D&D Court: Stolen Spells, Petulant Paladins, and Whacked Werehippos

This is a head gun podcast.

Welcome to Dungeon Court, everybody.

Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and the Loli Loli Loli

Lulo.

Caleb

Purwitz.

Perfect amount of lols, actually.

Yeah.

Nine perfect lolies.

Back to school.

We got to get back to order here.

Things are.

Yeah, you're right.

We need to reset, I think.

Do I have nine TVs all at the same time playing the busy world of Richard Scary?

Because that was nine perfect Lolis.

Whoa.

Joke was for no one.

No.

Is Lolius for Colton?

Is Loli the name of the worm?

Yeah, the worm.

We have.

I know that we have on our fridge, we have a magnet.

Yes, that someone sent to us.

But

I believe that magnet is a picture of you as Loli Worm.

It's the wife worm, isn't it?

Whoa, really?

I didn't even know that was custom.

That's awesome.

Closer.

Wow.

I didn't recognize my own wife as Loli.

Dude, you have to get that as a tattoo.

Yeah,

you have to now.

If you looked at a big trough of worms, you couldn't even recognize your wife, man.

Think about your life.

Can you pick your wife out of a film?

If your wife was a freaking pile of worms, could you pick her out of a freaking pile?

If you were in a spirited away situation and your wife got wormed because she was eating at a beautiful trough of food.

It's not exactly the same thing.

But could you pick her out?

No.

You got to go on another journey or adventure, man.

Yeah.

All right.

And with that, let's throw to Jake Hurwitz.

Let's journey to Jake.

Let's journey to Jake indeed.

Hear ye, hear ye.

Crit is now in session.

The honorable Supreme Crit Justices Oxford, Murphy, and Tanner are presiding.

And our first case comes from one Stephen P.

Stephen writes: to the effervescent justices and juck, don't screw it up, buddy.

Juck.

It's so hard to come up with the new insulting names, but Juck is really.

It's like a chuck and a joust, right?

It's like when you're jousting, but you try and huck your lance.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You should be allowed to do that.

You should be allowed to do it.

Hold on, is this a joust or a juck?

Oh.

I need to know ahead of time.

It's a risky move.

It's definitely a risky move.

Because if you miss, I mean, it'd be hard to miss.

Yeah, then you have no joust, unfortunately.

I mean, there are rules because theoretically, you could just hit their horse and really like buck stuff off.

So you could put that image in your head.

That's that's really unpleasant.

Yeah, really unpleasant.

Stephen P.

Stephen P, what were you saying?

Please.

Let's get back to Stephen P.

Okay.

Stephen P is saying, one year, the first ever campaign I was in, did a special Halloween homebrew one-shot.

Yes.

My character was bitten by a hippo and turned into a wear hippo.

That's really cool.

And was not cured by the end.

I asked if it was canon, and the DM said yes.

Wait, you said a Halloween one-shot, and it's, I guess, part of their website.

So it might have been people do like a one-shot with their characters.

Right.

Okay, so again, canon.

Anything that happens in this Halloween one-shot happens in your campaign.

I guess that was like the true spooky reveal, though.

The whole thing was canon.

It was all canon, after all.

So this person is a wear hippo.

Awesome.

And Stephen writes, I leaned into the bit hard.

I started getting more wary of my party and was becoming more hostile.

I wanted things to come to a head with some kind of intervention.

A few weeks later, the DM suddenly started the session by saying the moon was full and I turned into a rampaging hippo throughout town.

Oh, my party knocked me out and I had to make death saves.

I rolled a nat 20 to revive with one HP.

The DM made me transform again before I could be restrained.

Then, after I was knocked out again, a party member decided the safest thing to do was kill me.

What?

Just, what like werewolf movie is this person watching?

Right.

Just like, we have to put the dog down.

Yeah.

We've got to euthanize this hippo.

Yeah.

I took it very personally for a while.

It was my first character after all, and there were some arguments after the fact.

Ultimately, I was making a character choice that didn't pay off how I wanted, and I accept that.

This case is not against the player who killed me.

It should be.

Justice is, was it okay for the DM to spring the full moon on me at the start of a session, let my character be fully killed, and then expect expect me to sit there for the remainder of a six-hour session without anything to do.

I wasn't warned so that I could maybe have a new character ready.

I wasn't allowed to play the DMPC.

My death was moved on from after a few minutes, and then he started running them through some adventure he had already prepped while I was just kind of there.

Oh,

come on.

Oh my gosh.

You want to play a peasant or something?

So I'm like almost trying to get flashbacks to be like, have we ever had someone talk about a problem player?

And then we're like, just turn him into a wear hippo and and kill him off.

Yeah.

This does sound familiar.

Was this the coup?

Yeah.

So at first, I wasn't that mad at the DM because I was just like, yeah, they just had like a fun little encounter planned where they were going to like essentially find out about the hippo problem, restrain the hippo, and try to get him under control.

But that's not what happened.

And so the player ends up getting killed.

I do, to a certain extent, a huge extent, blame the player that decided to put him down.

That's a wild move.

I still think that, I still am really curious why the, I mean, it really depends on your world, but being aware hippo sounds like a huge deviation for a lot of characters.

So I am really confused why the DM was like, nah, it's canon now.

Do you think that the DM just thought it was like kind of funny when it was like, am I aware hippo now?

And they're like, yeah, sure, yeah, you are.

It was a joke.

Yeah, like it was offhand.

Like, yeah, you know what?

It was canon.

Thanks for asking.

It wasn't going to be.

You know, it's hard to know the mind of a DM because as we've all DM'd before, we know that we are complex beings.

Sure.

And also making a lot of...

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say, and also making a lot of random split decisions that you're not thinking about.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

A lot of 50-50 calls.

We are rushing to the toilet to vomit into it, and we're not going to make it sometimes.

A lot of sures that come out as yes.

Oh, I hadn't considered that.

Yes.

I think the fact that it was never established, it sounds like it wasn't established that it wasn't canon.

So if you're going to do wacky stuff in a session and it carries over, that's kind of not the problem here.

And the player even leaned into being aware hippo.

So that kind of has nothing to do with it.

But that's them being a good player and a supportive person at the table.

So I'm saying right off the bat, everything's fine up until they're killed and then have to sit through a six-hour session.

Like,

that's rough.

It's the whole table at that point.

It's the whole table.

It's the DM and even the players that didn't say like, hey, don't kill the hippo.

Yeah, who are the other players that are sitting there that is convinced by the one guy going, we need to put him down?

Everyone else is just like,

just imagining a situation where, like, Moonshine gets taken over by like a fungal entity and Beverly's just like, we gotta take her out.

And Hardware's just like, I agree.

I thought she would be dangerous.

Do as you must, young boy.

Like, if that happened, that would be the rest of us.

That would be.

I'm still in here.

Yeah.

I think if they did that, that would be the same.

It would be like a weird thing.

It'd be a fucking 10-episode arc.

It would be like the splitting of the party, and then the ghost of moonshine haunts you.

That would not be something you fucking move on for.

I still think, though, the like six hours without getting that player involved, and they weren't allowed to take over a DMPC.

Yeah.

That to me is like, that's on the DM's shoulder.

Minimum, you should be allowed to play your DM Switch 2 while everyone else is playing.

I think this is a major mistake on the DM's part, too, because if you are a wear hippo, right, or any kind of lycanthrope, and you know that obviously on the full moon, you're going to go nuts, you can like plan accordingly.

Like the moon does have, but a pattern, and that's that's like my big umbrage here.

I don't usually have umbrage, but I am going to bring a little bit of umbrage to the table.

Put on your umbros and take some umbrage.

It's a special eclipse, and I've got my umbros on.

Everyone, get your glasses out.

Does umbro make glasses?

I thought it was shorts.

Well, you need the umbros, but you also need the eclipse glasses.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

cool.

The joke isn't funny enough for us to extend it this long.

Anyway, I just think that like the moon, having to track fucking moon cycles because of lycanthropy sucks.

And I don't think, unless you're like a DM that really likes that and has like clocks and are like keeping your players in touch with that.

I think it just like bogs down campaigns.

And I don't think that it's like worth it.

I think you should like...

Worst, I think that like best case, you like roll a d4 and you say like, okay, the moon is like waxing, waning, full, or empty.

And then we play it from there.

And then we like check in on this every like session and we like roll it again to figure out what the moon is.

I don't know.

I just feel like having to keep track of that just like burdens everyone at the table.

Maybe it's fun, but I think that it's just too much.

Isn't there a happy medium?

where you're like, okay, like ask the DM if you want this to be a plot point, you have to say in three days, the moon's going to be full, right?

Like, right, so you're not tracking.

Or start, start the session at sunset instead of nighttime full moon.

Yeah, it opens, the sun is setting, and you know it's a full moon.

Springing a full moon on a lycanthrope is fucked up like you're automatically doing pvp that they're not prepared for you're definitely aware of when the moon is going to be full if you're a lycanthrope i don't think that gets sprung yes exactly so you were you're not like shit i've been so busy i haven't looked at the fucking and it would be warm if that's so early i were that dm if i were that dm right i could see myself making that mistake where i'm like okay at the beginning of the session i'm gonna have a fun thing yeah where uh you look up and oh shit it's a full moon and part of it is dealing with the wear hippo but then i think i am when i see that my players are being fucking maniacs and trying to like kill the one person yeah i think i am narrating them murdering an innocent person i'm like being like cool you put your swords to your friend's quivering throat as he's gasping for breath you can see humanity still there and we're gonna do that okay this hippo still has steven's eyes yeah but the hippo's wearing his dad's wristwatch.

The paladins lose their powers.

The clerics lose their powers.

And then we're going to take an hour for this guy to come up with a new character.

I don't.

I don't feel as angry as the players because I do think it's like they got him down once.

He got back up.

I really just fully am like, this is kind of on the DM's shoulder.

They wanted this to go how it went.

So I think I just blame the DM.

I blame everyone except for this player here,

the person who submitted.

Yeah, the player really did no wrong and actually was like kind of cool about it.

Like,

asked if it was Canada.

They leaned into it.

It was like a slow build.

I'm going to be a wear hippo for you guys.

Yeah,

the very least you could do as the DM here is to be like, oh shit, I didn't think they were going to kill you.

Let's get you set up with a new character.

While you're building this character, I'll narrate this next scene and I'll introduce you in the town that's to.

And like, maybe there's an hour difference where you're building your character and coming up with like a quick backstory.

There's just a million things that you can do and the DM fucked all of them.

You could also have like a herd of wear hippos that have been following this new wear hippo

emerge from the bushes and say and they like somberly carry off your hippo body into the brush like and vow to avenge you wow it's called a bloat a pod a herd a crash or a thunder but usually bloat is the term for bloat of hippos yeah that's awesome savage you would think the players would want a hippo on their side if they could could control that lycanthropy.

I know, but I think that this player was trying to play it earnestly, which the horror of lycanthropy is that you are unable to control yourself and you do things that you don't want to do.

So I think that I think they were trying to truthfully play lycanthropy.

I really think that the DM just set them up.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Everyone's, yeah, everyone did a bad job except for you.

I think it's pretty safe to say we're going to, I'm down to rule against literally everyone else at the table besides this player.

I think killing their friend is nuts wow i think the whole the whole table and it can be varying degrees of punishment sure you know dm is like 75 at fault but everybody else is maybe 20 and then five percent okay i'm personally just going for the dm though are we a hung jury is this what a hung jury is is this what a hung jury is

you don't think there's anything wrong with the players putting down their friend after one encounter but where they already have them restrained and at one hundred we don't know what this untrustworthy dm was narrating oh

you think that the dm was horrific

all of the all of the verifiable plot points point towards the dm so it could be that's really interesting emily all right well because i believe the dm did say oh my god thank you so much

can you guys leave this is my chance

she's finally gonna make her move

no you guys can't get double married it's not fair you'd be too powerful i guess

i have two ring fingers God love.

I can get double married.

I guess the DM could have been doing the opposite of what I was doing of like the guilt narration towards the players.

Could have been like, you can see there's no one home behind his eyes.

Like, they could have been doing that.

You're right.

Okay.

Yeah.

And the player could have been playing it if they were like trying to be truthful to lycanthropy.

They could have been playing it with no humanity.

I would say that the DM should have like had a moment where they're like, as you come back to, you have a moment before you transform where you're allowed to give a final plea to your fellow players or something like that.

I just, yeah, the DM was being certainly harsh here.

So I think that this player is allowed to get double married.

Can I ask a question?

Do we have ring fingers on our toes?

Oh, we have ring toes?

I don't think so.

No.

I don't think they call that a ring toes.

They don't call it a ring toe.

They call it a big toe instead of a thumb.

So it seems like they all have different names.

Oh, they all have different names.

Yeah, I guess.

So what's the name of the ring finger?

The little piggy.

The second.

This little piggy, this

winter market.

So they're all little piggies except for the piggyback.

I think they're all this little piggy.

Yeah.

They're all just little piggies.

They're all little piggies with different activities.

Yeah,

okay.

All right.

On Wikipedia.

It's probably something dactyl.

The first toe known as the hallex.

That's the big toe.

Great.

That's not a little piggy, so that's not really.

Wow, the hallex.

That's a cool nickname for me, by the way.

Hallex.

Yeah.

You wish you were the big toes.

You were the one who was a little bit of a little

piggy.

You wish you were the big toe, but you're a little piggy.

You're the freaking little piggy that went to market.

All right, well, let's find out what the name for the little toe is because it might be cool.

No, it's just baby toe, pinky toe.

Oh, it is a pinky toe.

Okay, so that's weird that there's a pinky and a pinky.

The fourth toe, known as four-toe or ring toe.

Oh,

ring toe.

It sounds like a disease.

Well, you could have like a pinky toe and then a rinky toe.

A rinky toe.

What about that?

I like that.

Okay, so it's a rinky toe.

We have to punish this DM.

Maybe throw them into a bloat of hippos.

But what if they just had to wear a really fancy diamond on each rinky toe?

Whoa.

How uncomfortable would that be to dangle your rinky toes over a bloat of hippos?

You have to go to a hippo enclosure and dangle your rinky toes.

That's so dangerous.

And maybe put a really valuable diamond ring on your rinky toes.

Or they love like smashing like a melon.

Did you ever see a hippo just like crush a freaking melon?

Okay, so maybe take the expensive diamond out of the ring socket and put in a little watermelon.

Hold melon seeds between your rinky toes.

We got it.

And feed the hippos.

Can I get the name of the other two?

Yeah, of course.

Well, second toe is indexed to our points your toe.

Pointer toe?

I'm always pointing with my points.

These are lazy points.

I'm always pointing with my points.

Toes are freaking rehashes of fingers.

I'm going to say it.

They are.

I'm always demonstrating with my points your toe.

And what's the middle one?

Maybe it.

It could have been Jim or something like that.

Unfortunately, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, it's just middle toe.

Okay.

Yeah.

There you go.

That's a bad phalange.

Okay.

Okay.

So it's going to be a hippo-toe situation.

So ordered.

So totered.

Zach C writes, Aloha to the judges of the Supreme Crit and barely Jake.

Aloha.

Aloha.

Not less than Jake, barely Jake.

Barely Jake.

Oh, it's kind of cool.

Barely Hallecks, you mean.

You wish, Lilic.

Reed.

Little piggy.

Man, I want to go back in time and start a punk band named Hallex.

There is a band called Halifax.

Go on.

Oh, yeah, they're good, too.

I start my defense with a question.

How scared would you be if 24 horses ran past you?

Ah!

Not scared at all.

I'm the fucking bravest motherfucker out there.

Hallex doesn't fear.

Haven't you ever seen Flow?

It means that a freaking waterfall is coming.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, I mean, it's Lion King all over again.

I cooked up a scenario where a group of highly trained assassins masquerading as vagabonds were guarding the BBEG's base.

My players sniffed out their disguise, but rather than fighting them, the bard cast conjure animals in an attempt to scare them away from the entrance.

Okay.

He at first tried summoning eight horses and made them run past them.

I ruled that horses wouldn't really scare a hardened group of assassins.

You have eight of them?

This is kind of the clown problem.

Hold on.

Yeah.

A hardened group of assassins, and the spell doesn't have any fear component.

He became disgruntled at this ruling and instead of switching tactics, doubled down and upcasted the spell, summoning 24 horses.

Sounds like he tripled down.

He didn't want them to engage in combat, so we just had them run around a bunch.

Eventually, guards were called because of the horses running amok, and the players ended up having the horses fight the guards while they fought the assassins.

Judges, should I have let their scheme work?

What should have been a short obstacle became a large, session-consuming argument?

The player is still salty months later, and I wonder if I should have just let it work.

This is so interesting because, like, really, flow, the movie flow, does suggest that if you see 24 horses running, that you do need to worry about water levels.

It was like deer in their

unit, right?

But still, still, any running horde of animals is concerning.

It means they saw something bad.

They don't just, I mean, they do kind of just run for fun.

They don't really run in packs for fun.

No, but anytime you see animals moving like that, it's like either there's a flood coming or a lion is about to commit wretchedness.

I guess we have to run for fun.

Like

wild horses.

Not a pack that big.

You can't see them just running.

This is also D and D, though, where like

magic is real.

You're right.

A stampeding horse might not be of concern to somebody whose job is to guard a castle.

Can I suggest though that

the animal kingdom is so magical that sometimes I want to ascribe its properties to D and D.

Yeah.

Because it is the closest thing we have to magic in this mundane world.

There are ancient languages being spoken.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, look, I would be scared if I saw one horse walking by me.

Yeah.

Dude, horses are so fucking big.

You fucking

fucking.

You fucking forget.

I know they're porn.

I don't even know they're big.

I don't think you do.

I do.

I think you're picturing a horse and you're like, oh, yeah, like, its head is at my shoulder.

I know, dude.

You're probably way ahead of me.

Murph, you're picturing a pony.

I think I do.

You're picturing a mini pony.

I'm not picturing Murph, you're picturing a Hobbit horse, dude.

Mick, Murph,

when you're picturing this, do you have a coin in your fingers that you're going to put into the horse to then ride on it?

Yeah.

To put into it.

Yeah.

You're picturing a horse.

Because that's a hobby horse.

Oh, I was thinking about a hobby horse.

Yeah, you're right.

I was like, it's plastic.

It sits in a grocery store.

I am not allowed to ride on it because I'm an adult.

Oh, but you guys are talking about real horses.

No, okay.

Yeah.

So I do think like these players have to understand that the DM has a lot of, and the NPCs have a lot of the same information that the PCs have, which is that they live in a magical world where people cast spells.

So if you're guarding something, the idea that just seeing like non-threatening animals run by could very easily be a magical trick, trick, which it was.

I guess if you want to be totally above board, a lot of times what I will do in these situations is I will literally roll in front of the board.

I think I would flat out tell my players, hey, they know that spells are real and that there are druids, so they're not.

going to be fooled easily, but I'll let them do an insight check.

And if they get a seven or higher, they're going to sniff this out for what it is.

And then I roll it in front of the table.

I think handling it that way is a lot better than just kind of having an argument about it or just like hand waving it saying it doesn't work.

I'd make the DC higher because by that logic, there's so much illusion magic that has built into it.

If you want to realize that this is an illusion, you have to roll like a 15 intelligent save, right?

Right.

Is it an illusion?

I think that isn't illusion.

But this is real.

That's what it's saying.

This is conjuration.

So it's also real.

Yeah.

But they're like, I don't even think they were like guarding something though, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Their job is to protect from anything attacking the castle including horses not even a magical world if i was guards get scared guards guards get scared in front of a castle and i saw horses running i would still stay at my post but these are assassins right so like they are trained to do a task i think what you have done is you've just like you've sent 24 horses to their death and you're just gonna have to like sit there and watch as your dm rolls initiative for all these assassins and all these horses and watches this battle play out you could do some kind of role that's like a courage save or something for like you know maybe a few of them flee but why would you flee if you were just guarding somewhere, why would you flee?

You wouldn't, you wouldn't flee.

You might not permanently flee, but you would probably knee-jerk, run away, and then be like, what if I die?

If that was just

that was just 24 horses, I gotta run back to my post.

If you saw, but it's so weird, Murph.

It's so weird.

So it's not.

It's not really weird, but you live in a magic horse.

I just think that these Murph, these are full-size horses.

Oh, shit.

Okay, sorry.

Let's do it.

Let's think about this in Jason Bourne analogies in Jason Bourne terms.

In Jason Bourne,

one of the things that he has to do for training is to learn how to drive a car really well.

And I think he gets a car driven at him.

So you have to imagine that assassins in this world have undergone horse training, where horses are just being driven at them non-stop.

As part of his training to learn how to drive, he gets

as part of his CIA training.

As part of his training to become a spy.

Oh, okay.

Let's put it in fantasy terms.

Just imagine them to be a fan.

I mean, Jason Bourne is a fantasy.

I'm sure.

Yes.

I failed.

He's our fantasy.

Specifically, Oliver.

Specifically,

I don't specifically care about Jason Bourne that much, so it's more of a you guys.

There's an active, there's a password for each of us.

It will unlock our Jason Bourne abilities.

We just haven't discovered it yet.

But just

imagine the guards of Gondor standing at the wall.

Yeah.

And then a bunch of...

horses.

I think they're no, not even, not wargs, because those are like wolves.

Those are actually dangerous.

That's true.

Even if they were wolves, even if 24 wolves came sniffing up to the wall and then left, the guards wouldn't drop their bows and flee.

They might get ready.

They might, if anything, that would alert them.

Or they might be like, oh, good.

Now we have a cavalry.

Come, horses.

This is good for us.

I think you're giving the guards too much credit.

And we actually need to go to a guard stat block because that's going to tell us what is their courage.

Well, these aren't guards, though.

They're assassins.

They're assassins dressed as vagabonds.

Yeah.

Guards came out afterwards.

Should we ask an actual assassin?

I'm here.

What do you need to know?

Oh, wow.

I forgot that you went to assassin.

We're not talking about comedy.

I forgot that your passcode has been.

I need to do that.

Oh, yeah.

Let me just try out a couple passcodes real quick.

Slither, 17.

Slither, 17.

Full moon, full moon.

Red, red, underscore the truth.

What do you need me to do?

Yes, I got her.

Shit.

I'll try mine.

It starts with Halleck.

Oh, fuck.

Emily's choking out Murphy

okay so because he's right I think I mean look it would be concerning especially if you if you were in the middle of a forest and fucking 30 horses ran by there would be like where's the natural disaster yeah there would but if you're at a castle and horses just come sniffing around

I think you could have if you were at the complete top of your game, you could have been like, I'm going to roll something to, and if they roll really high, they're going to straight up know something is up.

And if they roll really low, maybe they'll be concerned and a few of them will go poking out or they'll open up some gate or investigate.

They'll disband.

They'll give you some kind of advantage, something like that, so that you could maybe sneak in.

But the idea that they would like get scared and run off is yeah, you're right.

I think also because the player insisted on not using them in an aggressive way and just having them run, that you're right.

Like in order for them to be a problem for the guards to deal with, the horses would have had to go on the attack.

Yeah.

yeah.

The player also did escalate this.

Like, it was already an argument, and then the player's like, all right, fine, fuck you.

It's 24 horses.

Yeah,

they're trying to brute force it when the DM already did the wink, wink, it's not going to work.

And then this player, it just, the game is entirely in the DM's mind.

So you can't just be like, fuck you, I know how this works.

Like, the DM can do literally whatever.

You're not going to fucking win that argument.

If they weren't actually trying to say fuck you, if they were like, okay, let me see if 24 will be.

Well,

it doesn't sound like it was good nature.

Yeah, the table-consuming argument.

Yeah.

The only version of this I can see where the player wins is they just spend all of their spell slots making horses, and then they're super weak for the next confrontation.

So the DM still wins regardless, but it just seems like it's not worth it.

The fact that

they're assassins and they're like on a mission and they're guarding something just makes it so different than any other

situation.

Beyond that, I actually think that I think that the horses needed to run at them and attack them in order for it to disturb the assassin.

If they're just galloping across the plane, that's inspiring.

Yeah,

that's just a Lisa Frank notebook.

They would be able to tell if it was inspiring and if the horses were running wild and free and proud.

I think they would be able to tell that.

Yeah.

With a perception check.

That's true.

You would have had to, like, also,

you shouldn't have done this.

I'm also lying when I say this, but like, you could have been like, the horses have to roll a a performance check to seem as though they're running from a flood yeah

see right that

wet i do kind of can you conjure them so early i do think that that's actually kind of a good

25 percent there needs to be a roll or something i know it's not like in the book to say to do like a deception check for something like that but they should do a deception check like just do use your um magic modifier or whatever your like your spell attack modifier and have them roll a deception check the dm could have done something like that but they don't have to to do that.

That's not rules as written.

The player doubled down when they shouldn't have doubled down.

Yeah.

You know, Jake was singing it a little bit, dispatches the wild horses.

I feel like these players could listen to dispatch.

I think we gotta, they're gonna put on rings, and the rings are gonna have carrots tied to them on their toes, and they're gonna dangle their toes at the horse enclosure.

Oh, the horse, yeah.

Double, it's they're gonna have to double down by putting two of their toes in.

A ring with just a carrot erupting from it is absolutely foul and i hate it

yeah

yeah just a pointy wrinkly carrot i hate it on a ring yeah yeah oh erupting standing tall like a mountain oh i was picturing that like dangling from a string but you want it just like standing it's like there's like a little like pedestal for it's almost like a spike with a ring on it yeah oh wow you're wearing it like a spike anyways um i think i'll sentence this person to invent this and never show it to me yeah well emily's got emily's really onto a good good idea here, which is like, there's only, as far as like ring-based food goes, we only have ring pops.

Yeah.

And I feel like savory ring pops could be a real hit.

Ooh, that's good.

Cheese ring.

It's like a baby bell, a baby bell piece of cheese behind it.

That is so good.

You can do it with really hard parmesan, so you can grate it over.

Oh, that's good.

That's good.

So you have a pocket grater

with a little card.

I feel like you got to be so careful to not like grate your own knuckles.

You have to be so careful.

We'll call them Parm Charms.

Parm Charms.

Parm Charms.

Dude, I'm down to just stop recording right now and fully pivot.

Is your fucking cheese pot?

This group no longer makes DD.

We make Parm Charms.

Just imagine like you're at a table at a fancy restaurant.

They're like, sir, would you like some Parmesan?

It's like, no, no, no, I brought my own.

And then you pull out your like fucking maester chain with a Parmesan wheel attached to it and you start grating that bad boy.

I had just opened a new tab and deleted the podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I I mean, like, if anyone is still listening and not just searching out Parm Charms themselves, which is actually what you should be doing at this point, I will sentence this player to buy the entire first release of Parm Charms.

Yes.

And give them to your love demand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to find out

how low you can grade it before you start hitting it.

You have to be the grader tester.

We need you on QA.

This is multi-level marketing, except only for you.

You're the top and bottom of the pyramid.

Yeah, you're R D for Parm Chuns.

Okay.

So ordered.

And our next case comes from Maya to the ever honorable Jaliff Bake and his sweet, sweet justices.

May it please the court.

After years of listening to actual play and secretly worshiping Dice Christ, I joined DD Club at my high school.

Wow.

I was ecstatic.

My DM, although very inexperienced, was always excited and mostly prepared for most sessions.

I tried to bring the same energy,

unlike the other two players talked about.

Tis Tis.

One a rogue and the other a paladin.

Let's call them Huey and Dewey, respectively.

Why does it feel like it's always a rogue and a paladin?

So, wait, okay, so

Jake, I'm going to need you to switch these around because Huey's kind of more of a paladin than a rogue and Dewey's kind of

the leader and whatnot.

So, let's like Dewey and Huey?

Yeah, let's call them Dewey and Huey.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I guess, respectively.

Yeah, okay.

So just go ahead and do a finder replays on that.

Or we could even do, let's call them Huey and Dewey irrespectively.

And that actually

is a little harsh, but awesome.

Yeah, awesome.

All right.

They were clearly friends outside of the group as they would text during sessions, watch TikToks loudly, and pester the TM into submitting to bits that railroaded the campaign.

This is what we imagine happens at teenage DD tables, and they're just playing into it.

Are teenagers becoming teenagers again?

Oh my God.

Since I'm switching these, Huey was consistently mentally absent from the campaign while Dewey was unfortunately tuned in.

Okay.

Oh.

Oh.

My issue comes on session date four, Your Honors.

We were both paladins.

I don't know why either.

And I asked Dewey.

It's the start of a beautiful thing.

So, Dewey, wait, Dewey or Huey, Jake.

Huey, I'm doing the switch.

I'm doing the live.

You have the start of a novel right there with that line, by the way.

We were both paladins.

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

And I asked asked Dewey who they worship.

They said.

Wait, no, Dewey should be the rogue.

Murph is going to be the.

Oh, wait, what?

I thought you switched it.

I did.

We were both paladins.

Oh, so wait, me and the player were on the same side.

Huey was already the paladin.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so failing this.

I am fucking the family behavior at best.

Huey's the paladin.

Dewey's the rogue.

All both behavioral.

We're moving on.

We're moving on.

Okay.

We were both paladins.

I don't know why either.

And I asked Huey who they worshiped.

They said the DM.

I'm a slightly confrontational person.

So I said that this wasn't possible.

The argument escalated to Huey shouting at me, defending their stance.

I prostrate before the court and ask, is the DM a reasonable answer?

Was I too strict on the new players?

For the record, the DM agreed with me, Your Honors, and after that evening, I stopped attending the club.

Whoa.

Okay, well, it does sound like it got more dramatic than it needed to.

I would say if the DM was on board, then the idea of worshiping the DM is like worshiping a creator deity.

Yes, but it does seem like Huey refused to put any flavor on this.

Yeah.

Huey refused to absolutely put just like even a speck of salt or pepper onto this idea.

Yeah.

They served it up bland and cold.

Yeah, it's so weird to be so, to so aggressively not want to give an answer that you double down like this hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, they're leaning into the teen behavior.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Although, I don't know, if you're just joining a club and maybe you don't know people as well or something, it is a little bit of a move to really belabor a point that maybe isn't.

Look, if Huey is constantly praying to the DM and is constantly making weird meta jokes and being annoying, then I could see how that could be bad.

But if someone was just like, I insist on making this joke for my God or something like that, I would probably just be like, you can't really.

do that, can you?

Shouldn't there be like a pantheon?

And then once they said, no, that's what I'm doing.

I think I would probably just go with it sure until they um until they forgot that they said it which it seems like they would yeah if i can think about myself in high school if anyone so much as laughs in my general direction i'm doubling down on that joke

forever but

but as soon as someone says hey that's not funny or we don't like that anymore i'm shutting up for the next week

i can't get into huey's mindset here is what i'm getting at so you can't get between that feathery skull do you know i think that maybe you were bringing in some of your frustrations from Huey and Dewey's general interaction so far.

And this one moment maybe like didn't need to turn into this, but maybe everyone was just hot to trot because there was tension from them watching TikToks.

Yeah, it had reached a boiling point.

And this was the thing that set it all off.

Yeah, this is like, this is like, there's a heat wave and everyone's kind of on edge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I mean, I still, yeah.

I mean, if the DM says, no, you can't worship me as your God, then like it's true.

Yeah.

That's true.

That's also weird.

That's also weird with people like not knowing each other super well.

You also might just kind of be like, are you making fun of me?

Yeah.

Could you imagine that sort of like teen insecurity of like you're the DM and someone's like, I fucking worship you, bro?

I'd be like, shut up.

This is like fake.

You're being fake nice to me.

I hate this.

It's like a bully saying nice shirt.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh my God.

I got a compliment from someone who worked at an ice cream store the other day and it was a teen.

And I spent the next like 20 minutes being like, I think they were secretly making fun of me because I was wearing a big sun hat and they said, I like your hat and your dress.

And I was like,

I think you're making fun of me.

But I politely said, Thank you.

Well, it was confusing because the dress was cool and the hat was not cool.

Yeah, and Merp had made fun of the hat previous to this event.

The hat was worth making fun of.

Because it's purely utility.

It's like to just block the sun out of her face.

You spilled a lot of ice cream on the dress, too.

Yeah.

It's like a black hat covered in cat hair.

It wasn't covered in cat hair at the time.

Is it right now?

Yes.

But it wasn't at the time.

Yeah.

So tough to tell.

Okay.

So I, but I still kind of think that since the DM said no, they kind of needed to drop it.

Yeah.

You know, you can't really worship a god that the DM.

Definitely against chewing here.

I would suggest to the submitter, especially when you're, you know, when you're that age and you're playing with people like you don't know as well, well, it's probably okay to not like really try to lay down the

rules of the game when you're just another player.

Like, you could probably just roll your eyes and just be like, cool, let's do the session.

And if they're insufferable during the session, I can decide to not play, but you don't have to like, you know.

But you know what?

You got to blow up a mountain to make a highway.

So there's a way forward here.

Ah, yes.

There's a way forward here.

Highways.

I love highways and I fucking hate mountains.

Well, now there's a beautiful, easily surpassable road to a brand new session and a brand new party for you.

I mean, no matter what, I feel like the victory is you did D and D.

Yeah, Huey did D.

Huey and Dewey sound annoying.

They sound like they suck.

And that probably was like such a, that probably sucks to be like, I'm so excited to play and then play with people who weren't matching your energy.

We're just making jokes.

But this is ultimately all, I think, good like learning experience.

You get to get in so early.

You're in high school.

You like bit the bullet.

You joined this group and you enjoyed the dm and you didn't enjoy the players it's yeah so some positives and some negatives and you get to take that into whatever dnd you do next yeah you should be aware that most of the cases we get are from people 10 years older than you who have the same problem so you're getting it out of the way quick yeah

yeah and i will say the the point of contention being the like worshiping the dm which i do again i do think that's annoying i think it's an even bigger point of contention that they're sitting there watching fucking tick tocks and texting each other that to me that to me is way more annoying

So, yeah.

So,

yeah.

We're going to need some employees for the Parm Charm pop-up.

Yeah.

Oh,

more like unpaid interns because they're

high school credit.

We can pay them in Parm.

Credit.

Yeah.

Right.

It's literally cheese.

You're here to make some cheese.

That's great.

AKA.

Create some parm charms.

Yeah.

Cheese and credit.

Summer job.

More credit than cheese.

Making parm charms.

For cheese.

Okay.

Cool.

See you at the height of summer when this all kicks off.

Perfect.

Oh, that's going to be a perfect time.

Yeah.

Everyone's going to be craving Parmesan mid-summer.

There's no AC in the building.

It's cave-aged.

You're going to have to go down a set of steps.

Well, and the stench is kind of the gorilla marketing.

Yeah, exactly.

Ooh.

Right.

Wow.

What do you smell like?

I want to smell like that too.

We want our store to be.

That's my parm charm.

Oh, that?

Oh, that odor?

That's just my parm charm.

Pulling it out of your pocket.

Never leave home without it.

Great, great, great.

I have one on my rinky toe.

I almost forgot about rinky toes.

All right.

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Goodbye, sweeties.

Hey there, Nadpoles.

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Thanks, everybody.

Okay, our next case comes from Alex F.

to the honorable Supreme Court Justices, which unfortunately includes Jake as this is a case coming out of Boston.

Hell yeah.

I think I was disbarred, to be fair.

You were disbarred at the end of the show.

Yeah.

I bring you the case of the unobtainable spell components.

This case comes from a Strahd campaign where I am playing a nature domain cleric.

I had prepped ceremony, which was approved by the DM, and I attempted to use it at the church when we were burying the burger master.

Strahd spoilers abound.

Wow.

Okay.

The DM, but not farther than that.

Guys, don't listen.

I think we did this part, though.

I think we did this part.

What was going to happen next, though?

We did the Burger Master.

If they go to Argen Vostolt, what's going to happen?

The DM told me the spell didn't work since all of our silver disappeared when we crossed into Borrovia.

After a back and forth, I asked to just switch out the spell for another since it wasn't usable, but they wouldn't let me.

It wasn't that big of a deal, but I always felt a little slighted that the spell was approved and I wasn't allowed to use it.

Was this fair play by the DM or should I have been able to provide a proper burial for the Burger Master?

Okay, I'm gonna.

I know that Caldwell has been pretty intimate with Strad recently.

Is there a thing that says there's no silver?

I'm gonna have to double-check.

Yeah, I know it's incredibly difficult.

Yeah, you don't lose literally every single, you lose like your, wait.

Do you, I mean, we lost our gear.

but that was more of a narrative thing.

Yeah, yeah, that was because you were like overleveled.

Yeah, do you in Strahd like show up naked like the Terminator?

I've read the beginning so many times.

I do not remember the specific passage.

There's a chance they're playing like a 3.5e version of Strahd where that is brought up.

But why is it?

That was another wild thing I found out when I was like researching Strahd.

It's like there's like multiple versions of this,

but I do not remember this, this coming up.

Okay, so let's go back to this person was a druid.

Oh, nature cleric, nature cleric.

They're playing a nature cleric.

So this person's playing a cleric.

They prepare their spells for the day.

They're not really asking, like, can I know a different spell that I didn't know coming in?

They're saying, instead of preparing this spell that you told me I could use, which now I find out that I can't use, can I, what is, what does burial get you for the ceremony spell?

I'm trying to think what the heck this DM.

There's a, so there's...

One of the things you can do with ceremony, you pick from a bunch of different ceremonies that you want to do.

One of them is funeral rite, which I presume is the one that they're doing.

You touch one corpse and for the next seven days, the target can't become undead by any means short of a wish spell.

Oh, so probably this DM wanted the burger master to become a vampire or wanted them to become undead in some capacity.

And maybe this stood in their way.

But ultimately, if the DM told you,

I mean, look, there's a Maya Culpa route where they're just like, yeah, I'm so sorry.

I told you you could, and I was wrong.

And then at that point, you just let them start.

That's what I'm saying.

That's why I don't trust the DM because I could, if there is a world where they're like, your silver specifically disappears because they don't want you to have any ways to fight werewolves and vampires.

So Strahd would control that.

Yeah.

So that might make a lick of sense.

If you do have plans for the Burger Master to come back as a vampire or something, I think that's fine.

But I do think you would clear that with the player ahead of time.

When they say they have ceremony, you'd be like, Cool, but you have no silver.

And then, like you're saying, as soon as the player says, Okay, if I can't cast that, can I cast something else?

You say, Yes.

Yeah.

It's just so unfun for no reason.

If you were planning on having the burger master come back as an undead, a vampire, a ghoul, something like that, and this cleric goes through the proper ceremonial rite, like almost susses that out, you're like, Great, you had an impact on the world.

Now they're not going to come back as undead.

Yeah.

Isn't that

rewarded, if anything?

Yeah.

Also, I've been researching, this is like totally a homebrew.

I'm like almost 100%.

Yeah.

Because like there's a very limited supply of silver in Barovia for obvious reasons.

But like I don't think that unless you got mugged on your way in, I don't think you should be missing your silver.

Yeah.

It's also such a

really went out of their way.

I get it.

They had just an idea of what they were doing.

This is 25 gold worth of silver, which is, it's just not that crazy for, you know, decently leveled characters.

Yeah, I could see like the only thing I'm like a stickler about components for would be like a revivify because that literally brings someone back to life and costs like it's like diamonds worth 5,000 gold.

Yeah.

You don't want people to just be able to do that.

And then stuff like Heroes Feast, which like really sets up your players to be super powerful.

This is just like, man, I don't know.

Your player made a cool move.

Let him do it.

If you go through all of the like treasure available in the starting town, I think you could come up with enough silver

to cast this spell.

Like literally like in the book, it's just like, if you like overturn this chest, you'll find this amount of gold.

Like there's there is treasure in straw.

Sorry, I didn't give it all to you.

Shit, I'm going to start overturning chests.

Got a break.

Anyx overturns a chest.

Gave you so much already.

You took everything from his mark.

Yeah,

I think this is, I honestly just think that this DM, I don't know if they're mad that that you almost like figured out something they were planning or if in the moment they were a weird stickler for a rule that they made up.

But either way, they were wrong.

They should have just let you

in the first case and they have a plan for Burgomaster to come back as a vampire, then they should have let you do a different spell.

Or they should have just been like, wow, good call that you did that because as you pass this spell, you see that he was turning into a vampire.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I think we're sentencing the DM.

Certainly.

Yeah, they're taking their toes to the zoo.

You better believe it.

Yeah.

We're putting parm charms on every single toe.

I'm looking at you, pointer toe.

Oh, my God.

And we're dipping you into the parm hippo range.

They are going to have stinky rinkies from all the param on the roads.

Pardon my stinky rinkies.

That's the slogan.

That is the slogan for pardon my stinky rinkies.

Party my stinky rinkies.

They're to be worn on your feet.

they are to be worn on your feet

we'll be good with open-toed shoes yeah because it's like less um disruptive to your life if you overly grate your uh toe knuckles than your hand knuckles you know you can hide that under a pair of crocs you order some pasta at a restaurant you put your foot above the toe palm charms this crocot is the greater the crock is the greater it's got holes already oh my god okay so steel crocs filled with instead of gibbets palm charms

You pop off a palm charm.

I would rate it right on the ship.

Which is good.

And you can wear socks to protect your feet while you're grating.

Whoa, the no, the croc is like a cheese grater itself.

That's what we were saying.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like metal crocs.

Metal crocs.

Which honestly, you're, I mean, that's awesome.

I want to see a metal.

It's so painful.

And it's very kind of like medieval.

I can see it.

I can see that on like a coat of arms.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's definitely less arch support, but that's fine because it's not about that.

It's about

palm charms.

It's about palm charms.

Yeah.

All right.

So we've sentenced

who?

We've sentenced the DM

who robbed this player

of a spell.

They wouldn't even let them replace it.

So dumb.

Yeah.

They're going to have to get silvered greater Crocs and Palm Charms.

Maybe they're sort of the guinea pig for the Parm Charm

metal Crocs.

They're on the street team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to break them in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We see it.

Yeah.

You break in the metal cross.

You got to ride the bus in these things.

Okay.

Take the phone.

So ordered.

So ordered.

Can I just say, I think we've ruled with all of our submitters so far.

Really?

Whoa.

We're very agreeable.

Well, except for the people on the other side.

Except for the people on the other side, of course.

Yeah.

But we're good friends.

We're on your side.

Hey.

You say that, and now Jake's going to be.

Next one's going to be like, I'm a DM.

Some of my guys tried to take silver to Strahan.

And I said, fuck you, you're not allowed to have spells.

Is that wrong?

One of my players looked sad about that.

Okay, our next case comes from Nate B.

To the honored justices and the coolest, handsomest bailiff Jake.

Wow.

So you're right.

They are really friendly.

Interesting.

Interesting.

I bring to you the case of the hungry player.

I've been playing DD with a group of friends over Discord for several years now.

One of our friends in particular has a habit of missing or disappearing in the middle of our sessions to eat dinner.

Once he DM for our group and halfway through the session, said roll initiative, muted himself and never came back.

Wait, never came back.

Never came back.

Never.

Until next session, I assume.

Eventually came back.

Recently, said player failed to show up to a session and cited his absence was because he was, quote, eating ribs.

When berated about his absence later, his only defense, his only defense was, quote, I was eating motherfucking ribs.

Judges, is this a valid excuse to miss a weekly session with the boys?

Our typical session is 7 to 9 p.m., and I feel like there's plenty of time to eat before that.

Yes, Jesus.

7 to 9.

This dude raised comical, but he's out of bounds.

Unfortunately, this guy has so much swagger.

Yeah.

Saying it's motherfucking ribs on him why you didn't show up to something.

He'd be motherfucking ribs.

I think you'd be a cool character in a movie, but I'd be pissed at you in real life, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

To just like bail on any responsibility and have such a low-key bad excuse.

Sorry, I didn't pick my girl up from school.

I was eating motherfucking ribs.

Yeah.

I like want to be this person, but I don't want to be with them.

Yeah.

It's also like it's Discord.

It's easy enough to mute your rib munching sounds.

No, if I do understand them wanting to put space between the Discord and the food, because otherwise our thing could have been, this person is always slurping ribs.

Yeah.

They forget to mute themselves.

Well, this is, unfortunately, this is the rotisserie chicken problem back from back in the day.

But they've heard the modification, so they're leaving.

But the rotisserie, yeah, the rotisserie chicken person was eating at the table, which I think is much less egregious than what this person is eating.

I actually really am impressed that this person carves out such focus and single-mindedness for a meal.

It's unfortunate

behavior.

The rest of us are always, I'm never adjusting.

They're not carving.

The problem is that this dude is not carving out time for a meal is having to do it he's taking it from other things and then i'm bailing on his friends i i mean look if you know you have something like i have i have a hockey game tonight right so from seven brag brag so from 730 so you're loading up your hockey bag to nine right i'm not gonna eat i'm not gonna eat rib we're like stretching as we speak i'm gonna eat fucking before that you know what i mean like i have to just like change a time i'm gonna

I would argue seven to nine.

That's kind of, I mean, that's dinner time.

Seven is prime rib time.

But you can also

eat at six.

Well, I mean, yeah, that's not clear time for my family.

We eat a fucking 5:30 because I have small children.

But I also love 5:30 or so.

I love eating at 6, and I always have.

This is not an aging thing.

But I would say that, like, yeah, you've definitely got time beforehand.

But also, like, if you just got off of work, I'm playing the devil's rib vocate here.

Just, I have to.

You can eat in, you can eat fucking in 10 minutes.

Like, I also, I think, if you're gonna do this, the excuse just has to be a little bit better.

You could be like, I'm so sorry.

I was busy at work all day.

I didn't get to eat.

Yeah, I'm so sorry.

If you're literally in a Discord game and you're like, can we take like a bathroom/slash-dinner break?

I'm gonna freaking hork down some ribs right here.

Yeah, I'll be back in the middle.

It's the callousness.

Do we think that his job is eating ribs?

He could be a professional.

He could be a cartoon pig mascot that eats the ribs on the sign.

He could be a good rib fluencer for parm charms.

Ooh.

That's really.

This is our spokesman.

Gray.

Okay.

Maybe I'm not the most experienced.

Graded Parmesan on barbecue is not something I've encountered.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Okay, okay.

So we would be blazing a new path with that.

Yeah.

Well, the beauty of parm charms is that they're good with every meal, including ribs.

Just for text.

Heck, I don't brush my teeth without a little bit of parm charm on there.

My toothbrush is a grater.

My shoes and my toothbrush are greaters.

Everything is in service of the parm charm.

Parm charm, die choking on a parm charm.

A little palm charm charm.

Yeah, so the biggest, the biggest thing here to me is like, A, it is, no one sprung this on you, right?

Like if you were, if, if you were roommates or something and this person came home from work and you're playing in person or something or you're playing on Zoom, Discord, whatever, and they're they're playing right after work.

They get off at 5.

You're playing at 5.30 and they have to eat something and they want to take like 10 or 15 minutes to eat.

That's totally fine.

Or just like reschedule it or whatever.

The fact that it's 7 to 9, presumably they have time beforehand to eat.

Or, hey, sounds like you're some young rowdy dudes.

Like eat at fucking 9.15.

Like you can do that.

I mean, if I had ribs in the fridge, I couldn't wait that long.

I'll just say.

Oh, come on.

You couldn't have ribs for fourth meal

give me a fucking break you're 25 years old you can't eat ribs at 9 30.

he hit me with the fourth meal loop come on

this this guy if this guy ruled he'd eat fourth meal am i am i wrong

am i wrong can we have we also have to remember though that since if they are a rib fluencer that like eating ribs is kind of like

i think they are i think they are i was eating motherfucking ribs in an absolute rib fluencer

they might it might be like a religious experience for them where like every time they eat a rib they have to to go, good luck, this is so succulent.

They have to lick every one of their fingers.

Yeah, if you're a freaking rib fluencer, you should be doing it during the day, during work hours.

Also, if you're a rib fluencer, that kind of takes away sort of some of my praise of their behavior because they are, in fact, then eating and multitasking because they're making cheese, not parm jarm cheese, regular cheese, money cheese,

and eating at the same time.

So they're not, there's not that singular focus that I was admiring.

As a character, this is very funny.

When I hear this story secondhand, it's very funny.

If I was just sitting

if I was just sitting in a Discord waiting for someone to come back because they said they were going to go eat dinner real quick, and then they just never returned, I would be so mad.

This person sounds erratic and like you have to meet them where they are, which is kind of annoying for Discord.

I think just don't let the definitely never let this person DM again.

I'm rooting for this rib fluencer, but I do think they were wrong here.

Maybe you guys just have to institute some sort of policy for when when they leave, like almost

like when you're standing on fire in Hades and you start losing hit points for every second that you stand there.

Yeah.

Like I first off definitely never let them DM again, but then maybe as a player when they disappear or they take chip damage.

There is like every 10 minutes they lose a hit point permanently.

It has been so long.

Do you guys remember if we ruled for or against the player that would eat a full rotisserie chicken?

I think I ruled in favor of the fact that the

of the idea.

I think it's the same situation where we're like, this player rules, but we rule against them.

I think maybe I've lightened up because now, especially hearing this ribs nonsense, I'm like, rotisserie chicken person is an angel.

Right.

At least they were present.

They're present.

And I believe one of their arguments was that it fit the ambiance.

Yeah.

They're kind of right.

I think you've been redeemed.

Yeah, it's like eating a turkey leg in medieval times.

Have the players gotten worse or have we gotten soft?

I think the players have gotten worse.

I think the players have gotten worse, but I do think that we actually need to change our ruling.

Yeah.

Should we go back and revisit the rotisserie chicken?

Yeah, we have to verify what we actually said.

Yeah.

Maybe we were.

Maybe we were good.

Yeah.

A cold chicken case.

So there might be.

People are very quick to point out when we're wrong and hypocrites.

So feel free to point it out this time because we might agree with you.

Have we thought about using this person's refluencer abilities for good and getting them to be the mascot for Parm Charms?

They wouldn't even show up to work.

They would just say they weren't.

No, I agree.

We can't trust them.

I think that's true.

But we can't channel their passion.

We cannot trust them.

I agree with Jake that

we should sentence them to do a hashtag spawn with us.

Oh, okay.

By spawn, it's actually not paying for it.

But we can't get them to be Parma John, who is going to be our mascot, which is a giant wheel of cheese.

Yeah, I think they're too, they're not reliable enough to be a mascot.

We just need to have them put grated Parmesan on barbecue ribs and then attest.

You know what?

Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to do, we're going to hop into your session while this person is gone eating ribs.

We're going to hire all of you to be the new Parmesans.

Okay.

Parmesans get to travel.

They get a travel stipend.

They don't get a paid diem.

They don't get paid.

Why do they get to travel, Merv?

Why?

Because we need Parma Johns in every state.

We have to take the crosstown.

If we need them in every state, why don't we hire them in every state?

Well, we are.

They're on Discord.

Presumably, they live different places.

Right.

We have to.

I don't know what you're not following here, Emily.

Permit Johnson.

QE's a paladin.

We need Parma Johns in every space.

Parma Johnson gets traveled.

I mean, we have to get them all in all the quadrants.

Pacific Northwest.

Okay, right.

Northeast.

Southwest.

Let me spell it out for you, Emily Axford.

The Mickey Mouse in Orlando is not the same one at Disneyland and Anaheim, okay?

There's different Mickeys in different areas.

There's different Donalds in different areas.

Yeah, so then they don't get to travel.

The Mickey Mouse doesn't get to travel because they have different ones.

There's got to be a Pokemon.

Come on, there's got to be a prime Nickel Mickey.

There's got to be a prime Mickey.

I'll take the tiny L.

That's not a tiny L.

That's not a tiny L.

It's not a tiny L.

You were berating her.

I'm a tiny L.

She proved your point.

She didn't prove my point.

Because let me clarify, okay?

When you become the new barbershop.

Let me finish, okay?

He's holding up a tiny L.

I'm holding up a tiny L because I'll take the tiny L.

I'll put you in the back of the bottom.

Let me explain that.

Why this tiny L can be corked to the side a little bit, and then another tiny L can be turned backwards and corked to the side a little bit to make a big W as a connection.

You would need four tiny L's to make a big W.

You would not.

You would just need, oh, you would need two capitalized L's

to turn them to make a W.

That's what I'm doing with my hands right now on an audio podcast.

What I'm saying when you get to travel as being a Parma John is that we need a Parma John in every state.

Right.

Presumably.

Hey.

I'm talking here.

Which is how Parma John talks.

He has a New York accent.

Of course.

Yeah.

And he says, hey, I'm walking here with my

great in here.

That's good.

I didn't say we couldn't bunch it up.

Look, the reason I said that you get to travel as Parma John is that you get to relocate because we will send you to the more popular markets first and then we'll expand.

Right.

I mean, just smaller markets for the Parmajohns.

I don't know what is hard to understand here.

Do you think that every Mickey Mouse was born in Anaheim?

Parmesans don't get to travel.

They get to relocate.

That's true.

Yeah.

I mean, you got a fucking travel one-way drive.

Do you think every Mickey Mouse retires in Anaheim?

They don't.

I mean, anyway, it's green.

He's unraveled, guys.

Yeah.

I've never seen this happen.

So we're going to hop into your Discord.

This dude does not get to be Parma John.

No.

The rest of the team

are going to get, you know, we're going to...

We're going to fast-track you to second-round interviews for Parma Johns when we do the psychological questions.

So are the Parma Johns, because one of my one of my college jobs was to go to different um to drive across the eastern seaboard and give out samples of tea at grocery stores i'm saying it was not a fun job it doesn't have to be fun it has to be effective

so the parmesans get to relocate get to relocate and do a chef job

and do a chef job and well it's not tough it's fun you get to travel

it's funny it's fun but you need to be thick skinned when everyone turns you down for a sample at the grocery store.

Parma Johns, are you thick-skinned?

Yes, you're by nature.

They have a rind.

Yeah.

We're going to relocate you to North Carolina's up.

You're going to get to go to South Carolina's up, y'all.

You're going to get to go to...

What else is over there?

Virginia.

Rise?

Rise in Russia.

West Virginia as well.

Maybe even West Virginia.

We should clarify, not Hawaii, just not Hawaii, not Alaska.

Because we can't drive there.

You get reimbursed for gas, not flying.

Yes.

Yeah, if you drive there, we will reimburse you for gas.

We're deep in the middle of the knockout for the Silver Crocs.

Yeah.

God damn,

cost a lot.

And they've caused a lot of injuries.

Yeah.

They're heavy.

With that, we've got our new Parmesans, not Ribs guy.

Parmesans get to travel.

Parmesans relocate.

What?

And drive.

They can go back when they're done.

They get to travel more if they recruit more Parmesans.

I think that's simple as that.

It's pronounced Parma John.

Parmesan.

Well, every Parmesan is traveling up the corporate ladder.

Yeah.

Thank you.

As they sell more and they're battling.

It's a Parma scheme.

It's a parmamid scheme.

Parmamid scheme.

Oh my God.

The problem with the pyramid is it's triangular, but the parmamid, it's just a circle.

It's a circle.

It's a circle, which means that you're suffering at the bottom and the top.

And the people in the middle are actually doing really well.

But what goes around comes around.

So think about it.

So eventually you'll be doing really good and thus really bad.

Let's move on.

All right.

All right.

Let's head into church for a confession.

Okay.

This one comes from Caleb.

To the dearest judges and the darndest bailiff of the Supreme Court, I have not a case but a confession.

In my first homebrew campaign as a DM, my friend Gabe played a human fighter named Matteo, who during an adventure attempted to save another party member from a bag of devouring.

As Matteo attempted to save the other PC from the bag, I had him roll a deck save to try and escape the bag's grasp, which he succeeded.

But my true crime was after he rolled successfully, I realized he should have rolled a strength save instead.

I had him re-roll, which he then failed,

leading to both Gabe's character and the other PC both dying in the back.

Oh my god.

Since then, we've played many, many campaigns and have had many great adventures.

But Gabe has often reminded me how much he liked Mateo and how brutal it was for him to die an unceremonious death.

I pray to Dice Christ that he may lead me in the right direction of actually reading item cards properly in the future, and I will accept any judgment for wrongfully killing my PCs.

You got sometimes you just make little mistakes on the fly in the beginning and you learn from them and you're a better DM for having learned from this.

I would also say I think your mistake here was not to come down hard on you because you are in church and you are just asking for forgiveness.

Also, we're soft now.

We're so soft now.

We love rotissary chicken.

Except for the rind.

Yeah.

But I do think your mistake wasn't not reading the, I mean, it was a little mistake to not read the thing, but as soon as you said deck save, not that big of a difference.

You could have just gone with that.

Totally.

You you don't want the the reason mateo is like my character was unceremoniously killed is because there was a meta moment of everyone celebrating and then going like oh whoa wait actually no that didn't happen this happens instead do a different role and you're instead of you know being in the moment and having it be this movie moment it instead becomes this litigation that is not super interesting so i would encourage you in the future to if you make a little mistake like that you do a con save instead of a strength save or something like that.

I would be a rules lawyer, maybe in favor of your players.

Like, if there's like, oh, you actually get to roll again because it is this.

That will get people excited.

This is just going to deflate them.

But it sounds like you've learned your lesson here.

Totally.

You've learned your lesson.

If anything, there's an interesting thread in here, which is that Gabe wants to play Mateo again.

Is there an underworld mystery?

Is there a resurrection story?

Is there a way to bring this back?

Because maybe Gabe isn't needling you to make you feel guilty.

Maybe they're giving you like an opportunity.

Go to the bag to move.

That's a good call.

It's where everything that's ever been lost is.

There's just like giant mint monsters there and like car keys that can just slice you in half.

Whoa.

That sounds sick.

That has to be a movie, right?

Totally.

Probably.

It should be a situation.

I definitely wrote that.

I can say I definitely wrote that as a sketch for college humor that never got made.

Oh, okay.

I can say that.

We could totally finance it ourselves after Parm Charms goes wild.

Yeah.

Palm charms in service of a

provided that the Parm Johnson do their jobs and the coupons

and then we'll

like create a whole media branch of the Parma John Empire.

Yeah, yeah.

It becomes a lifestyle, which is actually kind of the only goal for any company now, it seems, from what I'm getting served.

Well, we'll see you guys all at Parma Park, which is going to be opening in 2027.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And no matter how rich we get, let's never let it change us.

Everybody rinky promised that they wouldn't change.

Yeah, get your ringy with Alex as our witness.

Yeah, yeah.

With that, we're gonna go ahead and wrap this one up.

Thank you all so much for listening.

We'll be over in our Patreon doing some bonus cases, patreon.com slash nadpod.

That's any D-O-D.

Don't sing, don't sing.

So all you Parma Johns can head on over there.

In the meantime, does anyone have anything like to plug?

I do, actually.

We've got a Dimension 20 live show coming up in Vegas.

Be on the lookout for that.

We're playing Starstruck.

Search Dimension 20 Live and get your tickets now.

I would like to plug

a personal accomplishment, which is that my basil plant is still alive.

Yes!

And I've been eating fresh basil, and it's really cool.

Oh, my God.

It's just cool.

Just nibbling basil triumphantly.

That is really cool.

Badass.

You don't have to brush your teeth anymore.

Your breath's so fresh.

But I do just to get some palm charm before bed.

Yeah.

Just to get a little sprinkle in.

I would love to plug our P.O.

box.

We've got some wild and wacky stuff that has arrived there of late.

Someone sent us a huge box of TV show DVDs.

Wow.

I don't know.

Literally like

a foot-long stack of loose DVDs.

Wait, what is like an example?

It seems like they're sending it to you.

Yes, no, they were sent to me.

All perfect for fun.

Oh, to flip.

Yeah.

Jesus.

We've got Friends, Grey's Anatomy, House, and more.

Any show from the early 2000s you can think of.

It's all there, ready for flipping.

So thank you for that.

Thanks for that.

Let's see.

Oh, Jordan W sent us some hand-drawn magic token cards featuring our C3 characters.

Awesome.

Very cute.

Brock S sent us a Sabolba action figure.

Oh, yeah.

I placed it in a prominent place.

In a place of honor, yes.

And Ginny and Justin from Maine, just to bookend this, sent me Caldwell's mother flipping disc, a five-inch metal disc perfect for coin flips/slash destroying tables.

It's super thick.

So, thank you all for that nonsense.

I appreciate it.

Awesome.

Hell yeah.

Check out my sub stack, substack.com/slash at Jake Hurwitz.

Sweet.

You can follow us on social media that remain right at use at SageFirstMe, at Caldis Caldwell, at AxefordsEmily, and at JakeHurtz Jake.

And you can chat about the show online using hashtag NADPOT.

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

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We are, we are

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