C01 - Ep. 87 - Infinight Campaign Wrap Up
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This is a Rooster Teeth production.

I was going to say that Gus was so emotional over the end of this campaign that he was crying all night and lost his voice from crying as we've all experienced once in life. Am I right, fellas? Yeah. He was full on screaming into the pillow, weeping as hard as he could.

How can I go on? Actually, like I've seen a lot of people and they're like, oh, but you know, goodbye to infinites and just like, oh, how heartbreaking and stuff like that. Like this is going to be good. I'm trying to be optimistic about it. Like as much as we love these characters, it's going to be fun exploring new characters. And if we fail there, there's nothing saying we can't come back to the infinites. You know, I'm looking at Micah's face right now being like, I've actually instructed Ben to delete all of our character sheets. Once the, the,

I ask again, what did you all think? It was a blast. I think we all agree that like this was one of our most favorite things that we've ever worked on. The characters, the story, the way the podcast all came together and like just the community that we've grown around the Stinky Dragon little

stinkers. I think it's been like just like one of I think my favorite experiences to date being part of this podcast. This is probably the most invested I've been in a Rooster Teeth production and like I was talking to John just how crazy it was just like even something like his mom making us puppets and and just like how everything fit together perfectly and like just made the last couple years so much fun and uh

I don't know. I really like Sticky Dragon. It's been a good ride. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's just... It's been such a blessing to be able to, like, come every week and make something with friends and really just have fun. And then...

No matter what happens, it always be better than we record it after Mike is done editing it and adding, you know, music and Ben's gotten NPCs and everything. It's always better than when we record it. And so it's just like, it's like a double blessing where it's one, I get to do it in the first place, which is fun. And then the second time when I get to listen to it, when it's released, I'm like, wow,

Wow. Chris, do you need to pray? I was going to say that was the alternative title to Stinky Dragon. It was Double Blessing. What a great segue because we are joined by both Ben and Micah who work tirelessly behind the scenes. Micah, of course, is our writer, editor, composer, and Ben is our producer. They do so much to help make the show what it is.

So, Micah, what is the overall name of this campaign? That's the next puzzle. You have to solve it. Go. No, the name of this one, I think we've kind of settled on the Infinite campaign, just because that's kind of the running theme from the beginning to the end, is that they start off as interns, Infinites, and then they actually eventually become the Infinites and kind of come full circle. Mm-hmm.

It's true. And then other than Kyborg, none of us stayed in finites. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the mantle. I want to also point out quickly, I filled in for Gus to do like the little outro read for one of the podcasts. I think it was a part one of the finale and it said in finale, but I wrote it as infinite at first. And I was like, is it like infinite tail? Like, I don't understand what this is. And I was like,

Oh, in finale. Now you know how we end up with an N tornado instead of an N tornado. I was thinking about it this morning. I was out mowing my lawn and just thinking about, oh, okay, yeah, I got another dragon, sticky dragon recording stuff like that. And I was thinking about it and it was like some of my favorite moments. And one of them was when we could not get through diarrhea. Did you change that to pallidians or was diarrhea a separate thing? Like it's a separate thing. Okay. I remember the diarrhea.

Diarrheans coming up, and Gus was a 10-year-old boy who couldn't get through it. You're surrounded by 10-year-old boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what you just asked right there, Blaine, about the diarrhea and the paladins, that's actually...

A really good question. I mean, speaking to the broader world and everything that you went through, do the players, do you guys have any questions about the world, the campaign, things that were maybe left question marks in your head? So I had a big question and it was something that we touched on towards the end. It was like well past all of Kyborg's arc, but like,

I feel like you guys were trying to like dip into each person's like personal investment into the ongoing narrative. So when Dr. Him passed away, he apologized to Kyborg for creating Quadrant. And I was curious, like what was the intent with that? Was Quadrant like Atten and Dan? Were they like...

not robots, but you know, whatever. Like an automaton of some kind. Yeah. Or was he like a person that came to like, what did you guys have in mind for quadrant? And what did you expect for cyborg to do with quadrant? Once you found out, I wrote. Accutarius and quad Darius is brothers that grew up in Titora. And, um,

Tatorans were notorious for, like, not wanting anybody else but Dragonborns, right? Mm-hmm. Because there's different draconic people. I forget what the term is. There's a term in, like, D&D lore of, like, all draconic-type people, but they were basically outcasts. I think he kind of mentions that, that they were cast aside by their parents because Dr. Hem is a kobold, which is a type of dragon-type person, and then Quadrin or Quadarius was similar. Like, he was basically the first Tabulian in our minds. Mm-hmm.

And so they were cast out of society. And so when... Raw. Yeah, exactly. When him and him were alone, basically on their own, he built Quadrant in his arms to basically fit into society again and like give him a chance to be something different. And I kind of grew out of Quadrant's wanting for more and wanting to pay back people. And so to answer your question about the latter part, like...

It was really up to you. Like, I think I mentioned that in the recording. Like, I didn't have anything particular in mind with what Kyra, excuse me, would do with all that information. But it's more just that there's a connection that, like you were saying, with each of the characters that Dr. Ham kind of had.

So Dr. Ahim is brothers with Quadrant then. Wow. Okay, I just now realized that. There was a moment there where you probably cut it from the finale finale, but you were like, did you want to leave him in the Briar Orb and stuff like that? And I was thinking about it and I was like, I don't know, would I want to rehabilitate Quadrant? But there was no mystic thing that changed him. He was just a jerk that got

arms and then like killed a bunch of people and was like no there's no redemption for that trash so I was like he can stay in the briar orb I'll go stomp on it with Smarsh

Something that I was also wondering about specifically with Gum-Gum, obviously we get the reveal that Dia is his mother and then Entropa, a.k.a. Galindor. No, is it? Garador, yeah. Garador are his parents. And so I'm just like wondering how that conception happened. Yeah.

I guess like how they physically I mean yeah when a mommy god and a daddy god fall in love I guess it's different because like in this universe the goddess Andi sorry Dia is like a physical being not like a like what I would picture a god to be of like this mystical non-physical being you read any mythological stories with pantheons those gods constantly had kids with

mortals. That's true. Yeah. That's where demigods, that's where we get Hercules. That's where we get Achilles, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There is a little bit of lore like related to that, not anatomically, but like die, die,

Dia had a mortal body, I guess you'd say, like a vessel. And when she entered the material plane. Gotcha. And Gerador was already, you know, like we mentioned, like he's an orc at that time. So yeah, when they fought, like that whole blowout where Entropa has Galindor at that point, like hostage,

and they have a big fight, that's when Dia uses the last bit of her power to kind of basically leave to save Gum-Gum and, you know, as much as she can. And then she has to return to Mount Celestia. Gotcha. As kind of a more deity, spiritual kind of thing, which I think what you're describing. Your mind works in mysterious ways, Micah. I don't know how anybody does these types of things where they create such a layered world and characters and, you know, different civilizations and stuff like that. It's just like insane to me.

It's very, very cool. It's a lot of work. Yeah. But thank you. So I have a question about Gerador. What form was he initially? And then how did he, because I believe he was from Phasa, like the world. Like what was he, I guess, in terms of like being maybe at least where he started and where he ended? I don't have his whole backstory written out, but basically in my mind, it was, he was an orc.

which is where you get your half-orc from. Your half-orc, half-deity, basically. And yeah, I kind of grew up as a wise person. I think I mentioned that in the last arc, that he's the wise Ard, Gerador Ard. And where he became Entropa, I think, is that what you're kind of asking? Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I didn't flesh out all that backstory because I didn't think it was as relevant as his connection to Gum-Gum. But my internal lore is that he was kind of...

the head wizard and kind of started teaching people magic. I think I mentioned that in the last arc as well. And when he discovered in himself that like people weren't ready for magic in his mind, his rage started to boil, which is kind of where Gum Gum gets it. I think his rage is

And eventually to the point where he started pursuing other things to try and figure out a way to stop magic from happening when Dia wasn't agreeing with him. That like magic was the curse of the world kind of thing. And I think part of that is him exploring the different planes. And one of those planes being, I think I said it on like Anarchs is the name, which is where Anarchs come from. And it's kind of like,

a chaos belt that loops around the different planes of the world like ethereal plane and shadow main and all these things and it's kind of the elemental border i guess of all the planes and he gets kind of wrapped up in that and ends up being cursed by this red mist you know we are anarchs yeah exactly every single time

I do have a question for you guys. I guess what was the most unexpected decision that our group made that took like what you had in mind for the storyline that took it like completely off track or like went in completely different direction than you anticipated or planned for? If there was any. Big forks in the road. I think.

I think the biggest one for me, it's like, it wasn't a big story departure or anything. It was, you guys were always like starting to go down paths that maybe we didn't fully flesh out. Like normally we would have a document. We talk about what the plan is or what the goal is for an episode or if there's any questions. And inevitably you all would turn left at a juncture we didn't see or just be like, get hung up on a door or... Someone's in a well. Right. Yeah.

Still don't know why. No regrets. No regrets. No regrets on the well fixation. Can we come back to the well? Is that an answer we can get? We'll come back to the well. But I think the biggest departure was the naval battle that you circumvented by having mud turn into a plesiosaur and then just swimming under the naval blockade at the port. And just like, well, that was going to be 45 minutes of that episode. Yeah.

Guess we need a ramp now. That's so funny. Yeah, I think the other famous one, which I think happened even before that, was in the second arc, which was the door fiasco at the Glockentower. Oh, God. We cut like two entire encounters because you guys just spent so much time on that door and we didn't know how to get you to just open it.

So for the rest of the campaign, for me anyways, it felt like anytime we hit a door, it was like, okay, this is either going to be five minutes or it's going to take the rest of the episode for them to figure out how to get past this. Apparently it's a common thing in D&D. It is. We posted a couple of D&D sketches and we did one about opening a door and like people doing everything but trying to open it. And a lot of people could relate. So I don't feel like we're too silly. Yeah.

We have trust issues collectively, all of us. I did research. I went back and I was like, what's the first door that they had trouble with? And it was the Infinite HQ. Yeah. Yep. I remember that one. It was the puzzle one with there's like three things above it or something. Well, yeah, there was even getting into the Infinite HQ was like booby trapped and like it would shock you. And there's three doors you guys go in. And I don't think anybody ever knew this.

But there was an armory. There was the stables, which eventually you found the stables later in a different arc. And then there was the main door to the lobby. And I think someone went to the side. I forget which side, but they'd never go in. I think it was like locked or something. And like if you had gone in, you would have found the stables, like all the animals that the infinites had that you eventually find out if you got on the armor, you would have had all these different armor things and like weapons and stuff. So, yeah. Yeah.

We even had jokingly in the very last battle in the intronado was a door that was kind of floating around. And I just jokingly thrown to Gusby like you could make that door a mimic and have it attack one of the party members for like in the very final encounter, the door comes alive and finally gets its revenge. These are from my door brethren. Is there some connection or is it just wonderful circumstance that the big villain of the whole campaign has door in his name?

Garridor. You mean? Garridor. Garridor. Oh, oh. I was like Entropa. Yeah, I was like Entropa too. He's right there in front of us the whole time. Entrance Entropa. Yeah, Endorpa. So what was the thing? Why were you being so weird with the lady in the well?

Wait, I actually want to defend them, I think, really quick. I don't think they were being weird about the lady in the well. I think we hyper fixated on the lady in the well. She had no explanation for why she was down there. But like, imagine like a video game and you're

you have entered a part of the video game that just hadn't been developed yet you've phased through a wall and so like that's what can happen constantly in dnd creation is that you know are we kind of like what we see is what is ready for us to like deal with but like if it's something that wasn't like fully fleshed out but we can hyper fixate on it we can force here's the thing i think it's

started tell me if i'm wrong guys it started as a joke when i threw a coin in and you're like someone's down there ow and then you just didn't have a story like ready to fire from the hip no there was a story that's entirely false you all just never figured it out then what was it why were you being so weird because you didn't figure it out we couldn't tell you like i can't just

spell it out. Like, there was stuff there. You just didn't get to it. And that's fine. That happens a lot. Well, do it now. Do it now. You found the end result without finding the explanation for it. And I couldn't just say it. If the character doesn't know, they can't explain it to you. It's funny how Gus's voice just makes him sound more emotional. It's like, calm down, Gus. It's okay. It's okay.

I can't talk. That's fine. I pulled up the module. So this is the Sunan province that you guys are in. So you went all the different provinces, you know, they didn't have different problems and you're trying to find the elders and stuff. So the Sunan province had people that were being tortured in different ways. So the first one was the inkwell.

which is where Magon, the person you're talking about, is trapped. This is what it reads. Trapped at the bottom of a well is an elderly female silver dragonborn named Magon, but the well isn't full of water. It's a reservoir of ink for the calligraphers of the town. Near the well is a Shadrow taunting the poor dragonborn. So the Shadrow had thrown Magon down there. It was like torturing the person. You didn't see the shadow person because you weren't looking for them, I guess. And then chaos ensued from there.

If I remember right, there was also some kind of attack that messed with their memories or something of the sort. That's why I figured in my mind that she couldn't remember or she was having trouble remembering. There was, I think, yeah, there was another person and that might have been a similar thing. Like Shizu, there was a nightmare that they were having in a different home. And so like all these people had like being tortured in different ways. Yeah. I have a question and it's okay if we don't have an exact answer. This is another one that was kind of like,

What do you think, GumGum? Would the die gems and the crown at the end...

what power they still have and what they're capable of and like what the right thing to do with them was i don't like classifying something it's like the right thing to do or i guess i think gum gum would have wanted to do whatever was best but i didn't know the potential and the power of them so i didn't know you know like or who might be trying to get them or the danger of them so i was maybe like the expected outcome or yeah did y'all have any idea for what might

be done with them. You're talking about like the wish? No, the die. Just talk about the epilogue, the epilogue, the die. Oh, what would happen to them after? Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think we had anything in particular in mind.

Yeah, I think the idea was just that like we hoped magic would come back to Faiza and then it did. And then really, yeah, like the ending is really up to you guys. I think we kind of pushed that direction when we were asking you guys those questions. Yeah, I think Blaine was also under the same feeling during that, that there was like things that you guys had written out that we could do, but you were kind of like just searching for us. But you guys...

didn't have an ending as far as like the epilogue of our characters. And it was up to us just to say whatever we wanted. Yeah. I had questions that I'd written down for each of the characters, things that came to my mind of like, what have we explored? What have we learned about the characters? What things would fans be interested in? And I just kind of wrote those down. And like, if we covered them, we covered them. Yeah. I have a question kind of going back to, I guess it was like the flats of to bull. Did you guys look into each of our character sheets to see what languages we,

knew and just like knew that since i knew draconic i would have a means of communicating like did you expect dragons to be as big of a role in this campaign as it turned out to be oh yeah absolutely we knew okay yeah it was all those sneaky times where i'm asking guys like hey can you see what's on the character sheet like what's their alignment what's their common languages here yeah i wanted that to be a thing it's the same reason that like

when we get to Tetra and Bart is half Draconic and he's not being affected by certain things, you know? Which at the time I didn't know, right? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, absolutely. I think for me, I wanted to save dragons as much as possible. Mm-hmm.

I had hints of it throughout, like the T'Polians, Kobolds, you know, that sort of thing. I even had like makeshift kind of appearances of dragons and even Duncan, you know, as a pseudo dragon. But yeah, I wanted to save that for like Bard as half dragon. Like that's the kind of thing. So you knew all along that that was going to be the case. Like how soon did you know what you were going to do with all of us? Or was it just like now that we're on to the next arc, I'm going to figure out this person in particular. Like what was the process behind that? Yeah, it was different for each character, I think.

because I was writing notes for myself to remember things for this episode. But one of the things I wrote down was like, the characters' songs played into basically every arc.

even down to like certain lines, like lyrics in the songs. And so like I kind of based my arcs on those things, but then like things would come up eventually. Like I couldn't know everything about your characters until you guys told me things as well. But yeah, I think that's my process is like I wrote down as much as I could in notes over time and then kind of collated those things when it got closer to your particular arc, you know?

And there were some times when Micah would have to have me ask sneaky questions or try to get information out of the party without raising any suspicions. Like, hey, can we find out a way to ask so-and-so this question? Be like, okay, we'll see if we work that into the episode somehow. Yeah, I think one was like, how old is Bart? Because Bart doesn't have an age written on their character sheet. We've never mentioned Bart's age. I think... Bart's timeless. Yeah, Bart only mentions that he never reveals his age.

And so I was like, how old is he? I kind of need to know for the backstory. Like, what's the timeline? When is he born? And I think at one point, Bart makes a reference to having a birthday or their birthday having passed. And I tried to like very casually ask like, oh, yeah, how many years old did Bart turn that year? And I think Barbara was very evasive even in answering that. She's like, oh, Bart doesn't tell or something like that. Yeah, he doesn't kiss and tell. That.

That also is associated with his age. He never tells or his weight. Actually, no, he did tell his weight. Chunky boy. But I will say like in the latter arcs, like more recent arcs, like I had a lore document of like how things happened way back in the day, but I didn't have a timeline per se. So eventually I took like a whole, not a whole day, but a day, an evening to like write down, this is the year this happened. This is the year this happened. You know, just kept going down the timeline and took a lot of work and it's not,

completely accurate, but it helped me to be like, that's when this person was born. This is when this person met that kind of thing. Was there an alt version of our different arcs where it's like, you know, oh, Kyborg's mom lived or, you know, Bart and Gum Gum switched and Bart's parent is Dia and all that stuff like, were there any alternate universe outcomes and stuff? Did Mud have a different story that you guys had in mind that just didn't pan out? Well, John, how much backstory did you give me? Too much.

Baloney. Is that sarcasmized? I overwhelmed you with the information. It was just an overwhelming blink page. The possibilities are endless. The writer's conundrum. That's exactly right. So for John, no, it was, I think I wrote down like a page for each of y'all's arcs when I was playing them out. And the first question was like, what if Mud doesn't remember his backstory because he doesn't have a memory? Hmm.

And that was the, that was the kind of initial thing. So that's you writing into like a reason for the fact that I didn't provide anything. That's it. That's so funny. I like that. That's fine. What you got. Yeah. I like that because that takes the no, no off of me. It's like, Oh no, I, I gifted you an opportunity to, uh, that's it. We have such a connection as brothers that you knew what I needed and I knew what you needed. Yeah. What I needed was to not spend time on my backstory. Yeah.

But like as far as alternate stuff, I think we kind of settled on like, yeah, Kyberg's family was, that's always been like your canon. Like his family's been gone. They were killed by Quadrant. We didn't know a whole lot about Bart's backstory. I don't think. Not too much. Yeah. Yeah. You laid into a few things here and there. Barbara, you're the one who provided the

pirate upbringing? I think so. Or was that written by y'all? No, I think I... I think that was you. Yeah, I specified that he was raised by pirates, but didn't say anything about like a captain's name or, you know, what happened afterwards or anything like that. What the audience doesn't know is that Barbara's actually a huge fan of Pirates of Penzance.

Pirates of the Caribbean, my friend. Let's get the Pirates right. Drink up, me-ides, yo-ho. I'll tell you the story of Pirates of Penzance later on. You understand how closely it relates to Bart's story. Oh, really? Okay. I was like, I don't know what that is. Did you have Archie planned to be the big bad and also Gum-Gum's dad?

Like, at what point did that come to, you know, like, did you have a plan for Archie whenever we initially met him back in like the third arc, you know? And then how did that evolve to what it was? Yeah. So arc one, you guys go to Pius Pass. Gum Gum walks up to the chapel and starts wanting to commune with his dad, right? Yeah. And Bart starts like...

faking his dad's voice and I go, I'm gone. And, um, I was editing that episode, that very scene. And I found some music. I didn't write the music for that particular scene, but I found some music that fit really well with it. It was really spiritual and stuff. And that the whole ending of the show came to me. And it was one of those moments where like, you can't write it down fast enough. Yeah. And so,

So I just kept writing, writing, writing. That was the beginning of that lore document I was kind of mentioning earlier. And yeah, I came up with Dia, came up with the Dia gems, came up with Entropa, came up with the connection to GumGum, and what the whole quest was going to be for the rest of the campaign. So basically you're saying it was me doing GumGum's dad that inspired the entire campaign. Even to the detail of like, I think you mentioned you had a dog later on, but...

It was funny that I had written a dog to bite you. And that was like, that's how Intrabug lures you out. Lures you out of the house and stuff. I didn't even think about it. We didn't even think about the dog bite that you got. Yeah. What's funny is before the finale, we had a meeting about possible questions Gum-Gum could have for Daya or possible wishes he could make. And we started trying to plan for worst case scenarios. Like what's the thing Gum-Gum could wish for that could throw us most off the rails?

And I think my thought was Gum Gum's going to wish to have his dog back. He's going to remember the dog. And it's like, what's going to happen? I took a picture of Chris the moment you guys were like, you get to make one wish, Gum Gum, but be very careful with how you say it and all this stuff. And Chris is just like,

I took a picture of him that I'll make sure that we post on social, but it was just a very funny moment. I just, I love when we put the pressure on Chris for something like that. That's great. Here's the ending of the show. Go. Yeah. It's all on you. No pressure. Yeah.

Howdy, my unhygienic hearers. We hope you're enjoying a behind-the-tails look at the entire Infinite campaign. Big thanks to everyone that supports us. Post on social media using hashtag StinkyDragonPod. If you're not already, make sure you follow us at StinkyDragonPod on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. You can stay up to date with the next adventure because this is not the end of the show. Next week, we're going to be releasing a mini-adventure DMed by Chris Damaris that will continue for five episodes. And then we're going to be diving right into our next full-length campaign with the original cast and crew.

This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

So I think that this is all of you guys' first D&D campaign for the players. How do you feel about finishing what I presume is your first campaign? Did we not finish the RT D&D? Not really. It was kind of up in the air. Gotcha. Okay, then yeah. I don't even remember a conclusion to that, so yeah. The question stands then. For me personally, I think we really lucked out in finding characters and chemistry that worked really well together. And I think this group is great at working together from an improv standpoint and stuff like that, but...

there's so much of D and D that a lot of us didn't know about. I know like, this is my real first time playing D and D and like learning how to, you know, do spells and attacks and roll for certain things. And like what needs to be done when, and in what order and like all that stuff, that's the nitty gritty of D and D. And so it really helped me, I think like become more comfortable with that stuff, but also, I don't know, like I,

I felt like we did it in a really nice way where it didn't feel so much pressure. Like you had to know everything about D and D right off the bat. Like we were a lot more lax with the rules and like the more specifics of D and D, like even like carrying capacity as an example. And I felt like that laxness helped us be more creative and more

like kind of fall into the comedy a little more of the podcast. And so I love how it all played out in that sense, but it's made me a lot more comfortable and excited to try new D&D classes and characters for different campaigns and stuff like that and to explore those. Well, there's a thing they teach you when you like do an improv class where it's like, don't focus on the things you don't know, just lean into the things you do know. Yeah. And I think that by trying to abstract a lot of the nitty gritty and trying to remove the worry about

and how specifically it all works. It's like we were trying to give you that space and more comfort about things that you do know and things you can lean into to try to make it more fun, hopefully. Yeah, definitely. One thing I felt really helped that was removing visuals. Mm-hmm.

you know, where we were just talking. And so it was all in the, in our head. So it was easier to not get caught up on like, Oh, well I want to move this many feet. Oh wait, I can't move that. You know, like not having a diagram is just us. Like, I don't know. I felt like it was like telling a story and, and,

living it out. I feel like not being so cut off on like graphs and visuals helped that at least for me. That was like one of the biggest conversations I think we really had had was how do we transition this from what really was born out of the pandemic and trying to figure out how we could do D&D content online streaming using Roll20 and turn it into an audio podcast format. And I guess really teaching you all how to shift away from like needing a map or anything and just like describing what you want to do and play in that space.

while still having the framework of like Dungeons and Dragons, you know? Yeah, I'll admit even myself as a player, like it's easy when you have that battle map in front of you, it's easy to get fixated counting squares when other people are taking their turns and being like, where am I going to move and thinking about what you're going to do and you kind of miss what everyone else is doing. You know, not having that map in front of you kind of,

removes that distraction or you can engage more and think about how what other people are doing plays into what you want to do. Going off what Barbara said, I really enjoyed our group's chemistry and like the relationships that each of our characters developed with one another. And like, I think we all experienced a little bit of anxiety when we're presented with making new characters for our next campaign. But I feel like going forward, knowing what I do now,

I'm not going to try to recapture that lightning in the bottle with the infinites. I'm going to like where Kyborg would have made this decision. I'm going to try to make that decision with this other guy. It's like when you're playing like doom and you notice that you're using the, I don't know, just like the DMR, the rifle way too often. And you're like, well, I'm not exploring the full breadth of gameplay in this, you know? So it's like, let's like try out other things. So I'm like,

I'm excited to do that. I'm not going to try to like, you know, min-max distance archery kind of attacks. Like I'm going to explore different combat and different like social gameplay. And I'm excited at that prospect, but I'm also like nervous. I just, I just want it to be good. And I want our listeners to be as invested with the new guys as they are with the infinites. Well, I think,

that when we started the Infinite campaign, we came up with these characters not thinking too deeply on it or not thinking like what this could become or the relationships we could develop and the characters that look like the way we could flush them out until it actually was happening. And so I feel like we'll be able to come up with like a whole new story and a whole new like slate of characters that have brand new interactions and chemistry together just like naturally because we're all friends, right guys? Yeah.

Yeah, that's something I really kind of want to hit on is this isn't changing. It's still going to be, you know, the five of you in a room around podcasts playing Dungeons and Dragons, which I know is what our audience really, really loves. And when you think about it from like even a player standpoint of Dungeons and Dragons, people play for like five, 10, 20 years in the same story. But eventually that story has to end.

and you move on to something new, but it's still the same fun spirit of Dungeons & Dragons. And I know that's exactly what this is going to be. And I'm really excited to see like what you bring to the table now that you have some experience under your belt for Dungeons & Dragons and can play with something new. One thing I thought was really interesting is we recorded a test for Dungeons

this show before the pandemic and it was really just us playing D&D for like the first or second time. This was before RTD&D even. Before we did our live stream. Yeah, we did a live stream during a pandemic of RTD&D on roosterteeth.com but this was just us like an unreleased thing and it had Kyborg, GumGum, and Mud in it. Barb, you were

a rogue, a different character, but we didn't really go into like as much character stuff is really just more kind of just us learning combat and stuff. But I went back and listened to it because I was just curious after having finished it. And what we did is way better than that. Like the dynamic and the chemistry and the characters are just way better, you know, cause we had more experience and we were also not learning how to play D and D at the same time, but it was interesting. Yeah. The voices also, even from episode one, I think,

can I make a quick admission before you get into what you're talking about, Gus? Uh, the reason I'm excited for the next campaign is because I have full faith in this team and our dynamic and Ben and Micah and Gus to lead the ship and stuff like that. When we did episode one and then maybe into episode two, I was like, this is, this is, this is bad. I'm not having like, I'm bad.

I'm bad at D&D. I don't have faith in this character. This isn't going to be a fun time. And then like what, 90 episodes later, like. It's like you find them, right? Yeah. You find the character with anything you do. You found your footing. I'm so happy with how it turned out. And I'm glad that I just like trusted you guys. And we got to where we did. Cause like time of my life. I loved this. I think even like when we originally had started,

I think Blaine, you and one of the other producers who we've been spinning up like Dungeons and Dragons ideas together had come forward to me to be like, I don't know if using voices for NPCs is going to work. Like they're going to have to match like Gus's tone. Oh, it's great.

how it works. And then we just did a test. That's why Christian is the voice of Bezler and Spectral, who was the other producer who's like working with me to create Dungeons & Dragons content, is the voice of Bezler as we just like, hey, can you just throw in like a grimy goblin voice so we can see how this sounds? And it was so good from the outset that we just kept him as Bezler.

I was so worried with how the audience is going to perceive it because I was just thinking of all the mental gymnastics of like, okay, well, there's the dungeon guy. Are these other people in the room with them? Dude, is this them making the decisions or is this the dungeon master? So it was like, where does this fall into like the canon and like,

I was like overthinking everything. And I'm so glad that I was proven wrong because like the sound design, the story, like the character voices with all of our like guest stars, like it all came together perfectly. How many people are in this room? I got way too caught up on the details. Like I should have just had fun. I think one of the things I think Barbie mentioned it earlier that gets people hung up on playing D&D is the rules. Yeah. I know for me, when I first DM'd, I was scared to death.

Because like, how am I going to know all these books memorized? And it's the varsity of it all, right? Like you're never going to know all the rules and they keep evolving. And so I think Gus has done a really good job of allowing you guys to do what you want to do. And here are the mechanics that we can put in place to implement those things. Speaking of which, like oftentimes I needed to vamp.

for whatever reason. Like I needed to look something up or figure out a rule. So I would ask you guys a question I already knew the answer to just to make you all look something up and make you think you were the bottleneck while I was looking something else up. And then I would read up what I needed to know. Then I could ignore your answer because I already knew the answer. The king of multitask. No, you're the drama. I can't count how many times I would like slap Gus like, Gus, you know the answer to this. What are you doing?

I'm just making them waste some time. I need to look something else up. It's some classic Gus gaslighting. There's some Gus lighting right there. Remind me what cloud of daggers does again. How many D4 does that do? Or I'm sure the listeners are like, Oh my God, why is he asking that again? Or for what it's worth? I never realized that. Like to me, you were just trying to be specific and like make sure that we knew what we were doing. It didn't come across as like you asking something that you

knew the answer to at any point in time. So that's a fun peek behind the curtain. That's incredible. I have a question, Gus, actually. What was your favorite NPC or favorite NPCs to play? Because I know we oftentimes would get other people to voice them. Sometimes it would just be modifications of your original recordings. But just when we were recording, did you have any favorites? Oh, man. I think there's...

a fan favorite, of course, little Jimmy. It's not just a fan favorite. It was just like one of those characters where I think in the module, I don't remember, he might've had like a sentence or two written about him. I don't even know if he had a name in the module. I think it was just like whatever the NPC and then y'all kept talking to him and it was one of those things where it's like, okay, this is going to become a character with dialogue now. I need to find that module actually and go back and see what was actually written about him because I don't think it was much. It wasn't much, but it was named after a fan.

Yeah. And I think it was just how you played him, Gus. And it just came across to the party like this, like, oh, sorry, guys. I just I don't really know where I am or what I'm doing. I'm just here to help. And like you guys are giving you're giving Gus way too much credit. It was the thinnest character down to the voice. Jimmy.

It's literally Gus smiling, saying, I'm little Jimmy. And just keep referring, I'm little Jimmy. You guys just latched onto that for some reason and he became your party favorite. Well, I do think it was interesting because I feel like that was, like with the Evergards, we were like bad guys.

It kind of like humanized them in a weird way. Like that we hadn't explored. So it was very interesting, actually. Even from a story perspective. Take the Stormtrooper mask off. Yeah. Being like, oh yeah, they're people. It's funny. I was not even kidding in the end, like the finale episode where I was like, what happened to little Jimmy? Like, I do want to know. Do you guys have like a favorite NPC then? Like for...

the players for me I felt like Hannah McCarthy did such a phenomenal job as Paralyte. She did so good. Such an amazing performance. Everyone did an incredible job but like she just moved me in a new way and also Raquel Lilly as Inkyu was so scary and so evil. It was great. When Dr. Ahem dies and she's crying she did like I think three takes of that line and I was like oh

Oh, my God. How do I choose? Like, what is this acting? I know. She was so good. Speaking of NPCs, you know, when we were meeting about the finale and everything, I gave a suggestion and a contribution to the finale lore that Micah actually used and I was very happy with. I'm trying to figure out what's going to happen to all of these NPCs. And I suggested, I said, wouldn't it be funny if Brink died?

and opened magic schools everywhere in every town of Faiza so that Kyborg could never escape him. Like no matter what town Kyborg went to, there was Brink's face huge on top of a building advertising this franchise magic school. And when Micah ended up writing that and using that for the epilogue there. So good. My partner came up with the tagline of learn magic in the brink of time. I was like, that's good. I got to use that. That's really good.

I think for me, my favorite, like, I guess, little bit of BTS for NPC casting was originally when we had the Woonicorn come in and we suddenly realized in the middle of our session that John could talk to the Woonicorn. Oh, no, this is going to be a voice we have to cast. And I was thinking and had originally pitched Ify Wadiwe as the voice of the Woonicorn. I just wanted this, like, jacked, deep voice dude of, like, the Woonicorn. Yo, what's up? But then when Gus broke out his, like,

Wunderkorn impression is like, no, this is absolutely what we're going with. So good. I love that. Yeah. Do you guys have favorite ones? Blaine, John, Chris, if you had a favorite NPCs. Smarsh. Smarsh.

Yeah. I was thinking back and I need to listen to that again, but just like, again, a very thin character. He had three lines that he kept repeating. And I was like, this is awesome. Like he's just declaring himself the King and he's fighting this other spider creature. I have zero investment in either of these two. Like, I think we're supposed to be teaming up with the spider, but like everyone's already loving that guy. So like, let's give this guy some love. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a King Obi Stan myself. Yeah.

That was the spider. I like Sleek a lot, Ben. I thought you did a really good job with Sleek. Oh, yeah. Thank you. The hi, cyborg! And then you coming in on Smarsh. And I say this partly because we did the puppet videos with the NPC prisoners when we were escaping. But I like Hairless Hutch and Sour Amy a whole lot. Oh.

Like they were just really funny to me. Both of them, like all the characters in the prison escape was really fun. And I thought you did a really good job with those little like side characters. There's something about like putting us in like a little hub where there's like several characters for us to interact with. Like, like,

it was the prison, the deck of the ship. I think like maybe infinite HQ, like, like you guys can go around, like, what do you guys want to do? I just love like socially, you know, like, like interacting with those other weird people and just hopping from person to person. It's funny you say that because lots of times we had scenarios where there were plenty of NPCs for you to interact with, because it's an opportunity to, you know, use the names from people who interact with us on social media. And most of the time you guys did that, but specifically,

on the deck of the Bramble boat, you guys were like all business that episode. And you're like, we're not going to talk to anybody. We're going straight to the bottom of this boat. And I kept getting slacks from Mike and Ben, like make them talk to someone, make them talk to people.

So it's just funny how wide the dynamic can be in the party. But I did want to circle back and ask Micah a question. Someone was talking about origins and beginnings earlier. And I was curious, like, where did you get the original idea for like the Infinite campaign? Like, what was the genesis for the very beginning of it? Because you talked about getting inspired, you know, later and how it's going to end. But what was like, where did you start? Yeah, I started with this idea that the characters would be sidekicks.

And I wanted to introduce like these mighty heroes of the realm that would like, they would learn from and like gather from. And over like talks with you and Ben, I eventually came up with like,

what if they're interns instead? Because I think originally I even wrote like you guys would go to school. I have an NPC that I fleshed out of like, I'd be a teacher that would teach you things that we never learned the name of. And then, yes, so the interns. And then so the Infinites, I was trying to come up with a name that encapsulated, you know, like always and then like a guard. So like that's where you get the Everguards as well. It's like the antithesis, of course, but you have infinite and then knights and then Infinites. And I didn't like how K looked with Infinites. So I dropped the K.

So that's where that came from. It would have been like infant nights. Infant nights. Yeah. La la la. La la la. Babies. Yeah, we'll do a spinoff where we're just babies. I want to get to some listener questions here. People who consume our podcast. We have one here from Sans Junior on Twitter asking, what is something you're missing from this campaign that you would like to have in the next one? Blaine doing a voice. All right.

Oh, yeah.

I started out with one, but I lost it really quick. I just couldn't be bothered. You have a voice for your next one, though. Yeah, I'm working on it. I hope it's okay. It's just one of those things where I know by episode 10, it's going to be completely different than episode one. So like I'm trying to go into it as prepped as possible. I just wanted to be like after doing Good Morning from Hell, which is another show that we did at Rooster Teeth where I did Clayton and it was just a demon voice. I just don't want to do something that's like

horribly obnoxious to listen to. Like I feel like Clayton might've been. Nah. I think the voices that are hard to do and even have that potential of being a little obnoxious can turn out really well because they can become beloved in their certain way. And it also, I like when there is a definite change from you, Blaine talking and your character talking.

And I just mean that like in the person and character in general, like not just necessarily just you Blaine, but when I'm listening to other D&D stuff, I like that because there's it's kind of a fun little like the distinction. So, yeah, it's a shift in personality that happens. And I like that because it's like it's kind of part of the fun of like when we watch the puppet videos. I like those little moments where you can hear like this is Barbara talking and then this is Bart talking. And it's really funny to me when there's that distinction. Yeah.

It's funny because we almost have the opposite problem with Chris, where Chris sits down and starts speaking like Gum-Gum before we've even started recording. So I can never tell when Chris is asking a question or Gum-Gum's asking a question in character. Something I'm looking forward to carrying over to the next campaign from this one is I think we strike the perfect balance of...

like really interesting, deep storyline, but having like a lot of levity and comedic beats. And I hope that kind of goes through. I know like the next campaign we've kind of teased, but it's going to be maybe a little darker.

But I really like having the comedic relief to go along with those more serious, intense moments. I think it provides for like a really fun show for us all to make. I agree. And maybe Gumbo. I did like the subreddit post. I think people were saying like, which NPC are you sad to see go away? And I think Gumbo was at the top. Yeah.

Oh, I want to shout out to everyone on social media and Reddit and discord and Tik TOK and everyone, anyone who's made posts like that really does help the show. Absolutely. And especially now is a really good time to tell people about the show and get

new people on board and we'd really appreciate it. And it's like seeing it like people post on other subreddits. We really appreciate that. And now it's a great time if you want to help spread the word. Well, speaking of online interactions and posts, I have a question here from Reddit. For you players, what is something you wish you'd explored more of in your character or the world? I wouldn't change a thing.

That's a hard question. I think for Bart, I think like I would have loved to maybe known more about him and Gum Gum's past. Like we touched on it a few times and we kind of like allude to the fact that they, you know, met in the orphanage and like knew each other growing up. But I wish like maybe we had been able to do like a time jump back in time to like maybe play through some of their adventures together, like some moments with them together.

just because I think the dynamic between those two characters was really fun to explore. Yeah. There'd be an urgency sometimes to the story where we'd be moving, moving, moving, which is great because it keeps, you know, like, that means things are happening, but like just a little weird NPC, like hanging out, making like third party NPC relationships that weren't part of the main storyline. I guess there was also some like items and stuff I wanted to use and like, but I was always like waiting for the right time.

Yeah, same. Like I had that item that was like would reverse my traits. Like my highest would become my lowest and my lowest would become my highest. I was holding onto it for like a really good moment. I thought maybe it would be like Gum-Gum met his dad where he could get like not Gum-Gum's heart, but like the intelligent perspective on it, which I thought might be a fun way to use it. I don't know, little things like that, but I don't have any real regrets or things I'm not happy with. I think I did figure out something that would have changed.

Because Kyborg goes on his own as a kid after he loses his family and is just like in the woods and training and all that stuff. And I did this, I built this into his character that he had like very low charisma and I think very low wisdom because he's just kind of an idiot that's out in the woods on his own. And I wish I had explored that more from a character perspective because I feel like he was too still very socially adept.

So I feel like I could have dumbed him down a bit and made him a little bit more like man out of time, like dummy. But, but I don't know. Well, this party definitely had no problems dumbing things down. Speak for yourselves. A collective intelligence and wisdom modifier bonus of probably plus two. Probably. Between all four players and two different stats.

There was a follow-up question to that one as well for the DMs. What's something you wish the cast had explored more of? Maybe naval battles? This was all submitted by HSD on Reddit. Do you have anything, Gus? Something they'd explored more of. There's just every now and then, like I kind of alluded to earlier, there's just like small...

where sometimes, for whatever reason, you know, the players are in a different mood and they don't explore as much. I wish that they had mingled a little more on the Bramble Boat. I thought there were some really interesting characters there. And I think they ended up meeting most of them, if I remember right. But...

But it could have also been very useful because I think having met them, they would have had more knowledge about where they were going and been able to connect things a little more quickly. Yeah. And they meet them later and all that stuff. Right. Yeah. I was thinking about in like White Winter, like that arc, I started to experiment with a few different mechanics and one of them was like downtime.

So downtime activities happen typically between sessions in D&D, but you can also do them like while you're traveling or something like that. So you did a lot of traveling in White Winter throughout Kaltberg. And I was like, I'm going to make like a hunting mechanic where like I can go hunt or like they can gather stuff and they can find, you know, woodland creatures and stuff. And like, I think one of you was about to go out there and then you got distracted by something that never happened. I was like, OK, that works fine.

But like just things like that. Or I started developing loot during that arc as well. Like if you killed a character, killed an NPC, then they would have this kind of loot on them. And occasionally you guys would find stuff. But like other times it's just be like, OK, I guess I guess we'll save that for later. Yeah, we didn't really loot anybody that we killed or got rid of. Typically, it would just be like they're down and then we'll move on to the next thing. And then that's over. I think Gum Gum did. But that was like a carryover from his previous character who was like a loot addict.

Yeah, after that, we just stopped. I think a lot of that is born of just, you know, transitioning from like playing Dungeons and Dragons as a game to keeping the pacing in an audio podcast. Yeah. Because if you stop to loot everything, there's a lot of like rolling. What do you find? Gussie there needs like a table with gold in it. We didn't really track gold closely in this campaign. And that's kind of where Bezler came from was because we wanted to give you guys like a moment to buy things after each

arc and then kind of like use those going forward which could I just say I love the fact that you had Christian Young voicing Bessler but always made him have like a different disguise or accent every time so you'd have to do like something different every single time I would have to go to him to get lines and every time I'd go I am so sorry how can you do a French accent

Did anyone in the party ever pick up on the fact that his name was M. Bezler? Yeah. Yeah. It was like, no one ever made a joke about it or a comment on it. So I was always like, they know his name's M. Bezler, right? It established the distrust towards him like immediately. And then every time we met someone who was like, I can't remember some of his other names, but like Mr. Thief or whatever, I was like, oh, it's M. Bezler in disguise. And I felt bad because like I completely cut the joke off at the legs sometimes. But I was like, oh, what's up M. Bezler? And he was like, oh.

Oh, I remember another one. Like when you guys were in also in white winter, a lot of things happen in white winter. You're playing as spectral and his memories, like each of you take a turn. And I don't remember how it happened, but like you could have used his like ether blades or his like boots that turn him invisible or he can go through like walls and stuff. And like, no, they're just on the floor. It's fine. Yeah.

I was like okay that's cool we'll work for that later no big deal Mr. LeBamf on Reddit asks are there any easter eggs and episodes that the fans haven't caught yet I'm sure they've caught a lot I liked the there's a lot of brink tusser lines like throwaway lines that Eric would do or I would write for him and like we just never hear those because he did so many funny lines of like just improv stuff but I think one of my favorites was when I made Deja Urbloom and it was originally going to be like a

a few episodes and each was going to be named after a part of a symphony. Mm-hmm.

So like Overture is the first one, Allegro, and each town district was going to be that movement of the symphony. So like Allegro, everything speeds up in time. So that's why everything's growing so fast. You have like these giant plants that are attacking you. You have Gumbo, that's huge, and the pet Apothecary. And then like Adagio, you guys go back in time to dinosaurs. Decapo is the Ironhoff district with Chanel, the Wind Elemental. You keep repeating times. So things like that, that I would write into it or people's names, they would be,

course puns or different things that would clue into their lives. Every time. Yeah. There's a lot of really clever things that Micah does, both with wordplay and music in the show. Anytime there's a new arc, I'm always looking forward to see like how he's going to reprise the theme song for the show into like fit that arc or the character. But even the little things like

With Wilhelm, you would throw like the Wilhelm scream in like the background for like most of the scenes that Wilhelm was in. I also love the Gum Gum's Wake-A-Bye song kind of playing throughout like really touching moments with Gum Gum. And I'm like, it's just making me more emotional in this moment. I think like character themes and motifs and things are really powerful in media. And I think you did a great job of building them and then like expanding upon and there's like

making them matter. Yeah. Well, thank you. We have a question here from American Wastelander asking if there's any chance of getting an occasional first members only video component, maybe say the first or last episode of an arc.

Maybe cameras in the room during an episode recording. Big ask, I know, but didn't hurt to ask. Actually, something Micah just brought up almost made me interject with this, but I'm glad it was organically brought up by a community member question. Something that we're looking to do thanks to the overwhelming support we've gotten from the audience so far, which I don't want to shy away from constantly pointing out. We were, in fact, challenged early on in the show to,

to kind of grow this community as best as we can, kind of on our own. And you guys have knocked all the metrics out of the park of what we were trying to achieve with this show. And that has gotten so much interest because we are part of a company that they want to do more with this show, with the next campaign. And part of that is

building out some ideas for some more video components for the show so that we can create even more content for what we're colloquially referring to as the Stinkyverse.

And we don't have exact answers for that, but you've gotten a taste for it so far with the Stinky Dragon puppet videos that we've been releasing on social, which those aren't stopping anytime soon. Even though this campaign's finale is done and gone at this point, we still not only have more films from this campaign to put out,

but we have plans to do more from this campaign for those puppets because we've got the puppets, which we might as well keep making these cool little videos. And there's so many good moments too. Yeah, there's so many good moments. And then on top of that, we are solving for the question of like, well, for this community, if we were to provide both puppets

like more free content for you guys to enjoy, as well as like a premium level for you guys to be able to participate in, to continue to support the show. We are like figuring out what that looks like. And even like what Mike had just said a second ago, like my brain went to like, if we're like referring to this almost like to a Patreon model, if our Patreon members got to listen to the Brink Tussler cut,

I've just, I've just all, all the different takes that our good friend, Eric Badour has done for that character. I'd love to put that up somewhere for people to be able to like kind of participate in a little more of that behind the scenes stuff that we just hadn't until now really taken as much time to release out there.

So the answer is we want to do more video work. We want to do more supplemental kind of extra content to support this show and it's coming. And so it's going to be a part of this next campaign. So if you thought like things were going to just be as they were for the next campaign, they're not, or they're actually just going to get bigger and bigger. And it is 100% because of your guys' support and your guys' like spreading the word,

of this show because I know plenty of you have said you've shared it with friends. I know plenty of you have shared it with family or listened to it with family. So yeah. Which is so cute. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Can I shout out to someone? Yeah. Please. So there's two people that have really helped with the Reddit and the Discord, the fan Discords and stuff. And that's falsely named.

and Julia Darkrest. Yes. Both of them have been named after people on the show, but I've talked with them consistently since False Indian built the Reddit and then Julia came on to help with the other stuff as well. And other people are involved too. I'm not discounting them. They've built a wiki page that has lore about the whole show.

There's people still writing on that stuff. I've seen messages with people being like, who knows CSS that can edit the wiki page so that it matches the colors of the campaign? But they've been incredibly helpful. Julia Darkrest is actually who I believe organized a document with like all of the magic items you guys had purchased and was the main reason I was able to create like the little item cards I gave you all.

And then also the other day when D&D Beyond was down, we were like, wait, let's we pulled up those documents, too, because we didn't have any. Yeah, no, those two in particular, I've seen them being very active within the Stinky community, Discord, Reddit, all of the things. But just like everyone who's been on there and like as part of the discussion, people who post on our subreddit for the first time, I've seen a lot of people like waiting for them to catch up before they went on our subreddit because they didn't want to get spoiled.

But it's just been so cool to see like a bunch of people starting to listen to the podcast, whether it be from the very beginning or if they found like a puppet video on TikTok, they came over to the Discord and are watching, you know, other Rooster Teeth stuff or, you know, other stuff that we make. So it's just like...

such an honor to be able to make a show that so many people love this much that they want to be involved in talking about it too, not just consuming it. I think that's like such a humbling and amazing experience as a creator to see. It's a huge community effort. And I love talking with everybody in the Discord and the Reddit, everything just to get like information or even look at speculation on how the story's going. Yeah. And maybe the scariest part about making a show like this or before we started the show is the fact that

making serialized content, you typically have a drop off in people's attention over time. Because it's like, even if you start with a big pool at the beginning, that pool gets smaller and smaller as time goes on, as you add more episodes, because people view it as an obstacle into jumping in and getting caught up to where you are in the story. But we've been very fortunate to see over time, the numbers actually go up.

as the audience grows and the podcast gotten more attention, which we're eternally grateful for. But you mentioned puppets a couple of times there. And Kimball Bobimble on the subreddit asked, did you imagine your characters looking different than what we all think they look like now, thanks to the puppets? And as a follow-up, since the puppet videos become so popular for Micah, do you think you'll write more encounters that can be easily acted via the puppet medium? Yeah.

As far as the characters and what they looked like, I don't really know what I envisioned. And then when we saw the puppets and like in the puppets were based off of the art that Andrew Douglas is a friend of the of the company made. And like when I saw that, like, actually, no, we all set a poster, right?

that was the original thing is that poster that we had come out of the store. Stinky dragon posters came out first though. Oh, okay. Yeah. He does the thumbnails on the website. Yeah. Yes. We all had input in like when I saw what his version of my guy looked like and I'd never, I guess I didn't imagine a bronze arm, but outside of that, like I was like, yeah, no, this is perfect. This is what I imagined. Well, there's been instances where the communities kind of decided what they look like to a degree. Brinks a good example of that.

where Brink appeared in maybe thumbnails, but someone's fan art, God, I'd be a better person if I could recall who it was specifically. My mom made the Brink toy. Like there is a Brink doll now that will probably appear in some upcoming videos.

And for reference, we used fan art because it was just like Brink wasn't a character we had fully fleshed out because it's an NPC. He's got blue hair, I think was like all we really, spiky blue hair. Careful what your fan art looks like. We might draw inspiration from it. It was funny though when we did get the puppet for him. I think all of us were like, he's a lot taller than I imagined. And I think it's because we all know Eric Badour who voiced Brink Hustler.

Who's like just a little guy, you know, as he is self-proclaimed. So it's just funny seeing like the character that Eric voices be essentially the tallest out of all of us. Yeah. And then am I going to write stuff for puppets? Yeah. More puppet content. Puppet friendly encounters. To interject, Micah doesn't.

exactly right these encounters, how they turn out. So like, he makes the play setting, but it's Blaine who decides to do a backflip surrounded by a bunch of amnesias that we then have to figure out how that works out. Not to like lessen Micah's impact. Micah creates...

all the skeleton or skellingtons that we are attached onto. But yeah, I don't think anybody would have thought like a zip line cord across two cliffs would make for puppet content, but we still have a video. I think if anything, we as the cast are more mindful of like, let's really play into this moment and make it really descriptive and visual while we're explaining what we're doing or what we're seeing so that we could help turn that into a really funny moment if we do decide to use that as a puppet moment. So like...

Now doing these puppet videos, we're not changing the way we do the show or the way we act as our character, but it's more like let's lean into this comedic moment a little more and be visual about the way we're describing it in case we do want to turn it into a moment. But also that's just a good way to do a audio only podcast is to try to be descriptive and try to lean into those moments as much as possible. So team effort. I did think about it when looking at new characters to make. I had some ideas like that. I don't know if that'd be as easy to puppet. Yeah.

And having spent so much time like trying to get shots and tight little maneuver of arms and things like, no, no, I can't do that type of character. It would drive me crazy. Yeah, I think we all like that was something when we're doing character creation for the next campaign. One of the things that I wanted to make sure is I didn't like repeat another character

species just because like I like how diverse the infinites look like we all have our distinct sizes silhouettes color of skin hair all that stuff and I want the same there's just something about a ragtag band of people that's like much more fascinating than just a bunch of clones just the Power Rangers standing next to each other yeah

Does anyone have any favorite moments that stand out from the entire campaign? Or maybe something that gameplay-wise maybe you had done a little differently? That's submitted by Volantis from Reddit. Damn, these are all so good. There's like small moments here and there that I really loved. Anytime that I used my suspenders of haggling and you guys would cringe at me snapping my actual bra straps was like always really funny to me. I just like, my favorite moments was when I could make you guys laugh. So, honestly,

I'll think on that more, but yeah, there's just so hard to pick one favorite. Unfortunately, some of my favorite moments were when I was the only one that was like on board for it. And everyone was like, oh, like head and hands. But Gus was still allowing me like jumping out of the window naked and like having a fight. I feel like everyone was like, what are you doing? I thought that was awesome. Actually, Chris, you did jump on board.

You did. And like, there's just moments like that. Like genuinely combat was, I think my favorite stuff. And then my, again, my favorite social interaction was a little Jimmy. Jimmy. My favorites are always like NPCs and like making friends with them, which I feel like was just very much what gum gum does, you know? And so it was very much fun to just like approach things from his perspective, either incredibly stupid or,

or just incredibly like kind-hearted where he would be friends with anyone to any degree that was just really fun to play like the jail breakout i feel like that section of the show is whenever i feel like we really started like finding our footing and really getting into the show like y'all embracing and going along with gum gum's idea to like we need an inside man you know like

I have to get arrested so they won't know what the jail is like. You know, it's like just like playing into that kind of stuff was just so much fun to me. I also I know we weren't always the best at it, but I actually really liked the episodes where we had puzzles and things to like figure out in that way or like things that were wordplay or like whatever it was. I will say it was always a very interesting challenge to try to take notes with the way Micah writes with alliteration and like all these fancy words where I was like, could you say that?

A fourth time. I got like two out of the 18 words in that sentence. But I always appreciated those because it's something where you got to think a little deeper on something sometimes rather than just like a combat scene necessarily. For the flip from what Chris said, where he liked becoming friends with all the characters, my favorite moments were any time Kyborg and Sleek interacted.

Of course. Anytime. Best friends. My favorite moment with Sleek, I think, is when he's eating popcorn and watching you all battle the Snow Bice in the arena. And recording those lines, I literally went and got popcorn and just was shoveling popcorn in my mouth. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They're doing great. I love this. A lot of that White Winter stuff was fun, too. I like the Mudd's and Bart's performance for V-King. I think that was like a fun little moment. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I liked 100 Fest. That was fun to make and fun to do just because it's all these little mini games and it's like carnival basically. I'm like, just go play. Yeah. Is there anything in your minds that made your character truly become who they were in the end? Like any big turning points? And that's sent from Heatful Healer on Reddit. I knew what I wanted to do with Gum Gum. Like,

like going in, but I think what really solidified who he was was the way you guys accepted him and made him feel like part of the group. There's a version where Gum Gum was dumb and, you know, would do dumb things and it would be like, oh no, it would be a burden. But I feel like y'all did a really, like accepting him for who he was and loving him for who he was. And I really enjoyed that. I think that made his character like,

more loving and a better character. Yeah, I agree. The relationship between all the characters, I think, was really heartwarming and like really unique in each of their own relationships. For Bart, though, I would have to say, I think when he found out he was the quarterling and that whole moment, I thought that was really fun. And like, I think really solidified like his confidence in himself. He's already a very confident character, but I think it was that moment of just like, you are way more powerful than you think you are.

And you already think it's quite a bit. And he's probably thinking it's quite hot, yeah. I think for Kyborg, with acting like an idiot and just like a show-off, there's often times where there's just dismissal and eye-rolling and stuff like that. And I thrive off of that energy. And I loved that. But every now and then when a dice roll would hit,

And I was actually able to back stuff up with like performance and athleticism and stuff like that. Like it's those moments of like going against the odds and just like proving some people wrong. And they're just like, Oh, this, this idiot, this, I hate this guy. Like I love those moments. And those happened early on where I was just like constantly doing backflips. And that's like, that was just the basis of kind of works personality. It's just like against all odds, this idiot survives for me, the pinnacle concept.

the best summary of Kyborg I can think of is the fact that Kyborg, I don't think ever used the word somersault. It was always barrel rolls. It took me a long time. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah.

I think it's Star Fox that did that to me. Do a barrel roll. Do a barrel roll. So what are like important takeaways you've learned about playing D&D? And is there anything that you learned about the mechanics of the game that you'll incorporate into the next arc?

That's from Daniel KS25 on Twitter. Something that I think I want to do more of is playing D&D like the character I'm playing. So a little bit more heavily in the role play. I think especially with Chris and Gum Gum, he had a lot of moments of like, well, Gum Gum would do this. And I think oftentimes I go, well, I feel like I wouldn't do this in this situation, but maybe Bart would. I didn't play into that as much as I think I could have.

So I'm hoping with like any future campaigns we do, I could like really dive into thinking in the mindset of that character, even if it's not something me personally, Barbara would do or agree with or think is like the right move here. But this character would I want to do more of that.

I agree. And I think that this is a lesson that we learned from RTD&D to Stinky Dragon that I think we're going to continue to perfect into the next campaign is that it's way more fun when the team gets along and we yes and each other and we support each other. And I hope we continue to do that because it just makes our friendship and our character dynamics work better.

that much better. And Gus, Ben and Micah, you guys just letting us play and just doing stupid stuff like that makes this, I think, a much more enjoyable playing and listening experience. Yeah. Well, hey, I love it because if you guys are talking and doing things and I don't have to talk. I mean, I've learned a lot about D&D from just writing because like I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the podcast, but I only learned D&D during the pandemic. Yeah.

Oh, really? Yeah. Holy hell. I never knew anybody. And so I finally met people that I was living with in Australia and they taught me. And then I eventually like I was in a campaign that I started teaming my own campaign with them. But like that's the best way to learn something is to teach it.

And so like when you start, like I, that's how I found out about, about skill challenges from like fourth edition. I use that in this campaign. I found out about the maze mechanic that you can use for labyrinths with the cards and stuff. There's all kinds of things. Oh, uh, action oriented monsters, which is a thing from Matt Colville, who's a former writer of critical role, I think. So there's all kinds of things you can learn on the internet.

Yeah, I think similarly to Micah, I don't really, I played a few sessions of D&D in college, but I didn't really get into it until like a year before we really started diving into RTD&D and stuff like that. And it was mostly from listening to like audio podcasts and like live shows that other people played into. And this campaign has really taught me a lot about playability

playing D&D for an audio podcast series and how it's very different from just like sitting down to play at a table at home. Cause there's a lot of pacing issues and just making sure like how things work when you're sitting in like a recording studio with everybody and just have to take time to, you know, we only have two hours, so we can't spend four hours doing combat, you know? So like, I feel like we're really getting a good foundation under ourselves going into this next campaign to like,

you know, do some more fun storytelling. That was one of the first things I researched was like, how to do D&D in 90 minutes, like 90 minute sessions, like lunchtime D&D. Okay, here we go. Yeah, because in the past, like when I've played campaigns, it's like, all right, we're going to get together and we're going to play D&D all weekend, like 10 hours a day for, you know, Saturday and Sunday. Like we'd spend 20 hours this week of playing D&D. And it's like trying to distill that down to like,

a 90 to 120 minute session weekly is just like, that's a lot. That's kind of crazy to distill it down like that. I don't know if we've ever mentioned like that, like when I send Gus modules, we don't stick to this by any means, but it has a timeline of like, here's when this generic thing will happen. Like it'll take probably 15 minutes. Well, a lot for that. And then this and then this and this, and it's all like broken down so that we know like we probably have enough time, but maybe not.

But then the party finds a door. The party finds a door. I have a question. What would you have done if in combat one of our characters had died? Probably stop the show. Yeah. Like, what do you mean? Like, fail to zero hit points or fail to all three death saves? Like, actually die. All three death saves. Like, just really bad luck rolling. Yeah. The show would have just been over. We would have just called it there and gone home. No, um...

I mean, I've talked with Micah and Gus about this before, where death in D&D doesn't necessarily have to be the end of a character, right? That might have meant a drastic shift in what Micah had planned for the campaign, where now suddenly you guys are going to whatever the equivalent of phase of hell is to bring Gum-Gum back from like, you know, the seventh circle of that area. But yeah.

It's just like a change in story as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, we wanted to lean into that if that happened. So if someone rolled death saves and just got a one and immediately died, let that be the dramatic moment and plan out the next thing. What's the next thing? What would the rest of the characters, how would they react to that and kind of anticipate what the story takes from there? Because that is a moment and we don't want to just wash over that and say, well, he died, let's move on. Roll another character, you know?

my first D&D character ever. We were playing AD&D, which is first edition. And it was a rogue who fell into a pit with an ice worm. The party refused to go in and save me. The ice worm ate me and the party just left. Yeah.

Woof. Wow. I was like, wow. What a great team. Thanks, guys. Like, I got my stuff together and left the session. Like, oh, I'm dead. Oh, they're not coming back. Oh, okay. Wow. That's it? Okay. Bye. Because we would never leave you.

How long had you been playing that character? Oh, that wasn't very long. It was a couple of months, but it was like my first campaign, and it was like, oh, D&D is kind of tough. D&D kind of sucks sometimes. Dang. I'm glad Gus had to go through these, like, experiences so that we didn't have to. You know, he's taking all his trauma from past D&D campaigns. I don't want that life for my kids.

Gus, did you ever win D&D though? Have you ever done that yet? All your experience? Win D&D? Yeah, have you won D&D? I've definitely had a character I took from like level one to level 25 over the course of like...

a decade of playing you know and uh that i consider is probably the closest to winning dnd you know where it's just like i started with you know a d6 hit die and then by the end it's like hundreds of hit points and you know interestingly enough that character was an arcane archer so i was kind of familiar with what you were doing with kyborg and i had like the seeking arrow and all of that stuff and like after a while you get to the point where it's like it becomes not fun and

It's like everything I shoot is going to hit. Like, unless at this point, the escalation has become, we are fighting literal gods in the deities and demigods book. It's like, there's nothing that's a challenge anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why Kuyberg was Gus's favorite.

When we finally franchise this show decades down the line and we finally decide to spin down like the stories, the final campaign is going to be Gus's level 25 character against the four of you. Gus versus actually you guys. Yeah, that character would have like one turn and everyone would have been dead and there still would have been actions left over. Like it's just ridiculous at that point. Oh.

I want to start trying to pivot some of these questions and segue them into talking about next steps and where we're going to be going to with Tales from the Stinky Dragon. So from Twitter, Chronomag51 asks, does this mean all new characters and a new storyline? If it's a new start, will we have the same people playing their characters or will anyone be leaving or joining? Same cast, same dungeon master. No one's leaving. Same dungeon time.

same dungeon time well we should we should also specify that's for the next big campaign we're doing but in between the end of this one the infinite campaign and the start of the next campaign we have a mini campaign which chris damaris will be dming and gus will be playing a character with us for those few episodes so that's going to be a mini thing that happens in between that we're also really excited to do and nervous to see how that plays out

Yeah, and we just made characters for that this morning. We did, yes. So that should be really fun. But yeah, same cast doing the next campaign, Gus DMing Micah and Ben, working their magic behind the scenes. How much of that do you guys want to reveal about the new campaign? Nothing right now. No, no, nothing yet. There's a new campaign. Yeah. Oh, no.

Wait, Mike had just left a Discord call. I just did find and replace on this campaign and just changed names. I don't know. As far as teasing, I would say, yeah, like it's kind of what Duncan mentions at the end of the finale that this new story, this new tale that he tells is going to be a bit darker and a bit focused on creatures and dare I say monsters. And

And I don't think it's a mystery to say that it will be mysterious. Yeah, there's not a lot I want to tell, but I do want to say like there there will be some fun new things that we're trying with this campaign that we didn't do with the last one that I think will be fun to explore as characters, fun to explore different lands. This won't be phase of this will be somewhere different. Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'm excited. I'm excited to do different music for it as well. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't consider that new music. Just as many puns. Yeah.

Someone posted on Reddit. I won't name names. I don't remember their name even. It was like, is there going to be an ungodly amount of puns in the next one? Or is it just going to be bear wool?

Only one way to find out. It'll be pun bearable. We'll see. I'm really excited to see what Micah does with music in the next campaign, especially because with this one, in the nature of how the show spun up, the theme song for the Infinite campaign was done by someone else that we had hired, Cole McGinnis, who he's done stuff with like Critical Role. He's done stuff with like

Riot Games and League of Legends and created like whole champion themes now. Very incredible, very talented. I think Micah took that first like intro theme that we had done for Stinky Dragon and you ran with it as far as you could and knocked it out of the park. So I'm very excited to see like what the next campaign theme is going to sound like and what you do with music going forward. Oh, so like the intro song is going to be different. We're thinking. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I'm also excited for John and Micah's mom to inevitably make us new little puppet characters of our new characters because

because until then i guess like this is the only thing i can update on because me and chris work on the puppets but like we're going to continue to make infinite puppet videos with like you know our original crew up until like we have enough stuff and into the new campaign accrued and new puppets to make those guys simultaneously yeah maybe we'll do some weeks with the old campaign some weeks with the new campaign if things pop up

What if she makes puppets of you guys in real life and you play out you playing D&D as you? I was literally just thinking about how I wanted to include miniatures to the scale of the miniature puppets. So like, like maybe one of them is making puppets in a shot and then we have even tinier felt puppets. It's puppets all the way down. Yeah.

Isn't there a South Park episode about them doing paper animation? Funny. Is there? Yeah, they're like doing the same animation of the original style of that show before it became digital. And they in the episode like express their exacerbation at how difficult and dumb that style of animation is. So you mentioned about at the end of the Infinite campaign, how Duncan kind of teases what's up next, right?

And there's actually a question from Brisby on Reddit asking, have you considered a new voice for the bartender for the next campaign? Like there was a shift change for the bartenders. And I think that's a funny question because we talked about that for a long time. Because Tales from the Stinky Dragon is supposed to be multiple different stories, like stories told at a bar called the Stinky Dragon. Tavern. Right. And.

And, you know, it's been one of the things that we've wanted to do for a long time, just we weren't sure, like, are we going to actually do it? Are we not? You know, does that need to carry through or can you swap it out at any given point? Is there anything you want to say about that, Micah?

Yeah, we can say like Duncan's going to probably tell the next one and he's going to use his like spooky voice that he's going to he's been working on behind the scenes. And I think it'll be it'll fit the tone of this next story. Can I ask like canonically? You're not going to be able to tell me because if it's a different land and it's not phase, is that like different planet or a different continent? Is it different timeline, different universe? I'm so like, or am I just going to find out? You have to find out, my friend. OK, all right, fine, fine, fine. Yeah.

that's called not wanting to write yourself into a corner. True. Subscribe plane. Okay. I'm noticing you're doing a lot of the things where it's like, Oh, what's next for this? And be like, it's in development. And that was always my way of saying, I have no clue. So,

Well, as far as the players, is there anything we can talk about? Like new characters, races, classes, personalities. I'll teach some things that I'm doing for my character. If that's okay. No bleep all this out. Bleep it all out. Barb, you keep talking, right? You don't Mike. I'll just bleep everything that happens. Here, I'll do it for you in my own court. There you go. I,

I think it's safe to say that a lot of people have been saying that I should play a barbarian. So I'm going to be playing a barbarian character to continue with the theme of my name and different classes like Barbara and Bard and barbarian.

And I'm going to be playing a female character, too, which I'm excited about. And I am going to be trying an accent as well. So it should be a very fun little experience for me. And I'm not going to embarrass myself whatsoever trying to do it. I embarrass myself for 80 plus episodes with a bad Scottish accent. You did a great job. You did a great job.

I'm doing accents for the first time, so I'm nervous as heck. My guy, the only tease I'll give is if John Candy was John Wick. That's a good one. I went very different from Gum Gum, but also not that different in some ways. Gum Gum was like a kid. I'm playing like an old man. An old man.

but I feel like in a lot of ways, like kids and senior citizens can be child hearted. If that makes sense, like having a child at heart, young at heart, that's the word. Yeah. You know, child hearted, child hearted, child hearted. Oh, my heart is too small for my body. John. Um, what do I want to tease about mine? I will be doing a different voice. They will have a different accent that I'm going to try to challenge myself to do. And something that I tried to bring with mud was, uh,

A backstory? A backstory. I actually... This time, I'll say this. I'm committing same sins and also not in that I actually have a little bit of a backstory for this person, but I'm supposed to have written it down and given it to Micah. Still haven't done it yet. Still the last person. Yep.

And we got time. So no, with Mud, I kind of made a choice early on. I don't want to be explicit about it, but I found that growing up being a little nerd, there wasn't enough like overtly queer representation. It was always queer coded. And so I wanted Mud to play that.

And so I noticed that there's never, there's never any ace representation that I could find enough in stuff. And I have several ace friends that mean a lot to me. And so, and I've always had a connection with them. And so I wanted to play Mud as ace, which is why you listen to the whole campaign. Mud doesn't really, Mud plays almost aromantic basically, because I liked playing that way. I like to explore that.

And so my next character, I wanted to include that as well. And I also wanted to mix up our groups since it was a boys club last time. So my character is going to be playing non-binary. So I'll say that. Nice. And I can't wait to hear everyone try to pronounce their name as well. I did. Yes, you are correct. Yeah, we got a little taste of John's next accent and character name. And you're going to knock it out of the park. But it is very funny to see people react to it. Yeah.

And the last question I have here, I think everyone wants to know, how long do we have to wait for the next campaign to start? I think it's 37 years. Is that right? All right. You can only do one campaign every 37 years. Currently, right now, as of today, the day we're recording, the year of our Lord, 2023, the plan is that the new campaign after the mini-arc will premiere on April 25th.

I made sure to say currently that's the plan. You know, things can happen. Texas could shut down again because of an ice storm for two weeks or something. Who knows? But yes, if you want to put on your calendars, April 25th. But also the next episode of a story is next week. Yeah. There will be no blank. Yeah. So the new mini story will be just next week. It'll start next week. It'll run for...

five weeks. Yeah. Is there anything you want to tee up about that story, Chris? Yeah, it takes place in Phasa. I wanted to like kind of bridge the campaigns or the story, you know, so the new characters, different time period, but still in the same world. So there'll be some things that might be familiar, but also, you know, entirely new to kind of transition into the new campaign. And we have, you know, four characters, Gus being one of them. The main thing I told them when making their characters, I was like, pick characters who you

aren't your traditional

And I think they came up with some really fun characters and backstories that are going to be fun to throw into an adventure. So we'll have this intermediate campaign run by Chris, which will go for five weeks to kind of bridge the gap between major campaigns. And we'll be back late April slash early May for the new campaign with the regular players in the new setting from Micah. So now's a great time to get your friends to listen to the podcast. It's a great starting point for anybody new.

Thank you all so much for taking a chance on our show. I know it's a lot to be part of like a long narrative podcast and kind of be with us for the entire story, but we really appreciate everyone's love and enthusiasm for the show because we love making it. So it's been an honor. Yeah, you guys are our bra. You support us no matter what. You're

You're all a bunch of bras. Oh, third blessing was seeing everyone react to it and seeing people online respond to it. That's the third blessing I didn't mention earlier. Three blessing shows. Hashtag blessed. Blessing sandwich. Yeah. If anybody listening to the show happens to have like super famous celebrity parent that wants to do voice acting for our show, you let us know, okay? All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you guys here real soon. Next week. See you in 37 years.

No. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to our Behind the Tales episode. Next week, we're going to be starting our five-episode mini-adventure DM'd by Chris Damaris. And after that, we'll be diving right into our next full-length campaign with the original cast and crew. So thanks again for listening. And remember, stay stinky.