D&D Court: Monkey Paws and Ballin' DMs

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This is a head gun podcast.

Welcome to Dungeon Court, everybody.

We are your Supreme Crit, Justices, Murphy, Axford, Tainer, and of course,

stop.

You're all going to get demoted.

Jake Kurwitz.

He's only

because I would like to demote you guys.

So by comparison, Jake is only a little bit lowly.

Jake Kurwitz.

Stay fucking firm.

He can't demote all of us.

Okay.

You'd be shocked.

That's true.

Wait a second.

If we all made it together, we could demote Murph.

Interesting.

You guys don't have the fucking guts.

You don't have the guts.

I would never.

I would never, Brian.

Okay, apparently we don't.

If we demoted him.

You don't have the numbers.

Guys, we could have cake all the time for every meal.

Oh my God.

Have you ever considered it?

You guys are always recusing accusing yourself and stuff.

You fall apart.

Speaking of us, hear ye, hear ye.

Crit is now in session.

The honorable supreme crit justices Oxford, Murphy, and Tanner presiding.

Stop.

Dun done.

Our first case comes from Uncanny, or should I say Dun Duncan?

Duncan Canny.

That's a good name for a bad book.

To the ever divine justices and the ever-dependable bailiff, I bring you the case of the wasted wish.

I've been a part of an online campaign for almost two years now, playing an Eladrin Rogue Wizard.

My character was part of the Thieves Guild and stole a book that was actually some sort of prison for an ancient black dragon.

I freaking love book thieves.

Book theft.

Even though in my real life, I use Libby.

I love book theft.

I would never thieve a book in real life.

You never take a book from Barnes and Noble.

Never.

Because you never know if it's going to be a book jail.

You never know if one of Atris's Rotten Sons from Myst is going to be in there.

We did read the book.

We read the Mists.

We read the book.

Together.

This is an 8-bit book club deep cut and

all of 8-bit book club has been like, I had a hard drive reformat.

It's all gone.

Except for

Wendy Koopa's feet.

Oh, yes.

And Sonic's feet.

I guess, yeah, I'm the sin eater here.

I've just absorbed all of the 8-bit book club knowledge.

It's still in there.

Anyway, okay, we got distracted by how much i love your character let's go back to this eladron book piece yeah okay no actually though because i no i just remember didn't wasn't you said one of atris's shit sons wasn't atris the song is atris the i thought wasn't the dad something with a g oh yeah okay we're just saying caldwell forgets too okay so caldell had his hard drive mostly wiped he's i can't believe this after the done dunes you're hitting me with this man there's some guy with a g that is the dad Anyway, Jake, go on.

What was this podcast?

This is why you're again.

It was on my network.

Yeah.

Sort of.

It was.

Yeah.

It didn't perform well.

It definitely, you wouldn't have clocked it.

Dude, no.

All right.

I think Atris is the main character.

He has two shit sons, but Gin is Atris's dad.

And he's a shit dad.

He's a shit dad.

Okay, great.

Atris has shit sons.

Okay, you're both right.

Cool.

I would love to guest on this show.

All right.

My character was now cursed and couldn't get rid of the book without getting an aneurysm.

So specific.

Yeah, there really is.

So he did what the book asked while looking for a way to cut ties to said book.

At some point, the DM put a deck of many things in front of us through a bag of holding, which was stolen by the DM PC.

Okay.

Okay.

I drew one card, one card only, and I got the moon card.

I then rolled a three for the amount of wishes.

I used the first two wishes for the party, but I used the third wish to end my curse.

The DM made me roll the percentile die three times and asked me to call high or low before each roll.

I only got one roll right, and my character instantly died.

The DM said that my wish did cut my connection to the book, but there were, quote, side effects that ended up hurting me.

The damage was so high it killed me outright.

Judges, I ask, shouldn't a wish just give me what I want without having to roll for it and without killing me?

Maybe.

Or was I asking for too much?

May I ask the DMs, deck of many things moon card what is this percentile

I do believe with any kind of wish you could do like a monkey's paw thing kind of and have it have like a bigger effect one would argue and I would be the one that argues that this was anticlimactic and sucked and your DM is bad that's the name of your biography yeah

one would argue and I'm the one who argues yeah and it's a picture of me it's just I'm doing what every stand-up does.

It's just me with a glass of whiskey at a bar alone.

Or it's just you in like a black turtleneck with like arms crossed and he just says the one that argues.

That's really good.

That's really awesome.

The Book of Atrius 2.

Turns out he had a third shit son named Rurf.

May we consult the Book of the Deck of Many Things.

Maybe.

No.

Okay, okay.

We need nothing from the Book of Atrix.

Okay, so I'm looking at the deck of many things.

The moon card says you're granted the ability to cast the wish spell 1d3 times.

Okay.

Yeah, this person rolled 1d3, got three.

Okay.

I think that also, so rules is written.

I do think the wish spell says that it's at the DM's discretion.

There are some things you can do just without having to roll for it at all, but I do think maybe this DM wanted to add more of a challenge to it, which I guess is like technically within their right, but also like a wish spell is such a rare thing that I would feel inclined to just give that to the player.

Do we think in the moment the DM was like, I had freaking plans for that book?

Maybe.

You took them from me, so I'm taking your character from you.

Yeah, just was it revenge?

Doing this really anticlimactically, it's, I think, the DM thought they were being a hard ass in like a cool way, and it just wasn't.

cool at all you know what i mean yeah i don't know just wait what if okay okay if you wanted to have a monkey's paw with this wish if you were like i'm the DM, shit, I have plans for this book.

I wanted to be involved.

If they say, I wanted to sever ties to me, I want to sever my ties to that book, couldn't you be like, and it attaches to another part of your life?

Yes, totally, totally.

Right?

That would be an actual monkey's paw.

That would be like an interesting thing.

Right.

This is a monkey's ass.

Yeah.

Or it could be like, maybe it's something powerful and the bad guy gets it.

So the bad guy is cursed, but maybe the bad guy doesn't care that they're cursed because they're bad.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, there's a million ways that you could have done this that would have been fun.

And like when I've had you guys pull from the deck of many things, I've had this card pulled out.

Like, this is not one that you guys can get.

Really?

Yeah, because I'm not going to let you guys get three wish spells.

It's fucking ridiculous.

It's because it just leads this situation where the FDM has to like put kind of regulations on it.

If you can't handle it, just don't do it.

I gotta be honest.

If we had pulled in the time when we encountered the deck of many things, if we had gotten wish spells, we would have wasted them.

Certainly.

i guarantee

moonshine would have been like uh i wish for three horses yeah

y'all we got horses now oh i really would have had the best beard ever you guys you guys think that but there's i feel like weirdly and i know you guys had did some nuts stuff in the beginning of campaign one but you weirdly when you're a newer player you are kind of on better behavior you guys might have been like oh you know you're right.

I would have been like, I wish Krick Rot gone.

Yes, exactly.

And it would have just undone the saga.

We definitely would have all decided to waste one wish.

I mean, collectively, we would have been like, we get one freebie, right?

Yeah.

If you guys had three, you guys would have like one dumb one, then you'd wish for Krick Rot to be gone.

Yeah.

And then you'd wish for the genie to be free.

Yes, exactly.

We've got to do the eladed wish.

There's no genie, but we would wish for the genie to be free.

Yeah.

I think I might have pulled.

I think I might have pulled one really bad one as well.

I think I left in the one where you guys could get turned into a gem.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, like captured away.

I remember that was there.

But there was like another.

Obviously, I didn't just pull a good one.

And there was one bad one I think I took out.

I've been like scanning through the wish spell.

And it's pretty lengthy.

There's a lot of stipulations.

There are like some like...

actual concrete things you can give them which is like 25 000 gp uh you can allow 20 creatures that you can see to all regain hit points you can end effects on them described by the greater restoration spell Rant up to 10 creatures.

You can see resistance to a damage.

Yeah, there's like six or seven things that are just like concrete.

Yeah.

These are allowed.

These are just awesome things that can happen.

Anything else is at the DM's discretion.

Yes.

But when they talk about the DM's discretion, it is kind of in the terms of a monkey's paw, like you were saying.

I think the example they give is like wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when the villain is no longer a wild.

Yes, exactly.

That's so much more fun to me than just like making them roll kind of a divine intervention dice or something like that.

Yeah, definitely.

I think I would say if you ever want to do a monkey's paw wish, it should never be,

yeah, your wish happens and you die.

And you die, dude.

And now this is over.

Yeah.

Because the monkey's paw should continue the story in an interesting way.

Yeah, the monkey's paw should be like, and here's the burden of your good fortune.

A sudden death can be interesting if everyone's prepared for that, right?

Like if you guys are going into the Tomb of Horrors or something like that, you guys know, okay, this is from like a really old edition.

We know this is a scary place.

Any door could have a trap, and then someone dies in the trap.

That's scary, and that's fun, and everyone's like elected to be part of that.

If you guys just walked into like a random tavern in one of the campaigns, and someone was just like, a random dude comes out and stabs you with a javelin in the back of your head, he crit, you're dead.

You'd just be like, what the fuck?

It's not cool.

It's not interesting.

It's not anything.

I feel like the table probably said after the DM said, and you die.

I feel like the first thing said was, wait, really?

Yes.

If the answer that you're, if your player says, wait, really, after you did something to them, that should be like a huge deal.

You did a bad job.

Yeah.

And honestly, it's totally fine to admit that you did a bad job and just take a beat, have a snack break and like talk with your players about like what would be better.

I don't know.

You're allowed to say, you're right.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're right.

I did a bad job.

Hit him with the JK.

Normalize saying oops as DM.

Yeah.

The genie laughs and said, wouldn't that be crazy if that happened?

Anyway, what's your real wish?

I actually think that there's a lot of situations, though, where you would say wait, really, to a DM, and it would actually be a good thing.

So I think it's not because it could also be like, and all along, it was your mother.

Wait, really?

Wait, really?

Yeah.

So there are the context of the wait really is if it's wait really?

It's a ton.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wait, really?

It's bad.

Wait, really?

Yeah, that's good.

That's good.

Wait, really?

Yeah, okay, that was a little confusing.

Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait.

Really?

That one I'm worried about.

Your family.

That one, I don't know.

That one I'm like, time out.

I think that this session needs to take a little break.

No, I can keep going.

I set the genie free.

Obviously, we're on the player's side here.

The DM could have done a monkey's paw thing, but he instead did a bad thing.

yeah okay so i think we have to sentence them um i think that we should sentence them to read whatever the mist book was that i can't remember i think the mist book was pretty good though it was fun weirdly i do think i remember it being one of the better ones can we sentence them to finish riven for me because i never finished it and i i just don't know if i have the time okay that'd be great that'd be really helpful yeah if they could just like do like a riven playthrough private riven playthrough for me yeah fantastic because like the puzzles are tricky and like i'm always playing it at night on my ipad and like i just just can't see my notes very well is the problem.

Okay, okay.

So maybe they could also just shine a light on your notes for you.

The DM has to do our homework.

Yeah,

they could be like instead of a poison taster for a king, a light shiner for

a hard-working dad.

My puzzle helper, yes.

Hey, Suze, I hope it's okay.

I fired this puzzle helper because I'm real stuck in the I've got a puzzle page now.

Yeah, and they will be a live-in puzzle page.

Are you cool with that, Caldwell?

I think so.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

We can adjust the shopping for sure.

They need lodging and also food as well.

Okay, yeah.

Just send me your dietary restrictions and I'll clear out some space.

You can sleep in the basement.

It's perfect.

What about this?

Since they went so against the monkey's paw thing and did such not a good job with the wish spell, they should get like a reverse Aladdin wish.

So we trap them in a lamp and they can't come out.

Oh,

a jafar.

Yeah, they get jafarred.

Yeah, they get jafar.

Okay, but how who's gonna shine a light on Caldwell's notes?

Well, Caldwell can hold the lamp.

The lamp is a light.

It's a light.

Oh, it's a lantern.

Wow.

I'll just have to be very careful not to rub it ever.

Yeah, don't rub it because then Jafar will come out.

Jafar is in there as well.

Oh, God.

And Jafar's nasty.

They're roommates.

Yeah, they're roommates.

You have to be roommates with Jafar.

Inside a lamp, we got there.

Yeah.

We absolutely got there.

Inside a lamp that illuminates that illuminates Caldwell's puzzles.

Yeah, that's the only light of day you see.

It's Caldwell's puzzles on his iPad.

And your only hope for Exodus is if he accidentally rubs.

And he's so tired and cranky.

You could hear like a little whine coming from the room as one of his children is crying, and he just goes, Oh, my puzzles.

I have to wait.

And I have to be very careful not to say, I wish I knew how to solve this puzzle because, like, boom, they're going to seize that opportunity.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got to be careful with my language because I need this light and I do not need a genie.

Okay, so Jafar.

So Jafar.

So Jafart.

Our next case comes from Cass cass m cass rights honorable justices and mr crabster himself

pinch pinch i bring to you the case of the armored wizard versus the dm i play a bladesinger wizard in my good friend's campaign oh in our recent game we fought an abolith that has the ability to charm creatures

our dm was able to charm me and the aboleth commanded me to drop my bladesong mage armor and my concentration on haste that i had on our monk eeesh it took a couple of rounds of combat to get all of those effects up and it feels wild that this beast beast would know exactly what magic I had active.

Am I being the salty wizard, or is this worth bringing up?

Is my DM just pissed I can get my AC to 21?

Yes, well, the answer is definitely yes, that they are mad that you can get your AC to 21.

I would say they would know your buffs.

Yeah, yeah, mage armor is visible.

Okay, the only thing I would say is that it takes an action to dismiss mage armor.

So, like, I don't think that you could.

Well, I think you can, can you break concentration just willingly?

So you could do those two things in one time.

okay yeah because you could yeah what is the what were the all the things that got dropped there was mage armor there was concentration on haste yeah bladesong mage armor and concentration on haste that they had on the monkey i don't know anything about blade song but dropping concentration on haste and stuff it's just got to do with the rules right so it doesn't really matter what would happen quote in real life if someone like jumped into your brain but i do think if you jumped into someone's brain and they were concentrating on something, you could think of something else.

I don't think that's that hard to figure out.

Yeah, if they're charmed you can definitely just like throw them off the mental yeah exactly you break concentration from like getting punched you know you like getting your concentration broken when someone else was like directing your thoughts you just insert a riven puzzle into their brain and then they're focusing on that and they like lose all concentration after that okay unfortunately this is buttoned up i looked it up you can dismiss blade song at any time no action required it takes an action to dismiss mage armor, but that's fine.

You have one.

And then breaking concentration, I don't think

requires any kind of charming.

I feel like charming someone and just being like, just drop all your stuff is not nuts to me.

Uh-huh.

Is it worth discussing the fact that this does suck?

Like, it absolutely does.

Yeah, but sometimes you take this stuff as a compliment.

You're like, oh, I got my DM.

Like, they're scared of me.

That is true.

I think that's a good thing.

Your DM is pulling out all the stops.

If this is like a big fight and they're swinging for the fences, I think that's cool.

I think, like, one time.

However, if this becomes something that everything you fight does, then then that could be annoying.

But I feel like if it's one time, they're just like, cool.

It is fun when DMs create, like, we know that this party has this one powerful ability here and like creates encounters to target.

Oh, this, I'm going to try and neutralize this powerful ability that the party likes.

I'm going to go after this powerful party, you know?

And actually, they're going to have to get creative.

I'm going to bring something up.

Okay.

Oh.

Okay.

So actually, I'm looking at the charmed condition and the charmed condition is pretty vague It's just it's not the same as like a dominate beast or something It is just like you have advantage on ability checks and they the charmed creature can't attack you that being said looking at the aboleth It does say that the charmed target is under the aboleth's control.

Yeah, so uh and the aboleth can communicate telepathically with each other over any distance

Yeah, I do think this is pretty buttoned up

specific like yeah

this is one of their things they get inside people's heads yeah they can communicate telepathically and stuff.

I think it would be one thing if it was just like they're in your mind for one round.

They know all of your deepest secrets and everything you've ever done or something.

That would be nuts and like a little bit of a game-breaking thing.

But just to be like, whatever you're physically doing right now, they disrupt it.

That is not crazy at all.

I think it's not crazy.

Also, especially like, I was like, well, maybe if there's, because some things it's like to drop certain things, it requires a bonus action, it requires an action, but I think it's all above the board.

And I also think that, like, again, as long as this isn't happening every fight, something like this is always a chance to be like, oh no, I'm usually the strong one in the group, but I'm the weak one.

And I have to, like, the rest of the party has to kind of look out for me.

And this is like a huge, like, moment of confusion and grows.

Yeah, it's a good way to like shift the dynamic.

And also, you are still a wizard, so you've got spells.

It's not like you're like totally out of the battle.

Yeah, you just have to run like a coward and throw some fireballs

like the rest of us.

You have to do whatever, you have to do everyone's favorite cowardly move and ask the DM, is there cover

Wait really

Although technically you're under the control of the abolis so probably the fireballs were then getting thrown at your party But still, I don't know It's it's more fun for me role-playing getting control taken of me than just like losing a turn.

Yeah, yeah, it's fun getting to be the bad guy for a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, this to me this to me feels pretty buttoned up.

I think the bad guy would know just the bare minimum of the stuff that you're doing right in front of them and would probably see like the spectral shoulder pads that you have on with your mage armor.

I could just unconcentrate from stuff.

I think unfortunately, I am going to side with the DM here.

Yeah.

And I'm going to suggest maybe that your punishment is that you.

You got to go in the lamp.

Oh, I was going to say just, well, no, I think you don't need to go in the lamp, but another puzzle page.

Caldwell.

What about visit, visit the lamp?

Visit the lamp.

Oh, you know what?

You could be on, you could be on rub duty.

So Caldwell might rub the lamp but oh i need to make sure you swat

fly swatter right so you guard the lamp from being rubbed i'll be so distracted i'll be like it looks like there's a little inscription on the side of this lamp yeah we don't need another return of continuation you have your little fly swatter to keep caldwell on on like path thank you so much yeah that's great just a little quieter though my children are so we'll get you the fly swatter yeah

it is electrified all right that's pretty big that's pretty buttoned up yeah okay so okay I'm really happy for your like growing stable of puzzle pages.

Yes.

I've got a sofa bed downstairs, and I think it'll be great for them.

They can share that.

I think it's really going to be fun for them.

Well, I guess one of them is going to be in a lamp.

So

it's just going to be really nice to have such a full, warm house.

And they're going to be learning how to puzzle from like the best of them.

And this Bladesinger wizard that kind of that thinks that they got so screwed over by having their concentration broken and stuff can see like truly how magically screwed over you can be by getting trapped in a lamp.

So just being near the lamp will be a lesson.

That will be a lesson for you.

We are going to need to make sure that the new puzzle page doesn't get tempted by the lamp.

Yeah.

Because Jafar is in there and he's going to be being like, oh, if you rub the lamp, I know.

Okay, okay.

Well, then we're going to need someone to keep Jafar busy.

This is which is right.

Which is why we're going to have to

see.

We have more cases.

We have more cases.

We're going to get a Jafar distractor.

Yeah, because that DM and Jafar Jafar are going to be on the same side.

We've created problems.

This is not good.

I love Triangle Jafar and the puzzle page that's inside the lamp.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

All right, let's see if we can corral Jafar.

Kyle C.

writes, Dear Nepo Baby Justices and the Bootstrap Bailiff, I play college basketball at a small school in southern Indiana and love D ⁇ D.

Oh my God.

Awesome.

It sounds like a Disney musical.

The problem is, I can never find anyone to play with me.

The D DD club at school would meet on Saturdays early in the afternoon, right when I would either have practice or a game.

So I could never play with them.

I also felt very self-conscious attending the group as the only six-foot-three, 190-pound guy there.

Why?

Everyone is secretly admiring you.

If they're shy or quiet, it's not because they don't like it.

Get out of here, Tolly.

Come on.

Everyone's just going to be like, you're willing to hang out with me.

You're fine.

Probably.

You're fine.

My muscles were too big to be in the chair.

Everyone was friendly and welcoming, but I still felt like an outsider.

So instead of trying to fit in, I decided to create my own game.

Cool.

The problem was my basketball friends laughed at me when I brought it up.

Oh,

you are stuck.

You're stuck with your girlfriend.

I was going to make that suggestion because I was like, if you have away games,

okay, continue.

They're great guys that would do anything for me, but they just couldn't wrap their heads around the idea of a game.

After begging for months, they agreed to play.

So

they wouldn't do anything for you.

Oh, this is the problem.

They wouldn't expect that you want to play this game, but they won't do anything for you.

Okay.

We did a session zero and built characters all normal and good with a little shenanigans to keep it light, but nothing crazy.

Normal and good.

Come session one.

After I worked for hours outside of homework and practice every night, one of my buddies decided he wanted his fighter to no longer use a great sword, opting instead to make his character have a giant penis with a helmet on the head to deal bludgeoning damages.

Okay.

Justices, I'm sorry to say I allowed it.

Oh, this is your fault.

Oh, you know.

I was so excited to run my first real session ever.

And honestly, I didn't want to rebalance all of my fights for one last party.

Member, get it, member.

The session was fun, but I could tell the game wasn't vibing with anyone at the table and cut out a big room of my dungeon so it would be over faster.

I've yet to play since.

Should I have made more of an effort to push back against the giant tip in an attempt to make my players take the game more seriously?

Or should I have turned the shenanigans up to 100 to try to get the players to engage with shit and piss jokes?

Okay, I have a suggestion.

I have two suggestions that are actually not related to the penis weapon.

Okay.

Why not?

I have a lot of fun.

Yeah, this is beyond the penis weapon.

Yeah, I think that's a good question.

I'm going to follow up with questions about the stats.

Two just like light suggestions, just because I really feel for your situation.

First suggestion, if you ever wanted to go back to the crew that you felt too tall and cool for, or like, obviously, you didn't say cool.

I'm projecting that.

But maybe that you were like intimidated by,

if you were feeling shy, like, oh, okay, like, I'm, I'm clearly like a jock.

Yeah, just be an outlier.

We are joking around, but I definitely get how you could show up to something and be like, I don't fit in right now.

Yeah, I don't fit in immediately.

Even like Gandalf doesn't fit into Bilbo's house, but he looks really comfortable there.

So, my suggestion is you could make a character that was really tiny, like play like a little roguish halfling or something like that.

And that might make you feel like it might be a fun icebreaker.

It might be a fun icebreaker

to show like, hey, like you don't, I like you don't have to be intimidated that I'm a cool basketball player.

Yeah.

So I think that the sort of fallacy here is trying to get people to play D ⁇ D that don't seem to really want D ⁇ D.

I don't think there's kind of any gymnastics that you can do here that's going to make them get into the game.

They're just not, they're not into it, and that's fine.

I think that, you know, the fact that the D and D group lines up at the same time as your practices or games

is unfortunate, but

I do imagine there is some kind of group or something that meets outside of that.

I would have to assume.

Or maybe on the rare time that you don't have practice that day or you don't have a game that day, or maybe when it's not basketball season, you can go to it and maybe you can make some friends that you play D and D with there.

and i totally get that it's intimidating and you want to kind of just take the game and bring it to your friends that you already have yeah i would encourage you to either maybe try to join the dnd group when basketball season is over and then carry those friends over once you get busy again um and

I understand that you're, you know, having anxiety walking into this situation and you don't know anyone and you feel out of place, but I assure you, you will meet people that you end up really liking.

And there's kind of like no better way to bond with people than to play tabletop games with because you get to act and solve problems together and everything.

So you'll make friends fast.

And then also, if, you know, if it didn't work out and you didn't feel like going back to the club, maybe think of some friends that you have or maybe even acquaintances that have more overlap with the kind of nerdy stuff.

People who are open to it.

Maybe they've, maybe they're not huge fantasy nerds, but they like the Lord of the Rings movies or something.

Like you might be able to work with that person.

Or you might meet just one person at the D ⁇ D club that you're like, actually, I do click with you.

And then maybe you could extrapolate that.

My other suggestion, if you want to try and make it happen with the basketball people, my suggestion would be

rather than planning a separate night to do it, if you could do it like on the bus on the way to an away game or like when you're staying at a hotel for like overnight for an away game or something like that.

It might be like those kind of downtimes might have them more open to do something like that.

Yeah, sure.

And this would be good for like teamwork and cohesion.

If you're all like working together to solve problems, like that's essentially what sports are about, but also you're sweating.

Yeah.

But, anyways, that I just took us away from the penis weapon.

Right.

So we think, like, is there like a D6 of damage that's dealt to the penis weapon whenever it attacks because of the like nerves and sensitivity?

I think it should be an unspelled weapon.

It should be able to shoot something.

It's a penis out there.

I think the penis weapon is a non-starter.

And I do think you unfortunately did make a mistake with allowing that.

I do understand that.

I didn't even get the impression from your submission that you thought that it was the penis weapon that made well it seems like they just weren't having very much fun.

They were just kind of goofing off and weren't super interested in it.

And to that, I would say this sounds like this is your very close group of friends and you might have to either meet new people or you might just have some acquaintances that are kind of nerdy.

I would reach out to a nerdy acquaintance and maybe they're not your best friend in the world, but you will bond over dnd yeah an acquaintance would have a harder time being rude to you to your family that's also something a best friend can kind of do you already have a huge leg up though which is that like you have literally prepared a whole session yes literally yeah so you can go back to this group and be like hey i tried playing this with uh some of my basketball friends and they weren't really into it but like i've got this all prepared Does anyone want to play?

And the fact that you are willing to DM like instantly, instantly puts you in such good graces with everyone else.

That's another thing.

If you go back to that DNZ club and you're like, oh, I actually have a session if anyone ever wants to play, and suddenly you're putting yourself out as a DND.

Yeah, that's true.

That's going to be a real shift to coach.

Absolutely true.

Yeah.

You could also try to, if you want to work in your more like, you know, athlete friends into your games and stuff, maybe you don't want to do DND.

Maybe you want to start them with something a little bit easier.

I was also thinking too, like, if you wanted to try again with the athlete friends, or like maybe the dungeon thing that isn't as interesting, you never know how people are, but like you could just be like, make them a basketball team.

And see if that sort of like easy.

You could do like a Stranger Things type thing or something like that.

If they're more into it, I mean, you could just find it.

What kind of pop culture are they into?

Do they play video games, but they play more of like, I don't know, I'm aging myself here, but like Halo or something like that.

Like you can do like a sci-fi thing or something like that.

That being said, I don't know how hard I would bark up this people that aren't into basketball.

I'm just saying.

Make them play.

I'm giving lots of options here.

I'm giving lots of options.

This person has a busy schedule

with playing college sports.

So I'm trying to give options.

The options are lovely, but we have to punish someone.

So we do have to punish.

Let's punish the fucking person who wanted a penis sore.

Oh, okay, but we can't.

But that's cool.

Yeah,

that's so cool and funny, though, Emily.

But it is going to be distracting to Jafar.

Yeah.

So here's what I'm saying.

Here's what I'm saying.

So technically by allowing, so we're rooting for this person, right?

We're rooting for the basketball player.

We want them to go to the DD club and we want them to succeed.

That being said, in this specific instance, they were incorrect to give out the penis sword.

Right.

You could have said no to the penis sword.

And the basketball player will be great at playing defense, so keeping Jafar in the lamp.

Right?

True.

We've got to box out Jafar.

No.

Why?

No.

We need someone to box Jafar out.

We've made a mistake by putting Jafar and the evil DM in the lamp together.

And we need to sacrifice the basketball player.

Just Jafar.

He's getting an impressive basketball player.

We're also rooting for the basketball player.

Wait, shit, guys, are we worried that Jafar is going to be able to hypnotize this player, though?

Because they've got, like, you know, it's such a power, they probably don't have high whiz.

I really think that we just need to take the guy with the penis sword and put them in the lamp.

Oh, yeah, because Jafar is no match for the penis sword.

Is Jafar no match for the penis sword?

I think Jafar will be able to hypnotize the guy with the penis sword as a problem.

I think no matter what, Jafar has his own penis sword.

Right, right.

And if he has a, I'm saying, if he has a, if he hypnotizes the guy with the penis sword, what's that gonna do, really?

Look, I don't, the penis sword, I don't trust their like intelligence/slash wisdom saving throws.

This basketball player, I do, you know what I mean?

I don't think it's not a penis sword because they actually traded the sword for the penis.

So this penis was dealing bludgeoning damage.

So it's a penis.

Penis like flail hammer.

Yeah.

Fine.

That makes sense.

Okay, I think impressive basketball player doesn't go in the lamp.

They go outside of the lamp to play defense with the hopes that them and the other puzzle pages can start a DT

All right, we're gonna keep you outside the lamp, but you do got to watch the lamp because we're you're the only one we trust right to play defense here, okay?

It is true.

I feel like yeah, you're like Jafar's pretty tall, so you're gonna have to match him for height.

If Jafar gets out, we all know what happens.

We've seen Return of Jafar, we don't remember what happens because it wasn't as memorable as the first one, but we know it's better, right?

And we know he was ripped when he was a genie, okay?

So we're scared.

That's true.

And we need a huge basketball player to help.

He's ripped and red hot.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

That's perfect.

Well played.

All right.

So Jafar.

Hey there, Nadpoles.

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Our next case comes from Riley W.

Honorable Justices and the, if we're being nice to the bailiff, ruggedly handsome bailiff Jake.

We are being nice to you today,

yeah.

Got usually handsome.

How about that?

I really appreciate that.

How about it?

Then, if they were being mean, it was going to be the guy with the lukewarm boiled hot dog energies.

Okay, actually, I like that better.

Let's go with that.

Sorry, ruggedly hot dog.

Why don't we pull a ruggedly handsome to Murph and you can have the boiled hot dog one?

Yeah, agree.

Totally.

And we'll be the buns.

So, Jafard, I'm in a Curse of Strahd campaign.

Shout out with my DM and four other players.

Interesting.

Before we started, the DM laid some table rules, banning some spells and subclasses, including banning all summoning spells because they, quote, bog down combat too much.

While I accepted the rules at the time, in a recent story arc, we spent several sessions saving NPC townsfolk and sending them back to a stronghold.

After literal months of this, we went back to the stronghold to defend the NPCs from an onslaught of enemies.

At one point during combat, there were 14 enemy monsters on the field.

Wow.

They swooped in and killed several of the NPCs we spent months saving.

Playing a druid, I asked if I could use a spell like Summon Woodland Creatures to try to distract the enemies from the NPCs we had grown attached to.

RDM reiterated, no summon spells.

They slow down combat.

Huh.

Well, with 14 opponents, combat sounds like it's pretty laborious already.

Yeah.

Same thought.

I retorted, okay, but your 14 monsters on the field are slowing down combat way more than my summon spell would.

He got very defensive.

At one point, I think he spent 20 minutes describing the monster killing NPCs without a single one of us having a turn.

I asked you, most honorable Supreme Crit, is this fair?

Or should I have been allowed my summons?

So

yeah, this is not, this is the same thing as the like a penis hammer question, which is just, this goes way beyond the actual question.

You're trying to cover up the problem by putting a helmet on a penis.

Yeah, yeah.

Something isn't the problem.

I think it's not the worst restriction to say no summons.

I do think that the problem is the 14.

Yeah, I think your DM is just doing not a great job running combat and has built up this has built up you guys saving all these NPCs just to kill them in a laborious combat that makes you say, wait, what?

Yeah, it's a very wait, what?

That's like the worst when

someone's like, okay, like this is actually railroaded for you to lose, and it's railroaded for you to lose by having so many other combatants that it's going to be 20 minutes in between each turn.

Yes, yes, yes.

This is, I will say that Strahd, as a module, kind of does lean into this a little bit because I believe that.

I do.

They're just tables upon tables being like, you know, if they're here, like 2d6 of this show up.

Yeah.

So like you can, if you're not careful, you can end up with a situation where there are just like tons of monsters.

But I think there are like, there are smarter ways to handle that.

You like turn them into swarms, or honestly, you just kind of like have like a separate battle going on.

You've got like, you know, the town militia versus these monsters, and you're doing like individual roles, and like the players can like aid those roles if they need to.

I think, yeah, like it's it's tough though.

Like I do sympathize a little bit, but I think that the DM is like not meeting them in the middle here.

Yeah, but if you you have, if you have, like, 12 dire wolves in a, uh, in a fight, it's just you roll them all at the same time.

They all act on initiative 15 or whatever, or you split them up into two groups of whatever is half of what I said.

I don't remember the number I said, right?

Well, yeah, you've got like the home team and the away team.

Sure.

The dire wolves.

I think it's like so hard because it's like, I understand that realistically, there would be battles in which you're outnumbered.

I think that the point of tabletop is collaboration.

And when you're really outnumbered, it doesn't feel collaborative.

This is actually 14 seems like a lot.

This is, yeah, this is actually an interesting point, though, that Caldwell brings up that, like, the module might just be like, there's two or three D6 of these things.

So maybe there are like 14 or 15 or 16 of these monsters.

To which I would say, if you're going to go by the book and not make any amendments, then it is pretty bullshit to take away spells.

Yeah, because it's one thing

in a homebrew world, right?

To be like, look, I don't want to have a million combatants on the field before you make your characters, just so you know, we're not going to do these type of spells.

Yeah.

I think it's fine.

As long as everyone is on board, session zero, you can establish whatever the fuck you want, as long as everyone goes in knowing what to expect.

That being said, if you're going to have exactly what it says in the book and you have these de-powered druids and shit, then

the players aren't going to be able to fight back.

The module is made for them to have summon spells.

Yeah, there are a few spells that do not work.

I think like astral projection, teleport, and plane shift, I think.

Got you because you can't get out of Baroque.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's fine.

Yeah.

So like within the module as written, I don't think that like summoning are prohibited.

Yeah.

Which, yeah, it seems weird that you wouldn't be able to like call the creatures to your aid.

Yeah, I would say the one defense that this DM could have is what Caldo was saying, that like maybe this is just how the dice rolled and they're just running a module.

But that being said, if they are going to do that, they do need to keep in mind that you can't summon allies or anything like that because they made it that way.

You made your players less powerful, so you can't throw everything the module has at them.

I will also say, like, I don't know, when I started reading through the Strahd module, I was just like, I want to play this as straight as possible.

I want to, like, really follow the rules as closely as I can, but like, that's impossible and kind of makes it not fun.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

The module is there just as a guide, as like a source of inspiration, and basically to give you like a little chunk of text to read if you're lost.

Yeah.

And you have to treat it like that.

If you're going to be completely by the book, then you have to be completely by the book.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, you should have summons.

Yeah.

I think you should.

You should die by the book, die by the book.

You should get to summon Bahamut.

Yeah.

You should be able to use whatever Final Fantasy summon you want.

Yeah.

Ooh, Ifrit.

Ifrit would be great.

Which Ifrit are you thinking of?

Because there's a lot of different Ifrits of Final Fantasy VI.

What does he look like in Final Fantasy VI?

I think he's like a fiery guy.

Okay, cool.

He's always a fiery guy.

Yeah, but in like Final Fantasy X, he's like a real buff fiery guy.

Oh, he's always a real buff fiery guy.

Yeah,

he kind of looks like Blanca from Street Fighter.

He's got kind of a dog face in Final Fantasy X, though, which is pretty cute.

I don't recall.

I do not recall.

I'm telling you because you don't recall.

Yeah.

This is Attress All Over again.

Yeah, this is Attress All Over again.

So I think that we're going to rule against the DM.

We're not mad if you rolled that many combatants.

We're mad that you're not letting people summon.

And it is kind of your responsibility as the DM to make combat interesting.

You know what I mean?

So

if you look at the book and the book is just like, have the worst fight ever, you do have to be like, maybe I change that.

Maybe I change it for the worst fight ever.

A monologue narration of killing your allies is really fun.

You got to treat it kind of like an eighth grade dance or something like that, where it's just like, oh, wow, there's too many people on this side.

So I need to summon a lot of other people so that they can all dance together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you can definitely have, especially if the dice roll that way, where like you save a bunch of people and then they end up dying anyway.

That can be what the story is.

But generally, it is better to have like, you know, a Pyrrhic victory or something where like something bad does happen, but still the thing, some of the stuff you worked for did something.

Like, yeah, kill one ally, kill one NPC.

That's more meaningful.

Best friend,

one of the ones that was fighting alongside of them dies and but the other people get away.

I don't know.

I also wonder if they're sitting back there and it's saying, like, roll 2d6 or roll 3d6, and they roll a 14, it buys you some grace to say, oh, shit, I rolled really high, guys, and then lift up your DM screen and show everyone how high you rolled.

So it's kind of like, we're in the shit together.

Yeah, we are advocates.

We're advocates for some metagaming when it comes to that.

It's always more fun to be like, there's going to be two dice did it two d6 of the vampire spawn, and they can be pretty tough.

So there can be two or there can be 12.

I'm gonna roll this in front of the table.

That would, I can almost guarantee people would have responded better in that case because otherwise they just think that you're pulling some bullshit on them.

Yeah, you can villainize the dice a little bit if you want.

Yeah.

But that being said, it sounds like the DM was going by the module, except when it hurt you and benefited them.

So that's strange.

Unfortunately, we're going to throw them into the lamp.

They're getting lamped.

Ideally, you're going to start a love triangle with Jafar.

And then it just is too confusing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe the 14 monsters are on Jafar duty guarding the lamp outside in Caldwell's basement.

Yeah.

Them and all their monsters are, yeah, that's good.

And Jafar is honestly kind of strah core.

He's kind of strawberry.

So I think that you could really like learn a few tips and tricks from like monitoring Jafar and maybe falling in love with him.

I think I can 100% say that Jafar has been Strahd for Halloween.

Yes, definitely.

I think I can say that with

certainty.

I think you can say that with confidence, yeah.

Yeah, I'm saying, and I'm going to.

Jafar has been Stradd for Halloween.

We don't have to fact-check that.

Yeah,

we just know it's real.

Yeah, I'm sure there's a Halloween episode of Disney's House of Mouse, the TV show, where I think that Mickey Mouse runs a nightclub and all the Disney characters show up.

And maybe, maybe there's a Halloween episode and Jafar is dressed as Stradd.

Although, actually, it'd be cuter for them to do an episode where all the villains from Disney movies dress up as the heroes.

That's cute.

Oh, that's really cute.

Unfortunately, that was so fun.

Jafar is Aladdin, and you can finally see his abs poking out from that vest.

We already saw his abs when he became a genie and returned to Jafar.

Right.

He's yoked as hell.

He's absolutely yoked.

And you think that maybe he gets those when he's a genie, but I think he had the abs the whole time.

Maybe.

Oh, I guess you see him as a naked beggar man for a little bit.

I don't think he's got the

shape-shifting.

Oh, you're right.

He's using

a lot of money.

He's always had 0% body fat.

True.

Yeah,

he didn't have the bulk that he had as a genie.

Yeah.

He's eating a lot of functional nut butters.

Well, this DM is going to find out.

Yeah, you will find out if the true Jafar is yoked or not, because they're sentenced to a love triangle in the lamp to keep everyone from leaving and distracted Caldwell while he puzzles.

Keep us posted.

So Jafar.

It's a little Jafar-fetched, but all out.

And our next case comes from Allie.

Dear Justices, a holy Kong trinity of Donkey Kong, Bluster Kong, and Diddy Kong.

And the one I think is Tucker's little buddy.

That's me.

I feel so excited because I think I might be Bluster Kong.

Take them.

I want to be Donkey Kong.

I definitely don't want to be fucking Bluster Kong.

Jesus.

Bluster.

Do you need an intern?

Oh, no.

Oh, you could be Cucky Kong.

Me?

Thank you.

There you go.

Creeping all the time.

I don't remember what that song was.

The sound like a chicken from Parappa the Rapper.

Let us know if anybody out there is doing Bluster Kong's song for their first hands at their wedding.

It's very disappointing.

He's on in Bonanza.

Go ahead.

I come to you with the case of the railroaded DM.

My friends and I have recently started a new campaign.

I always ask my players for their feedback to build a more collaborative game.

Love it.

Including asking what themes players want in their character's narrative.

Love it.

Aw, that's really beautiful.

However, this has backfired.

What?

This wasn't just a nice one.

A new player is giving such specific feedback about where they want their character to go, even saying how specific NPC interactions should go.

Obviously, with the dice and player decisions, there's no way to guarantee an outcome.

And when the story has deviated from the player's fixed idea, they have given me negative feedback, even saying things like, quote, I wouldn't have run it that way.

Oh!

Kick them out.

Get them in the lamp.

Lamp their ass.

Jesus.

This player has one chance for you to be like, hey,

we're not writing fan fiction.

I'm mad

in real life.

It wouldn't even be fan fiction.

It would be like, I invited you to my home and did a lot of work.

We're not friends anymore.

This is a weight really from the DM.

This is making me feel insecure in my DMing because I'm always dreading the inevitable text message from this player post-session.

Yo, fuck out.

Fuck this person.

Fuck them forever.

God, I mean,

yeah, kind of block their phone number.

Yeah, block the level of entitlement.

I am so mad at this person in real life.

This is not a DD question.

This is a personal grievance I have with them.

I think you have to do a smokescreen text thread where everyone says they can't make it.

And there's like, you're having a lot of trouble scheduling the next session.

And then you just like fully make another.

I'm just going to say it.

We got to let Jafar out.

And let Jafar let Jafar at him.

Whoa.

We got to.

We just got to.

We got to let Jafar lose, I guess.

This is so bad.

I don't know if this is like too

far.

I don't know if this is too far, but like my feeling is that the only text you should be sending your DM after is like,

or even

after this session, I'm thinking about going in this direction with the character.

Do you like that?

I do that shit all the time.

And then you get feedback from the DM on if they're excited about your story.

I could see making a mistake and being like, oh, because they're giving feedback, they're giving too much feedback and giving too many notes and they just don't understand fundamentally what the game is and are over prepping or whatever.

I understand how that could just be like a snafu, but this person is just fucking brutal.

Yeah, this really taps into some of my real pet peeves in the world.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Jake.

Is there any more?

I mean, I don't think they're going to be redeemed or furious.

Go on.

I mean, we already, yeah, they do close out with a question.

I think we already know the answer.

Am I right to feel this is overstepping or am I being too sensitive, and I should just DM the book this player wants to write?

No.

Jafar is going to turn into a snake and swallow this person.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Jafar is unfortunately.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

And they're going to bite.

A snake with stealth ass.

All the effort we went to corral Jafar is just, it's always been overrun.

My baseball.

Jafar is loose now.

Jafar is fucking loose now.

He's loose in my goddamn house.

He had so many people guarding him.

We had a freaking 6-3 basketball player.

Yeah.

I know.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

So this is, yeah.

I mean, this is really unfair and this is rude on so many levels.

Like, as the DM, you have to do truly so much.

So to say, like, I would have run it differently is so

passive aggressive, bordering on actually aggressive.

Yeah.

And just really sucks.

And I hate it.

I really do too.

This person, I'm like, I'm actively mad at them for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the punishment is they're getting Jafar.

Yeah.

Jafar is loose, and it's their fault, yeah.

Jafar as a snake with stealth abs is coming after, yeah, and then I guess, how do you, I don't honestly, I know we, as a joke, sometimes, but also for real, sometimes tell people that they have to break up their group and get new friends.

Uh-huh.

This is, I think, one of the situations where you stop branding the game for this person.

I do think it's possible that you haven't expressed this to this person, that you've been too polite.

And so, you, I think that you, you have one chance to to be like, hey, just so you know, like D and D isn't really like you trying to write the book that you want to write.

It's much more, we let the dice tell the story.

It's much more collaborative.

So like, if you want to continue, I think that you can tell me the direction you're interested in going in, but you do have to be open to where the story goes outside of what you envision because it, it, you don't have control over the story.

I would say that and be less polite, but that's, I mean, what Emily's saying is perfect.

Yeah.

yeah, I just think the fact that they're so disrespectful, I can't imagine being at the table with them.

Like, my head would always just be cocked, like, what are you gonna say?

What are you gonna say?

Like, they're just rude, you know, they're judging you and stuff.

Like, yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Get rude, get this person out of your fucking, you don't have to get all new, uh, a whole new party, but you do need a new party member.

But I'm saying, if you want to hang on to this, then there is a chance, like, there's a small chance that this person just doesn't understand it.

And you have been so nice that you haven't tried to communicate that to them so you have a chance and if they are even vaguely snotty to you when you say this to them then yeah they're they're done they're not meant to do anything with other people they're an entitled person

interested in their vision yeah but at least you gave it your best shot if you say something yeah yeah i guess if you want to be really generous yeah you can just have this conversation with them about you know how that's it's not part of the game to decide everything ahead of time that's literally not what the game was it's also so like transactional and like entitled to be like hey you tell my story it's so weird on so many levels i would just not play with this person anymore just start a new text thread i would pay to read the text messages yeah

i would pay to read this text yeah i i think you start a new crew with uh the rest of the people yeah say

i think

you know you give them a chance right because that's the you give them a chance if you explain this to them would have run it differently

right i know but I'm saying, like, if you want to do this with the least amount of friction and coming out without anyone having any reason to have hurt feelings, you give it a chance to describe that this is different than them thrusting a story upon you.

And if they don't amend to that, then

you give them.

a nice t-ball, easy shot to apologize for their behaviors and

the lamp.

Or you throw Jafar at them.

Yeah.

Oh, right.

But you actually aren't going to have to deal with them because Jafar's theory is going to eat them.

Yeah.

Jafar is still bound to the rules of the lamp.

So, like, is somebody wishing for Jafar?

So we already wished.

We wished for.

So the problem is we have two more wishes from Jafar.

And I do think Jafar does do Monkey Paw wishes.

So I think

we don't know what's going to happen after Jafar.

Can we free another genie?

Not Jafar.

Just get fun.

We already.

All right.

Jafar is already loose.

Okay, my wish, because we have two more wishes.

My wish is that every genie needs to be free.

Oh, no.

Oh, wow.

that's cool now nobody gets wishes that's really yeah nobody gets wishes is that how it works well because every genie would be free yeah i guess they're free but then i think jafar just has a ton of power now yeah yeah

and then there would just be genies running loose with crazy powers that we don't have yeah it'd be it would be so destabilizing for the world and then i guess final wish is like the pasta pot from streganona but like with perfect control oh

what do we think i'm just spitballing here i'm almost like i just don't want to eat that much pasta Okay, but again, it's perfect control.

So, like, is there a different type of food?

I think maybe that's what the perfect control element is.

It's like it can be different types of pasta.

Okay.

You could do chickpea pasta.

Yeah, it could be a vodka penne.

It could be

a stroganoff if you wanted.

It's going to have trouble with bow tie, but it can do it.

All right.

That's the

soda element.

Sojourn.

The bow tie always comes out as a regular tie.

But obviously, we're on this dm side yeah don't don't let your players push you around in like a way that is honestly quite rude and maybe this person isn't as bad and so sorry if i went in too hard on them they just like really kind of made me feel mad for you i'm jafar is going to find out and jafar will i'm furious

all right let's see if we can cool down by entering church okay

all right i'm gonna dab some holy water on my face

i'm gonna eat some of my pocket pasta this one's from gabba Gublin.

Forgive me your honors, for I have sinned.

I play a support class and a curse of strahd shout out game with basically

strahd themed.

Loving it.

Digitiz mark goon in your campaign.

We'll find out when we do stories of strahd.

I've run the campaign before, so I have enjoyed sitting back and just helping the group explore the game and occasionally explain things from the side while the DM does their thing.

Cool.

In our last session, we all rolled like 100% grade A certified dog shit against a group of vampire spawn.

I was struggling to keep people from going down, and we were all banking on our assassin rogue and his sneak attack damage.

However, I realized about halfway through the combat that he had misread his assassin feature and thought it gave him advantage and auto-crits against anyone who hadn't taken a turn yet each round, basically anyone who went after him in initiative.

I knew it was wrong, but even rolling four times per turn, he was barely hitting.

And so in the interest of party morale, I said nothing.

In the end, we defeated the vampires and the rogue gotten a cool finishing blow.

But as my CCD teacher loved to remind us, a lie by omission is still a lie.

Therefore, I kneel before Dice Christ and his holy justice ears and beg for forgiveness.

I do think Jafar is going to get a free hit on you.

Oh, really?

I was going to, then you want to know what?

I think Javar gets a free hit on me, too.

I have seen people do things wrong or take two bonus actions, two reactions, stuff like that.

Other people in the party.

And like, if I think it's going to become like something that people debate and it makes them look bad, I try to say something, but otherwise, I let it happen.

I do get this though, because it's such a momentum.

Lawyering on someone else's behalf can be kind of strange sometimes, especially I think in this case, it sounds like maybe you picked up on it after it had already been happening for a little while.

I think the move here would be to the next time be like, or before the next session, so everyone knows the stakes going into the next thing,

that that's not how the assassin ability works.

We've had a ton of combats and stuff where like we realize afterwards, oh, we shouldn't have been able to be allowed to do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And next time we just don't do it.

You know what I mean?

And I think sometimes when you already established that something can happen in the middle of combat, you just kind of let it happen for the rest of that fight.

Very important to establish the stakes with Vampire Spawn.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

But sometimes, though, i mean like it's kind of like it sounds like dice crisis was having you were getting your punishment the bad roles were coming right so seems as though uh you know you've served your served your time yeah yeah i'm i would say i'm 50 50 on

rules lawyering someone else when it's like that i don't know when the situation is super super dire and it's just like actually you need to hit a dc 18 not a dc 17 on that i'll be popping back up or something when we like perform it i'll be like looking out for people so that people aren't mad at them.

Although I won't always say something.

If I'm playing with just my friends, I'm never

sure, sure.

Yeah, it is like trying to break my spells.

Yeah, it's reminding the teacher that you have homework at the very end.

I think like the best way to correct this is maybe next time they start doing it to be like, oh, is that...

I feel like maybe I'm wrong, but you kind of like put yourself in a position where you're like, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think it's supposed to be that way.

Even that's a little icky, but like, that's the way to get it.

I think you just say it at the top of like a session session so everyone knows what's happening.

If you think

you could secretly just be like, hey, I actually clocked this during the thing, and I didn't say anything, but um, just for the next fight, I, this is a thing.

Oh, actually, maybe, like, invite them to like a parking garage

at night and then, like, just confess that you knew this the whole time, but you didn't say anything.

But they were wearing a wire and they play it forever,

and then you show the DM, yeah,

and then Jafar pulls up in a car and gets out and beats the shit out of you.

A Jaqar,

Right, it is a jet black Jaqar.

A Jaqar.

It's a Jaguar, but.

Oh, sick.

Jafar times a Jaguar Jaqar.

Shit.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think.

Is he even a villain at this point?

He's just cool now.

Trap me in the lamp, man.

Trap me.

He has a freaking power card.

I think it's, yeah, it's not really your, as essentially a like helper that has already run through this.

It's not really your responsibility to tell on the other players.

Yeah.

I, I, especially in a situation where it's like the stakes are already dire.

This is your only hope.

I don't know.

I don't think this is that big a deal.

I think tell them next time because you don't want to base your whole campaign on, you know, this thing that the character shouldn't be allowed to do.

They'll be unbalanced.

Maybe it worked out this one time because everyone's rolling like shit, but in the future, it will, you know, work against the party to a certain extent because this one person will just be playing their character wrong.

But for this one fight, I think it's not a huge deal.

We've had this happen.

Not that we knew going into it that something was wrong, but we've definitely had it be where like we thought

this spell wasn't concentration or something.

Maybe they would have, the character would have died had we not known that.

It's like you're not going to retcon and go back and be like, actually, the character is dead or something like that.

That would have sucked.

That'd be a wait what moment.

Yeah.

So understand why you feel guilty, but circumstances were pretty dire and you decided not to raise your hand and tell everyone that you had homework.

And so,

you guys, you guys rolled like shit that whole time.

Yeah, you rolled like shit.

Dice Christ was already furious at you for something else.

We don't know what.

Tell him next time, and you are forgiven.

So forgiven.

So Jafar.

Jaffard.

So Jafard.

So Jafard.

Thank you all so much for listening.

We'll be doing more bonus cases over on our Patreon, patreon.com/slash natpod.

That's N-A-D-D-P-O-D.

Don't sing yet.

Don't do it.

Don't even think about it.

We stopped.

Jafar, Jafar.

We've got some things we'd like to plug.

We've got Dimension 20 live show in

Vegas

in November, so be on the lookout for that.

Search Dimension 20 Live to get tickets for that.

Where are we playing?

Starstruck.

Oh, yeah.

I

might try to wear a bodysuit.

She might try to wear a bodysuit, ladies and gentlemen.

You're going to wear your Fred Flintstone costume, right?

Pillowcase?

Yeah.

I'm going to rock the pillowcase for sure.

What do you think I meant when I said bodysuit?

I'm also talking about wearing a Fred Flintstone pillow costume.

A Dino bodysuit.

Skin type.

Purple.

Does anyone else have anything?

Yeah, sure.

I'll plug one of my favorite webcomics I've been reading recently.

It's by this person named Beetle Moses on Instagram.

He does web comics I would describe as like, you know, new age far side in the best way possible.

I really, really love them.

So check out Beetle Moses on Instagram.

Hell yeah.

All right.

Hell yeah.

And I'm out Substack at Jay Kurwitz over there.

Sweet.

Wow.

Check that out.

In the meantime, you can follow us on social media that Remay Remain I use at CH4sMe at ColdScaldwall, AddieXwords Emily, and at Jay Her, which is Jake.

And you can talk about the show online using hashtag NADPOD.

That's NADD P-O-D.

You are nation.

Jeffrey Farm.

Ah, it is time to thank our benevolent council of elders.

They are Brad D, Jeffrey S., Lord of the Fjord, later McSkater, Matt M, Cutter W, Jeff C, Daniel G, Danny L, the Dastardly Dame, Carpe Liam, Victor T, aka Valnor's Boy, Hoyt's friend, Justin I, Danny, Danster, TJM, Trele, the Cray, Christopher B, Damiel R, Jordan L, Cyborg Version of Josh Josh the Kobald, Targat, Stevie Wags, Hellish Rebuker, the NBDMPHD, Princess Yar, Jory S., Jack L, Nicholas C., the star of every film ever made in Bahumia, Mike Hightower, Alka Smelter Plus, Great Value Gemma, Tyler F., Carborough Chapel Hill, FPV, Cece Lulu, Bald Byrne, Heracule Poirot, the Rabbit Folk Detective, Timmy R., Jake's Jerk Jelly, Hashtag CCC, Cass Skateboard Cass Steven Bowie is Seattle's hockey mascot UC Mike K, Nick W, William W, Big Bad Beardo the Mad, Eric McD, Adorama, Percival, Red Rickstein, von Mussel, Klowowski, De Rolo the Third, Jay Dragonborn, Guardian of the Vibe, honoring the cock, impressive Dongle, Ben A, Dave H, Dustin S.

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DPC is awesome.

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Russell H., a monk named Dilgo.

Yes, the whole thing.

Yes, every time.

Cody C, Lorelei, the succubi, and Kira, the succulent snack.

McKenna, stout, your friendly neighborhood yacht and yunkle, Andrew and Sid, soon-to-be education specialist John Adams.

Hell yeah.

Meg, the mail carrier of Bahumia.

James F., Wayfarer now has to do something with the trolls.

Get rid of them.

Turn to page 42.

Keep them.

Turn to page 69.

Oreo, or should I say hydrox?

Barpo, good barrel, bard, Barian, Garrett G, one big curd, Charlie Brown's best friend, Renee, the monster captain, Olivia the Enchanting Bard, and Jared the Soap Opera Cleric are now performing ballads from the age of stories.

Blue, Ash, Fico, Garrett, the Artificer, Anthony, the rattest of dudes, Jay, the fairies have returned to debauchery and now must go to the Carnal Corner.

Cantrip Dumbledore, the Bear Onesie-Wearing Barbarian, Lexi H, MJ, the BFG, Roger L.

Nodrog, the pass-a-fist barbarian, John Luca, Leon K, legendary hero of Bahumia from a future campaign, Shenanigans O'Connor, Mios the Great, Joshua S., Alexander, Linz W, Sky the Wise, aka the lone dungeon master, Johnny Dude K, the mischief of nadpods, familiars, Pabu Eskinor, the Goliath Paladin, providing service with a smile, Kit and their cat, Jakewell Murphily, wow, nice, Tim M, Dragon Knight 86, Tiles Lamar, T-R, MLG, Cheeto, Shel B, Kenna's first favorite sprite girl, very cool way to honor Beardsley's baby with a quangle.

Even hard ones watch this made an appearance.

Snailis, who's infecting Worcestershire for within.

Vegan, roll by Taylor, Jared and Olivia, who are house sitting for the triplets while they're away.

Oh no, Mimos Guydays, Megan N., Anthony B, Balnor's best friend, Steve, Stephanie of House and Zunza, Benjamin A, Gimli the Corgi, Pawpawn Foster's canine friend, Michael A.

Josh Hole, pilot of the Nightmareverse Flight.

The two crew blew through.

Kelsey A.

Ethan the mailman, Maple the Shy Bookworm, Ash Asaurus, Seth the Stroker, Bearer of All Hog-related Burdens, Billy B., Tori the Tungsten, Dragoose, Accidental Sharer of Recipes, Michael L.

S.

II, Carl B., Plumber of the Realm, Dex Riddlewell, Ace Dregs, High Lord of Critzburg, Vinn Diagram, Catamilius the Consumed, Clinton P., Cam the Vampire, Frogman, Dean, Jake W, Hi Mom, Tuesday Cross, only here for the surf and murph, Dave Nadpod saved my life but stole my wife, O.

Steve L., Tyler McM, Alex G, Zibby DeBacheri, Kaylee, Katarina, C, Misty, the crispy kitty, really hates flame skulls, Greg W.

There's so many of us now, but hey, you're doing great and we love you.

Thanks for that.

Baaruch Thunderhelm, fifth generation Minotaur, working as an abandoned labyrinth tour guide.

Chupak Aubrey, Bony is Dead, The Waterworth, Nick Amy, Aegis Kunari, Ignition Class Pedal Storm, Charlemagne, Not the God, DJ Dramamine, Ulrek von Zarevich, my favorite patron, makes me say penis on my show, Chef Julie B, Jen the Rowdy, Caitlin H, and of course, Buttwax.

Thanks, everybody.

That was a Hitgum podcast.