C01 - Ep. 23.5 - Deja Ürbloom - Between the Tales
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Hey, everyone. Welcome to this special supplementary episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. A tale between the tales? Question mark. We're going to be doing a bit of a story recap, going over what the party did when they leveled up to level four, as well as answer some questions. A little Q&A from questions that we've gotten from the community. Thank you so much for sending questions. As always, you can give us a follow on social media at StinkyDragonPod. Use hashtag StinkyDragonPod. We might even use your name in a future episode as an NPC.

i'm rolling a d4 right now whoever it lands on is the character that we kill in the next arc okay i'm sorry kyborg you're we have to kill you next time well you kill the show because i'm the best one in the game you all need me well you just wrapped up the i guess the second big arc so far in uh in the story you all started out as little interns uh for there's a there's a group of heroes in the land known as the infinites

And this party answered the call to be interns for the Infinites. And you all made your way to a town called Boulderay. On your way there, Kyborg had a run-in with a character named Brink Tussler and a long-standing rivalry was born. If I remember right, Brink Tussler bested you in your initial encounter. He did. Nice.

I think that that's a matter of opinion. That is why Blaine has been mad at him. No, that's a matter of opinion. No, he definitely bested you. Not a matter of fact. It's a matter of opinion. You all made your way to go meet up with Mayor Prattle, who was the mayor of the town, invited you guys to be the Infinite Interns, and he let you in on a secret that the Infinites had actually been kidnapped, and it was up to you guys as the interns to rescue the Infinites. They've been infinapped.

Infinept. The next morning, the mayor let you know that someone claiming to be Paralite

what kidnapped the infinites from their headquarters there in boulder ray she's like the dr doom of our of our story right i'm gonna say yes i don't know who that is but yes that's not you don't know who dr doom is is that a comic book thing oh my god it's not canon and stinky dragon so it doesn't matter fantastic four metal mask green cape oh is that it's not the michael chiklis movie

I have no idea what you're referencing. He was the thing. Oh, Man in the Iron Mask. No, Michael Chiklis was the thing. Fantastic Four. So you saw... No, I was trying to make you mad with that reference.

That's fine. There is no Fantastic Four cinematic reference that can't make me mad at this point. Well, you guys started chasing down Paralite in the labs and you discovered it was actually a robot that had gone out of control created by Dr. Ahem, who was a scientist who helped out the Infinites.

I guess he's kind of like, who's the James Bond helper? M? Is that M? He's Q. Q. Q. You are just messing up all pop culture today, guys. So Dr. M is kind of like James Bond's Q. Helped out the Infinite and created this robot. Is he Q-ing on? Oh, that's a good one. I mean, I'm uncovering it. We're doing it, guys. You get an inspiration die for this episode. Damn it.

Y'all stop this robot, which had set up a trap.

that was gonna harm Dr. Ham and the mayor. Who killed, Kyborg killed a hamster, if I remember right. - Yeah, that's a matter of opinion. - Facts don't care about your opinions. - I feel very bad about it, I'm sorry. - No, it's great. We did a one-off episode later about it. But then you all split up. Kyborg and Gum-Gum visited the library to learn about the Infinites, Sleek, Spectral, Aleve, and Grizzly.

Mud and Bart went to the tavern to learn about the mining accident in the town. Bart had some flirtatious interactions with a barmaid there, if I remember right. Yeah, I did. Wink. Mike, I don't know if you want to explain any more there. I don't know. I mean, you guys kind of, do you guys remember any of that interaction? Yeah. Absolutely. It feels like forever ago, though. It was a long time. It's been 84 years. It's been so long. It was Hopps, right? That was the bartender?

Yeah, the bartender. I'm talking about the library particularly. Actually, no, you did talk about the mining accent in the bar. I'm sorry. Yeah. But that's irrelevant. All that matters is hops.

Yeah, correct. Now you're speaking Bart's language. Dr. Ahem put you all through some actual tests, which ended with you facing down Brink Tussler and some of his buddies. And you all did actually manage to get the upper hand in that encounter. As we always do. Yes. You were shown the dreamery that gave you flashbacks to when Paralite captured the Infinites and Dr. Ahem was injured. And then you all had to go to Pious Pass and...

to continue the experiments and you when you went to Pius Pass you found that they were plagued with a curse that was killing villagers that was the desert cowboy town right that we broke into the prison okay yeah well the jail but yes

You get a little ahead. We'll get there. Sorry. I'm just so excited that I remember all this. I typically forget things like these. I've actually listened to our show. Well, that's what's good about a recap episode like this. If people haven't listened, it's a quick way to catch up. And for those of you who've been there, it's a way to do a little refresher. Yeah.

So you all arrived and you headed to the store to pick up a package for Dr. M, but it's been delayed. You were pulled into a confrontation where there was a local cleric by the name of Mother Abby who was being arrested by the sheriff and blamed for the curse. You all tried to interfere a little bit and then backed off.

Then y'all went about exploring the rest of the town. Mud got a haircut and sang a song. Great song, by the way. Thank you, Micah. Mud didn't sing the song. Mud got a song sang about him. Yeah, I said was sang a song. Oh, okay. His name is, his name is, your rock-collecting stud. His name is Mud, his name is Mud, your fearless fear-bog-bud.

Some of the locals requested your help to break Mother Abby out of jail. You went in a long roundabout plan to do this that involved breaking into and stealing some stuff from the store, which led to actually an out of game discussion that we had about how difficult it would be to jump out.

10 feet when encumbered with gear. So we made a TikTok video. A TikTok video. God, I sound so old. We made a TikTok. TikTok video. We made a movie film. We loaded up Blaine with 80 pounds of weights. 85. 85 pounds of weights to see if he could jump 10 feet because his character was carrying 85 pounds of gear. Spoiler, he did it perfectly.

If you'd like to see that video, just look up squad team force on Tik TOK and you'll see it there. We need to do a Tik TOK where I learn how to backflip like Kyborg.

It'll probably get flagged for dangerous activity. Yeah. That's a backflip. High school girls do backflips. We got flagged for you knocking your face on my floor trying to do another little stunt. God. Yeah. Snowflakes over there at TikTok. Come on. They just want to make sure that the youths watching TikTok don't do stupid things that Blaine does. Yeah.

Just watch. He's a trained professional. I'm not doing the milk crate challenge. And I'm so disappointed. I know what that is. When you all finally do break into the jail, you discover that the sheriff's daughter is in there and afflicted with the curse. And you overhear the sheriff interrogating Mother Abby. I remember you went like through the underground passage to go to the other building. Gum Gum subdues the small girl with his iconic move of hug somebody. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Gum Gum likes to hug and grapple. He does. He likes to grapple.

Yeah. He's a spooner. He wants to raffle. Is he always the big spoon? Yeah. No, he's definitely the little spoon with Bart. Bart likes to be the big spoon. No, he's little spoon with Bart because in every other instance, he's the big spoon and he misses being the big spoon. I think if Bart is the big spoon, you call that jetpacking, right? That's jetpacking. That's 100% jetpacking.

While you find Mother Abby and you get to the bottom of this, you realize Mother Abby reveals herself to be one of the Infinites. Elive specifically, and that Elive is behind the curse. You guys try to take her down at the last moment. You're stopped by Paralite, who reveals themselves as the savior of the town. But you guys know that

really paralyzed behind Aleve's strange behavior. She says mean things under her breath to us. Yes. Once you wrap that up, Mud, you have a run-in with the bed warmer back at the tavern who gives you a prophecy on your future. Bed warmer. Forgot about that guy. Yeah. I like just calling him a bed warmer and not even explaining what he is. And,

Mud reacted the exact same way that John would have in real life. Not necessarily. And Mud did it for different reasons. John, you would awkwardly like, I think you need to leave. Don't tell me you would be like, you're right, let's get going. Apparently, Blaine knows everything about my sexual encounters. I know everything about your, you know, never mind. Your social anxieties. Yeah, please, please.

Explain it to us. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, sure. Explain my sexuality to me. It wasn't even a thing. Okay, whatever. So when you all checked into the inn, you all were offered bed warmers and nobody knew what it was. Everyone declined it except for Mud, who took a bed warmer. Little did you all know bed warmer was code for a prostitute. Sex worker. Yeah. Okay.

A gentleman of the night. John just admitted that he would take a prostitute. I'm just going to point that out. Sex worker. You are correct. Thank you. Sex worker. A gentleman of the night. Yes. Or day, depending on what you like. Batman. I don't even remember what the prophecy was at this point. You must fulfill your destiny. That was it. Oh, it was about Mudd's specific heritage and his problem with his family and everything. Yes. Okay.

That's right. That's right. Guilt. It was guilt is what it was. Guilt prophecy. Is Mudd Catholic? No. No. But does he lick cats? Well,

Wait, is there a fantasy Jesus? Or is Jesus fantasy Jesus? Yeah, okay. There are religions. There are religions in D&D. Yeah, there are. And in earlier editions of D&D, there used to be deities and demigods books that outlined all the different major theologies. And not just like

fictional D&D specific ones but like it had like Norse mythos and all kinds of different back of the DMG there back of the Dungeon Masters guide there's a whole list of like appendices of all the deities and stuff like that I think I'm a cord guy I like cord is that a god yeah the god of athleticism I think from like the last campaign you guys did

That carried on. So once you were done with that, you took a leave back to Boulderay with the package that you picked up. So you... The town loved us as we left. Yeah, they were very happy that you were leaving. I think we got a parade, did we not? No. Yeah. If you mute it, it could look like a parade.

Lots of pitchforks, lots of torches. Really weird. Yeah. Celebratory pitchforks. And you all had to help Aleve by getting her in breather and some medication, which you did. And once you were successful with that, you were sent to Urbloom to track down the next Infinite. And when you arrived, you arrived at the entrance of Urbloom. It looked like the world was ending pretty much. You found a dying Brink Tussler. Oh, you found your own dead bodies and a dying Brink Tussler who torched

who told you that you had to fix everything and work together, and he shoved a recapitulator in your hands and it activated, and you seemingly went back in time to before this disaster, before this calamity. He also gave me some dog tags or something for his, like, snake, his flying snake or something. Do you remember the name of that snake? We just covered it in the last episode where we recorded two days ago. Yeah, he said it, because the snake gets used as a hostage. Yeah, okay.

Who will be the first to remember? Jake. Everyone's looking it up. Jake the snake. His name was... Nope. It's not there at all. I didn't write it down. Micah? His name is Micah? His snake's name is Micah. The snake's name is Hannibal. Hannibal. Hannibal. Oh, yeah. Hannibal, like Burris.

Hannibal was there in the first episode. Hannibal was there during that first encounter with Brink Tussler. The only famous Hannibal, Hannibal Buress. Now that we're talking, I don't know why I didn't say this earlier. We also, in this episode, have Ben and Micah with us, who normally you don't hear them during when we regularly release episodes. We didn't introduce them at all. Micah does all of the writing for the show. It's all a homebrew campaign. Yeah.

hats off to Micah for all that. He wrote Mud's song that we talked about earlier. And Gum Gum's lullaby. Or what's opposite of a lullaby? A pipe song? Wake-a-bye? Yeah, like a morning alarm? A bull-a-bye! It's time to

Mike is also John's better half or brother. What's better? It's the better. He's the better rising or brother. It's better. Half of that's a, that's a, that's a spousal thing. Well, again, we don't know John and his relationship. So who's to say, and we've also got Ben with us as well. Who's our producer and a co DM, uh,

Lots of times when the party does something stupid, it's Ben who's flipping through the rule book to try to figure out if it's allowed or not. And he normally, when we're recording, he's furiously sending me messages like, make them go faster, speed this along. As I say, you usually don't hear us because we're like furiously trying to come up with ideas to get them back on tracks or on the rails for whatever they're trying to do or whatever door they're trying to open. I've probably written more in our Discord chat than I have for the actual show. Yeah.

It's a lot of just like what the heck are these guys doing? Oh my god. Why haven't they gone through the door yet? Why aren't they moving? Why aren't they making decisions? We took a half an hour to decide whether or not we were going to go through a door or climb up a wall. Correction. It was 50 minutes. How much did we cut it down to? Well, no, we didn't. It wasn't us deciding if we're going to do it. It was us deciding.

Doing it also. We also did climb the wall. Yes. I'm surprised. One of these days, I think it would be fun on social media to release a screenshot of that DM chat that you all have along with an episode and be like, this is what we were saying while this was going on. That'd be so good. I'm surprised that like the, you know, Boulderay or wherever we are hasn't like changed out all the doors for like hanging beads, you know, like the hippie doors. Yeah.

That way we don't have to encounter them anymore because we keep getting tripped by doors. Every building has the automatic openers that a grocery store has. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to say we like cut down a 50 minute door encounter down to like 10 minutes. It was wild.

God. That's us. Well, speaking to you guys, after you popped back in time a little bit, you encountered Oof, who was the first NPC you encountered in episode one. He was a cart driver who was taking you to Bouldery back in episode one. Funny fact about that is that I think when I wrote that, it spelled E-U-P-H.

And you read it as oof. And I originally thought of it as youth, like euphoric. And I was like, I actually like oof better. Yeah. I think that was one of the trivia questions we had asked the party. I think maybe back during RTX was what was his last name? And I knew it was aura because it was supposed to be like euphoric, but I had always said oof. So maybe it wasn't as easy to figure out as it should have been. You failed correctly.

OOF failed correctly? That's one of the things you gotta put on social media one of these days is all the constant puns that Micah's sending during when we're recording an episode. You guys have only seen probably like half of them. Micah throws out so many zingers in our DM chat. Yeah. Normally I try to make it a point to read as many as I can when we're recording, but there's so many in there. Anyway, after your tour of Urbloom, you run into Brink.

who was like past Brink, not the one you saw before, who admits that Sleek is here, who's Sleek's one of the Infinites, and Sleek is out of control, and that you can work together to bring him down. Then you guys, after your encounter with Brink, you ran into Wilhelm and his partner Howie, who gave you guys schematics for the recapitulator, which was the device that brought you back in time. Wilhelm also gave us backstory of Sleek. Correct. Yep. Wilhelm was like the maestro of Sleek.

But the recapitulator would allow you to go back in time, break into the main tower where Sleek is hiding. So you had to go through each of the districts in Urbloom to get pieces to make the recapitulator. Some of which, some of the components you needed were flowers, which I think Howie actually got for you.

No, Bart did. Oh, that's right. Howie found them and then Bart picked them up with a mage hand. That's correct. Yeah, I think Howie just had the bag for it. My little mage hand doing all my dirty business. Yuck. All of it? Yuck, yuck. Yeah.

Along the way, you had to fight a wind djinn, or a wind elemental, which is how you got the crank. You had to run from dinosaurs and cannibals. You had to break into a logging mill. You encountered a sexy, sexy aurochs. We all know what aurochs are. Jacked.

Jacked aurochs. We posted a photo of that to social media too, and most people agree with you, Bart. Hell yeah. I felt things about that aurochs. I'm just going to leave it there. Had to use my mage hand that night.

Nice. Yeah, good one. That joke just trumped my joke that I said at the same time. Sorry. No, it's bad. I like that. I like the idea of two jokes competing for attention at the exact same time. You mean a stinky dragon in a nutshell? Yep. Once you had all the components, you meld, actually assembled the recapitulator for you, the daughter of Hugh Manor.

And you assemble a recapitulator. You find yourselves back at the base of the tower, ready to confront Sleek. Brink excused himself, saying that you no longer needed him. You all sent Sordo to keep an eye on him. You then climbed into the Glocken Tower. This is the 50-minute thing that Ben was talking about earlier. Yeah. You had a couple of encounters along the way. You had to fight DJ Boots and Cats.

You had to do, what was it? Sprookin says? What was it? No, that was actually something we actually had to cut. Oh, did it get cut? Yeah. Oh. Well, y'all fought DJ Boots and Cats. That entire tower from top to bottom, we only did like, I think a third of what you guys wrote. Including the boss battle. Yeah. Well, you fought DJ Boots and Cats at least. The audience knows about that. You got to the top. Y'all talked to Sleek.

Y'all got into a fight with Sleek, defeated some of his instruments, but then of course Paralite steps in

Uh, looks like you all are about to be finished off. Then Brink shows up and attacks her, buys you all just enough time to escape through a portal. But unfortunately, Sordo and Brink get left behind. Uh, and I believe Mud picked up Sleek and took Sleek along with you guys through the portal. Yeah. He showed up at the brink of time. Yeah. Uh, then in a little, uh, plot twist, Paralite reveals to Brink that that wasn't the gateway, uh, that Sordo had summoned, that it was, uh,

uh potentially maybe a gateway portal that she had created yeah uh that was our cliffhanger i also like that at the end of that episode there was like a whole uh video game cut scene that our characters clipped out of and we didn't see any of it go down uh we were just on the bottom floor when sleek apparently died yeah

Not died. No, fell unresponsive. Are we ever going to find out what happened up there visually? Because from all we heard, it was just like a thud and then some footsteps. That's a really good question. So the way that it was written, well, Micah, actually, do you want to explain it? You're the one who wrote it.

I, yeah, I don't know much, how much we can reveal. I guess we can reveal it. Do you think so? Yeah, I don't think there's any issue with it. Okay. Yeah. So there is a mirror, a vanity mirror that as you guys go up the loft and he's kind of staring into and talking to himself and you hear voices as you come in, it was written that Paralite is controlling him through the vanity mirror.

him being the vain person himself. And so he that's kind of like the whole thing is if you guys had actually destroyed the mirror or figured that out then Paralite would have revealed herself sooner or something to that matter. And so when she did reveal herself that smashed the mirror she came in kind of incapacitated Brink. Well dang. Sleek. Sorry Sleek yeah you're right. That would have been a lot shorter boss battle. Yeah a few times throughout the encounter

I kept trying to mention that Sleek was standing next to the mirror. If you guys kept asking where Sleek was or what Sleek was doing, I would always answer and then say right next to the mirror. Like to remind you guys that it was there. We should listen to Gus more. Next episode, I'm just going to shoot everything.

You know, you walk in, there's a potted plant. I shoot the potted plant. We just should bring grenades everywhere we go. Just in case. I feel like half the time Micah writes something. It's like, OK, cool. They're going to talk their way through this, surely. And you show up and you shoot everything. And then the ones where they're like, OK, I think they're going to roll up in here and shoot everything. They roll up and you guys go, I think we can talk this down and make this a friend.

Well, you know, sometimes you don't want to fight. You just want to chat. But we never know with you guys. There's no consistency. That happened in the Elder Pines forest. Bart and Mud went in there and you guys came across a huge beast and decided to talk it down. We did. The power of friendship. We succeeded. We didn't have to fight. We didn't have to throw a single punch. Exactly. We didn't lose any spell slots or take any damage. It was great.

And then Dottie the Ox, that was probably going to be a thing. Oryx. Oryx. And we were just kind of like, all right, well, cool. Hey, look at that big Oryx. And then we just walked by. Y'all lucked out there. Well, I was going to say, then when I had any inkling of talking to an NPC, everybody got mad at me for talking to an NPC in the lumber mill. That guy alerted the guards to our position.

Yeah, but we got out. You did get out. Anyways. We're doing our best. Last little bit here. Potentially one of the Brinks may have died, took a serious wound, was bleeding out when you all escaped. And now the next arc picks up three weeks later. And we're going to get to that in our next episode. That's it for the review of the story so far. Let's talk about you guys leveled up before that boss battle. We didn't talk about it.

We didn't put it in an episode or anything. So I guess this will be your time to talk about if you guys want to talk about what happened to each of your characters during their level four level up. Absolutely. So I improved some of my modifiers. I improved my dexterity and constitution, I believe is what I added. You're correct. Yep.

And for spells, I did a little addition and subtraction. I added a cantrip called Blue Fever of Bluegrass, which I believe is a custom spell that Micah added, correct? Yes. Yeah, that's from a previous campaign. I ran with some friends one time. It's just like hilarious that I wanted to add it. Full disclosure, I think that's like a spell that like you just mentioned and Micah went, oh, I didn't realize you guys had access to all my homebrew spells I've created before. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad because it's going to be a fun one. I added cure wounds back to my first level slot. I think I took away comprehend languages because I wasn't really using that very much. And I was like, I want to be able to help people when we're hurt more because that happens a lot. Good call. Go Bard. And then I also added suggestion for my second level spells. Okay.

So I could suggest things to people and have them be convinced. It's essentially like a brainwash, which is a big fan of that. And I think that's it. What else did I do? I think that should be it. Yeah. I'm not sure if this is the, maybe this is maybe a good time to bring this up. Um,

I know sometimes in the past episodes, you try to use charm and it's not always successful. I can never say this in episode when we're recording, but I've never had a chance to tell you this. Maybe I should tell you now. Don't forget that some races are immune or have resistances to charm. Yeah, I need to...

learn when you try to cast it yeah it's like it it's it's more inclined to fail or won't work but just a reminder now that we're not in the heat of the moment you mean Bart's not powerful enough to charm anything he puts his mind to well maybe with his natural good looks and his uh his wit and banter uh who's next I'll go gum gum gum yeah so well barbarians don't typically learn a lot of spells so I didn't really learn any of those um

And I thought about doing acting or something. Take a semester at a liberal arts college. But I decided to just go with some, what do you call those points? Ability scores. Ability scores. And I upped my charisma and I upped my dexterity to both the 14. So now it's a plus two on both of them.

That would be, yeah, that's really helpful for you since barbarians have relatively low armor class. Getting that additional bump in your dexterity bonus will help improve your armor. Yeah, so I did that and then that's about it. All right, who's up? Pretty not huge change. I just upped my dexterity ability score.

Which, you know, is most important because that includes things like stealth, sleight of hand and acrobatics because I can do backflips now. That's pretty much it. I don't think I'm ever going to touch my charisma just because I still think it's funny that Kyborg is not charismatic. So full disclosure. I thought of another thing. Oh, I have a rat blanket, a blanket made out of rat fur. I'm modifying it to a rat cape.

So visual changes to Gum Gum. Like a superhero. He's a big boy. He doesn't need his blankie anymore. He can count on himself in rat situations. Is that a big rat or a barbarian in a rat cape? He'll never tell. Who's left? Mud? Mud.

Mud also didn't have huge changes, but did a little bit before getting leveled up, I personally made a realization about how druids work. As far as changes, I just did, I think, mostly constitution improvement. Mud also got a wild shape improvement, but due to the fact that Mud already has Circle of the Moon, it really didn't improve it. Normally, I'd be able to do challenge rating of one half now, but I already have Circle of the Moon, which gives me challenge rating of one for wild shape improvement.

Blaine, that means the animals that I can turn into are higher difficulty and bigger, but I've already got... You always keep asking about challenge rating. I thought you were talking about gas mileage or the engine size, but okay. Mud also got a new cantrip slot and a second level spell slot, but the biggest change that I was able to fully take advantage of was that I found out that druids...

When they take a long rest, can correct me if I'm wrong, DMs can basically reassign all of their spell slots or all of their all of their prepared spells. And so I kind of redid all of Mudd's spells to be I kind of play Mudd a little bit like a utility character. He's not fully a healing druid.

He's kind of a little bit of a... I try to play him a little more as a Swiss Army knife kind of thing. But Mud did add Thorn Whip to his cantrip, which he used immediately at the top of, I think, our most recent episode when you were trying to get Brink to leave and we just weren't letting him. Oh my God, I forgot about that. And then Mud also learned Fairy Fire, which is basically a thing to use against invisible creatures.

Um, added healing word to get some healing in there. Um, also added enhance ability, which is a little bit like guidance where guidance adds a bonus for roles. Enhance ability is, uh, just has a bunch of different kinds of, um,

Versions of it like bears endurance and bull strength and fox is cunning and it all gives advantage on certain checks for what about aurochs charm? There's no aurochs charm. You know, there's no aurochs pre-workout shake. Could I get the aurochs charm? We can humbrew that. We'll come up with something. Humbrew that. Also added hold person, which is a paralyzing spell. Spike growth, which is a big...

bit of more of an offensive spell that, um, causes spikes in the ground. Um, and yeah, base, it just kind of, um, reworked a lot of, uh, my spells and stuff. Uh, but I like, go ahead. No, as you say, I do like a little bit plain, uh, mud, like, uh, uh, like an, um, avatar from avatar, less airbender. That's why I like having like shape water and, uh,

spike growth and all that stuff. I want to like have control over all the elements. Huge James Cameron fan. I'm a big fan. So I feel like level four in D&D, you know, typically for the most part, it's usually just ability score improvement. I feel like this is the level where people really begin to get into the rhythm and figure out their class. Like what are the things that work? What are the things that don't work? So here you talk about like discovering things and reworking the way

you approach playing the Druid makes total sense to me. This is like where you really should be starting to find the rhythm of that class and then things should start progressing from here.

And we just leveled up again, right? Because we just had a big boss fight, right? No, no, no. You're still level four. Chris thought that when he got into the recording earlier today, just a little while ago, Chris asked if this was another level up if y'all were getting to five. Like, you just got to four. He almost convinced you. Didn't we just level up before recording our last episode? Yes. Yeah. That's what I thought. But it was a big boss fight. Well, I have a question. Lots of XP. I have a question for Gus, Micah, and Ben.

In y'all's opinion, who is playing their class or their race like the most opposite of what you would expect? Oh, man. I will say I don't know specifically for Kyborg. I don't know if I've ever been in a party with a fighter before that is so reliant on the bow. Normally fighters are a lot more like melee get up in the mix of things.

Yeah. I mean, that's that's comforting to know, because if I if I get into that situation, I feel like I have the HP for it. But like it has been paying off just staying far away and just sniping, not letting everyone else get hit. That's the thing is that you doing that is more often than not putting. Well, obviously, gum gum is a damaged sponge, but also mud is turned into a damaged sponge.

You big guy. It works. And I've been using I've been using wild shape as basically free HP. I mean, to be fair, I in our previous D&D campaign, I played a ranger, an elf ranger. And like being able to be a ranged attacker is really fun.

And it's also helpful because like you don't want everyone in the party being damaged and stuff like that. You want some people to be. Oh, yeah. No, I'm just pointing out that like with your question, Barbara, of like who's playing it different. That's like an answer for that. And so like to put it into like almost video game terms, I'm a druid from World of Warcraft that is just stuck in bear form the entire time.

And well, I mean, I think you probably have the highest DP like damage just well, just in general. Kyberling. Yeah. Yeah. That's consistent for sure. I don't want to brag. I think most players that want to play like with a bow will choose Ranger. Fighter has like literally one subclass that is geared toward bows, which is the one that Blaine took, which is that arcane archer subclass, which is what even then called shots and explosions and stuff.

I played an arcane archer back in third edition. And back then my base class was a rogue. And then I took arcane archer for some reason. So it's not, is it, is it just a fighter subclass now or is it available to everyone? It's just a fighter subclass. I think that changed with five E where now it's more of a, I think like their philosophy on it is Rangers are more about like foraging and you get animal partners and whatnot. But yeah,

Fighters are geared more toward like when you want to do an action thing like swing a sword or shoot a bow. There's like a subclass where you can parry or block shots. And then arcane archery is more of those like I want to shoot a bow that's going to explode. You're going to tie someone up or whatever else they're looking for. So it kind of falls more under that fighter subclass. I think I'll also bring up the gum gum being a barbarian.

is certainly like can be violent at times, but more often than not grappling things and then making crazy magical occurrences happen in fights and stuff. So I think that would probably be my answer as well is that like Gum-Gum doesn't really want to pursue being the biggest person in the room, but wants to either hug someone or create some sort of magical thing.

Always asking if you want to find magical things in rooms and such like that. Not knowing Dungeons and Dragons super intimately. John, you play it. It's not Tiefling. What do you play?

Fear bog fear fear log. Is it the the Shape-shifting is that like a normal approach to combat? That's true it well you you do a lot of shape-shifting and so no that but that's not a fear bog thing That's a druid druid got it got it got it. Well. I yeah, I didn't know if that was like I thought that was an interesting approach to combat I've never seen anything like that. Yeah, it's a Subclass thing where druids can kind of you can take a subclass It's like either gonna be like I'm gonna turn into all the animals that do a bunch of damage or

or I'm going to sit back and cast spells from afar. And John wanted to go the, I turned into all the animals route. I'm a dinosaur. Yeah. I think is, is combat wild shape part of circle of the moon or is a normal Druid move? Um,

That's a Circle of the Moon thing. Okay, so that whole thing where I can use a bonus action to turn into an animal in the middle of combat, that's a thing that's a special class, kind of like how you picked Arcane Archer. That's what I have. And that whole thing during the boss battle where I was burning spell slots to give myself health back, again, it's me acting more like a tank, which...

which is fine. It just doesn't allow me to use my spells. All those spells that I just listed off. I, you, if you listen back to the boss battle, I didn't do any spells the entire time. I was mostly a spider that entire fight. You were also trying to avoid getting hit. Yeah. Talking purely from like a metagame standpoint, like I've played Druids that are the, like not like are more spellcasty and they don't transform as much. And you, you turn into animals more for like, I'm going to turn to a cat and go like sneak into this room and listen in on the bad guys. Um,

unless I'm going to turn into a velociraptor and break down the door and jump on these dudes. Velociraptors can't break down doors, so they can't open them. You guys have so many problems with doors.

Just put a door in front of us if you ever want us to not go somewhere. Chris, I got your Jurassic Park references very good. I like to play Mudd a little bit like a Beast Boy, you know, just turning into whatever I need. And because I can turn into an animal so many times with the several different slots that I have to do it, it's not so much of a hindrance.

Wait till I get to the point where I can turn into flying animals. Y'all are screwed. Uh-oh. Should we turn this podcast episode into a therapy session for our group and then talk about our grievances? Like, would you guys like me to play less ranged and more melee? Because now I'm kind of paranoid that my whole team is upset with me for using the bow. No, no. If we did it, we'd have to do it in character. It's all about balance. Yeah.

I find with with team makeups. And I think I think it's a good balance to have someone be a ranged attacker. Personally, I get the feeling that we could be doing we could be more efficient with this actually kind of a I'm fishing for an answer from the DMs. But I get the feeling we could be more efficient with our combat.

And that when we actually do get into combat as a group, not pointing fingers at any individual, we're not like, to put it in gaming terms, really like getting our DPS we could be getting. Well, I think for me, Micah had a great suggestion during that last episode when y'all were fighting Sleek, which was to start letting y'all know ahead of time who's coming up next.

That way you know when to start. You can casually during combat think about what you're going to do. Then when you know you're up next, it's like, okay, this is going to be the scenario I'm facing. You narrow it down. That way you can act a little more quickly. I think that'll help us tighten up combat a little bit. I'm curious to see if that continues to help us in combat moving forward. You know what? Something that I noticed from this campaign to our last one. Our last one, we had a mini map and

And we were able to see geographically where we were. And the spaces were more defined. I really like playing with her imaginations more. Sometimes the geography of it gets a little bit confusing. But I kind of like...

Having to keep more of a track of it and not have all the information laid out in front of us. It also helps let us fudge things a bit, if I'm being totally honest with you. No, we have everything planned, Gus. I forget who it was, but during that last episode, I think it was either Bart or Mud. Someone wanted to move and go down the ladder and go confront some of the mobs.

And geographically, really looking at the map, there's no way they should have made it. There was, you know, there would have been two moves to get there. But in the interest of trying to speed combat along, I was like, yeah, sure, you make it. You're there. I like that. I'm a fan of that. We imagine you slid down the ladder, you know? Yeah.

So it's like, let's just be a little loose on that end where it's like, yeah, you know, if we know what you're going to try to do, you know, we're not going to punish you. It's like, yeah, okay, we'll facilitate that. One of the things I really like about the show, and I think what we've seen from a lot of feedback from people who listen to it is that like, we're obviously not like us as players aren't D&D experts. And like, we're not super stringent and strict on the rules and like all the little ins and outs of D&D. Whereas, you know, some people probably take D&D a little more seriously, but it's like a good way to kind of

Like an introductory D&D show, if you don't know much about or don't know anything about D&D, it's a very easy kind of thing to get into because it's not like super strict on it. I think that that provides a better environment for creative, like making jokes, telling a stupid story, character development, stuff like that, instead of being so...

in the weeds on the numbers and stuff like that. Yeah. Because I think we had a path that we could have taken where we were thinking about that, but in the beginning when we were kind of developing this whole show, I mean, I'm speaking from talent perspective. I had nothing to do with the background stuff, but we were trying to figure out how much do we want to do actual roles and combat versus role play, which I love the role play stuff. Yeah, I think it's great. Speaking of role play stuff...

I have a question here from the community, segueing into our Q&A here. At Jackson Sayers 2, it's a two-part question. So we'll do with the first part. That's illegal. That's illegal. I don't know if I missed it or it wasn't said, but how was Kyborg's arm taken from him?

Oh, it was in the battle of, uh, against quadrant in the quadrant squadron. So I, how I imagined it was that Kybor or Cydelius at the time, his whole, uh, village was under attack by this like evil horde of bad dudes. And, uh, I think at some point Cydelius probably tried to defend himself and then, uh,

just took, lopped his arm off and just kind of expected him to die. Cause I think I'm imagining that Kyborg probably got a hit in, uh,

and then that guy was so pissed off that he took an arm off, and then he just left him to die. But then he got strong and took the robot arm. Golem arm. Golem arm, sorry. Another piece of background for Kyborg is when we were developing these characters from forever ago, this was a character I've had for two years in mind when we were first considering doing it.

yeah when we were like first considering doing the dnd show and i straight up told yes i was like i don't like high fantasy i think all that stuff is lame but i love sci-fi so i want to make the most sci-fi character i can and it fits within the rules of your high fantasy world yeah and we went with it and now we have kyborg um part two of their question uh part two of jackson sayer two's question was uh how did gum gum and bart meet

At, I believe it was at the, you found at a orphanage. Yeah, was Gum Gum at the orphanage or were we both at the orphanage? I think, right? I know Gum Gum was there. I'm not sure. You might have been both or you might have been visiting the orphanage. I don't know. Well, I know with Bart's backstory is that he was abandoned as a child and then picked up by pirates and kind of like adopted by them.

And then after being with them for a few years, he kind of went off on his own. So I think he was looking for some companions and maybe went to an orphanage to find a fellow friend. And that's where he met Gum Gum. Yeah. Or maybe visiting the orphanage that you were at after the fact. I have a follow up question, Barbara. Does that mean Bart adopted Gum Gum? Yeah, I think in a way. Or like a guardianship? Guardianship? Kind of like a big brother situation. Yeah. I've always found it interesting how Gum Gum defers to Bart.

Yeah. It's kind of like a set reference of like, like almost like a, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good one. Maybe it was like you were, we were in the orphanage together, but then you left and came back for you and came back. Oh yeah. I like that better. I like how we're, we're making our backstory. Yeah. Workshop. Hold on. Let me write this down. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, make it up on the fly. I think that's fun. I think that's a great story. I think y'all came up with something really good there. I literally just DM Micah being like, interesting note, Barbara's backstory next arc, something, something, something. Well, as long as we're talking backstory, at Amy Joan asks, what was Mudd's childhood like? What kind of life did he leave behind while adventuring? I think I've alluded to some of it at some point. I don't know if it maybe made it into edits or not, but Mudd comes from royalty.

Oh, um, but actually comes from like a very prestigious fear bog, like royal family. I don't think his family is like actually like, you know, the king and queen of like all fear bogs, but let's say like some sort of other level of royalty. Um, but mud just isn't jiving with that. Um, and, um,

kind of wanted to go do his own things. And so he was actually sent off to this internship to like get his, get his act together. Um, or to like burn out this idea of not, um, participating in his family's like, um,

you know, high society requirements. What's Mudd's family's expectation for Mudd? What do they want him to be and what does Mudd want to be? They want him to take, to like continue the lineage of the aristocracy. The Bramblecracks.

The Bramble Cracks, yeah. Oity-toity. I wanted Mudd's last name to sound accurate, but also to have a subtle butt reference in there. Nice. Yeah, but Mudd genuinely just doesn't want to do that, and like...

You know, he's a simpler guy who just wants to have a simpler life. Hence his, like, fascination and love with dirt. He just likes dirt. He's just a simple boy. Full disclosure, I had intended for Mud because my last D&D character was much more...

and aggressive with action. Oh yeah, Professor Luce. Professor Luce was a father figure. And I wanted Mud to play a lot more young and dumb, but then Kyborg and Gum-Gum showed up and I realized, all right, Mud has to play a little bit more like...

I don't know, smart. And so that so that Gum Gum and Kyborg could do their shenanigans and we wouldn't just like not go anywhere. You'd still be stuck at the first door you found. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe maybe maybe Mud just really wants to open up a cafe somewhere. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Tales from the Muddy Cafe. That's our next show.

Tales from the Muddy Bean. The Muddy Bean. That's a good one. Yuck.

I've got another question here. This one might be better suited for Ben and or Micah. Do you, this is from, who is this? At Panire. Do you choose who joins in as a character to voice for an episode or do they volunteer? How does that process work? And they're asking about like Matt, Trevor, some of the others. That's fun. Yeah. That's basically like we play through the whole episode. We record everything. Gus voices everything. And then I, me and Micah listened through and like basically transcribed the whole episode for any NPC voice lines.

throw those into a document. And then I just start reaching out to people in the company and hitting them up to be like, Hey, do you want to voice this person? Which originally started off just like, you know, reaching out to some people that I know are interested in voice acting around the company and wanted to play a part in it. And then,

From there, it's just been more a, okay, who's going to be good for this role? Like, I know Barbara reached out to me at one point and was like, Trevor would really like to do something like with the voice in this character. And I was like, oh, I know Trevor loves D&D. We have this cannibal guy coming up that'll be perfect for like a creepy voice that I know Trevor can do. Yeah, Trevor's always like, oh, anytime you guys need someone, I'm always down. And I was like, we got the perfect person for you. For those who don't know, just to say it, Trevor is from Achievement Hunter and is Barbara's boyfriend. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. That's why I went on that whole tangent about like, I think you're charming him. I think there's some sort of tension there. Yeah. And then like, I mean, there are other like really good fits that I just know almost immediately who I want to reach out to, like the underground survivor during the dinosaur arc that was kind of referenced as like a predator type character. I was like, well, I know James Williams, another person within like the Restreak Company is would be perfect for this and kind of play off of Blaine really well.

And I didn't give him any direction. He just immediately like went into that, like Arnold Schwarzenegger type voice. Yeah.

yeah and then eric so funny eric badour eric badour as brink tussler i think he's already a little rat fink of an individual that feeds into the the rivalry that i have it's it's a uh a part that he was born to play i think yeah that was that was fun was because when i immediately when micah wrote brink i saw that and went oh eric is absolutely gonna play this for you guys every time he does vo for the net for an episode i look forward to it because he gives me a like

the range of takes that he gives me i just laugh my head off every single time he's he's he commits yeah the infinite turns out yeah and i mean eventually we'll transcribe everything and micah will like punch up some of the lines or we try to like make it a little bit more like flashy or high fantasy and kind of play into the story a little bit more and go from there i want to make a request for eddie revis from animation one of our ruby writers because he used to have the show called the elite world and he had this character named west westminster westheimer something

"And he's just this old man, he sounds like this!" He always made me laugh. Also Cole Galeon, because he's perfect and I love him. Awesome.

Well, I hope you don't laugh your head off too much, Micah, because we need that head to keep writing and keep giving us more stories so that we can keep playing this game and continuing. But I think that's about it for this interim episode. Thanks to the community for sending us questions. Hopefully we'll get to more of them in a future episode. But keep listening. We'll have a new episode in the new arc here real soon. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye. Thanks. Bye.

Hey everyone, welcome to the- oh, go ahead. Sorry. I asked, ready to go, and you said yeah. This is why we don't let Ben talk on the show. I said yes, and then OBS blip. I had to restart my recording. Oh. We're good. Leave that in. I want that in the final version. No!