Short Rest - Adam King and Ben Van Lier

friends fans and fine folk grab your drinks and snacks and coming down for the definitely first take of this short rest with the lovely adam and ben oh yeah we have both so wonderful to be here for the first time it's so good to have you the very first time i've ever been here it's so good so good to have you to make my first appearance on the stream i'm literally the only one who can say that well it's good to have you here thank you very much for coming along uh we've got we've got apparently only 25 viewers uh which is another streamlabs uh artifact i'm sure um because i can see because i can see more than 25 people chatting so thanks streamlabs everybody um so uh who are these fine folk for anybody who actually and i am actually starting to get a bit a few people every so often will come to me and be like oh who these viva guys and and they'll have found me through my dming or through my youtube or through other things uh so for the people who have found me through other sources uh who are these people on my stream enjoy joining me for the short rest adam let's start with you who are you um my name is adam i am a actor writer director and member of people who do like i do i do funny videos and i stream and i take lots of photos of cats that's actually a lot that's a large part of my life at the moment actually i think about it you go and follow at adam kingfilm on instagram it's it's cats it's cat's color there's so many cats it's like 50 cats really in truth and they're like 25 garden and 25 my face well it's it's fun it's uh it's always nice to see cute kittens how many how many do you actually have now you have obie and cora who are our cats they're yours and then you're they are strong they were fosters but they are foster fails and they are our cats now now we have eight others we have a mama and seven babies mama and the beans challenge how tiny are they are they like little weak kittens the newborns like that big yeah they're like five weeks old yesterday i think so they're very very very small uh and who's next to you ben who are you i'm ben tell us more about yourself you muppet uh hi i'm ben i am an actor and a writer and an artist and a jiu jitsu fiend from new zealand and i also work with viva obviously viva so i'm getting it's fun getting to troll rob physically on stream live having to intervene into trolls i just realized i can say whatever i want and he can't stop me i can literally i've just muted you i can like that says that's how easy it is i'm the only one that anybody can hear now and now you're back i literally still have the back but how quickly can you i will hover i will hover my mouse over the click to switch off button the entire time with my finger on it poised and ready oh good so you have to you ha it's how well you can hide what you're about to say and get it out in one one syllable at the beginning it should have had us on like a three second delay like yeah like the news center um so ben where are your cats at where do you where why do you not put cats on instagram um well my my instagram is specifically purely for my art basically i've started putting some stuff in the stories of my garden and [ __ ] but it's basically basically pure art because i try and keep my entire instagram pure art pretty much and i follow a couple of friends but it's mostly artists and what sort of what sort of art do you do for the people who haven't checked you out on your instagram yet uh well it kind of varies but these days i do mostly portraits and figure drawings really like i just i just put one up today um they're very good they're getting closer and closer to bloody photo realism every time i see when i'm like holy [ __ ] especially because there's a lot of nudes on there and i'm like when is instagram going to start taking these down because they're just getting so realistic it's basically a nude photo yeah yeah because it's funny for me because again i follow so many artists my instagram is constantly full of nerd drawings like so for me it's so normal but i forget for most people that's probably not i don't follow artists and my instagram's full of nudes as well is that not nice you're thinking of only fans oh right yeah that's a different service that's a different yeah yeah that's a different app yeah so uh the reason i chose to have you on today is because we're out of episodes um just as just as a final tie up for anyone who happens to be watching this later because i'll likely be putting on my youtube maybe years down the line people are going back and watching it um their context for uh where we're at is i'm the dungeon master for you guys on over on the vivaldi dnd channel um and we we usually film in blocks we film like a a table session of several hours and then we chop chop it into lots of half hour chunks for the d d channel on youtube and then and then we by the time that's starting to run out we film to the next session and we do it again but we're currently as of late 2021 we're in a new zealand lockdown and uh and and we haven't had the chance to film so we've run out of episodes the last time we filmed was in july july and it is now november is a flat circle in meaningless community like july feels like march feels like 1982. genuinely like it the it's so long and short of a time since the early 2020. i it feels like everything of lockdown has just kind of been this year and it's been two years just blended together it really has that's so so if we've run out of ep episodes then that means that the people watching it are actually up to date with you guys playing it for once for the first time ever for the first time ever yeah for the first time ever so uh you know the exact same amount as ben and i do yeah yeah because you might you guys watching might have actually gone back and re-watched things and watched it more recently especially more than ben discussed it with people and things yeah so um let me start with asking you about your experiences with the indie like where what what are you uh how what's what's your experiences with d outside of me adam no no not a lot like before playing d and d with viva i had uh done not actually official duns and dungeons and dragons but other uh role-playing tabletop games um monster of the week maybe i think that's what it may have been um uh but only like three or four times like three or four sessions i think and didn't super get into it um so yeah but and apart from like knowing that it was a thing and i will have actually no i give myself a little bit more credit i have played the hell out of baldur's gate one and two like a lot of bubbles gate one and two that is that is a straight-up dnd video game and yeah in terms of actual tabletop play yeah very very very little how about um since we started playing though because you were you had a session with um dragon dragon friend dragon friends that's one and then then that is the literal only other time that you've played you haven't you've never you've never bothered to uh to crack out some dice when you i mean you've got a lot of merchandise now that we've been doing this channel for a while we get we get sent a lot of dice and all kinds of stuff you've never been tempted when friends came over to crack them out do it all of my dice i need to go digging for my other desk but um the uh i mean yes i want to i would i would like to get into a regular weekly schedule d d game with friends but i uh there's two things one i don't have the time yeah um i just genuinely don't have the time in my life at the moment and two uh this is going to be an ego boost for you rob i don't think i'd want anyone else to damn me apart from you stop yeah you need to need to dm yourself you need to be the dm would you ever do it i think i think i'd be good enough to yeah i think i'd like to give it a go yeah it's uh i think i think any one of us of the viva d lot would make a good dm but they'd be very different stories i reckon and they'd be very different types of dm i think even rowan would make a good dm he would just be the type of dm that is like improvise everything and when you come up with needing a rule it's just like oh we'll just rule it like this for now and imagine he would dm like greg davies rules over time yeah yeah i was i was i said this to jen the other day i was like the new zealand host of task master which most of you won't know the name of um jeremy well jeremy he's he's a fine broadcaster but he is a terrible host of task masters i i think rowan would be a great task master host he would have the energy of greg davies on taskmaster on new zealand taskmaster they needed they would they need a [ __ ] boot yeah uh they need to boot jeremy wells and get ron on task that's that's actually a [ __ ] great petition i actually i've watched both seasons of the kiwi monster and actually he's grown on me he's very different to greek davies but they're heaven paul yeah him and paul's relationship is very different is it a very different relationship but i kind of like it too like it's kind of becoming it's not that sort of jokey antagonistic one of uh no they're kind of like a they are more of a team yeah than than um then greg and regan yeah so back to d d ben what was your experience with d d before me uh if every single time i've played d d i've had a camera on me [Laughter] so you can you can literally see every every instance of your yeah your dnd at some point yeah the the first episode of like npc dnd on the the main channel that's the very first time i ever played dnd like episode one of this current ongoing campaign yes like some of the fans would have seen the isolation games first but that actually came and chronologically in my life that came after because it was really recorded the first session and then yeah the first lockdown got in the way my god this dnd campaign is most certainly themed by lockdown talking about time that feels like five years ago yeah months ago like legitimately feels like no it was about oh wait would we film it in my i don't [ __ ] film the very little thing right very famous uh we filmed in february yeah we must have done because because the green screen is the green screen the green screen was meant to be shot on the wednesday that we went into lockdown um the very first day of new zealand lockdown very first time um and so it was it was like literally couldn't have been closer to lockdown and started one day later we'd have probably had green screen and then the episodes would have started yep that's right such is and then you've uh played d d outside of me ben you had ever had another dm you you played with me uh i heard that one game and you were still in the game and i was in the game so you've never played dnd without my presence no no i've never been i've never done it without you holding my hand so you actually both have um experience there of d d in person with me and then d d online with somebody else dming and tell us what your views of uh are of the two different types of because with lockdown i can still theoretically dm for people on online and things and my home games i've had people been like we're really missing it would i we would rather do online than not at all um and i've i've had to move my home games online which i really hate but it's it is how it is it's better than nothing what do you guys what do you guys think better than nothing not at all i i've talked about this quite a lot on stream recently and i think for the chaotic energy and improvisational style that we have at least for npc dnd it it just works so much better in real life that there's something about being on on a call like this with i know it's not much of a delay but i'm a new delay and having to talk over each other on call it doesn't quite allow for that same chaotic improvisational energy that we have at the table yeah yeah i've i've actually been given this a lot of thought because i have had a i got an unrelated i got an audition offer but because i'm on complete lockdown i'd have to do the audition like even a self tape because i'm not doing it with haley because that's a nightmare [Laughter] because she hates it um but so i'd have to even though like even recording it on my phone or something i'd have to be doing it with someone over skype or zoom or whatever and i i i hate acting over zoom and i was thinking about it and i was like because i've always hated it and it's because of that delay and like me and adam and the other guys were playing some games the other night and we we even did the little experiment of trying to sing happy birthday over a call and you literally can't do it like you cannot do it we tried to time up happy birthday and it was impossible to do yeah yeah even trying to count because even if i went like one two three and everyone tries to count with me you'd like you just can't do it i think you can't sync up i want to demonstrate that now i want you to start counting and i'll jump in okay one two three four five six and so i realized today i was trying to because i basically turned down the audition because i was like originally i was like yes i can do it but i'll only do it when i'm out of lockdown and i can film it in person with someone and now i'm never getting out of lockdown never ever never this is my life forever um and i was trying to work out i was trying to come up with a way to describe why it's so bad and it's that it's the music like the thing i love about acting is that connection that you have and and dnd plays into this because the reason the thing i enjoy about dnd is yes i enjoy the character rpg aspects of it but i i because i mean the only thing i've dnd have played is the viva guys so it's comedy d d basically and i really enjoy that kind of improv nature and the kind of character work in the acting really i mean that's what i like to do yeah i feel like i would like it over zoom as you say ben if it was just if i was playing just for the rpg it was more like it was more battles and more fighting and less of the less of the role play stuff i'd probably like it over yeah exactly and and obviously if i love if i really really loved cnd like dnd was my jam and zoom or online was the only option then yeah i'd probably do it i'd probably do it if it's my literally my only option yeah and it is good um people for those reasons it's good that people in different countries that like want to play together obviously have yeah doing so um with all the virtual tabletops and things and and i think the future of online dnd will be a lot less irksome because because there will be i mean we'll always have that barrier of certain like one of the things i really hate about it is that around a table i could be for instance having like a one-on-one discussion with alan and i i'm having like a scene with him and the other three of you can still really be talking and uh especially if you're on the set like you and you two could like turn to each other and say like something under your breath but it's not distracting from this but on the situation where you've got one mic and everybody's getting the same audio you can't have a side conversation the person talking is the person and that's that's the person everybody hears and that's the thing i hate so like for dnd online to get better i think it needs some more of that like a like a i can imagine going into like a virtual reality situation everybody has the vr and you are like sitting around headsets around the table and things and then you kind of literally proximity audio you've got proximity audio yeah proximity audio things like that might help yeah directional audio all that sort of thing might help um but i think the i think like the lack of table uh minis and map and stuff like that tactile stuff that's all going to go away like you're not going to miss that stuff as much as um as virtual stuff gets better there's already programs that do like three-dimensional uh minis and props and stuff that are easy enough to pick up and move so that sort of element of it's good but you're still going to miss out on that just just feeding it from each other's energy i i feel for npc dnd at the very least there's something else very special about sitting in that room at that table with other people there knowing those cameras on you and and either being in the moment in character and doing that improv bouncing off each other or while other people are doing stuff just kind of looking at your notes and thinking about what you're going to do next yeah whereas if you're here and as you see there's just voices in your head and you're just kind of sitting there being like like it's not it's not it's it's the exact same thing as rehearsing a scene for a film and then putting the costume on and being like oh i am the cat i am the character now yeah i can definitely yeah that's a good name yeah there's definitely a part of that and like all that stuff i said before is true i think i think it's it's it's more of an issue for me with just straight up acting because that is pure like when you're doing a scene that is pure musicality like whereas dnd as you say there is much more you know the battles and stuff it's all fine and so it works better online but it does always have that kind of hindrance basically yeah what do you um what do you like most about like we've touched a little on it but in person dnd what what do you actually enjoy about the indie what what's what's the thing because ben you've previously said that like the d d stuff is one of your favorite things to do with viva the some of the most fun days that you have like what is it about it that you actually enjoy well it's because it's kind of funny because you say what do i enjoy about d and d but as we've established dnd for me is a very specific very narrow thing like dnd for me is sitting at that table with adam and rowan playing that is these characters with you what do you enjoy about your dnd experience yeah that is your that is what dnd is to you yeah totally totally i'm just i guess i'm prefacing this saying that it's a very specific experience of dna because yeah there's also five cameras on us and tom and elle other people reacting and you've got you've got somewhat of like an audience an audience that's had like usually they've got the applause for like you know sitcoms and stuff it's the opposite it's like stay quiet they've got this silence and so sometimes it is quite fun to to like something completely unexpected happens and tom the cafe the guy like goes yeah and you're like if you guys ever see us look off that way what i mean for in the frame i know it would be looking up that way yeah um that is us looking at tom who's probably just laughed at something yeah yeah exactly not only left but he picks up on stuff as well like there's been a couple of times when we'll go to lunch and he'll come up to me privately and go did you you said you said so-and-so didn't you and i was like yeah and he goes he goes none of them picked up on it and i was like no and he goes all right um oh god garrus goldhorn and ben and i couldn't see this because you were twitching on alan your eye was twitching on ellen's side and so ben and i had no idea you're twitching but tom had this close-up camera on your face and said that oh i thought it was [ __ ] obvious that rob was twitching the entire time through the thing we couldn't see it and it's also a real thing for online dnd you'd have seen it yeah yeah true but you also with dnd like there are times when you know you'll be talking to alan or something and i know my turn's coming up next so i'm like what am i gonna do what am i gonna do i'm gonna oh maybe i'll do this maybe oh if i do this and what's he going to do like and then it can't so i you could be divulging all sorts of [ __ ] [Laughter] like just thinking about what i'm going to do just white noise yeah exactly but i think i think the thing i like most apart from just the acting and the improv and just like i just always enjoy acting with guys that's always fun um but i think what i enjoy the most about d is the storytelling of the dice and how you it's like where chaotic at the best of times anyway but then sometimes the dice just gives you a roll and you're like [Laughter] oh okay like when greg tied that knot and it's like oh that's okay yeah you're [ __ ] and it's like it's always no i i try to hide i tried to hide death behind a number of walls like it's not like one it's not save or suck like one person casts a spell at you and if you fail you save you're dead like i try not to do that because my style of damning is more narrative and i don't want to just have to reroll one of the characters and background i've tied all of your backgrounds and your stories into the entire plot like what happens so if one of you completely just gone now i'm like oh [ __ ] this this sort of big reveal bad guy that actually means something to the that particular character i'll have to rework that someone jumping off an airship is not useful and so things like the uh things like the rope across the chasm was like all right you had to go through the entire process of getting everybody across and then you had to put put one rope across and turn it into a plank a plank of road and then you had to tie a knot and fail and then he did an a a a a an investigation on the knot and failed that so he didn't even know that it was a bad knot and then he had to and then he had to fall off so i tried to hide things behind and then jumping off an airship i tried to hide it behind like you're not just gonna splat because you're you know hundreds thousands of feet up so there was like you have time to get caught but if but it was the last roll and if it if the dice had decided we were playing a game the other day me and the guys and rowan plays games like he plays d d as well like we're on top of a tall building and rowan just like jumped off and felt she was dead here we are fighting a zombie horde and rowan wants to know if the game is accountable jumping up the building and guess what he died and we didn't have a fourth player for the rest of that level oh god i had laughed so much my life so much that's and then it happened like the next week or the week after that he wanted to know what the water physics of back for blood were so he jumped in the ocean and died there's if only there was like some sort of rules manual of the game but there's not there's nothing that would have told him there's nothing that would have told him what happens if he jumps in the water so he's got to just try it out yeah yeah but yeah i think i think the dice the the storytelling of the dice is probably my favorite part because because the also that includes the anticipation of the dose yes yeah and sometimes getting that net 20 or whatever or that one in my case like that that adds just so much and that's the kind of [ __ ] like you can't write this [ __ ] like that's why i've always thought a dnd campaign like filmed as just a straight narrative but based completely off the dice rolls yeah would make sometimes would make a hilarious [ __ ] so like so playing it out at a table and then like after the fact writing up what happened and turning that into a script yeah yes exactly rolls a natural one on his spare throw he really does [ __ ] it up like yeah i am yeah i i find the same thing like there's been numerous times when the the story direction is is completely anticipated by the uh or directed by the dice like the like frank is frank is a great example because frank was in my mind when i was preparing for that session he was a badass assassin that would that lulled you into false sense security by being old and he was like oh i'm just i'm just a duddery old man follow me down this way to find my daughter i'm i'm lost and oh i've gotten turned around and then he gets you on your own and he goes and he turns around and slashes your head off and because the rolls were just garbage i think i gave him advantage or something and he was just garbage roll and he went oh no you just didn't even hit your armor class and you have an armor class of 10 or something so it was just absolute and so at that point the dice have told me no no this guy's not a good assassin he's just an old man that took the job because he really needs the money and it just completely changes direction of certain characters and things and especially when it comes down to character death or all that sort of thing it can really change the direction of a of a story which is why i like it because if you put too much if it's just storytelling without dice without a random element randomizable it's it's too much pressure on all of us but especially the gm to come up with a good story and to like to make it compelling and to make it unpredictable and to make it whereas i can prep i can prep like just one chapter of the story i can put bones down for the the full story as it were but i can only put flesh on the next chapter because the dice are gonna decide for me what the hell happens after that yeah you just kind of trust the chaos to a certain extent speaking of what are you guys what's your what's your um opinion of the concept of plot armor for characters it's such a hard one a because we were talking about this uh the other day me ellen and rowan being like we've said everything that happens in npc dnd is canon until someone dies and then it's not canon um because it's like these are four or three but four characters that are set up in epic if you see me we can't have them die yeah yeah but but then on the other side of the coin what drone says all the time is like he wants steaks he wants the ability for us to die and i kind of agree with them on that like i want to go into an engagement or a fight or whatever and go if we [ __ ] it up one of us isn't or multiple of us aren't coming out of this yeah i i really are i think i always want the um the threat of death like i i want that to be a real threat but i don't think i'm i'm interested in like gritty realism like so i guess i g so i guess in some sense i'm i'm after a little bit of plot armor just to recognize that [ __ ] you're an adventurer yeah it's hand get away with [ __ ] so you can just get away with some [ __ ] and be a bit stronger than you normally would or whatever yeah like but um but yeah i still want because yeah i agree with rowan or whatever that without without threat of consequences then what's the point in some ways you know i mean i guess i guess if you're just into it for the story but for me if i just wanted story i'd go to and something else i'm not yeah i'm not here i'm not in d d purely for story yeah full story and to play the [ __ ] game it's one of the things that i thought about recently that like unique is a very unique form of storytelling because the writers are the actors are the storytellers and the on and the audience like in a regular game of d d for us we've actually got an audience but yeah for a regular home game the way that 99 of the world plays d d you are the writers and the and the storytellers and the and the audience for it you're telling your own story as you go in and you you have to that's why a lot of people say the main focus of dnd is that you're having fun that's that's one of those wrinkles of dnd that is that like my specific experience of dnd is very different in that regard although i always know i haven't i have an audience although correct me if i'm wrong and this is one of the things i love about our game as well is i don't think we're necessarily consciously doing anything at that table for the audience we're doing it for ourselves to make ourselves laugh yeah i would i would be willing to say that most of the things that go through our minds and come out of our mouths is to make ourselves laugh is to have fun at the table usually the things that go for your minds come out your mouth to be honest the venn diagram is very close to just being one circle yeah it's gonna be pretty bad for me to buy my tongue but there are times when i do manage to shut the trap before it gets down oh that was nice um yeah i think i generally i think i agree with you adam i think it would be just as chaotic i think it'd be more chaotic if if the cameras weren't on but the audience being there is still an intrinsic part of the experience of dnd for me and and and knowing that we're going to film it at the green screen and and all of that even it does just bind its nature influence even if in like a cyclical way it influences what happens at the table and vice versa and so it just it just does have an impact on the game you know like just then as you said like the audio like people playing at the audience i was about to go well not really the audience so the audience i mean come on rob most people would not have an audience and they're the only ones and yeah they're not really performing d yeah it's why there's it's why there's huge uh uh subreddits and things for people to just be like oh i want i need to tell somebody about this story that just happened indeed and how epic it was and how we rolled four ones in a row and or whatever yeah yeah of course yeah you need to tell somebody because you've got nobody to tell about it that's i think that's one of the reasons why i enjoy re why i enjoy watching um the show is i think it's just genuinely funny and i like watching it but i also get to relive some of those hilarious moments that happen like [ __ ] it like lock it lock it look look that was nice too that was that was nice because i said like charisma i think i would be kind of gutted if i had something happen in a home game that i couldn't share with anyone by showing them a video of it yeah the the one of the toughest things about being a dm is that often you've got such cool ideas or something something that's really cinematic in your head or something that you're like expecting to play out a certain way and they and it's really tasty because your players like here's the thing that's been simmering underneath the the surface the whole way the sort of the sort of deep plot that they haven't they've been picking up breadcrumbs and then they're going straight for it and you're like yes we're finally gonna get and then they go and you're like oh they're gonna they're gonna look back at this moment and they're going to realize just how close they came to uncovering the true plot of the entire story blah blah blah all this stuff and of course you can't share it with your players who most often are the people that you want you would want to share it with because people are usually playing with them they've got their friend circle and those are the people they're playing with you with and you're like oh can i tell anybody about this this story or this this weird cool thing that happened that i can't give away to my players yet stuff like that and and of course yeah now i've got a sim situation on a a a youtube channel wide setting of that where there's no comments being like oh what's happening here and i'm like well there's so much i want to talk about the only one that knows i'll get there i'll get there thankfully i love keeping secrets makes me feel superior to know things that you guys don't it's kind of it's kind of like because i imagine there's there are a lot of people who love that about dnd too it's kind of like the whole theater thing like there's a lot of people who love theater because it happens in the moment and then it's gone yeah you know and they love just having that secret little they love having a secret basically they're like that experience you know so i imagine dnd is the same for some people but i'm really glad that it gets all recorded and blah blah blah on the um i've been listening some uh dmd podcasts recently and there was like an interesting debate about people who yeah i know right it's almost like i do this for a living and it's part of my job to actually consume material about it professional dungeon master um there was one they were having a debate about like whether or not to actually even call it a story and storytelling and stuff and whether it's whether it is even just a completely different medium and it sort of devolved into a discussion of railroading versus sandboxing are those terms i've used those terms around you before but i'm not sure if you're fully familiar with what they mean yeah yeah yeah yeah what's what's your take on like that that sort of uh scale that sliding scale of railroading you into a following we've never we've never really had a true sandbox i i i consider our games to be pretty railroaded for the most part well the the main the main thing of what we're going is railroaded and then you have little sandbox moments for us essentially each train station is a sandbox but you're on a road exactly exactly yeah i get you do a train i get you to a station and then i'm like all right do you think a bit and then everybody back on this train everybody come on heard your back on track i'm sure you i'm sure you'd be perfectly fine than one of us deciding to just literally be like now i'm laying tracks over here and you'll probably deal with it absolutely fine but i don't know if the other three would be here's what it was here's what would happen the main train track is here and we'll and one of us is like i'm lying tracks over here and rob's like yes you are good boy here we go yeah [Laughter] [Music] [ __ ] the stuff that we're doing in the swamp we're going back to the dirt league and i want to i want to track down um i want to track down my brother yeah i'm sure i [ __ ] i'm sure i'm sure i'm sure like that would be tens of episodes of of of railroad track off before we got back to the mainland yeah but but the thing about the thing about how i like to dm is that the stuff in the swamp would still carry on it would still be doing its thing yeah while you're doing the same thing yeah unlike a video i can't wait to get back to hollywood funny what because i went into the actual timeline i've got like it day by day what you've been doing and how long it's been and it's been 69 days in game as well as 69 episodes which is an interesting coincidence um and and you killed the assassins in greg's shop on day 10 like nearly nearly 60 days of decomposition it might actually be past the smell now searching for something and the fbi comes over this shoulder and then he adds 5e on the end which is shot for fifth edition and it's usually how people like how to dispose of a corpse 5e and then the fbi guy walks away yeah yeah i can i could i could easily search for some actual ways to like like get rid of a body in real life and then just pass it off as being like oh yeah no that does look weird but you know look at all this other stuff that i searched for uh what was the saying so yeah the um um the the railroading thing that i've seen an image of that that does it really well it's like dungeon entrance here and then like corridor and then like a room here a room here and then like on each end of those rooms the courier does just come around to the cut to the next room and it's like doesn't matter it doesn't matter which they're going you're gonna you're gonna go to the room that you've that you've given them i feel like i would really like a sand boxy game but my personality would be i would most certainly lead the charge and i don't know if other people would enjoy that right yeah yeah right right right like i would be the one playing in the sandbox and forcing other people to play in the same box with me and i know that that's not enjoyable for other people [Laughter] we can literally do anything so we should do this thing over here you just described rob right like that's how rob's playing this game look at this exciting box that you guys have given me that i can just railroad you adam brings his train tracks puts him under the sand and he's like come guys come play in the sandbox with me i i do i mean part of me would that but having said that i've never i've never played with other people that i've been ron and alan who would also act like that and i would have to then fight against in the sandbox so i don't know that's the yeah that's kind of like being railroaded in some ways like the i like basically i like the way you do it and it almost and i don't know if this is intentional because it's in a video game world as well but it really does feel like i'm looking at a video game map in my head like especially when we were in the deep frost because we were literally going down to town to town but it would feel like we're just like town with a and then yeah yeah yeah and especially in the dead frost it did feel like that so as you said like a railroad a railroad with a sandbox at each stage yeah it was basically like just levels almost you get to the [ __ ] the city level and that city level the [ __ ] level and the bloodline scotland and blah blah but but what you mentioned before about whether it's story telling or not it's something i was talking about on stream the other day that i found really interesting too if you guys heard the idea of the strengths of the three main kind of storytelling devices of novel versus film versus theater and the kind of strengths of each but in regards to a character so basically the way i heard it described was a novel strength is showing a character and conflict with himself because you can show the inner monologue theater's strength is showing characters in conflict with each other because you can have two people on stage at once and talking to each other and film strength is showing a character and conflict with their world because you can place them in the world you know you can really place them in physical environments but then and i was talking about how video games is kind of a new one and dnd is very very similar to video games in that sense and that dnd is more story focused whereas video games are more gameplay focused although that's starting to shift a lot depending on the game as well yeah but it is interesting how there's now really interactive story and how and i don't know what the strength of that is like i don't know there might be one i i i and someone might have worked it out or someone might have illustrated it i don't know but it is interesting to think how being the active protagonist in that story how that changes it and what the strength of that is yeah i hadn't thought about that before i feel like it leans into that same film world where it's uh the character against the world generally especially in something like an rpg yeah but but i guess it depends on how you design it too because with dnd it could definitely be character versus character i guess yeah i don't know i don't know yeah it's yeah it's an interesting one for sure because i'm i'm trying to think of the three other ones the the novel in the theater and the movie which is the least like and i was like well maybe novel like the internal struggle but i've i have a lot of people in my home games that that like they will it's all about their own character progression through yeah overcoming daddy issues or whatever the the like the background stuff um they'll be like i'm on the search for this thing and and every session is about like them trying to work out work their own character through it and i mean the dm like you quite often provide us with thoughts almost via dreams and things or or you'll go you're feeling such and such so yeah or like or like bob's thing with the [ __ ] old one you know like there is a lot of that internal stuff and and just as a by the way by the by that's kind of why a lot of the time adaptations don't work because a story a story works really well as a book because it has a strength where it's about the inner monologue and translating that to a film it doesn't work or vice versa and on a rare occasion it might work better but that might be because it was in the wrong meetings in the wrong meetings where they deserved to be a tv show yeah yeah yeah so it's it's something i think about a lot and and i still don't quite know and maybe video games still and and dnd perhaps too still don't quite know what the strength of the story is or maybe it's just way more flexible and it doesn't matter as much because you've got the gameplay as well it's not just storytelling so it's not as important maybe i don't know on the um on the topic of the the the railroad sandboxy situation because you guys when we first started this channel and first started playing d d you guys specifically asked for a railroading kind of campaign because rowan in particular just ca he just gets choice paralysis if if he doesn't have a call to action exact goal if he does not have a quest of even the quest to like go and check out the iceberg where people are not coming back from he got to the iceberg why are we not here but why are we not here why are we here we're investigating to see why people aren't coming back yeah but what are we meant to be doing that's not a thing to do [Laughter] i love in that episode you i'm not sure if it was a genuine little bit of frustration came through ben but it really did and i think we cut a bunch of it too because i got quite hated because i was just like what the [ __ ] how laid out for you does it need to be anyway my point was anyway because it started as very much railroad like here's a quest and and baradine is his quest is to get back his his um his power and the rest of you got like minor quests to get back the stuff that was stolen from you and by the time you've got it back you're kind of a cohesive team and you get forced into quest after quest but then you got to the dead frost and we were far enough into it at that point that i was like i'm going to introduce the possibility of sandbox in case they wanted to do that which is why i gave you six different tracks to choose from i gave you the railroad tracks still but there was a choice uh to make of do you take the left track the right track and it wasn't just the illusion of choice if you had gone to the other three villages or a different combination of the three villages of the six that you chose you would have encountered different stories you you might not have encountered yaris goldhon you might not have encountered the ice giant in the in the glacier you might have got you would have been you would have been on the if you'd have gone to argos i think it was you would have been on the on the lynch mob that went to dirk's house and then you'd have got there and been presented with an ethical dilemma of being like oh i really wish we'd trust in our experience this guy was a very nice guy to us maybe we try and convince this irate mob that wants his blood where he just came down it goes into a fit and turns into a wear it's interesting so story-wise i i mean obviously because i'm lifted i can't imagine a world now where we didn't bump into yaris goldtone like that seems so integral to the story to me now totally and well yeah especially because of all this ties to leopold and all that [ __ ] like there were things in the other three towns that you didn't see either like in the same sort of way that if you'd have me if you'd gone the other way you'd have gone i can't imagine has not having done this because we didn't get the information of this so so that was like a genuine moment of sandboxy kind of thing and then and then that was going to continue once you got to scotland and then got on an airship and got back to azerum it was going to be like you're back in honeywood what do you want to do like which direction do you want to go but at the same time they went oh here's here's some sponsorship taken to the feywild and i was like okay i guess we're going to the wild for a bit i guess we're going to go into the ewelin forest and we'll do that do more of a railroading thing for a bit because it's sponsored and yeah so you there is a chance to be a little more a little more sandboxy and and try and open it up a little bit bury those it would be interesting just to see what happens yeah it would be it's a unique experience for me as well to try and send books properly in a world that isn't entirely mine like i don't have full creative control over where everything is in the world and what the history of it is and all that stuff which if i was fully sandboxing one of the secrets of sandboxing is trying to lay that sand before them as they're playing they keep your players okay like playing along in the sandbox and they're getting closer and closer to the edge of the sandbox and you're like i haven't created this part of the world yet so i'm going to just end the session here and then you like have a week or two to like flesh out that bit and then they turn around and go the other way but i can't do it in a world that you don't have full control over in a pre-built world thankfully a lot of it has been dead for us lately and that one was so literally fleshed out by you guys already i had more i felt like i had more control over like i can just say these things because they haven't thought about it won't be contradicting anything that they've already established about dead frost because it's not existent uh i think when we get back to honeywood it'll be the most interesting part because i will have to be super aware of the geography around it and like the sort of things that you have in mind for and before we play rob often just sends me little dms like what's this thing about and what what's this area what can i do with this person and the the responsive content that's happening at the moment is a great example because they went it's it's an entire campaign set in the fa wild and i said to i had to say so um do you have a feywild do you have do you even have planar cosmology like do you have other planes of existence in this world or not like can if i take them to the feywild should we just make that like a a magical forest instead and that's why you're on you're in ewell in which is not a different plane of existence but it's the closest you had to the feywilds right right so i will i will consult adam um and uh alan as well sometimes um to be like what do you think about this would it break continuity if i said this or how how long has it been since this war or whatever and then the good thing is yeah once we see the base droid that is locked um but there are there is something very nice about the world of epic nbc man has always been very organically created by so many different ideas that have come from a lot of different places yeah i was just gonna say i like that still there a lot of the time those ideas are just improved like in the middle of the stream um yeah so i i think it'll get easier in the future though alan and i have started working on a bit of a law book basically just to kind of consolidate a whole lot of stuff um we've used our lock down time wisely to to start doing that basically and we'll hand the tone over to rob one day and be like there you go there it is and then we can and then we can work together with uh friends of mine publishing friends of mine to actually turn it into a dnd campaign setting that would be the next thing you see in the um so there's uh you i don't know if you could do the drawings you guys heard of uh fool's gold or dingodoodles is a youtube channel uh i didn't go doodle sheet well she was an art channel to begin with um and then she made a video that was just like her illustrating uh just an anecdote of her dnd campaign off screen like she was like oh here's the thing uh here's the thing that happened i i accidentally res raised the tarasque and the teresque in case you don't know is like the world ender it's like the godzilla of dnd we accidentally raised the turrets by carrie by doing bad karaoke and she does this whole story and it was intended to be like a one-off story and then it got super like it went viral and and everybody loved it and so she carried on telling the story through illustrations and stuff and it got this huge huge following and it's a fantastic story really is i definitely recommend it a channel's called bingo doodles if you want to look it up um but then the they've started a campaign they've got a kickstarter that's currently going and um and and it's i think it's reaching 2 million us dollars at the moment to make the make it into a published campaign setting so you know there's definitely we we have an equal following i imagine i've just seen ben's face go blue as he looks it up um to a kickstarter that's highly successful with the the uh right sort of um audience for making a campaign setting and people would certainly be uh calling out for it on hours yeah 2.5 million off 12 000 backers that's pretty good it's pretty great in it average out to like uh 20 dollars each i think there comes ben's man's face because my brain was like that's like a thousand each that's not that's not right no that's more than twenty dollars each that's two hundred dollars each isn't it yes i could i don't know i was joking oh were you were you just throwing out i was under exaggerating raging i'm doing the mess now on my phone i want to know i want to know it's about it it's it's a dot on 200. matt might be really good on that yeah damn nice nice work um what was i gonna say so yeah that's that's a thing that uh would be amazing to do at some point in the future actually publish it as a proper campaign setting almost certainly yeah yeah areas are fleshed out here's there is there is a lot in the world sell sell some cards maybe some some dnd cards yeah there is a lot in the world that has not even seen npc man or nbc dnd screens that we know about the world but it's it's very misty at the moment very very vague yeah and it's kind of working on that to really solidify a few things that you talked about in that skit where it's like oh there's an entire new continent down here exactly i mean that's that's like that is the thing that is in the world the continent of south wind with the turtle people but it's not been referenced beyond that one skit but it is a thing and and i and i do have uh law to back up why that's there why the turtle people are there when it came about or all in ezram terms and then also all it's kind of yeah because that's another that's a different challenge isn't it it works on two different levels that it is a video game that's that's a good question for you guys actually i have yeah i have two separate sets of documents one which is skycraft how did the yeah here's a question for you what level of making our dnd session will the the world that you're playing in feel like a video game are you guys comfortable with like if you do if we do have a character that when we have a character death let's be honest when we have one of you die do you want d would you prefer we we lean into the fact that oh remember this is a video game and and suddenly you pop back up into it you respawn uh you reskin it's it's a really tough one and i think we will have difficulty in the game which is why we've never really heavily leaned on video game stuff so far is the only one who knows it's a video game is barra dune and i purposefully don't play that very much at the table because it would be difficult um yeah we like because we we when i first came on board i didn't really have a character to play and so because all the guys chose nbc main characters and so we were talking about making me a a a pc not an npc yeah and it's still kind of vague as to what the [ __ ] you're interested you were introduced as a player in episode one or am i wrong about that maybe i can't remember in my mind you're an npc now yours are broken i i it might be you might be confusing it with uh brit's character in avernus because she was a pc she was a pc and that wasn't true yeah right because i because i remember us talking we talked about it at first and it's just going to be too many layers of abstraction for me especially literally yeah yeah exactly i know who i am i'm a dude dressed up as another dude playing another like it was just because there would be moments especially because we'd be filming it too in the green screens there would be moments where i was ben playing a guy who's playing bob and then sometimes bob is like playing a cat like it's just it's just kind of it just got too much bob tries to deceive his way into a high banquet or whatever and he puts out a different person and then there's the question of does do any of them does baradune know that they are characters in a video game that are currently playing that is currently being represented exactly it's like how [ __ ] aware am i right now yeah yeah like and because that's the thing like does bob know he's being played by daryl or whoever the [ __ ] my charac my player character is and how much does daryl like on the green screen do i have a different daryl costume now like that the the the way to sum all this up is i don't think it serves the story and i don't think it serves the the comedy or anything so i i've i've pitched jokes a couple of times at the table saying things in the game or whatever and it's just it's never felt like it served anything so i never think about it as a video game anymore to be honest it does yeah it does it does feel like it's become this own it's just the indy and you're playing and i think it's in the world but it's not it's not a video game world i think it serves the need for stakes as well because if you were video game characters especially as npcs you just respawn like you you there are you've literally done skits about that where somebody will kill greg and he'll respawn immediately and they'll kill him again and he'll respawn and who the hell cares and it will remove any stakes of him dying if he can just respawn immediately and of course we could get around being like he can respawn at level one he's lost everything and now he has to play a different character because otherwise he isn't yeah you know yeah like that kind of thing you could still have stakes like yeah it's a video game where you respawn as level one or even just [ __ ] like fisheries if if say rowan died on that blimp and then respawned in honeywood and the rest of us are in the [ __ ] dead wood or in a dead frost or in the fey wilds or whatever and he's got to find us like that does yeah he wouldn't know well i mean honestly would be that oh great he wouldn't it'd just be back it's nice and that's one of the things that's one of the things that uh baffles me as well is that he's so he's so dead set on getting back to honeywood as like the thing that he wants to do and i'm like for what what are you going to do when you get there your shop is literally derelict you you a good reason to go on an adventure i gotta get home to [ __ ] um to stand outside of my tent to be in hollywood to live my life to just be that pretty need to be in hollywood it's fun it's fun i i i do enjoy it i enjoy i enjoy playing uh very much so and i enjoy all of the like just the cool epic stuff that i'm in a position to use against you now that you're getting to a higher level you're getting more more badass i love seeing like the progression of the characters as barodon is getting more powerful like remembering his stuff and he's getting more arrogant greg is getting more powerful and it's really just confusing the [ __ ] out of him about everything that he can do bob's getting powerful against his will almost like he's he's just unlocking things within himself that he's like okay bob's just along for the ride you're you're you're not on a train track you're on a roller coaster and you're like oh okay on this right now oh this is a scary dark tunnel hey so on so on that topic to a certain extent and before i sort of open it up to people's questions since you you guys are up to date now with the what people have actually seen and therefore you can talk about anything without spoilers what do you think what's what's where's the story going what am i alluding to what's your what's your own fan predictions or theories about what is happening and what's where where the story is going my gut feeling is lethal is not the bbeg he's gonna be uh he's gonna be a mid-tier boss and someone else is waiting in the wings i don't know why i don't know what gives me that thought it's just a gut feeling yeah i don't know again it's i think it's partly because i'm playing bob who is just so all right what's going on all right like i don't when i'm at the table i don't really think that far ahead you know like bob's not going oh i wonder what's going on with this layuphill car i bet he's not like he's just like like he's like i think about it and stuff but yeah i don't really have any big what about what about by the way everyone in the chat saying look at rob's face rob is playing poker right now goodness he's not gonna give away anything on his face what is um what about the what about the entity bob's entity oh man i really hope that it turns out like you you remember you remember the uh the poem was not the poem the saying that got said in in the giant uh language yeah yeah uh go to the castle plant no go to the mountain plant a thing under the sky with the clouds you didn't even want to you didn't want to find a word that rhymes with thing it's like ah clowns go to the thing do the thing with the clouds and the mountain sky you gotta thing perfect perfect well when we get to the mountain cloud you'll be perfect yeah you'll know exactly what to say you'll know that you'll know the poem in giant to say that yes exactly exactly um yeah as far as veteran goes i i mean i don't i can't i don't really know it's it's obviously some dark force that just loves taking things over and making like spreading itself i guess i don't [ __ ] i don't know man i wasn't just just oh [ __ ] i don't know just trying to uh fix the uh camera yeah i just noticed i i don't know jumping around around the place oh no they're freezed up there yeah um cool just taking it a day at a time that's fine that's fine with me yeah yeah like it's because like bob is very curious about it but you drip fit them such mysterious vague like dreams about like dripping caves and [ __ ] and then like i i don't know it's just so weird and then like the cloud giant giving me these [ __ ] beans with a poem to say and like he's like all right i guess i'll just carry on then i have a reason to believe that one of those beans will permanently raise my health [Laughter] so can i have a baby there's no that would have been another that would have been another budget falling off the ship thing there is a lot of things that those beans could do that would kill him um exactly and yeah the whole like voices in his head like it's all very clearly kind of leading somewhere and there's clearly dark forces at play and ancient whatever's you know i mean who knows or it could be a [ __ ] spell i don't know but but yeah bob is very very confused by it but he's kind of just so into the violence he doesn't care as long as i've got something to jump into yeah yeah he's just wanted to go go for it one of the things i'm looking forward to with baradoon is i don't necessarily know that baron wants to be high sorcerer when uh when the time comes back around i was thinking about that the other day actually he's been high sorcerer for video game world 20 years in game world you know if you're assuming that 24 hours in the real world you know you might have 50 100 game days he's been high source for hundreds of years potentially yeah um and he was really exciting not to be yeah and we talked about how your call to adventure is the fact that you are finally not just a superman anymore you finally just got actual challenge and potential danger and stuff that you could you're like barodune as high sorcerer level 20 sorcery he was able to do anything he literally saved the universe everyone in chat this is not adam's funky timeline this is not adam funky timeline it's 20 years since the beginning of the video game that barrow dune has been uh that barodune has been awake real world yeah since the video game was released is that what you mean yes 20 years since the the first of the videos released in 2001 yep correct there you go then oh yeah that's that's something i'm really looking forward to with barodune is getting to that point in the story and i guess it'll be on the spot or it might be a dice roll who knows the decision to make and going whether or not he wants to be high source or he wants to pass it on or there's something else that happens i don't know we'll see dope well that's uh a fun place to uh to to wrap up my chat is uh let's open it up to the questions from from chat uh what what do you guys want to ask them not necessarily about dnd you can ask them whatever you want because they're here and they'll have a legally obligated to answer anything you want i just see haram saying i personally want zaza as high sorcerer that's just made me think i really want to meet number 14 again yeah i want to meet number 14 watch this space i have i have tracked every one of them that is still alive r.i.p torok uh i've i've kept a decent track of where they would be and where it makes sense that you would um encounter them again um what uh would you ever consider taking on uh 14 for this campaign if like barodune died in a freak accident or something would you would you guys want to i really enjoyed playing number 14. that was a very enjoyable character to play would you play would you play eugene or would you eugene just be like a filler filler character to be like we'll get it would have to be a fellow character that'd be so hard yeah so just slow yourself adventure his speed would be like 15. yeah yeah what [ __ ] class would it be it'd be classic to make him like a monk or a fighter yeah he gets it that's what i've said to robert if barone dies and we need to fill in with uh with eugene briefly he'd be a fighter yeah well like i'd love to see him as a barbarian he goes into a rage oh wait no we said it would end up being a monk didn't you robin there's some like drunken master master yeah i said that about i said that about greg because we were talking about like if we needed to uh for alan's sanity reduce the amount of [ __ ] that he can do as an artifice i said i could just switch him over into being a monk and making a drunken master and he just accidentally is really good at fighting yeah um uh who was it somebody had a good comment they said um what about the watcher would you consider playing the watcher um possibly the the watchers are very uh purposefully a very uh dry character very unfleshed out character um i don't think that would be as fun to play right i mean it could be it could like sometimes they're real dry character can be fun to play as a straight man to bounce off the insanity because we don't really have a straight man yeah no uh yes and no that's part of the reason i liked 14 is because number 14 was the straight man by being a robot basically and i played number 14 as the straight well as like the as that comedic straight man that's so straight that stuff flies over their head yeah the kind of like what's the character from guardians of the galaxy [ __ ] uh drax drax yeah yeah that style of thing yeah yeah um what about um i was gonna say that uh there was a character uh i'll come back to me okay there was a there was another of my character yeah there was a skit that i remembered that i thought that would be a balloon guy he's super fleshed out yeah no it was one of your paladin's paladin type ones yeah adamus adamus ah yeah that'd be quite fun possibly those are those are weird characters because whenever we play those they're player characters they're playing the game but we play them as if we're role-playing i guess is what right yeah like whenever the do you have one of those uh no i played one of the magicians in the [Music] magic that was different but yeah it's almost like you're a player characters playing a hero character almost like like jaina proudmoore or something from from order or something yeah how about you ben what would you what would you go to be if bob died would you consider alfie or having having green screened him in all of the the hair and being like with an [ __ ] beard that smells like casserole like within a with a beard that smells like healthy stored it in his gooch particularly um yeah that was a nightmare there was i was in that costume for 10 minutes and it was 10 minutes too long um so if we got a better costume for healthy i'd love to play alfie i've been elf is a [ __ ] gym um if not i don't know i'd probably just have to make up a new character again okay because all my mpc on npc man i generally play the adventurer or i play the mugger and the mugger we talked about me playing the mugger in the first place but you really need both of them they're they're a duo like they work as a duo just one of them would be weird it'd be some massive there would need to be some massive character development if you were to play a mug yeah exactly like because they're so what he's so one-dimensional and constantly focused on mugging that that would get old very quickly people have said the same about actually it's the same as uh eugene they're just so wonderful people said the same about rowan oh why is he not playing bailin it's like because you can you imagine for an entire campaign well you can literally and people say oh but you did balance rounds yeah that was a very meticulously scripted and crafted thing so that it works it's not just like you can imagine trying to organize [ __ ] in d and d with bailin you're like here's what we're gonna do it'll be literally like hurting a [ __ ] cat like yeah every time he says anything i just have the three of you all an insight check to see if anybody can work out what he's what he's meaning and the dc is really hard really high can you work out what he's meaning it seems like he's angry about something um so yeah i think i would just have to invent another character somebody double or go without him w says uh have you guys considered using one of the cast as a bad guy for a table session like if we if we uh got in somebody like hamish and was like instead of being like go with you yeah please just fight um though i guess there was a chance there was a non-zero chance that was going to turn into a bad guy that was the thing at first i thought hamish was a bad guy it was entire i left it up to him to decide as well like what how he felt about you towards the end i was like you're gonna have to go with them for the quests and stuff but once once it comes out because because there was a chance that you actually took an interest in him at any point during the two [ __ ] table sessions that he was playing with you there was a chance that one of you just asked him about himself but you did but you didn't so so you never learned who he was a cleric to you never like asked him who he worshipped or anything and so there was a chance that had you done so he would have been like oh worship or real and then that would have been like what the [ __ ] and then it was up to him whether or not he that's us being herbs specifically that question but even that whole thing like because as you've noted many times we still very much play ironically as a video game world but we do play it like a video game like with leaving the dogs outside and stuff we're like right we've arrived yeah dogs and shouldn't be taken care of blah blah blah like we we assume a lot of stuff will get taken care of and also we assume that the quest dial the quest text will be given to us to ask in video games i like to explore but i have like i'm looking at the world if you know what i mean so i can like so i can if i'm walking around a tavern and i see i see a guy in the corner and i go and talk to him whereas in d d it's just you have to really be picturing it in your head i guess and think to say like you have to be good at dnd and think to say i go and look around i go and explore or otherwise you know yeah and if you don't go and explore so i don't get a chance to say there's a shady guy in the corner and i really need you to meet the shitty guy in the corner and then i just say oh by the way there's a shady guy in the corner suddenly i've put a big arrow over his head and a spotlight on him and then you go oh he must be important because rob's mentioned him as as rowan did in the whole locket situation he goes i'm going to look around for more food and so i was like well i'm going to flesh out the world then he's looking for cupboards to see if he's got jerky or anything this guy would have something in his cupboard wouldn't he what would he have a locket i guess uh so he's got a locket sure and then and then rome goes this locket must be important because rob's mentioned it not that it's just rob's just making the world you know realistic and flushing things out with stuff that would be in a cupboard but like this is important and so there is that difference of being like as you say in a video game you can look around and go i'm going to investigate that guy that i can see whereas i also wonder where you can see him yeah i also wonder if that's partly our tendency of storytellers as well you know gun introduced from the first date goes off in the third so if you if you and you don't mean to but if you do specifically mention something we uh we go oh unless you specifically mention something that we're meant to pick up and then we go but then we also we also get hyper fixated on things for some [ __ ] yeah about this before as well as soon as like like crossing the chasm as soon as someone introduces a tool we're like right that's how we're doing that's how we're doing how like that's what we're using the plan a planning magic row a plan in dnd is always is always like whoever mentions the first part of a plan you all then start patchwork quilting together a plan from that rather than ever going is there a is there a more concrete platform is there a different thing that we can do for this plan right from the beginning um so uh well we're talking about um hamish being the bad guy and other other cast members being the bad guy we're on top of cast members who's who's like on your wish list who would you most like to have at the table as a guest i want to i want to get byron and yeah fantastic would be funny chaotic amazing energy so before so before d logic uh the four four of the cast had never played d before so i got them around to my house not it wasn't recorded i just i just walked them through a an improvised game of d d you're starting a tavern and there's a shady guy in the corner and he was going to be like a quest giver so as soon as i mentioned shitty guy in the corner phoenix says i shoot him with an arrow and i was like all right roll for it and she rolled she got in that one and it went over his over his head and into a barrel of ale and the ale spilled on the floor and then byron who had decided he was he was a a the tavern owner slipped on the ale and broke his ankle and fell down the cellar steps and it just was absolute [ __ ] craziness but byron was they were all very fun they were all very fun to play with um as soon as as soon as i i i played that i was like man byron would be good to have at the table i want to get brit back as well but because we've header and before it seems like less priority yeah like we've got a lot of people we have access and and if we have them for two table sessions each like we did hamish that's a lot of episodes each yeah yeah i mean i think i think you'd be you could easily bring brick back i mean the bonus was a was [ __ ] ages ago these are um these are people we know though i asked you your your wish list who's celebrities and everything we've got we've got some sway in the d world you'd love to have donald trump at the table that's right okay why okay we're gonna have to talk about it he's just saying that what are we doing here jesus i'm the best all the people that are coming to mind are just literally people who i'd like to act with like ian mckellen gotta imagine playing dnd with ian mccollum you shall not if they don't play dandy it would just be [ __ ] painful well are we also assuming that they're into it are we yeah assuming that they're into it yeah uh yeah i don't know i don't i have no idea who i would pick um going back to task master [ __ ] greg davies would have such great chaotic energy christ that would be amazing oh i tell you speaking thinking of taskmaster uh rod rod gilbert uh did you see the episode the series with him in it the season with red gilbert he he is such an out of the box thinker all of the tests every one of them was like how can i get around this he would be fantastic for d because he would be presented with a chasm problem and he'd be like how do we get across this and he'd come up with something just nobody itself some of the [ __ ] he comes up with like the the episode where he ties alex to the chair first yeah yeah and then ties the longest to get untied so he's like all right untied by alex it says yeah honestly any good improv comedian would be a genius i i have i have would i lie to you leave clips like bookmarked because i just need to go back and watch this yeah i've watched there's there's a like it's i think it's 53 minutes maybe the best of both worlds i've watched that a lot of times also uh martin short i would love to do dnd with speaking of bob uh locker asks how was the character of bob chosen why did you choose rogue why did you choose elf what made you um bob uh a big part of it was trying to choose something that was different than the other three already mm-hmm we've got three sports they were humans you know we had a barbarian we had an artificial whatever the [ __ ] that is and we had sorcerer so like we've got magic covered we've got brute strength covered we've got whatever cover yeah whatever i'll go like sneaky guy sneaky guy i mean the the stereotypical party right from like early days of dnd and everything like is the fighter the the fighting damage dealing tank there's the wizard spellcasting mage there's the healer and there's the rogue thief assassin yeah the sneaky one so if you consider greg to be the healer then you are than the one that was missing do i consider greg to be the healer he's the only one with healing magic so in that sense so yeah it's kind of like if a tree falls in the forest each of you like to what's a class that you would like to explore i know that you've said previously adam that you when you're playing video games you kind of like like the damage dealing tanky kind of barbarian types yeah the the pl playing a fighter or a barbarian and really getting into the tank aspect of it would be would be good fun i mean as you say that's how that's how i often play like that's my main in world of warcraft as a tank um and i do as much as i enjoy the spells and the versatility i have from the spells with barra dune i do sometimes feel a little bit pithy at the back just kind of thing whereas to get in there with a [ __ ] great axe and go at it it's like it's fun yeah i quite feel quite just that they're being dead on the ground yeah i reckon i actually probably what you should do ben is just not don't no don't not die just don't ah okay you could try interesting interesting don't go below zero hit points because if you do i've got my way playing dnd and you've got your way of playing d all right i'd like to play my dnd subtitles you like to live dangerously i like to live in negative numbers what what would you what if you rolled the new character for whatever reason um what do you reckon you'd you'd enjoy what class what kind of thing um i don't know i quite i quite like the idea of spider fighter or monk um yeah specializes in grappling there's a there's a there's very good grappling builds in india as well that like there's things you can take that allow you to grant advantage to anybody else in the fight if you're grappling somebody and there's things that you can take that if you're grappling you have advantage to attack them and there's all sorts of cool builds you can do with it i i think i've mentioned this to you before rob um i did a whole lot of research into i'm pretty sure it was home brewed to some degree or maybe it was like an expansion or something but playing a necromancer a proper negative dancer yeah great fun yeah i've always wanted to play necromancer especially one that's not necessarily evil like i like the idea of evil characters i always enjoy playing evil but like a necromancer who just genuinely believes like the world's problems could be solved if we if we just put menial tasks to zombies and and skeletons yeah right yeah they're not their bodies aren't being used anymore why don't we use them to plow the fields and then you can you can pursue out yeah yeah um kit it says sorry i was just gonna say that the the it's it's interesting trying to choose a class because the part of dnd that does kind of interest me the most in some ways is the kind of rpg the role-playing elements more than the combat but i feel like the class you pick affects well the way we've played it so far anyway the class affects the combat far more what i want to get better at is using the class outside of combat yeah and to be fair that's a that's a downfall of d d d is is base it's history comes from a war game and yeah right and they they claim that fifth edition d d is on three pillars combat exploration and social interaction but that combat pillar is much thicker than the other two yeah yeah that may come down a little bit to your character build though like i have purposefully taken i have purposely made myself weaker in combat to take spells that make the storytelling more interesting like major major or although i have used it in combat i 100 chose that because it was going to be best used in storytelling i've got a bunch of those too as well like i've i've got so many spells that i can give i [ __ ] um but and that's that's part of what i'm saying i love that you used to tell the dead like for the first time in that fight with the giant and you'd had it since like level three i i was and i was so close to saying like i i heard you say told the dead and like um you can't quite tell the video footage but i kind of like lean forward and look over at ben's card and then sit back because in my mind i'm going to show that he's no it's not my place to say anything let's just see if this doesn't work cold damage nope that didn't do it he's a nice giant yeah because i have i have disguise self i have silent image i have a i have a bunch of spells that i that i chose for those more role-playing things because i was like i'm going to be a sneaky rogue i'll like disguise my way into places and like operate in the shadows i mean yeah like part of it is i haven't felt the opportunity to do that but again this is also what i was getting at earlier i don't create enough of my own opportunities in dnd because i'm not used to having to think that way in video games yeah yeah uh in that sense of like cl um uh sneaking into places and stuff actor is a very good feat to take as a rogue yeah or as artifact or a surpriser you used to pretend to be butterflies and monkeys uh kid kit says uh did bigger nectar is one of my favorite things in the whole thing the fact that it's like the first one on the list going to that theater show where he played all the characters i'm describing the theater group where they meet up every tuesday and thursday and he was kind of feeling really guilty because he was really developing close connections which i have taken note of and he wasn't there and he's let them down and that theater group will at some point come back in and they'll be pissed with him um i love it kit says did ben did you find any challenges or find it intimidating at all to enter into the campaign with a completely new character whereas the other three were playing existing characters who'd already played a campaign together we'd already done the awareness we'd already played these characters they already knew the characters and how d d works this was your first game and your first character playing bob was that what was that like nah not not really like that like i was i wasn't intimidated as such because i'm i mean i've been through some [ __ ] as an actor like i've done some [ __ ] man on stage in front of people and stuff so i'm pretty used to that kind of performing under pressure stuff and like i was very very unsure of the d d rules but i kind of knew that would be part of the charm of it in a way as well and i knew ultimately it was like if i don't know i just turned to wrong way i don't know i don't know what do i do how does it work just so much there was there was so much and slightly less these days but there was so much at the beginning of me being like what's your armor class and you're like yep and you just stay looking at me yes i do correct i have ammo yeah what else do you want to know what number is your dc my idea i played enough games they you know like there's a lot of crossover between dnd and games the way like role play role-playing games obviously um and like i mean i had this when we played that one shot uh d and d game as well in the little break because before the before the game all the other people were far more experienced in d d the man said they had all these hundreds of character sheets and stuff i was like yeah this is my second third character ever yeah but of course i've played many many many many characters as an actor like yeah and so i'm very used like that whole side of things the playing the new character i mean that's my job like that's my life so i'm totally used to that yeah and the d and d was foreign but not so foreign that i'm like i don't know at all what i'm doing at least i know a little bit i just didn't know the exact mechanics of it or whatever but uh myth asks which is the mystery you'd uh you're most looking forward to finding out the uh reasons for verderin uh leia phil the disappearance of califac or your tokens in front of you pop i i'm actually more interested in california because that is a that that's uh that's a plot seed that i had put in to the epic bc man world a long time ago and i didn't know i didn't know the answer i didn't know the answer to it and rob presumably made the answer up to it and i'm looking forward to finding out what it is um yeah for me it's verteran for obvious reasons you should try to work out what the hell is it is that's going on for you what's going on in here that's what i want to know um adina asks a really good question uh could we see bob turn up in an epic mpc mansky if the right situation presented itself now that he is canon to the world like would we strange because outfit is the same as a generic adventurer yeah no it wouldn't obviously be bob at first well i i guess as soon as i said yeah like i guess i guess we could but it's the kind of thing where and who who knows what the future holds with viva in any regard but you know if the dnd channel really takes off then it won't be justified but right now and don't get me wrong the dng challenge is obviously doing very well and we all enjoy it and blah blah but it's still a fraction of the main channel yeah and so there's not much like there wouldn't be enough return on investment basically to create a skit about bob but bob could be like an easter egg in a skit if that makes sense unless of course unless of course bob was the perfect character character to tell a skit that didn't necessarily hinge on the dnd yeah it would have to be a standalone skit that just gives you a little bit extra if you happen to know who bob is but it still works exactly because in nbc man the series is about video games and bob is very much a d character yes yeah correct um speaking of crossovers though uh donnie moose asks would you consider a d logic crossover or play as or meet crunch and damacos well you want rob once specifically keep them separate don't you correct yeah i would i i want to keep them separate things because they are serving different things one is talking about yeah one is i i don't want them to for for the first part i don't want to have to worry about consistency over law and i don't want to have have the dnd logic set in the world of epic mpc man and have lower implications and things about that and that that restrict me as a writer weird and incestuous yeah maybe maybe one day we'll do like a marvel dc crossover yeah just just just for fun for like a one shot maybe like for a patreon high enough levels it's just like a big event of i don't know maybe it's a character maybe it's a a stretch goal a stretch goal of a kickstarter or something to be like oh we'll we'll film and we'll shoot and and release a three-hour episode where you guys are just playing as the d d logic characters or something and there's like nine of nine players around the table with alan having to dm it and i would and i would be playing as aaron as a fighter can you imagine that's actually a question would you guys be keen to do like a one shot where you guys actually dm something for like a for the right sort of thing i just knew i think it would be and yeah i don't know and the other was playing i think it would be fun to create a little sandbox and a world and i i'd obviously there'd be a lot of learning to go on first yeah of course or or and there would also be a lot of learning in that very first game that oh okay i didn't prepare enough here or i over prepared here yeah the over preparing is a huge thing when i when i first started and when a lot of dm's first start nervous dms they'll still way over prepare i had an entire town with like 50 npcs all fleshed out and i and i had every i'd like descriptions for everyone in that town and and their likes and wants and fears and things just in case they talk to them so that i knew how to talk and now it's like oh that's never important they didn't they talked to two of them and i spent more time like looking them up and being like oh these people speak and now i'm like okay yeah i need a free npc there are npcs that i did flush out specifically for you guys that you never talked to and instead went to like the receptionist of some bum [ __ ] town in the middle of the and asked her about who she was yeah so you can't you can you can over prepare for sure but as they say like any preparation you do even if your players don't go to that town you can just take that town and put it in front of them over here instead yeah that is something that that i do find fascinating about dnd as opposed to video games which are very set literally coded and programmed thing dnd is very it's it's i almost think about it like the shifting fog you know like outside of your field of vision anything exists yeah you know like everything exists in a superposition and it's up to the gm as to what happens when you finally uncover the fog then then the gm can say like okay now this is solidified on your map as existing there yeah yeah but even and even once locations are there you don't know what's happening there like and it can until you go there you can find out for yourself yeah and then and i can imagine that can that can be a burn or a curse as well like it depends on the yeah the mind of the person playing like it can be really freeing if you're the if you're the type that can just improvise that stuff you can be like i don't need to worry about having enough time to do prep because they don't they're not going to go through everywhere on the map and i only need to improvise one town when they get there um or it can be really crippling by being like i can't start my first session my first campaign oh i'm gonna put it off because i'm not ready to start yet because i haven't got the idea of what's on this continent over here just in case there but that's that's the same as anything like i feel like you learn by doing and that you just need to get into it and learn learn on the go um all right so i'm aware of the time it's getting late and i don't want to keep you guys uh up all night so i'll ask this one last question from w a very good question bob how would you uh ben how would you feel about veteran potentially turning bob evil if the story if the story goes that way that like it's a corrupting force and turns bob evil i had that's something that i've totally thought about as well is that it may be a corrupt like again it's like how much can you really corrupt bobs yeah exactly i mean he jumps inside of his friends and explodes in terms of the evil council that are sitting around being like who can we corrupt to our side they look across the bob and they're like low-hanging fruit yeah i mean you're basically here he's already in the queue he's not standing outside already i want me to be evil yeah all right i think that would be a fun thing to do it's it's um there's an element of like taking away play player agency that a lot of players wouldn't enjoy they've been like no i didn't want my character going this way you're making me do things that i don't want stop licking black oil pins that's basically it there are consequences yeah i mean i don't know because because it could be it could be a really strange thing to especially if i take this character to level 20 and then you take him off my hands essentially and he becomes evil and evil and pc oh that would be pretty funny like you get all the way to like level 20 in five years time whenever we finally get there because it's taken a year and a half for us to get you to level seven there have been a couple of locked outs to be fair to be fair um but yeah but but there is there is a part of me that would really enjoy a uh evil turn for bob and and i think it would be um because ultimately just like when i'm an actor i just want to do something that's satisfying in a narrative sense you know like yeah i don't care whether my character is evil or good or whatever i want a good character if it tells a really juicy story like oh that's good yeah that's a good yeah i want a character that's fun to play or satisfying to play and it's part of a good story yeah that means bob goes evil because of the [ __ ] voices in his head constantly going drink murder kill i mean yeah that makes [ __ ] sense and it'll be a good story image says maybe he'll go to darkwood and meet their evil counterparts and bob is just exactly the same or better all right bob and duck bob and darkwood's like oh lovely to meet you how are you doing yeah oh hello roberto yeah all right this has been uh thank you very much he's bob backwards bob of dark wood all right this was this was a blast thank you very much for joining me everybody um one last time in case people weren't here at the beginning or they whatever uh where can people find you what would you like to plug uh we'll go ben first uh you can find me here on twitch as i'm sure you all know or on instagram at bend.van.leah or you can check out my merch at benvenlia.threadlist.com [Music] yeah no mate why do you think we're here oh god that's [ __ ] horrible ben and hold it while we introduce adam and just the entire way adam where can people find you what do you want to play you can find me on instagram at adam uh otherwise you could also find me on twitch at twitch.tv the watcher what are you what are you streaming at the moment i'm streaming a little known game called new world which i've just found out about and i don't know if i'm into it yet maybe maybe it's name orders just testing it out how many how many how many hours of testing have you done now let's have a look i think it's it's getting up there i think i don't think it's quite 200 but were you streaming at the moment ben you stream your artwork a lot but you're playing video games uh yeah i've been streaming artwork a lot recently i got into a real like again just managing my mental health and lockdown pretty much by the way speaking of which let's all compare lock down hair before we go because i see that yours is i see that yours is very long and curly afro i had i had quite a short cut just before lockdown so mine's actually lovely ben's ben's basically look at that i can just about yeah i can bring it right down oh if i go to the side of my nose i can get it in my mouth if i go over if i go over my nose it can just touch the i can't get down to my mouth yet i don't think no i'm right i'm right in my nose so mine isn't actually that long it's just a lot of body it's so fluffy it's like a teddy bear all right and on that note i will i will take us over to the ending soon screen and uh stick around for the right everybody and i'll see you soon same time next week bye you

Channel: Robert Hartley GM

Views: 18,558

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D 5e, dnd, Role playing games, rpg, Dungeon master, role play, ttrpg

Id: TdEAyE3792M

Length: 100min 15sec (6015 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021