and do... It's unreal, thank you.
- So delightful, it's wild. - And you'd be crazy to expect this. Any decent person with enough humility to walk through the world as a good human being would not be like, "You know
what's probably gonna happen? "My D&D show's gonna crush." No, I didn't anticipate that! It's been an incredible surprise, and a dream come true. So, thank you very, very much. SmaugInTheTardis.
- Thank you! - Siobhan is right about
every goddamn thing. - Yeah, okay.
- Absolutely. - They're choosing what they show us. Show us all the As!
- No, no, no. - Show us the thousands of As!
- Absolutely not. - I know they're out there!
(Siobhan laughing) - She is irredeemable.
- SmaugInTheTardis. Shout-out to someone doing a cool mashup of Middle Earth and Doctor Who there. - Yeah.
- SilentChief52. Thanks, SilentChief52! Brennan, which PC
screwed you over the most in Fantasy High? Riz Gukgak shooting Daybreak in the head. That's the answer to that question. - Yep.
- I had to rewrite everything on the fly real quick. Only 'cos of our shooting
schedule, I think. Because that was on a Wednesday, and I needed to be ready by Friday. But, you know, no-one ever... No-one ever screws me.
- No, we weren't... That was not a thing that was like, let's mess with Brennan.
- Yeah. - That was a logic. That was also Riz logic.
- Yes. - That was the scariest moment, I think. Weirdly. People getting shot in this series was always intense.
- Yes. - That one was crazy, 'cos it was also this thing
of all of us being like, oh, come on! Come on, Riz. We don't really have to.
(Siobhan imitating gunfire) And he was like, "No. "I point a gun at the back of this"-- - (laughing) Teacher's head.
- "Unconscious man's head. "And I pull the trigger!"
- Yeah, 100%, 100%. Of all the PCs, yeah. Riz just going full Punisher was wild. (others laughing uproariously) ProJoseph. Thanks, ProJoseph! A, that's a big old A from ProJoseph! - There you go, ProJoseph! - Only one of those counts, though, so you can keep typing them.
(others laughing) - Disqualify that ballot. NerdyNerd52! Thanks, NerdyNerd52. What's the most difficult
part of character creation? - The maths.
- I wouldn't know. - The math is the hardest part of character creation.
- The math? - The math is the hardest part. - Oh, yeah, adding all those things. I think for me, it's coming
up with amazing ideas. - Yeah.
- Picturing them, how they work with regard
to other people's ideas. - Right, yeah. Finding a character that's
going to be fun for me to play. - Yeah. - That has a specific enough game that everybody gets it immediately, but not so specific a game that
it gets tired very quickly? - Yes.
- Yeah. I know from my perspective as a DM that when you guys submit
multiple ideas for characters, the thing that's guiding
me the most is often, does this character illuminate
a part of the setting that I want to have illuminated? And do they, through their
emotionality and personality, hit on themes that are
gonna be in the story? If you're trying to tell
a dark, twisted story and someone's like, "I'm playing a funny, "happy-go-lucky..." You can kind of go, ooh. As a DM I'm looking for which one is gonna cast the
most light on the setting? And then also, I know what the amusement park is like, so which of your characters is gonna have the most fun on these rides?
- Right. - You know?
- Yeah. For Fantasy High, I came in very strong. I have this idea, I don't
have any other ideas. Everybody else can figure
out their stuff around me, because this is the idea that I have. And for The Unsleeping City,
the other idea that I had that I came in with was a
East Village crust punk rogue. - Yeah.
- Which I think would also have been very fun to play, but there was a space in
that group for a bard. - Yes.
- I think it made... Either of those characters
being equally fun to play, you go with, what is the
dynamic of this group? - And as a perfect example of that. The rogue, I knew, I was like, Siobhan would have a lot of fun playing that rogue character. Between two equal choices, the rogue character is illuminating a part of the city halfway
between Pete and Kugrash. - Right.
- And Misty is illuminating a part of the setting that, if she's not present in the campaign-- - Right.
- Will go unnoticed. We'll never go to Broadway. We'll never see that
performance side of the city, and that'll be a bummer.
- Yeah. - We'll miss out on that. And I think that when you're DMing or making characters up, I think even as a PC, when
you're doing character creation, looking around and being like... My brother ran this
awesome pirate campaign, and during character creation, nobody was making a pirate! And I was like, well, damn. I'm not gonna let my
brother make this campaign and have nobody be a pirate! So I think if you're making PCs, look at the story that
your DM's excited to tell, and I think you can go, oh. We're doing a weird
haunted fairytales setting? No-one's being a big bad wolf,
or a wolf hunter lumberjack. I gotta be that! No-one's being a weird pied piper bard? Well, how are we gonna do fairytales and not do... You know, so there's that element of... - We should do a fairytales one. That's fun. I would love to play
Jack and the Beanstalk. - Jack and the Beanstalk?
- I'm claiming it now before Ally has a chance!
- This might be season seven. - And I would be the... I'd be Rip Van Winkle.
(others laughing) No, no, what's the--
- Too late. Canon, Rip Van Winkle.
- No, no, no, no! - You're asleep the whole campaign. Sorry, dude, bummer, man!
- Please! - No!
- You own this! You're the stake!
(Lou protesting indistinctly) Only you did this!
(Siobhan laughing) - Rumpelstiltskin is who I wanted! - Oh, Rumpelstiltskin?
- Yeah! - Well, did you say Rumpelstiltskin? - No! - Or did you say Rip Van Winkle? (Lou laughing)
You sleepy... You! - What if I slept the whole time?
- The whole time. - And woke up last minute.
- We're gonna cut over. (Lou laughing)
Rick Perry's gonna make your beard a little longer. Your beard's gonna get
incrementally longer. - Oh my god.
- Session after session. And I'm gonna play Rumpelstiltskin. (others laughing) - Guess my name!
- Oh, my god. - (laughing) HotLiquidJello. Thanks, HotLiquidJello! Hashtag #questionforbrennan. What's a philosophical
query you want to explore in a TTRPG but have
not yet had the chance? - Thanks, HotLiquidJello.
- Thoughtful. - There are so many great
philosophical queries to explore. Everything, for me, always
comes back to axiology and ethics in particular.
- Trolley game? Feel like we haven't done a trolley game. - We haven't done a trolley game, I feel like. We have not. There is an element to... I love philosophy. I formally studied philosophy in college, but the vast majority of
philosophy is, I think, impractical, navel-gazing. There's a lot of
metaphysics and epistemology that while it's truly
fascinating on an academic level, is not as immediately useful as ethics, and I think if you look at the
current state of the world, you'd be hard-pressed to not say that we are in a moral
crisis, where straight up, our ability to make ethical,
utilitarian decisions that benefit the most people has not kept up as fast
as our advancements in other spheres of human
thought, like technology, and various other academic studies. It's a bummer, and there's
a lot of reasons for that. - Yeah, if you work in tech, please study ethics. That's important.
- Right. Ethics is truly important. And the fact that we are grappling with all these huge, global issues that require advanced ethical
consideration and thought is really significant and important. So, I love including ethics in TTRPGs, and in fact, you can't play a game that's about choice-making
and getting involved in narrative and characters
without having those. In terms of queries that are important. Look, I think that Fantasy High was a lot about coming of
age, which has its very... And about identity, which has a lot of
ethical attachments to it. I think Unsleeping City is
very obviously about duality. It's really interesting
that in old versions of D&D, there are tons of campaigns centered around law versus chaos rather than good versus evil, in terms of the alignment spectrum. And to me, a lot of the
set-up for The Unsleeping City is almost about, and I don't want to give any... I don't think this is
a spoiler to say this, but when I was designing the setting, after these guys had made their PCs So, designing it around their PCs. I was sort of like,
wouldn't it be interesting to do a setting that had an
active threat of evil in it but that our good guys were split along a really intense
law versus chaos spectrum. And I think that the disagreements
between Kingston and Pete and even the various sides of the table are kind of affiliated on law to chaos. - Right, it's a true
spectrum on that table, which is very fun.
- Which is really, really fun, 'cos you have people like Pete and Misty that are clearly beings of dream energy, which kind of stands in for chaos. And then you have people
of the Waking World that is very clearly
the law side of things. What I love about that too, also, is that law in that setting is very cool. Like, Kingston's a cool character. - Yeah, it's very rare to
have a lawful character that's also cool.
- Exactly. And to me, as someone who, I certainly identify lawful in my life. It's like, oh, the stuffy
rules-focused paladin is not what law is about.
- Right. To have the stuffy rules-focused paladin to be a hot dummy.
- (laughing) Right. To be hot dummy is great.
- Zac is so good at playing hot dummies.
- He really is. - I think I might play a hot dummy next. Who knows?
- Hell yes, dude. - Who knows? - Jump out of your comfort zone. - Right? Maybe?
- But yeah, in my head, law is not about, in this setting-- - As a PC.
- Yeah. - Not, like...
- Yeah, yeah. - You--
(Siobhan laughing) 'Kay, this was a great stream. (laughter drowning out Lou speaking) - Don't go, Lou! Yeah, but the idea of
having a lawful character where law means harmony,
community and things... Cooperation and coordination
is what is meant by law. It's very fun to me. So, to answer your question. God, there's so many. Maybe I'll do one on the trolley problem. Maybe I'll do one on--
- How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? - Yes.
- Real quick. What is, because somebody asked it, and I had the same question. What is a trolley game?
- Whoa, okay. So, here's the deal. You're--
- Are we about to spend the last 15 minutes of this talk-- - Yes.
- Okay. - You're in a trolley, it's unstoppable. You can go left or right. Left, there's one person;
right, there's four people. You're gonna kill either
one person or four people. - I now know the trolley game, yes. - But, you know the
person who's one person. You don't know the
people who's four people. - Really?
- That's another step. - That's not--
- There's many different steps in the trolley game.
- The way I heard it-- - I thought, now that we're saying it. Isn't it eight questions?
- Yeah. - There's a bunch. There's so many different
kinds of trolley problems. The one I always heard was, you're standing off to
the side of the tracks. The trolley is barrelling
towards one person. You haven't done anything. Sorry, no, the trolley is
barrelling towards four people. It's barrelling towards four people. It's gonna kill them, it's
gonna kill four people. Has nothing to do with you. You could pull a lever
to divert the trolley onto the track where it
would kill one person, thus saving the four people. But, you would have pulled the lever condemning that person to die. For me, the obvious answer
is save the four people. Kill the one person. You gotta do it. But it's about whether... It's basically, that version
of the trolley problem is about whether inaction counts as action. And much like Spider-Man in the MCU, I also believe if you are
powerful enough to stop things and you let them happen, you did them. - Yeah.
- That's my personal belief. - There's lots of that kind of stuff in the Philosophy of
Archeology, which I really love. The one that I always go back to is, what is material culture? Is an apple material culture? A knife is material culture. Is an apple material culture? Well, once you pick it from the tree, does that make it material culture? Well, a human grew this apple tree from a branch that they cut
from another apple tree. Does that mean that it's material culture? Is it still natural? At what step is that line--
- Drawn. - Drawn. - We're gonna do an archeology season. - Hell yeah.
- Confirmed here. - Oh my god, I'm gonna kill it. (Brennan laughing)
- Yeah, can we do one that's just, we play six
philosophers at a table. (Siobhan laughing)
And every episode is just us sitting at a table.
- Oh, my god. - And the combat episodes-- - It's just a Carol Churchill play. - Exactly.
- Beautiful. I love it.
- The combats are just, yeah. Who can be the most philosophical. - Exactly.
- Oh, good point! Good point.
- Psychic damage. Oh, I was proven wrong! - TheStateArizona. The whole state?
- The whole state. Thanks, TheStateArizon.
- We love your teas. - What do you do when a player forgets the established background of
other characters, the setting? What's the weirdest,
funniest thing you've seen because of that? Ally Beardsley will while off (Siobhan laughing)
and create details about the setting. Kristen being part of the Harvestmen was not agreed upon backstory. And while they were talking about that, they were like, "Oh, yeah, I'm--" - Yeah. They said, "I've been to
their festival," right? - Been to their festivals. I was behind the screen
being like, do tell! (others laughing) But I rolled with all of it,
because it was all awesome. I think if it ever actually
contradicted something that I needed to be true, I would probably step in and
say, maybe something else. But that hasn't come up yet.
- There was definitely a moment in the Unsleeping
City, which is a spoiler. Which I'm gonna--
- Not a spoiler! This episode's already happened. - Oh, yeah, great. It's been out. In the first episode I
think I, as a bit, said oh, you can take the train... - You can take the L train to Nod. - But you have to take the L train. You have to go past
Canarsie, it's a whole thing. And then when we got... I said that as a bit.
- Yeah. - And then we got there. And it took me such a long time to realize what train we had to get on, because I truly was like,
but I said that as a bit. - Yeah. - And they built the sets already! So, that can't be true, 'cos they already built the sets! And I said this as a bit.
- Yeah. - Now, to be fair, that bit was stacked in
my favor a little bit, because we did both live
off that train stop. (Brennan laughing)
- That's true! Right around the corner.
- But, it was still, like...
- Incredible. Well, when you said that,
the first thing I did is, I was like, can we make the... Because we hadn't decided what the train was gonna be from yet. - Oh, okay. - The set was built, but
we could easily change... - The signage?
- The signage of the trains. We were like, make that the L.
- It was a magic trick! And I got got.
- Yeah. - Gotcha!
- Magic. - Amyakaspentgladiator1. Thank you, Amyakaspentgladiator1. - I think it's Amy, AKA Spent Gladiator 1. - I like Amyaka!
(Siobhan laughing) - But Amyaka might be right.
- Amyaka! - No judgment.
- Amyaka, I'm so sorry. Siobhan's insensitivity will not stand. - I apologize on behalf of
my people and my country. - Thank you for your question. Which Dimension 20 NPC would you like to hang out with the most? Also, A! - God dang it!
- A, A, A! - NPC? - NPC. And it's Dimension 20, it's
not Fantasy High, so we've got all the way through
Unsleeping City episode 11. - I mean, gotta say 53V3N. That guy seems so much fun.
- 53V3N! (others laughing) - It's tough. God, that's tough. There really are a lot of fun ones, but also a lot that are fun for one scene, but do you really wanna
hang out with them? - Yeah, I'd like to meet
Buddy the Shit Elemental. But I'm not sure I'd wanna hang out with Buddy the Shit Elemental. - Yeah, I mean, probably
Tracker and Jawbone. They seem like a fun hang. They're the most human of the NPCs. - Jawbone is genuinely nice.
- Grounded. - And wants to make sure
the people he's with are having a good time.
- Yes. - And also, has rad stories about stuff that happened in his crazy life. - Yeah. The ice cream... I can't remember.
- Santa Claus. - (laughing) Santa Claus
from the Unsleeping City? - Yeah, I mean, look. I guess, sure.
- I'mma kick it with Santa. Yeah, I would like to meet Santa Claus. - You're right, that's cool. - I mean, I don't think this is a spoiler. You could also hang out with... No, yeah, I'mma go with Santa Claus. I'm gonna go Santa Claus.
- I also feel like Esther Sinclair and I
would just be friends. - I would love to hang out with Esther. Esther's very cool.
- Yeah. - If I hung out with Esther,
she might teach me magic, which would be rad.
- Yeah, that would be also... - That would be extremely cool. - Very rad. - Alejandro, same reason. Would love to hang out with Alejandro. NerdyDragonCat. Thanks, NerdyDragonCat! Since Tracker is also a cleric, what kind of form would
her spirit guardians take? Also, would the philosophy
students, professors, be able to interact with them? Yes! Tracker is a priestess of the moon. She worships the moon. So, her spirit guardians would probably, if I were gonna come up with something off the top of my dome. Probably be--
- Stevie Nix. - What's that?
- Stevie Nix. - It's just a bunch of Stevie Nix. It's Stevie Nic cloning herself like Multiple Man from the X-Men. (others laughing)
Just potentially thousands of Stevie Nixes, like the white wing dove. (Siobhan laughing) That, or cool ancestral,
primal, Celtic werewolf... I'm thinking, like, painted werewolves, with cool--
- Woad color. - Woad colors, and torques, and spears--
- That's cool. - With wrapped copper on them, and stuff. - That's very dope. - Stellaka1! (others laughing)
Thank you, Stellaka1. Did you always plan on having the musical being a big part of the
Unsleeping City setting before Misty was created? That's a great question. I present a pretty volcanic
campaign setting to my PCs, because I want to incorporate as much of their character
choices as possible baked into the fabric of
the world around them. So, I don't start designing
battle sets for these seasons until after I know who the
main six PCs are gonna be. - Yeah, I mean, all we get is, "Hey, it's magical high school. "It's magical underground
in New York City." - For season 5, there was slightly more. - Yeah.
- Well, that's spoilers. We won't go into that. There's a lot of material that
is cooked up after the fact because it's also the kind of thing where I don't wanna be like,
hey, I've mapped out all the different gods
and pantheons of this, and then nobody's proficient in religion, and no-one's playing a cleric or paladin. - Right, well...
- And then you're like, woo! I wasted a bunch of time. This is PuddleOCrumbs. No? PuddleOCrumbs, hi! First of all, thanks, PuddleOCrumbs. - Oh my god, my heart.
- "Hi! "I just started my sophomore
year as of three days ago. "What would be Fabian and Adaine's advice? "What is your advice?"
- Oh, my heart! - Wait, PuddleOCrumbs. Everyone else stop talking in the chat. Is this sophomore year of
high school or college? No-one else chat, just
PuddleOCrumbs answer the question, if it's college or high school. - It's gotta be high school, right? - It's gotta be high school. - Potentially, I think so, right? (all exclaiming) Something's happening.
- Ahh! (Lou laughing) - High school!
- Thank you, PuddleOCrumbs. - All right, everyone can resume chatting. - First of all, go to bed! (Brennan spluttering)
I don't care. Stay up all night! Have fun with your friends. Truly, my advice, high
school doesn't matter. All of the advice that you get of high school matters is incorrect. Follow your passion. Read a lot, and have a good time. I dunno. Sounds like terrible
advice, but truly, I... I think that (laughing) the
schooling system is bad, and if you have a thing that
you're passionate about, follow that passion, because it's your life
and you have to live it for the rest of your life. - Fabian's advice is, get
out there and make friends. You may show up to school with one expectation of the
person you're going to be, but the people that you
open yourself up to and meet can drastically alter and
change that for the better. - Yeah.
- My advice, dude? (Lou and Siobhan laughing) You've gotta get that GPA way up, dude! Colleges are important. Start studying for the SAT right now! - Right now!
(Lou laughing) Get a tutor!
- Yeah (laughing) get a tutor! Are you with the Princeton review? You're not ready! You're not ready, that's it! No, yeah, I don't know. I think I 100% resonate
with what Siobhan is saying. Your life is your life,
and you have to live it, so do what you want.
- Yeah. - I would say the exact same thing. I, in my adult life, have
never been asked for... No-one has ever asked to
see my college degree. - No.
- What my grades were... - Anybody who's an adult who still knows what their SAT scores are
and tells people about them? Sucks. - 1640. - All right.
- I got a 1640. - 1640?
- Yeah, okay, good. - I got a 1640.
- That's really good! I think.
- Oh, I was back in the days when it capped out at 1600.
- Yeah, it's 1640 out of 2400. - I went to a completely
different schooling system, and I did okay (laughs). - I would say to you, PuddleOCrumbs. I never went to high school,
so I don't have any advice about high school or what happens there. And in fact, high schoolers scared me when I was high school
age, and they still do. - [Siobhan] Coward. - What I would say, I have been very clear and upfront about my cowardice from day one. What I would say to you is this. I think that at the age
you are at right now, which is, what year, sophomore year? You're like 15, 16?
- 15, 16. - That was the age that I
started working at Wayfinder, which was my LARP summer camp, and started writing a lot of LARPs. And I've always had role-playing be a big part of my life. I was so badly bullied in school that I got taken out of school, and home-schooled for four
years from the age of 10 to 14. I had a hard time, and it was a situation where I spent a good part of
my early adolescence believing that I would not have friends or do stuff in my life. I thought I would maybe write novels in a shack in the woods, and my brother would
bring meals to me, and (Lou laughing)
that that would be my life. I'm not really exaggerating too much. - You do live in a shack in the woods. - I do live in a shack in the woods. - So that's accurate.
- I will say, there's something... And this is a sad and
heartfelt and powerful thing that you're discussing. But the idea of a
15-year-old child being like, "Yes, one day, I will have a shack, "and my brother will bring--"
- Will bring meals to me, in my shack.
(Lou laughing) So, the shack thing didn't happen. I went to this summer camp
and I started working there. Role-playing, through
Dungeons and Dragons, through LARPing, through all these tools, imparted a lesson that I wish was a mandatory
lesson for people, and I think it's a gift that
role-playing can teach you, which is something that... The struggle of being a teenager is about moving from childhood, where you are just being authentically. Like, a five-year-old
just has the personality that erupts from within them,
and it's out in the world. And then you get to an
age of self-awareness where all of a sudden, you get the mental
ability to self-critique. And you move from being someone being cared for by your parents to inching towards autonomy and agency. And you start to enter all
these profound questions about the world, your place in it, and your identity. Who you are going to be. The gift that role-playing gave me when I was very sad
and not in a good place was this understanding
that identity is fluid, and that you get to
choose who you want to be. And that becomes really
clear when you're like, I'm a dwarven paladin named Burzo. And the thing to take from that is, that's obviously fantastical, but you get to choose if
you're brave or not brave. You get to choose if
you care or don't care. And so I think it's not
necessarily about high school as the academic institution,
which is whatever. It's just that high school's
an extension of your life, and the people there present opportunities for you to be the person you wanna be. To enter into relationships
and friendships with integrity and honor and compassion, and try as much as you can
to forge your adult self. I didn't know it at the time, but that's the work of being a teenager, is you're making decisions and forming the ruts and grooves of the paths of your brain
into who you wanna be. - [Siobhan] Also, fail as much as you can. - Yeah. - At as many things as you can. Because failure will only
teach you who you are, and how to be better. I think that you're taught
to fear failure so much. But failure is not the
same thing as losing. - It's wild how much the teenagers that I've known in my life fear failure and reprisal when you are truly at
a period of your life where the risks for experimentation are potentially less
than they will ever be. - Yeah. The thing that I finally learned when I started working in restaurants, that I did not learn all
the way through school, is that it's not the failure that matters. It's how you deal with it that counts. - Yeah.
- And often, you can not only salvage a situation by how you deal with that failure, but you can make it ten times better. And I wish that I had learned
that in school, and I did not. - Yeah, absolutely.
- Because I had bad teachers who are on my vendetta list--
(Brennan laughing) and I will one day murder them. - So, PuddleOCrumbs, go forward into life, and don't be afraid of failure. Experimentation is there. This is an age in your
life when you get to decide so many exciting things
about who you wanna be and what your life can look like. Experiment, fail, rise up
again, dust yourself off, and we are speaking with authority because we are Dungeons and Dragons
players from the internet. So everything we say...
- Yes. - Should be taken as pure gospel. - Absolutely.
- We know everything we're talking about.
- Don't listen to your parents, we're your parents now. (Brennan laughing)
- And just for the record, for everyone who's keeping track at home. I spoke incorrectly. I got a 1760 on the SAT. 1760. - 1760? - Yeah, way better than--
- Out of 1800? - No, out of 2400.
- Oh, okay. - 1760.
- I truly don't know what any of these numbers mean. - I think I got a 1450?
- (exhaling) And look at that. - In the old one, in the 1600 one. - I got an A in Chemistry. I got a B in English, and I
got a C in Theater Studies. And now, I'm a writer!
- Tom Price gave me a B in History when I was at SUNY Ulster. And Tom Price,
(Lou laughing) you robbed me of my 4.0.
(Lou clapping) You know what you did. You know what you did, and
you know that I earned that A. So you come find me,
and you can talk to me. (others laughing)
All right? Guys, this has been Extra Credit. So delightful to have
Lou and Siobhan here! Yay!
- Yay! - Tune in next week for
our last Extra Credit before the return to Elmville, and the world of Spire!
- Oh, my goodness. What's it gonna be?
- What's it gonna be? - We genuinely don't know!
- I genuinely don't know. - I genuinely do know. And I'm gonna tell you what it's gonna be next week.
- What? - Bye!
(Brennan laughing) Guys, that's it for this
chapter of Dimension 20. But wait, harken! The cry of more full
episodes of Dimension 20! They call out to you from Dropout.tv! Will you not run to their aid
with your free trial today?
