C02 - Grotethe Campaign Wrap Up
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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Hello, everyone. Welcome to a very long special bonus episode. We haven't even started, and you just said long. I'm predicting it. Very long. Long, long, man. We have a lot to talk about. Gus is going to filibuster to make sure it's long. Gus, why is your chair turned around? I don't understand. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to address...

We're going to be doing a discussion about Campaign 2, the Grotesque Campaign as a whole. Before we get started, I'm going to hit everyone here with an arrow. What? Can everyone just go around the table and introduce themselves? Do we go counterclockwise or clockwise? I'm Chris Damaris and I play Barney Farney. He decided it for you.

I'm Barbara Dunkelman and I play Elga Von Brath. And I'm Mike Reisinger, the writer, editor, and composer. I'm John Reisinger and I play Matty Confissis. Counterclockwise. Just go. I'm Blaine Gibson. I play Chipaini. And who are you? Oh, and I'm Gustavo Srola, the Dungeon Master. And I think we have someone on mic back over there too. Yeah, I'm Ben and I play Dr. Frankenstein. And I also play Quiff the Batman.

I'm so excited for him to do that. I don't know. Something you stuck to sticks of butter in your cheeks. What you need to do is you need to imagine your tongue growing three times in size. We also got David Sanier on the ones and twos. Our Sferatu. But I do want to say Ben is also our producer. He doesn't just do those two voices. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Mini hats. He produces VO for us. I know that. So we want to talk in general about Campaign 2 and, you know, maybe talk about some questions the players may have. I want to start with my own question first. I have a question. No, no. So we're recording this and all the episodes have not come out yet. So, you know, the players here have not...

Seeing audience feedback about some of the last several episodes So I want to start off by asking the audience does anyone remember who Sadate Tempura is? Us? Yes. You just said ask the audience. Ask the players. I'm sorry. Who Sadate Tempura was? Well, yeah, I feel like that name sounded familiar when you said it and I think I had mentioned that yes and obviously she's in sheath and she was Elga's fake mom and

During that time. But I feel like we met her in Carcassouk or like heard about her in Carcassouk maybe. But I don't remember. Anybody else? Is she from Campaign 2?

She from campaign one. Is she from campaign one? Now you're asking the right question. Because I thought we had met her in campaign one, but I wasn't sure. I don't think you ever met her in campaign one, but there was mention of her. In the story sense. Well, didn't we die at one point and someone said, no, no, no, they're not ready or something? Yeah, that was campaign two. That was campaign two. Was that them though? Sadate and this dragon person? Who, by the way...

I think I know who that is. Well, we'll know. Here's the thing. The audience will know by the voice if it's somebody we know. So say it now if it is because the audience knows this information. I'm going to defer to Micah. I'll say, yeah, you definitely heard the name Sadate Tempor in Campaign 1 in Deja Urbloom, that arc.

Do you remember hearing that name? In Deja Urblu. Yes. Would have been the city that we went around in time a bunch of times. Correct. Kyborg met his good buddy. I forgot that one. Now, I'm trying to think of any place we would have... Was that... It wasn't like Hugh Manor's...

Wife ding ding ding Wow Chris, you know, I'd have as dumb as you look There's reference and it's one of the things I had always I was always curious about, you know Obviously Micah you do all the writing was one of things I was always curious about it was it was a left-open hook at the end of campaign one was Meld was going to leave to look for her mother Yeah, and it was just like never it was never addressed directly. Yeah, um

So even when I got the module from Micah with the name Sadati Tipur in it for the first time, I looked at it. I probably had the same reaction you did, Barbara. I was like, where have I seen that before? I had to like look through your Rolodex. And it's so funny because all my old documents are because even those episodes haven't come out by the time we're recording this. Yes. Yeah.

And I'm sure there's going to be so many people in our audience who know it's from campaign one because a lot of people have like re-listened to the first campaign. That's why I was kind of excited that we were finishing off this campaign without the episodes having aired yet and without you guys having the audience have to say something. Without us knowing. Yeah, it's like, oh, we have a real opportunity here to like lean into and kind of have fun with it without any people, like you said, who've listened to the story many times chiming in with comments about it. So...

Just in case people haven't listened to the first campaign and they've only seen the second campaign.

We're not talking about any major spoilers, right? They don't have to feel like they... No, it's like Nick Fury at the end of Iron Man. It's just like, who's that? Nick Fury's at the end of Iron Man? You didn't watch the end of the credits? That's like a thing now. I do think, though, even the connections that there are to Campaign 1 doesn't spoil Campaign 1 as a whole. I think you could still go back and listen to it and not have anything ruined for you. Unless I mention...

I know sometimes when I listen to stuff, I'm like, oh, wait, is there a spoiler? And I'll turn it off. So I wanted to like... Did I unknowingly give mom a really important role? Well, she did birth two of you. I wanted to go with that. So it was like a thing that like you had been and brought up and I was like, yeah, that's who I want to play this person. It was something I pulled where I was like, yeah, mom makes sense for...

you know, Elga's mother. I was like, good idea, John. A little behind the scenes, right? So is dad the dragonborn? I'm going to go on record and say no. I love you, dad. I got a role for you coming up, though. Gus really likes to not read too far ahead in modules, so as to not accidentally spoil something for players. I'm terrible about that. Yeah, you've done that before, too. Yeah.

I'm so bad about it. But Micah and I have talked at length at times about just kind of pacing and where the story's headed and kind of like wrapping my head around...

you know, what his thoughts are for the story. Right. And I think Micah told me about Sadate months ago, kind of when we were talking about, okay, where's Groteth headed? What's going to happen? And so when we finally had the episode where her name was dropped, I'm really glad I'm sitting behind a screen. Cause I just kind of like held my breath and just waiting to see if anyone picked up on it. Oh, he matters wife. Wait. So was Sadate to per, you know, we often, uh,

name characters after community members who have interacted with us on social media. Was that? No, that was just a random name. You can kind of get a clue from it from everybody else's name in the family. So like she doesn't share obviously the same last name, but meld

It's like mild, sedate. So it's always like this juxtaposition of Hugh Manor and like these people. And obviously this will be more obvious when the episode comes out and we have all the like voice actors doing the parts. But was the...

Dragonborn person dr. Ahem Well, I can't say that cuz it's a spoiler for season one but interesting interesting yeah, so we haven't Said you're not dead my I'll catch we have to go back to an island. Okay? How I interpreted the ending

Was it was kind of like giving the stakes of the big story because it's like again when you talked about it was a hubris Consuming worlds and it's like that was the example of a world getting consumed You saw my like where you were were like grotesque like was that? Yeah

I'm talking about... I think your answer, Mike, is just going to be, okay. This is how I interpreted it. That's what I'm saying. As in, like, he's telling you a statement and all you have to do is say, okay. What's the question, Greg? How do you feel about that, Greg? The hubris was like...

Consuming worlds or like consuming growing and eating and and and the grotesque world was almost like getting Consumed what was being I know there's like the earthquakes and all the things like falling apart That kind of aspect to it. Are you talking about? Yeah, well and then it literally kind of like we came out of a mouth and it was kind of like the great mom Yeah, but like kind of eaten and consumed and like I don't know like everything was falling apart like the world was being consumed by the hubris which is like the big big bad and

I think you're on to something. I'm not going to give you a definitive because I think that would influence future decisions. But I think it's an excellent theory and I think it has traction for in some ways. So I have to ask. Yeah. I assume it's for me. No, it's not. It is for you. So obviously the ending of this campaign is very different than the ending of the first campaign. The first campaign felt like.

He got kind of closure on a lot of things and answers to a lot of questions. And this one, obviously, there's a lot still up in the air and a lot of, I think, loose ends that maybe some people assumed might be tied up that weren't. Is there is this the end of the story for them? This is not the end of the story of Groteth. Hmm.

Yeah, I can see how people will assume that. And I kind of did that intentionally in a lot of ways. But yeah, clearly there is some sort of interconnectedness with your last scene that we kind of heard with Sadati and that other person. And the doctor.

I didn't say that. No, we don't have the rights to the doctor. That's a different time traveling. Who? Yeah. But yeah, so there is a... Of everybody here, I'm allowed to slap you. Oh my God. Put you across the table. Actually, we're all no longer employees. So yeah, we can do that too. Hey, no HR. No HR free zone. Hey Ben, can we make this remote now?

May 11th, you just see me and Blaine having a slap fight. Finally. Did that actually answer the question? Yeah, pretty much. Did Blaine and me having a slap fight answer your question? No, definitely not. It just caused more questions. I think ultimately, like, wanting to know if we'll ever see these characters again and, like, learn

more about things. If this was a visual medium, it would be the end of Avengers. It says like the grotesque detectives will return. And I guess like, and you don't have to answer this too, but obviously doing the show, we plan on doing more campaigns as in a third campaign coming up next. Would that be involved in that? Or do you think that's like a later on kind of thing? I can take a stab at the answer. Are you going to stab him? Put that knife away, John. John's got a gun! I don't think I've ever stabbed you.

I've done a lot of things to you as Big Brother. I don't think I've ever stabbed you. Probably with like a fake lightsaber. I think an easy answer is an answer from you, because I know he can't directly address this kind of stuff, is that the can of worms has been opened of this addition to our stinky verse, and the can of worms is open now. So now it's not like he's going to put a cap on it, and it's not going to be a part of what's going on, but to reveal how it's going to incorporate the rest of the stuff, we'd be giving away story.

That makes sense. That's a good way of putting it. I'll also say, you know, Micah and I have talked a lot about Dungeons & Dragons story pacing and how stories go. And my interpretation of this, separate from anything like Micah has, so please don't read into this as something like Micah knows or I'm giving you hints on. Take notes, everyone. Infinite's told the story of the Infinite interns, and we got a compelling end with, like, information and conclusion there, right? Mm-hmm.

It told the story of the grotesque detectives in trying to figure out who the murderer was. And you guys got the resolution there, right? Like what is happening with you all being framed as murderers? Carol was the big baddie.

I leave that up to the interpretation of the audience. That was our whole mission in the beginning was who killed the person we were framed for. I guess technically you got the answer. So that way anyone can listen to the different campaigns and get a story and its conclusion, but there are still these little bits and pieces that are cool if you've listened to both campaigns and you're following along. Fair, fair, fair, fair.

Which one of the guys in the jail cell at the first episode are going to end up being deities in campaign four? Do you remember? I don't know if we ever talked about this from that episode pilot. When you're in the jail cell. Yeah. You guys were leaving the jail cell. You were like,

starting in, like the holding cell. Yeah. And you kind of started going down a hallway and there were several like cells on either side of you and you kind of, I think Gus had mentioned some prisoners and in passing, you made a description. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And...

Do you want to hop in there? Was it the prisoners along both the walls? They're talking about the one when they made the turn to the south. There was a person who was in gray clothing that was asleep. Oh, right. Yeah. And you walked right past him. And I don't think anybody interacted with them. The alchemist? It was the alchemist. He later gets back.

blast us out of there. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I caught on that. I remember in that episode, I was wondering what the pacing would be like. And as always, it was one of those things where you all went totally in a different direction than I was expecting, where you...

spent more time than I was expecting in the first holding area with the two gnomes who had the one of them had the tattoo. And then when it came time to walk down the hallway, you all just kind of blew past it. And I was trying to like, wait, wait, wait, there's this and there's this. You're like, no, no, no, we're going down. We're going like, oh, okay. I still, so I recently re-listened to the first two episodes because I was like, I remember hearing something that I wanted to ask about when the campaign finished. During the time when like

Chip and Elga were in the bakery with Mateed and like they had just met at that peace parade. There was like, I want to say it was like a gnome or a dwarf or like someone making comments or being like, oh, sorry, like, oh, didn't mean to get in your way. They popped up, I think later. And I was just like, I'm clocking this. Were they like stealing or something? No, just like they they seemed like they were watching us or something or like following us. I don't know what it was, but I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

So it happened first when you were in line with Chip. Yes. And then later on, I think someone similar came by. I think when we were outside with Barney. Yeah, you walked outside exactly from the bakery and you literally ran into Barney. And that was initially supposed to be like a pivotal NPC character and it never panned

I was like, nope, this isn't going anywhere. That doesn't make sense. It's fine. That happens in stories all the time, though. You're just a gunshot. Something I am. Maybe there'll be a campaign. There's no chance they will come back. Something I am disappointed that we didn't.

happened in the final episode. I was really hoping that at one point we'd all be in trouble and then out of the distance a goat comes running in. Ah, Hooper! No, the goat that we saved in the cave. Hooper's dead. Oh, that goat. I don't care a lot about that goat.

Well, we made a joke at the time when we saved it from having its life. We did. We did. And we're just like, that goat is going to show up next arc and save us from something. That goat started eating and hasn't stopped. And now it's the size of a mountain. My God. What have we done? Are there any things that kind of flew over our head?

Are there any huge things that you just kind of had been keeping from us and you were like dying to elaborate on or tell us about? It's always when something is going to be revealed, how to reveal it. Right. You know, because I don't want it to be always forced on you and you have to... Shoehorned. Yeah. So I think it's things like that. Like how...

how to lead you in the direction that the alchemist also has alternate personality and that Henry has that connection, but not to like wave it in front of you all and be like, look at this, look at this, look at this. So things like that. And like, I even gave minor, minor, minor clues to things like that. Maybe the audience can clue in on that kind of thing. I like to leave a little Easter egg for people. Like what? For instance, I call,

Do any of you know who the writer, the author of the story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of? Robert Louis... Esteban? Stevenson? Robert Louis Stevenson. So Robert Esteban. Yeah. Lewis is his alternate. And then do you know the first names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Yeah, that's the... Is it Henry? Henry. Yeah. And...

Eddie? Edward. Yeah, Edward. It's not Scissorhands. No. He's Hyde? Hyde, yeah. Robert Stevenson's wife in real life is Fanny Stevenson, Francesca. Oh, nerd. So there's things like that that I'll do with names. I love names. I love words. So that's some stuff I just do mostly for me. One more question. Sorry, I'm taking up time. No.

That's what we're here for. I know, I know. Before I lose it, I have a term in my loss. We're going to be here for a long time. Lock the door. Lock the door.

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We, at one point, I think it was in Carcassouk, it was like outside of a library. We looked down and we're all like handcuffed to the table. Someone slipped me a note and I was like, was that Carol? And then like, you know, obviously with the haglings and stuff like that. Had we encountered Carol at any other point in the story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely had interactions like spy interaction kind of stuff. Really? Well, that's one. Yeah. Off the top of my head.

I'm sure there were. But yeah, you've received several notes and shadows in the background. Like I've described figures in the writing before. We didn't go back to the train. Mission Impossible style. She was disped the whole time. Oh man, ticks off the mask. I'm sorry.

A question, I guess, similar in that kind of same vein. Was there any point in time we were discussing something or like someone mentioned something where you're like, oh, they know. Oh, yeah, definitely. Henry. Yeah, Henry was one. We grilled Henry. From the beginning. Yeah. We did not trust that kid. And then we grilled Alchemist. But this party doesn't trust any NPC. What was the voice of Henry? Ash Hildreth.

Oh, okay. They're awesome. Incredible job. Yeah. Yeah. It also just makes me hate them more because it's like, it's such a good little boy voice. And I'm like, Henry! What are you talking about? Where's my dad? That's not a character per se, but I saw someone ask this. Like, I've seen several people ask this online in the past about dragons. Why are there no dragons in this world? Dragons. Dragons. Everything's kind of a little off in this world. Are those the big bones?

those are the big that's what i thought i thought the big monster yeah and so like there's kind of this were they there at one point what's their involvement and there's kind of remnants like we see barney comes across a way to summon one and then there's also the cave you guys went into that was kind of remnants of a dragon that eventually was skelegon and then drag cast um so like there's that kind of stuff too uh one thing that i wanted to bring up that before i forget

This is a music thing for Eddie and Alchemist and Henry and Francesca. All of their motifs, like musical motifs, share the same three notes in different combinations. Yeah, it's just dun, dun, dun.

Thank you for ruining that nice moment, ABC. I didn't count on you to do that. This is what I'm here to do, baby brother. Eddie uses, I kind of mentioned this in another second one, but Eddie uses a famous like kind of demonic motif that you hear in movies and stuff all the time. I think it's the DS era is what it's called. It's just combinations of that. And then Alchemist is...

So it's the same thing, but just like kind of backwards. Yeah. That's cool. What was your favorite part of the entire campaign when we pulled out the little piano on my phone and had Blaine sight read? That was enjoyable. That was a highlight. I felt like he played right into that draft. Well, yeah, I guess from a like DM and writer perspective, do you guys have a favorite moment from like all the different arcs during this campaign? I,

I have mine. Oh, you do? Oh, I know what yours is. Do you? I'm going to guess it's the hemo pieces, the blood bank. No, that was good, though. That was very good. I think that's my favorite. That was very good. Just like Matide going around trying to scam every single person. Like, in a situation where you should be stealthy and fearful, Matide just leaned into it. That whole fake it, like, act like you belong and just really, like, leaning into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm heading to the chapel. You want to give me some hemo pieces? Like every time you did that, I was like, okay, John is fully realized Mateed and you know what they are. It just took me five arcs. My favorite part of the entire campaign was I think a frustration for everybody involved, including you guys because of a sandbagging moments is when we were talking to the wall that mumbled. Oh,

I was in Carcassouk. I love that. It was very much the lady in the inkwell kind of situation where it's like, but you kind of set this up to be something to stall us. The description of the module just had this wall mumbles. That's all it was. Before I forget, on that same vein, when I was making this last module where you guys kind of making your way, chasing after Hugo and stuff, and you're going to these different weird rooms,

I, you know, the one practice you do in D&D is obviously put treasure in certain places. And like, if you find it, you find it and just over overwhelmingly do that. And then like, they'll only find certain things. I don't always do that because you guys have really powerful stuff. But I thought about, oh, yeah, I could just put in like artifacts to really distract the part. No, I shouldn't do that.

Need a whole extra episode. You saying that reminded me, there was another favorite moment. You know, you, I mentioned Matisse conning people out of hemo pieces. Another favorite moment, this is all later, was Barney perfectly falling into the trap of the Vamparty, also in the Vamp Spire. Oh, yeah. That was a funny one. Where, you know, Chris or Barney asked, like, is there a place I could rest for just a minute and do this? And did not get it all done.

suspicious when I named where I perfectly described a spot where he could do it. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. I was like, oh, okay. We're doing it. It's Barney's literal hell. Just surrounded by a vampire. He's an old man in a loud techno rave. There was a fun moment. I forget which arc it was in, but we were like going through this

where we were going through walls or like going through into different rooms. And I went ahead first. And so you guys had taken your headphones off because we were recording that one remotely. Seeing how you guys approached the situation after I had done it, it was just a really entertaining mechanic, I think. I think that was right by the mumbling wall.

I think it was that same episode. I remember finishing recording that and being like, that was a fun episode. There's a lot of that that I would like to pursue as we get more familiar with D&D and kind of like get out of our rookie stages. We're still pretty new. I was like, when are they going to learn what a modifier is? Um...

As we get out of that, you know, and I'm not a DM, so you can take this or leave it, but like messing with the meta of it. You know, there's times where it's like, oh, Mateed finds this Bible that says this highly specific thing. And then we all suddenly know about it, even though like the characters don't. That lack of information, but also like, I think you'd tried this at one point in a past campaign. Gus, how you like stole from the party during long or short rests. And then it was like this thing that you'd worked out with the DM. Yeah, I highly...

discourage anyone from ever doing that because it created a lot of problems but in one campaign with some friends I was playing a rogue but I told everyone I was a fighter

Yeah. And at night I would make checks to steal stuff from the party that they had that I wanted. And then in combat, people would be like, I pull out my so-and-so to use it. And the DM would be like, yeah, you can't find it. That's so funny. I do not want to do that. Do not do that. Do not do that. I will say I hate that. And I love it more the way we have done it here before.

I heard that you two, Barbara and Blaine, found treasure. But because Mati didn't roll a check, I went, okay, Mati doesn't know. And I think that's funnier because then you can actually play with it. It's everyone playing in the space. John knows, but Mati doesn't. Yeah, I like that better because we're supposed to be collaborative and be yes-anding each other. And when we are not telling each other what's going on, that's kind of a bummer. One of my favorite moments are when

Motif for one of your characters like the player characters comes into my head So for instance, the first one I think was probably when you went into the dragon dragon cave and you guys had I think my teeth was like splashing Barney with like that Purple stuff and you started having dreams and yeah and Chip had a vision of Carol

and of a person that was like crying or something like that. And it was clearly Carol. And I just came up with a motif for you right then. That's what the Chip and Carol motif was from that beginning. So that from that, it was just piano. That's all it was. And then later on, Barney was singing to Creature, you were singing to, but you said, go to sleep, go to sleep, little doggie.

Don't be mean. I'm a froggy. It was something like that. Sounds like Chris. Yeah. Was it a warg? Maybe it was the warg in Haskettan. Little doggy. And that became your motif. Like Arnie's motif. That's interesting how you, because that's not the first time you've pulled motifs or musical things from little dogs.

And we're not musically inclined like you. The Gum Gum Wake-A-Bye song was like a huge kind of recurring motif in the first two bands. It's so ironic that you sang basically a lullaby again. And I was like, I gotta use that. Interesting. For Matide, it was when you were on the train for the first time, the Grotte Express, and you start doing your forms and dance. And then you have that vision of someone that's an Aarakocran, which we learned is Jacques.

And you sang something in that episode. And I thought, I'm going to use that. That's funny because as writing singers, we never do that. Yours was the theme song of the whole show. I thought that was the case. Part of the theme song. So I used different parts of the theme song for different characters in your family. Yeah, when we were in the VAMSpire, I noticed a lot of that coming through in a lot of moments. And I was like, this is cool. You can argue that Elga is the main character there.

when we were when i was actually writing the theme song for the show we kind of went back and forth on some iterations of it with like i think john i think you were involved in that i can't remember who else was maybe maybe ben i chipped into it was then i came in to translate you came into one of the things was we kind of we kind of rearranged the order of like the sections of the song and one of the things that i kind of

pulled out from that was a little ditty that i ended up putting that the way i originally wrote the song in the second episode when you uh lorenza wolfman's giving her speech like of that the peace parade and so like you'll hear elga's theme right then i think it's the first time now i gotta go back and listen to the whole campaign yeah uh you mentioned something micah that made me remember something else you mentioned uh jacques appearing to matit on the grotesque express yeah

Which makes me think back to the first time that Mateed encountered that cat in the sewers in arc one. And the description in the modules, it was just supposed to be a cat that was there. Yeah.

You know what I'm doing. Well, I've made that up on the fly. He made that up. Because I think I thought about pets who have little tags that are like, leave me alone. I know what I'm doing. I know where I'm going. So it was kind of like a subtle way to be like, leave the cat alone. It's fine. It's okay here. I thought it was a plant all along for John. Oh, no. I knew it wasn't super important because of its

placement. It wasn't along a path that we had to take. We were going to see it. You're going out of your way to finish exploring. In fact, we made it to an advancement point, me and Barney, but only because I left Barney there and then went and re-looked into places to find the cap. We were like, at that point, we could have advanced and never have met Jacques. Right.

Because you guys were off stealing stuff. Yeah. But Blaine and Barbara. What are you talking about? That didn't happen. Yeah. John knows. But if you're going to put a cat in my path, that's the kitten distribution system. That's all you ever want is a crazy cat person. The cat did have one spell it could use. And I think it only ever used it once in the entire campaign. Oh. It was in Mascotten. No, no, no. It was in Outer City. It was in Outer City. It was at the very end. You went into the office of the alchemist. Yeah. Oh.

And then I think Weezer was in there. Yeah. And like instinctually there was like this spectral claw that came out. And I got confused because I didn't realize that was the cat doing it. I thought it was like something else. Yeah. And I was like, well, I can't remember what I thought it was, but it was the cat. Did Alchemist...

What did the alchemist know about Henry? How much did he... So I wrote it as Francesca and Robert. Francesca particularly knew something was up with Henry, but didn't know what it was. And was very protective of Henry, so therefore didn't ever bring it up. Alchemist was too busy, much too busy to notice that and just thought like his condition that he had was just him. But we met Eddie in the university, right?

Yeah. Which is where we met Henry. First time you, you fought him was in the, uh, not the apothecary, the, um, their asylum. That's right. There was someone else who we chased out the window. Like you were looking for the professor. Yeah. It was a professor. He was like the pig man or something like that. Yeah. I couldn't remember where Eddie first killed, uh, chip. Did we have, so in campaign one, this isn't a huge spoiler, but we got into a fight and it turns out that the key to the fight was breaking this one mirror all along. You remember? I remember. Uh,

Was there a mirror that we didn't break for campaign two? I don't know that there was a mirror that they didn't break, but there were definitely lots of times where there was a lack of investigation or something gets glossed over and missed. Yeah. That could definitely really aid the party. Yeah. I felt like that was a common occurrence. A good example of that that happened recent was you all came into this last temple where like you kind of end up meeting Nessie, right? Yeah.

and there were some bones on the wall, like shelves, or sorry, boxes on the shelves and around you, and no one looked at them. And so later on, we discovered the temple falls down on you guys when you're diving in. That was the box. And I planted that box there. I'll give them a bone, literally. Like, it was a box of bones, and it had a scroll in it. That I never used. Things like that.

I think, uh, yeah, Michael, you had a comment about that. It's like the party was still hoarding, uh, items at the very end of the story. And when using, when it's a very specific item that could help them in the exact niche situation that they're in. I think I threw that in Slack where it's like, it's the typical video game syndrome. We're at the final boss fight. We have this whole stash of items we've been collecting in the entire journey. I used a lot of my inventory. He used a brownie.

used your goose. But also we thought Hugo was the final boss and then he wasn't. So I remember I was like, I wouldn't have used my poison and this and that. But isn't that the way of adventure, like real adventures though? That's true. You think you don't think the big boss, you know? Yeah. No one's met a gaming life. I tried to use my thing that let me eat metal.

to eat the bell yeah i had a rhyme written in everything yeah unfortunately you failed that check i'm sure it would have been special chris wanted to eat his bell yeah he uh hugo had an ability uh i forget what's called silver tongued or something that kind of like charms you and enraptures you to listen to him that's what he was doing when he was giving those speeches at the end that's what led to the checks and you know seeing how uh he would react yeah and that's that's the other thing with like

I tried to give clues of like who Hugo actually is. His clothing is very similar to what the first campaign is like. And connections to Sadate Tempor had the same kind of dress and garb as Meld. Interesting. You did really listening to get those though. I feel like I need to go back and listen to the first campaign. And, you know, again, might spoil a little bit, but like obviously Hugh Manor was not a good person in the first campaign. I misunderstood. Yeah.

But I don't remember anything about Sadate if she was like good or evil or very unclear because I think the one thing that you might have learned I don't know should I talk about campaign one or no we can see the harm in it. She was looking for her mother I didn't know where she went right. Yeah.

There was a moment at the VAMP Spire where it was the guy from Glurb, the mummy and, oh God, what was her name? Francesca? Francesca were like outside protesting stuff. I assume that they were like a part of a greater plot, maybe like in Sheath or anything. Was there anything to that? Not Sheath, not Sheath in particular. No, they, I like to think that, I think the way I wrote it was like, they all had,

Lost something and they found camaraderie amongst each other and wanted to basically help along in this quest It almost seems like we were encountering like another adventuring party exactly. It was like what a weird group of people, you know Yeah, that's exactly right. Cuz I mean like I said, I think I said this another second before like the world is alive It's not like when you guys go to sleep the world stops. I

There are things that are always operating. It's one of my favorite running jokes in Shaun of the Dead is they keep running into that other party. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you don't know what they're doing, but it's like they keep intersecting. It's like, oh yeah, it's these other people who are also out and surviving in the world. And like, there's weird connections between them. I actually have a question for everybody based on that. I want to know what everyone's favorite running bit was through the campaign. Like for instance, mine was what Blaine was just saying about anytime referencing Francesca saying Frank-esca. Oh, that was your favorite? That was my least favorite. Okay.

But then my other favorite was any time we kind of got away from it toward the end, but the I'm alive. It's alive. It's alive. It's alive. It's alive. Yeah. That was fun. The Sling of Sandstorms. Yes. That was fun. So dumb. I like getting dumb references like that as fun. I don't know. I just had so much fun playing Elga. I liked making names for all your acts. Yeah. I was like, how can I do a pun for this one? That was always fun. It didn't last very long, but I liked Scamsylvania. Sounds nice. Yeah.

I also just like the running bit of like, if you guys ever want a fun character to play in D&D, play a little kid because you could get away with so much stuff. Like even when you're in the dragon stomach, like be like, I lost my

And like Barney's like the you know old man grandpa about that I liked fooling these frauds you into playing hide-and-go-seek Funny how that those characters really evolved yeah If you yeah if you meet them in the very end well and they're like it really Forboding and like mysterious and they end up being just like goofballs that are like trying to patrol. Yeah In my mind they have to be

More stern outside of the vampire right like these are like gatekeepers You know trying to dissuade people from coming in whereas you know once you get into the vampire especially if they recognize Elga the belts like They're cracking a cold one we can be a little looser I like Frank guess good and I liked I feel like there's a running thing with chip writing overly long letters and then reading it to the rest of the gang I always enjoyed

Those moments. That time that Jon, as Mateed, was doing the sending stone or whatever it was. And you're like, how are you? I'm good. Thank you for asking. And we're just like, who's Jon? There's the car just there. Yeah, that's the one. There's a point in every campaign that we've done so far where Jon just like stakes couldn't be low.

I think during like the Bayou part in stuff where you're just like and say lovey, you know, yeah That reminds me of another favorite part of this campaign of mine was the damaging yourselves for hemo pieces Yeah, that's Barney healing you and then just like really lean into it. Like alright more money. Let's go. Let's roll those dice I don't I don't this is gonna sound really like mean but in my head

But I mean, this is actually a compliment to your intelligence, Chris. When you were doing that, the thought that went through my mind was like...

he can't be this dumb. Well, because I thought like he's clearly playing into the bit and you were. The reaction was so genuine. It was so upset. Especially when you're playing a healing character. It's like you take it upon yourself to be the responsible one of like making sure people have HP. Well, it made sense because like Barney was like on high alert because we're in the VAMS part, like the heart of darkness for Barney, you know, like this place that he hates. Yeah. He's like trying to heal and make sure everyone's good for the mission. Mm-hmm.

I made a joke. I can't remember if it was on mic or not on mic, but I think there's a point in this campaign that you can clock where I got on anti-anxiety meds.

I think so too. Because to be clear, at the beginning of this Groteth episode, this was like from there to about halfway through the campaign was the peak of my anxiety getting so bad. It was when I was starting to have conversations with my girlfriend where she's like, I think you need to get on medication. Yeah. And I was like, I think you're right. And then when I got it and I was like, this is fantastic. This podcast got John medicated. Yeah. I have a...

Quick question that I just lost in my brain. Oh, yes. Did you, Micah and Gus, know from the very beginning that Barney was a ghost? Because he introduced himself as a human cleric every time. Or did you know right off the bat? I knew. He talked to me about it. I talked to both of them about it. I had to create his character sheet. Right. Which I assume you guys knew. I knew. It was curious. I tried to...

I didn't do him any favors, like trying to distract away from it. But there were definitely some moments where he maybe towed the line. Yeah. Like, all right, where's this going? Or like, I'd have to have like a side slack conversation with him. Like, what's going on here? Or what's the play at this point? Right. There were a couple of things because I did have abilities on my sheet that I that were giveaway stuff. And I like flying speed, probably.

Well, things like Mati would do, like possession. Yeah. Or going through walls. Yeah, or death saves was one. Death saves, yeah. Because I had advantage on death saves. Gotcha. But I couldn't, I didn't want to roll those publicly. Oh, that was it. So, yeah, you would have a second secret roll. Yeah. Gotcha. Just to guess. I think when I made your homebrew, is that, yeah, race? Yeah.

I called it Variant Human 2.0. Yeah. We've done a couple of live things where we switched character sheets and I would always get really nervous that you'd like read too much into it. You told me you found out because of that one time. Yeah.

Yeah, what I saw your character sheet at one point when I don't remember It was during the fundraiser the extra life extra life. Was it during that? Yeah, yeah, okay, because you guys were switching characters and stuff There's one moment during that extra life thing where you guys were trading sheets and I was like, oh, thank god Blaine is blindfolded right now because I know he can't see what's on the sheet I don't look that far into it. You're really good chris like Constructing a character in a way where like we don't know a lot about you

Was there anything else that you were keeping from us that you were hoping would be found out that we never got to? I mean...

No. No? Okay. I wanted my idea for Barney and then but like how it played out was up to Mike you know like Micah and then there's stuff that's like I didn't come you know that's just Micah. Yeah. Yeah I think I give Chris a heads up like the week before you all found the body in the grave. Yeah. I was like hey this is coming just so you're thinking about it and you know what you want to do at that time. How to react. But Chris also like you played the character so well that even now audience still has like theories on what Barney actually is. My

My favorite running one is that Barney is a revenant. Oh, yeah. A D&D creature that basically is the soul of a mortal who met a cruel and undeserving fate. It crawls its way back into the world to seek revenge against the one who wronged it. The revenant reclaimed its mortal body and superficially resembles a zombie.

So I thought Avena was going to be a zombie or something else or like a werewolf or something like that. You told me something interesting about your name selection. Yeah. I don't know that anyone ever talked about it or it never really ever came up, but I thought it was a cool nod. So when I was creating Elga, I knew she wanted to be a twin because I was curious to see how we would go with the mechanics of like Elga, who's a vampire who doesn't age.

having a twin sister and like what would happen there. But when I was making the name, Elga and Avena was supposed to be heaven and hell. Oh. So like Helga and Heaven. Oh. But then I just took off the H's. Yeah, just like Matit took off the H's. And put an A at the end. That was another favorite running bit. Ugo. Whenever I was creating characters, I think we'd gone back and forth on whether Barney was a ghost or a zombie.

Yeah, the first initial thing I came up with was that you, because Matee was ghost, I didn't know if that would play too much into the same thing. So I said like, well, you could be like a zombie of sorts or something. Yeah, at that point I was, I'd already settled into the cleric, twilight cleric. And I was like, oh, I feel like the ghost works well with that because of the abilities that they get.

It was fun this season. Do you guys have any favorite encounters or boss fights or things that you came across like that that were battle or combat driven? I have my favorite. I have my favorite.

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Oh, it's such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I meant those blackout motorized shades. Blinds.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install? No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install. Hall of Fame's son? They're the number one online retailer of

custom window coverings in the world. Blinds.com is the GOAT. Shop Blinds.com right now and get up to 45% off select styles. Rules and restrictions may apply. I really liked the Hemogoblin. Hemogoblin's great. In Carcassouk. I think it's Carcassouk? Yeah. Where it was like any time it would be loud, it would spit blood at us. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was such a fun mechanic and also like

I loved the running bit I had with Elga where she sometimes did not know how to control her volume or care to control her volume. And so that was just a fun mechanic for me to play with. But just the idea of like people getting stuck to the wall and these like giant blood globs. I don't know. It was really fun. I don't think we ever touched on it in the VAM spire. I wrote, I think it was when you guys were on the last, not the last level, the, um, not the thing pick, but the what's the second level? Not the tales of doc, uh, the thing pick and the sepulcher. No,

No. Clostrid? Clostrid, yeah. Thank you, David. David's got a great memory, by the way. I could not have. I have a terrible memory. That's why I write everything down. But yeah, in the Clostrid, there was actually a chance for you to re-encounter the evil cop. Oh, really? I wanted to talk about that. I'm sorry to interrupt your question for a second, but that's one of the things I wanted to talk about was

In the chaos of the VAMP Spire, there was so much that overwhelmed the players, but there was so much also that they didn't see. Yeah. Including the Hemogoblin. There was the chance that they could have run into the Mould and discovered that the Mould was there. Which is a big aspect of that area where they kept talking about how they had gems. Right. And the Mould shows up at the end to kind of like save you guys from stuff that's falling. And it's like, there were all these possibilities. Mikey, you wrote

So many possibilities in the vampire there was so much dice rolling behind the scenes like what's gonna happen Are they gonna friend into this thing? I know that my favorite was like the bat rat races Trying to remember which direction was what and like where we've been already We're like where a dead end has happened and like going backtracking as anything to is like each level of the van spire

mechanically played differently. So the bottom level that you guys starred in was a mapped out dungeon that had rooms and had people moving in and out and all that kind of stuff and it functioned in a certain way. And then you moved to the second level and the second level was virtually endless. You could have kept finding places if we'd kept playing the game. And that's what you're talking about, I guess. There's just tons of possibilities. Which is funny because it feels like we exhausted the options. So that's the spiral.

Yeah, it was the spiral. I know it might feel that way as a player, but you really didn't. It's like you kind of honed in. Everyone wanted to find Elga's home. Then it was like, what's going on with Count Vixie? Then it was like, oh, we found this other room. There's a point in that episode where I made a joke where I'm going to go down every door. There was a lot more to do. And you said, that's going to take a while. There's actually something planned. But do you guys have favorite encounters? I would just say the Mould.

But it was mostly because of Gus's portrayal of it. Yeah. I love giving Gus a monster to play. It's very Incredible Hulk. I liked all the Glurb stuff, not as an encounter, but just like that world, like a moving mountain that's made of snail. I thought that that was like such a cool, beautiful visual. But my favorite encounter would be, it wasn't even real combat. It was just you guys gassing up ship because I'd been eating butt all day.

like every combat scenario I was terrible and then you guys like gave me a dagger character to interact with oh yeah he gassed me up and he was like chip 80 and then I started like assassinating dudes on towers and I was like yes I'm doing it I'm roguing

I think that's hard about Rogue is that you don't get an extra attack but you have all this extra damage that if you do get a hit then it lines up but yeah it can be rough sometimes I need to research those classes for next campaign I might dodge Rogue for a while yeah I think you've had your fill of Rogue yeah

I think you also enjoyed all the gim pronunciation. Yeah. Everyone was like, are we hearing it wrong? What is happening here? Is gas being leaked? I don't understand. The fight we also had with those like, they weren't Sphoenixes, but like the cat things in the sky. The fiery birdies. Fiery cats.

With the tiny hut. Yeah, that was a fun one. Just anytime there's like weird mechanics of like everyone's like trying to carry each other. And we get through it in like a very non-typical way. We were talking earlier in the episode 50 about like words that we only read and then like the pronunciation. I've always pronounced it Lehmann's.

Oh, Leomans Tiny Hut. Not LeMans. Because it's L-E-O-M-U-N, I think. I also say Leomans. But that's just the thing. It's like it's always written down. You don't really hear it. Plus it's a name on top of that. It can sometimes throw the rules out the window. Speaking of name, I remembered something that I could actually talk about now. Oh, yes. Do you want to know where Matide came from?

They're actually based off of somebody. Oh, I described Mateed as non-binary, binary femme presenting. And I was like, I wanted to find a woman from history, from French history. That was like a bad, bad gal. Bad gal. Almost, almost swore there. This is Mateed Kare, born 30th of June, 1908 in France, died in 2007. Wow. Wow. Check out this. Known as Le Chatte.

The cat, which is why I named the bakery after that. And funny enough, Jacques was a French resistant agent during World War II who betrayed the Franco-Polish resistance organization in Turali and as a double agent was responsible for the arrest of dozens of in Turali operatives of the German occupiers of France. Wow.

She became an agent for the British at one point. And at one point, she arrived in Britain. She was interrogated and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. After the war, she was deported to France and convicted of treason and sentenced to death. The sentence was later reduced, and she was released from prison in 1954. A double agent for... She was like double, double. I read into her, and she's like, she worked for herself. I bet it's like super confusing. It's fantastic. Whoever, whoever... Yeah. And so I based Mateed off of her.

I said it before, I'll say it again. Chip Haney, Mike Haney was like basically my uncle. He's a coach that my dad coached with for like years. And I knew this guy my entire life and I just loved Haney. And he had this sick, sick mustache. And I was like, well, I don't want to do Mike Haney. So like Chip just seemed like a fun chipper name. Chip Haney. It's funny you mentioned that, John, about...

like the whole background of Mateed, when you brought up Carol Blaine and like that you were both assassins and that kind of thing. I think you'd mentioned that in your backstory, right? And I was like, well, what would be funny? Because like you got a double agent and those things are fun to do, but what about a triple agent? So I was like, let's put her in every single organization. Something that's interesting doing these types of campaigns is obviously like when we work on the characters and develop like some backstory and some stuff like that,

And when we get asked questions throughout the campaign, we just answer them based on like what we think is the case. And I think someone had mentioned this that on an early episode, I think I had mentioned my sister. I thought she was dead or something like that or like wasn't alive anymore. I have to go back and see what it actually was. But like, I'm sure at the time we didn't really know the plan for things. And like you write as you go to, you know, clearly for something. Yeah.

things are figured out as we go a little bit. It's just funny because like, there's some things where I'm like, I don't know if I should answer this or not, or if it's going to ruin some like big plan that you have brewing. I think that's something I learned about the arrows as well. Like what kind of arrows we want to fire at you all because yeah, you don't want to box yourself in either. You don't want to give off too much things that,

Like it's it's set in stone forever. It's more like it should be fun for you guys to warm up for one and to get to know each other. Yeah. And I think I'd mentioned in a previous second, when maybe the last one that like I have another mechanic that I want to try for this third campaign that I think will be fun as well. That'll kind of be in that same vein. I think something lovely about this podcast is we're all very production oriented and all of our input is valid. And I feel like it's a safe space to give feedback and criticisms.

And early on when we started introducing arrows, I was like totally against it. Cause it was like, no, we got to get right into the action. And then arrows ended up like, I loved arrows. Like answering arrows is so much fun. I like when we, did you, did you love arrows playing? Did you love it? I hadn't noticed by the end of the day, you reciting in time.

Monologues to answer. I love the Bradley monologue. I was like this could be an animated clip. Yeah you slacked us at one point or like I've got an idea for for an arrow. Yeah Bradley in the stolen piggy bank. But no I thought it was a good mechanic this campaign doing like the character introductions the arrows having like a little bit time before getting into it because I was relisting some of the Infinite campaign and we don't do that. Yeah. And I was like I kind of wish we like revisited who we are and what classes and races we are. I think

If we had done that in the first campaign, I'll speak for me, I would have been terrible at it. I think I learned so much how to play a character in the Infinites. And I think even on top of that, I learned even more this campaign on how to play a character. I feel like that contributed so much to the character development, though. Like, Kyborg was insufferable and awful, and then at the end he was still insufferable and awful. And then we ended campaign one.

But it was still like fun and I was like that learning process. I'm glad that's captured. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The way that we did campaign one worked out because we found all the characters as we did but I think adding the arrows in campaign two was its own like addition that was good and it was like that was the time to add it. So you talked, Micah, you talked about potentially like a new mechanic in campaign three and Barbara you talked about like world building and doing all of that and I don't want to, you know, get

spoilery here but looking ahead and thinking about campaign three and the types of characters you all may want to play without saying anything too specific about the characters i just want to ask do you all have voices in your head planned for those characters yet i do

I don't know if I'm ready to commit to it 100%. You can test it here. We'll put a big asterisk. May not be final product. So the character I want to play is inspired by a character I used to play in a different production named Gambo. Everyone knows him. Everyone loves him. He just talks like this. You know, there's nothing a whole lot special to him, but, you know, he's a special guy. So we'll see. Guy. We'll see. I don't know.

I don't know how to describe that voice. I was trying to figure out how do you describe the way Gumbo talks? Gambo. Which is another thing where I'm like, I don't know if I should. Gumbo is mine. Gumbo is yours, which is why I think I might have to rethink who the character is. The voice though, I was just trying to figure out because it's such like, where do I land that

type of talking in the world. It's a little bit like Bronx-y, like old-timey gangster. There's definitely a bit of a speech impediment as well. I almost think someone from Maine, like that weird Maine accent that they have. Really? That's what it makes me think of. Well, then it must be like a Maine mobster.

Because I hear... With the speech impediment? Yeah, I hear a little bit of like a seedy underworld, but like from the 1960s kind of thing. It's fantastic. Interesting. It's fantastic. Thank you for your input, John. I will take it to heart. Thank you. The first thing I think of when I hear voices like that is...

I go to what would be the most insufferable one shot we could do with characters that are like, okay, Gambo, Captain Kirk, Quiffly, and I don't know a fourth character right now. Wait, are you saying this is an annoying voice? I don't know. I think we could do something here. Let's boldly go where no man has gone.

I think I think we all feel like the voices we start off with in each campaign evolve as we get more like familiar and comfortable doing it. And with the character, like I, I feel like no one sounds the same at the beginning and the end. I feel like when you start the voice, you have this idea for it, but then it becomes impractical.

You can't maintain it, so you have to make some compromises to make it sustainable. Except you, Barbara. You actually, you're consistent. Yeah, I feel like you're pretty consistent. I don't know. I feel like there's subtle differences. Like, I think Elga got much higher pitch throughout the season. Oh, I agree. There's just some subtlety. Yeah. I'd say with, like...

At least I'll just speak for me. Wild difference. I feel like you were the most consistent. That's funny. I think both of my voices changed drastically throughout the campaigns. Yeah. Mud was much was supposed to remember, like I've said, mud was supposed to be a dumb, slow, deep voice, like almost like a kid in order to.

keep up with the character, my speech got faster and therefore his voice got a little higher so I could talk a little faster. And then now with Stinky Dragon Adventures, because we were doing like

and pickups and stuff. And I was doing that so much, like I've turned mud into something that I can pull out. It's like you almost make mud easier to do in order for me to just be able to do him whenever I need. It has to be easy to do if you're talking a lot or like, and having to role play in that voice and act in that voice. He just did something today where I had to switch from mud to Mateed and I think I had a heart attack. I've shown examples before of like other D&D shows where when they're starting off their new season and a player brings a new voice to the table and sometimes they'll stop down and be like,

Are you sure? You're going to do this for maybe a 50 to 100 episodes or more. This could be the next two years. Chip's like started out difficult because it was an accent that I wasn't familiar with. But like now I feel like I've got a grasp on it. Of course, when we're done, I'm like, no, I can whip it out and it's easy and fun. Well, it might come back.

Yeah, that's true. I do have my next campaign character like pretty flushed out. I don't want to reveal the voice because like I am deathly afraid and we'll take all criticisms on like the subreddit. So if I see anything negative, it'll make me say yes. They're super supportive. I know, I know, but I got between us. We won't share this with anyone. I got some, I gotten some feedback on chip that made me like really not believe in my like, uh, Wisconsin-y like Northern accent. The only hint I'll give is, uh, there's a character in Venture Brothers that is, uh,

that heavily inspired the character that I want to play, at least the voice. And I'm very excited. Just take a page from my book. If anybody ever commented how I didn't do a good Scottish accent, I say, he's not doing a Scottish accent. He's talking like a bramble crack. Uh, where are they from? That's a, every time I would have to do Weezer, I'd have to go back and listen to myself. I can't even detect a car.

Everything must be on the table. It's very, uh... What was his name from the Andy Dick show? Andy Griffith. Andy Griffith.

Wow. Could not be more different. No, yeah. Miss Andy Griffith. What was the dumb? I'm pointing to Gus. It's very British Gomer. Gomer Pyle, yeah. Hi. Yeah, it's very British Gomer Pyle. I'm Gomer Pyle. Yeah. It was funny to see like anytime we would put up shorts and stuff like that from the Grotev campaign, the amount of comments that are just like, is that the

person who voices Little Miss Fortune because I have never heard of this game or played it but after we were doing Groteth for a while and I saw a comment about it I looked it up and she sounds exactly like this the same kind of tone the same like little accent and I was like is she from Borderlands it's called Little Miss Fortune yeah

I get that with my regular speaking voice people ask do you know there's some YouTube child like do you narrate the videos on this YouTube? Do the other two of you have voices you're going to share yet I'm Christy I don't because I'm still

Chris is fiddling. No, no, I'm just fiddling. I'm not committed to a character yet. I want to also say that I'm not super committed to this one quite yet. That's just what I'm thinking right now. I'm 100% locked on what I want to do. Which is great. What you described, Barbara, I really want. What you described when we were talking about our characters, and I'm not going to spoil it, like I

I thought that was so funny. Yeah. I just need to, I think, look at the class a little bit more because it's something I'm the most unfamiliar with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that I need to flesh out. But I think the character itself is fantastic. You don't have anything, John? I'll say that I have an idea for a voice. But the one reason why I don't want to commit to it is because I like to challenge my voices and make them something hard to do. And this is an easier one. And so I'm still trying to figure out a way where I could take it somewhere difficult. So it's probably going to change. There's nothing wrong with easy.

No, there isn't. There isn't. And I might just default there. Yeah. Because her voice plays into who she is. Right. So in order to change her voice, I got to change who she is. And I don't think I will because I really want to play this character. So if I say it right now, I have to kind of commit to it. But if I don't, I don't. But I have a little bit of a voice. But I've alluded to what she is. Right. Do y'all...

practice them by yourself? Yes. On the drive to work, I would stop listening to the music or I would sing along to the music in Chip's voice. Because I don't. Wait, what music? I'd just be listening to like any song. Oh, that's funny. I want to hear Chip sing now. Can we get like a Chip album? He's just singing Taylor Swift in Chip's voice. It's by Haney. You were working as a waitress in the hotel room.

I love it. I am here for it. I 100% had to try to work on doing something even remotely close to a French accent. I watched so many videos. I think it might be the hardest accent to try to do. It could so easily go into German or

Like in travel around Europe easy. Yeah doing this could sound like many things and with any accent same as like the Scottish of mud There is no Scottish accent, right? There is no French accent. There is like hey, what part of that place are you from? I didn't want to admit it, but I do the same thing with sleek and quickly I sing along your songs in the car Yeah, it's an easy way to start getting into it and we have a pro tip I

I feel like we learned something here. I will say, you were trouble when you walked in. That's great! The thing I'm excited about is the most... Bart's easy because he got sang all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, you did sing a lot as Bart. I'm excited about campaign three because I think something that I noticed with campaign two is depending on your character's attitude and kind of like what they're

like, I feel like I adopt that as a mindset. So Kyborg, I was like really cocky and, you know, shooting little quips. And then with chip, I was chipper and happy. And so, you know, all that. And I feel like it bleeds into real life. And my next guy, I'm like, I'm excited to see what that does for Blaine. Oh, no, no,

The other thing too, and this is like any advice for people that are listening, and you get into the role play of it, it's like try to have a fun character that's enjoyable to be around. Don't be a jerk because then you're fun to be around. Yeah. You want people to enjoy also interacting with you and playing with you in the world, in the space. I want to make an exclusive reveal here that the campaign three narrator will be Captain Kirk. Okay.

No! I quit. I quit. Patreon's done. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I knew that would get a rise out of Blaine. But I'm happy we are at the point we are, you know, just having wrapped up Campaign 2, looking forward to what we're going to do with Campaign 3 because I feel like lots of times, and I think this was maybe in the back of all of our heads or in the pit of our stomachs, that Campaign 1 was such a...

well accepted huge success, it's always a little scary to try to follow that up. It's like, what is your next thing? It's not just D&D thing, like any band releases a huge album, it's like, oh, what's your next one? Or, you know, film or anything like that. You're also comparing it to when people found it and fell in love with it. So their expectations are high. That's actually a question I wanted to ask everybody was, you know, like we had some trends

leaving the campaign one characters to go on campaign two because like in production, right? Like when you have a good hit or something that's working, it's scary to go away from it. And typically you don't want to. A lot of people tend to just stay with it until maybe people kind of get tired of it sometimes. And in the nature of Dungeons and Dragons, like eventually you hit a point where the campaign, you're max level, you can't really do anything else unless you're fighting gods. And so you got to like wind down and start a new character. And so I was kind of wanting to ask everybody, like, how are you feeling now going from now that you've gotten two campaigns under your belt?

how do you feel going into campaign three now that we have one and two done? And how is it different from going from campaign one to campaign two? Big shoes to fill is what I'll say. But I have the utmost confidence in Micah and the whole team to do an incredible job. Because I think like...

I personally, I loved campaign one. I had a lot of fun with campaign two. And I thought a lot of the like discoveries and twists and turns were like really interesting to me. And I would say I almost liked it better than campaign one. Personally, I'll probably like campaign three even better because it's like it's these things that we keep having more experience doing and get comfortable doing and know how to build the space more and more. We're only going to have more fun with future campaigns. I think you said something important there, which is like,

your familiarity and your comfort with the material. Yeah. You're not so preoccupied with the rules and the mechanics necessarily. It frees up brain power to explore the creativity and like the fun side. Like what are the moments we're going to lean into? You're not so like focused on looking at a sheet of paper or like some rules in front of you. Like, what does this all mean? It's like, you've partially, you know, you've learned the material and partially you've learned it's not that important.

Right. We're going to, we're just going to have fun. Now with the state of stinky dragon and us doing this ourselves, I think a lot of us are also going to be a lot more invested in everything to do with stinky dragon and like,

not having to work on any other projects or like do anything else for our previous job that maybe was distracting or like took away from us being able to like dive full into something like this so i think it's going to be even better my calendar will be freed up from meetings that i'm like why am i here i promise you all i'm going to start committing to this show i'm gonna wear a fourth hat if that's okay

no you you out of everybody has been wildly dedicated to this since the very beginning i think the timing is fortuitous too because it's like you know we're winding down campaign two and as we start this new journey we're also starting a new campaign so it's just like it obviously it wasn't a perfect situation but i feel like we're making making the best case scenario out of a worst case scenario yeah you know for sure so i'm excited absolutely i'm very i'm very much in the same vein as you barbara we're uh

I feel like I keep getting better at this as it goes on. I'm very glad we got the second campaign jitters out of the way now because that was a concern. And between that and I got to DM my first mini campaign, I'm fully addicted to new worlds and new characters, which I know is a very common trope with D&D players where they just want to keep making their new character. They're excited about it. And so I'm...

I'm all for that and excited to do that. And so, yeah, I'm and I'm also excited to see what's it like to do an entire campaign medicated. I also will say we have talked about KME3 a little bit and I'm really excited for it because Micah, you seem really excited for it. Like it's something that excites you as a writer. So I think like in my mind, that's when I'm the most excited to play in a space that someone who's created it is really amped about.

Well, I fall into that trope as well of like, it's a new thing. As soon as we finished recording my mini campaign, like I was sad. I was like, and right before the campaign, I was freaked out. Cause I'm like, and I've listened to a few of the episodes and it's like, oh man, I was terrible at DMing. But I'm more so I'll phrase like, oh, I could have done this better.

Oh, this could have been, I, oh, this is why I shouldn't do that. I, you know, I learned a lot and I love learning more and more about D and D. Even like you guys saw at the end of this campaign that I fell in love with rolling real dice and I started memorizing my modifiers and my stuff. Like I really wasn't even looking at my, my,

D&D Beyond a ton near the end of it and that was really fun just this week started listening to funny enough started listening to the Adventure Zone fights Dracula which I think is so funny that they released that like halfway through and to listen to it it's very much like wow these are touching on similar things like they have a Frankenstein character and everything like that but

but I love listening to other people play D and D cause Ben got me listening to a dimension 20 and, and that kind of stuff. But I love the best parts is they don't dwell on figuring out which spell to do. It's all about improv and playing with each other and having fun jokes.

and getting to do those silly moments, you know, and I look forward to that for the next campaign. It's like, those are my favorite moments. Making Gus do improv. I think that Ben, unlock the door.

I want to say a big thank you to anyone who's listening to this. You know, we've poured a lot of energy and a lot of our hearts into Campaign 1 and Campaign 2. And we're glad that people really enjoy it. And, you know, as Blaine was talking about, you know, we're at an inflection point with the stories and with what we're going to do. And, you know, we're really more than ever are reliant on

You know, people who consume the show, people who tell their friends about it, people who subscribe on patreon.com slash stinky dragon. Uh, like it's all, uh, it's all needed. It's all necessary to help, um, uh, support us and to help us continue, uh,

these adventures. So thank you so much. Share the podcast with a friend. Please do tell people about it. I think a lot of these podcasts really succeed from word of mouth and like talking to your friends and people who also like D&D or just general fantasy adventure kind of stuff. So,

So yeah, if you have a friend you think might like the show, please do tell them. Send them a puppet video or an animation. There's a whole podcast you can listen to with this. It's pretty heartwarming going onto the Reddit and being like, yeah, my friend turned me on to this. He said, you know, I was getting a DD and so on and so forth. And it's like, this is a person that would have never in a million years have encountered Rooster Teeth or any of us. Our family, like our parents and our sister, like they are not D&D people. Did you guys know they don't play D&D?

play dj they know nothing about it and they've also to be fair i've been an employee making content for the past like 10 11 years they don't watch any of it i will give someone credit uh that heather actually when i started when we started sister can't yeah sorry heather is my sister uh john's sister as well it's really weird she was my sister first i

When I was starting the pious past, like that first arc in infinites, I did a test run with her and some other people. And she was one person that that's right. Jumped in. That's right. Yeah. So it's, it's they, my, I joke, my family did, had, did watch some of her stuff like, uh, and no stuff, but adamantly, this is the first thing that they are. They are fans and they are D and D fans. And she's so funny. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Every single week they listen. The risingers have been a crucial part. I haven't watched the episode yet. Don't tell me. But I don't know. It is a very interesting. My mom just texted me. If you're listening and thank you for, but really like it's only possible because people support really if you're, if you're enjoying something, um,

Thank you. Yeah, it's especially like, I think there's been a very huge shift in online entertainment where a lot of people like you are used to YouTube and having like free access to content. But to have like a sustainable show like Stinky Dragon that has so many people involved in it and there's so much that goes into creating it.

If you like something, supporting it really is the best way to keep having it happen. Yeah. And the Stinky Dragon audience just like has been such a joy to interact with. Oh, they're amazing. They've been just even from, I'm really active on like Reddit and Discord and like talking in the YouTube comments with everybody. But like I've even had moments where I'm trying to get the episode out and it's 2 a.m. and it's like almost done rendering and I'm just hopping to Discord and chat with people and they help me get to the point where I can get the episode uploaded. They're the best. So if you're listening to this and want to be part of the best community ever.

Join. Join the party. We can't do this without you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Until next time.

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