D&D Court: Deadly Doors, Bland Backstories, and Strict DMs

Speaker 1 Hey everybody, it's Emily here to talk to you about Uncommon Goods.

Speaker 1 Holiday shopping season is officially here and Uncommon Goods takes the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique high quality finds you won't find anywhere else.

Speaker 1 Uncommon Goods looks for products that are high quality, unique, and often handmade or made in the US. Uncommon Goods has something for everyone.

Speaker 1 Moms, dads, kids, teens, book lovers, history buffs, diehard sports fans, foodies, mixologists, you'll find thousands of new gift ideas that you won't find anywhere else.

Speaker 1 Last year, I got a sweater with one of my cats' faces embroidered on it, and I gotta say, it was a perfect rendering. I ordered a second one this year of a different cat.

Speaker 1 So, don't wait. Cross those names off your list before the rush.
To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com/slash/pawpaw. That's uncommongoods.com/slash p-a-w-p-a-w for 15% off.

Speaker 1 Uncommon goods, we're all out of ordinary. Goodbye, sweeties.

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, it's Emily here to talk to you about Adam and Eve. Who wants better sex and who wants to start having it immediately?

Speaker 1 The best way to start your adventure is by going to adamandeve.com right now. Right now, Adam and Eve is offering 50% off just about any item, plus free shipping and rush processing.

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy, all will be packaged and sent discreetly for free and fast. So don't wait, better sex is just a click away.

Speaker 1 Just go to adamandeve.com and select any one item. Just enter offer code PAPA at checkout.
That's Papa, B-A-W-P-A-W, at adamandeve.com.

Speaker 1 This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast, so be sure to use PAPA to get your discount. 100% free shipping and get it fast with rush processing.
That's code P-A-W-P-A-W.

Speaker 2 Goodbye, sweeties.

Speaker 3 This is a headgun podcast.

Speaker 2 Welcome to Dungeon Court, everybody.

Speaker 2 What the fuck? It's Halloween, So it's creepy carnival. Okay.
Right? Yeah. Isn't that obvious? I was like, well, it doesn't read as creepy carnival to me.
That just felt regular carnival.

Speaker 2 I was kind of doing a sexy carnival, to be fair.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got really horny at the end.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I thought, do I follow this?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 In my head, it was a picture of Pennywise with like a huge rack. That was what I was.
Oh, okay. Okay.
Does that tie it all together? That makes sense. Great.
We are your supreme.

Speaker 2 I think you've got a thumbnail. We are your supreme crit justices,

Speaker 2 Surfy, Axpert, Tanner, and and the Loly, Loly Bailiff, Jake Hurwitz. You think I don't have some of those pictures already? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Everyone's all torqued up with thoughts of Pennywise with a huge rack. We'll collect that.
Let's throw to our bailiff, Jay Kurwitz. Oh, God, it's going to be such a horny here.

Speaker 2 Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 Crit is now in session. Shwee! Welcome to Dairy, indeed.

Speaker 2 The honorable Supreme Court Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner are presiding. And our first case comes from Olivia M.

Speaker 2 Olivia writes, May it please the glorious Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner. And is there anyone else? No, I didn't think so.

Speaker 2 I bring to you the case of the Nothing Door. I recently joined a paid one-shot at a local brewery.

Speaker 2 After a treacherous trek braving battles with gnolls and animated skeletons, our party finally escorted a teenager into a lost temple to cure her curse.

Speaker 2 The DM gave us a piece of paper with a riddle and a ring of symbols.

Speaker 2 He said the symbols were on 12 doors surrounding us, and we needed to solve the riddle to determine the correct door. We solved the riddle.
The answer was, quote, nothing.

Speaker 2 So we chose the door with the X symbol. The DM smirked and said, she steps in and dies.
What? Oh.

Speaker 1 I love also like the DM smirks.

Speaker 2 The DM talking over the LA Rams Rams game, which was playing loudly and cheating in the background.

Speaker 1 The DM knocks over Big Jenga.

Speaker 2 The DM, knowing for a fact everyone was going to be upset and dissatisfied with his session, smirked.

Speaker 1 Smirks and takes a sip of their nitrous style.

Speaker 2 The DM makes a wide gesture and spills his boot of beer on the ground.

Speaker 2 Okay, so the X is correct. Turns out there were 11 symbols on the paper and 12 doors.
So there was a door with no symbols on it that our characters didn't notice, apparently.

Speaker 2 Seeing our confused and disappointed looks, the DM gave us a second chance. We then escorted her into the door with no symbols.
Okay. The DM smiled.

Speaker 2 You, you all die.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 I need to understand. You paid for this? I know that.

Speaker 1 I know that you're being brief because we ask that.

Speaker 1 But right now, I'm like, okay, how do you think that's a good thing?

Speaker 2 I want a physical test. Did they just say,

Speaker 2 I want to know?

Speaker 1 But even, like, I want to know, did they say, you walk through the door and you die?

Speaker 1 Or did they say, like, you walk through the door and a trap or something?

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.
A million fireballs go off at once. He said, she should have gone into that door alone.
The session ended there.

Speaker 2 Am I wrong to be miffed by this deflating and frankly weird ending to an otherwise fun session? Or do I deserve a refund? P.S. If it matters and it does, I paid $20.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 $20, but you said an otherwise fun session. I would say not every session is just like...

Speaker 2 Well, that's, I mean, that's a fucking shit. That's ending.
Like, that's bad. Yeah.
Sometimes you pay $20 for a movie and it's bad. Yeah.
That's like you can go online and see if it's going to be bad.

Speaker 2 I asked for a refund after Titanic. I did not like Leonardo DiCaprio eating it at the end.
I don't know if you're joking. You, as a nine-year-old,

Speaker 2 marched up and said, I love Leo. You really should be living happily ever after.
He should have fit on that door.

Speaker 1 Instead of that website where it's like, does the dog die, where you can Google if like an animal gets hurt in movies, it's that for Leonardo DiCaprio just for Jake.

Speaker 2 Does Leo die? Does Leo die? A lot of times he does. Yeah.
That website doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 So Jake cannot see one battle after another because he just doesn't know. Yeah, okay.
So this was weird. It sounds like also it's a little bit theater of the mindy, right?

Speaker 2 Because it's not like you're going to have miniatures of all these doors or anything unless they like drew it out. It also sounds like they're working with bad information.

Speaker 2 Obviously, two things wrong here. One is just straight up killing the NPC with the X thing.
It's like pretty clear that the players didn't know that there was a door with nothing on it. Right.

Speaker 2 They got a piece of paper with 11 symbols and they didn't count the symbols. They did count.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's so tricky.

Speaker 2 They solved a riddle to get that. So it was a riddle and a trick.
They solved the riddle where the answer was nothing, And then they looked at all the symbols and they said the X.

Speaker 2 You do have to physically describe the room to just be like, wait, there's only 11. You know, it'd be one thing if you had people do that.

Speaker 2 That's true. If you're putting them in the room, you should definitely.
You should describe the room. Yeah.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 If I walked into a room, I wouldn't need to solve a riddle to notice that one of the doors changed.

Speaker 2 It would stick out.

Speaker 2 I have to imagine there was at least some visual aid here.

Speaker 2 I mean, they mentioned that there were like riddles on the sheet of paper, but like there must have been a picture of all the doors because it's impossible. What about

Speaker 2 what this DM did makes you think that they cared?

Speaker 2 Because look, even if they got it right, all the players would have still died because they did eventually let them retcon it and go through the door and all the players died because she had to go through it alone.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so the DM weirdly had a boner for killing everyone and for everyone having a bad time. A boner like we do for hot it.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I understand what happened. I think that they gave them a list of the symbols on the doors

Speaker 1 rather than like a picture of the doors. And it was like, here are the symbols that are on each of the doors, but they didn't count to see that it was 11 instead of 12.

Speaker 2 Gotcha. Yeah.
Okay, that checks out. I mean,

Speaker 1 which is actively trying to trick someone. And I think not how you would react in a room full of doors.

Speaker 2 It's also, we've talked a lot about how it's kind of good to set stakes and to be like, here is the meta of it. If you go into this door, there's this amount of chance that you die.

Speaker 2 Like, we're going to make you roll a death save or something if you choose wrong or something like that. Or straight up saying, if you choose wrong, you will die.

Speaker 2 And I do think that makes people, you know, it makes it more tense. Yeah.
It makes you count the doors twice. It makes them count the doors twice.

Speaker 2 It also makes them understand the stakes so that when you do something nuts, like say, you walk in and everyone dies, at least in that case,

Speaker 2 people will have expected that a little bit. It would be like that Indiana Jones scene, except if you walked in and the night was just like, yeah, one of these is the cup.

Speaker 2 Just drink out of all of them. Try it out.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Can I say that I also think this is a bad business model on the DM side? Because if you run a session that was good, you could have potentially run a future session with these characters.

Speaker 1 They might have said, hey, we want to come back in the future. And then you just kill them at the end.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you're not going to have return customers if you kill them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess. And that's the gravest sin of all, I think, is the poor business model.
Yeah. You want to have that $20 as a recurring payment.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 I guess since it is out there, that's just good business.

Speaker 2 Since I will give a little bit of a generous read in saying that since this is a bar, like it's likely a one-shot because they're like paying for it.

Speaker 2 So it might be that the DM set it up to be like, it's almost like a goosebumps, choose your own adventure, where it's like, you'll get the good ending or you'll get the bad ending.

Speaker 2 We have to deal with these guys either way.

Speaker 2 But the fact that it was so anticlimactic, just being like, I'm going to trick you not with how good my puzzle is, but by not giving you the information of the room that you're in.

Speaker 2 I have another theory.

Speaker 1 I have another theory that they could have been sort of borrowing a table, and then the peak brewery hours were coming, and they had like a heart out that the owner of the bar was like, You guys got to be done by six.

Speaker 2 There was a birthday party. Somebody might have had a 37th birthday party.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The table was reserved. You're not renting out the whole bar.
It's not their 40th part.

Speaker 1 Because I think I would, if I were in that situation, I might panic and just kill the players and be like, fuck, I cannot be here

Speaker 2 a minute after six. But even then, how do I wrap it up? You do have to, as the DM, set expectations and have like a little bit of a flair for some drama.

Speaker 2 You know, you want to describe it in a way that's satisfying and make it tense. Again, we've said this over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 When something bad happens to your players, you don't want everyone to just go like, wait, what? Really?

Speaker 2 That's just nothing. You know, that's a nothing reaction.

Speaker 1 My feeling is that you are 100% right to be miffed, but I actually don't think you should ask for a refund because you said an otherwise good session, right? Just because the ending wasn't good.

Speaker 2 If you guys had fun the rest of the time, then you would have had to have left before halfway through the session, I think, to be entitled for a full refugee. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like saying I didn't like the last bite of my salad. Yeah.
Yeah. Right.
Which I've tried to do.

Speaker 2 They will not let you do that at a chop. You needed to complain before act two of your salad.

Speaker 1 Sir, you got that salad at 2 p.m. And it's 7.

Speaker 2 You've been nursing it.

Speaker 2 It's not our fault. Sir, you have a lot of chickpeas in your teeth and you're yelling at me a lot.
You suckled every leaf, sir.

Speaker 2 But I do

Speaker 2 given the info here, too, there's no reason to believe that the character should have gone in there by themselves.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of this stuff is just like...

Speaker 2 poorly i mean it sounds like honestly that sounds like a good riddle to have a bunch of symbols on the door and then have a blank one and the answer is that you go through the the door that is blank, and through like deducing it in the riddle, it's like the answer is nothing.

Speaker 2 So we go through the no door.

Speaker 1 You know, it would be so messed up, too, if you had an X and an O, because then everyone would be like, okay, but it's the X or the zero.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We don't know.
Yeah. Or do we need to go through one door and then the other? Because that's no.
Yeah. Wow.
Think about it. No.
I like this as a setup. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it's a great, that's the thing that sucks is that it's a great puzzle.

Speaker 2 It seems like my read on this situation is maybe this DM is great at the number crunching aspect of it, like the puzzle creating, maybe doing the combat and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And then when it comes to the like

Speaker 2 setting up drama and storytelling, maybe fall short.

Speaker 2 So a little bit more forgivable because it is just you guys are all playing at a bar, was probably planning on killing you guys or giving you the good ending.

Speaker 2 That being said, this is a terrible fucking ending. The DM did a bad job.
We're going to rule against the DM, I guess.

Speaker 2 Of course. I'm for sure ruling against the DM.
You saw a bad movie.

Speaker 2 You pay student 20 bucks and we're going to go to the movie.

Speaker 1 No, you saw a good movie that then had a bad ending.

Speaker 2 I would say that's a bad movie. I thought Titanic was great otherwise.

Speaker 2 Well, a sad ending could still be a good ending. A bad ending is

Speaker 2 true. Like, if most of the movie is good and you still get to talk about it with your friends afterwards,

Speaker 2 yeah, it really depends on if I'm seeing a bad movie alone, that's no good. But like, I get to discuss it.

Speaker 1 Maybe we sentence the DM to see a bad movie alone.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 the DM can watch the Sopranos and see see the ending. Oh, yeah.
Because that's the ultimate example of not that. Well, it's like much debated now.

Speaker 2 I now kind of understand that

Speaker 2 it's supposed to be sudden and from Tony's perspective. But I will admit, when I watched it, I was like, what the fuck? You were missed?

Speaker 2 It's time. You were missed.
It's myth.

Speaker 1 Did you ask for your money back?

Speaker 2 I asked for my money back 20 years after the fact.

Speaker 2 I guess you could cancel your HBO subscription. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, so this DM has to watch Sopranos?

Speaker 2 They have to watch, which is honestly great. That's

Speaker 2 a simple thing. I will say this undoes also everything I just said because I think the ending is not great.

Speaker 1 Okay, maybe this DM has to watch the Sopranos, but instead of Tony, the entire time is pennywise with a huge rack.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right. That's good.

Speaker 2 Okay. So, like, there's just like

Speaker 2 corny

Speaker 2 just keeps saying this little thing of ours and pointing to his huge rack.

Speaker 2 Chrissy, Chrissy, help me with my makeup. My makeup's running, Chrissy.

Speaker 2 Okay, so ordered, you are watching Tittywise. There it is.

Speaker 2 Well played, bailiff. Our next case comes from Secretly Made of Worms.
To the esteemed justices, the East-oriented bailiff, and the perpetually steamed Murph.

Speaker 2 I ran a game for five adventurers where I asked for one page of backstory or longer so I could work them into the world.

Speaker 2 One adventurer submitted two sentences that amounted to, I'm a goblin and I want to to be the explosives man, like the sappers from Warcraft 2. Whoa, that's clear.
That's just after my own heart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, honestly, this is rocks.

Speaker 1 This is, in terms of the two sentences you're going to get, that's evocative.

Speaker 2 I know exactly.

Speaker 2 We're ruling with this goblin. Yeah, I will say, yeah, I'm a little bit scared that you said that there's like a word count minimum on what people submit.

Speaker 2 Because I do think like that, that is pretty evocative what they just said.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because when you say sappers from Warcraft 2, what you're saying is go to the warcraft 2 wikipedia and read 4 000 paragraphs well they just they come out of the little goblin alchemy and they go we're ready yeah wow also like explosives goblin is such an archetype like even like magic the gathering is so like that is if someone says i want to be a goblin i want to be the explosives yeah they're a little mad scientist the lore is filling itself in for me when i see a goblin that doesn't have smoke charring his face uh and isn't holding like a stick of dynamite about to explode You're like, Were you adopted?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's a

Speaker 2 trope. Like, it's just, it's, yeah.
Okay, but to me, it's a fucking slam dunk. We have to hear because maybe they're saying there weren't goblins.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We're ready to hear the case. Anyway, the party came across a town beset by death cultists and their monster enforcer, a shambling mound I reskinned to be made of worms.

Speaker 2 After they cracked the case of who's killing people in the town, they began to infiltrate the cult's underground temple. Here, one of the characters ended up dying.

Speaker 2 By going through the door with the X symbol.

Speaker 2 You have to look for the blank door. You have to go by yourself.

Speaker 2 Anyway, out of game, the goblin had expressed interest in changing their character.

Speaker 2 He wasn't loving that everyone else had a stake in the story except him and promised he had a new character with a good backstory.

Speaker 2 So I designed an encounter later on in the cultist dungeon where there was a basin, like from Dumbledore's Last Stand, where someone from the party could essentially swap places with their dead companion.

Speaker 2 Oh. The problem is, when we got to this part, I asked the group if anyone wanted to drink from the basin.
The goblin said, well, I didn't really know him, and my character isn't the heroic type.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 1 okay, never mind. Here we are being like, you, you like had a perfect character and then they didn't even want to play it.

Speaker 2 So fuck everything we just said.

Speaker 2 You're right. This is wrong.

Speaker 2 So instead, the barbarian of the group, who was critical to the story, decided to swap places instead, and I lost the character with the most hook into the plot.

Speaker 2 My question is: should I have talked more with the goblin player outside of the game and designed an encounter together to make sure he was going to swap?

Speaker 2 I feel like I ruined the game by trying to force a choice his character didn't want to make. It's a good question.

Speaker 1 I don't think you should have had to, but it is a learning lesson that in the future.

Speaker 2 Loading that kind of thing without the player knowing that this is their new character.

Speaker 2 And also, I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that you would base all of the story around backstory, where this player is saying, I am the only character that's not invested in this.

Speaker 2 And it's like, we couldn't get invested in this. We couldn't pick up something in the first few.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm kind of like, is it the goblin's fault, or is it the DM being like, okay, I'm tailoring everything to backstory? Because there is such a focus on backstory.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I think that that's what you do at first, right?

Speaker 2 It's also like this goblin didn't just appear out of nowhere, unless that's the lore of your world. And then that's a good hook in and of itself.
Where are the goblins even coming from?

Speaker 2 Is there some sort of like cloaca in the side of a mountain that's just popping out goblins?

Speaker 1 But this player didn't even want to explore that. This player was like, I actually have a better character I want to play.

Speaker 1 And then they were like, here's an opportunity to heroically send your character off and play your new character. And they were like, oh, sorry, no, I'm not a hero.

Speaker 1 This character I don't want to play isn't a hero.

Speaker 2 But there's other ways to get people invested than just like playing into their backstories.

Speaker 2 Like literally, if one of the bad guys was like, fuck you in particular, and like was like really mean to specifically this goblin or something like that, like a rival situation.

Speaker 1 I think sometimes that's kind of unfair when like people authentically engage and then the one person who isn't engaging, the DM goes out of their way to be like, here's a present.

Speaker 1 Here's another present. What else can I do to get you involved? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I see what you're saying.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess like it does seem like the DM should have maybe tried to ask a few more questions about like why this character wanted to be a goblin and why they were inspired by the sappers.

Speaker 2 It's like easy enough to like start that text thread and ask like a couple more follow-up questions.

Speaker 1 I think that it makes sense that it didn't occur to you to ask, but maybe this is just a learning lesson going forward to like not assume that people will like that if you want to give someone an out that like maybe you can flag ahead of time like, hey, there's going to be a chance this session for you to retire your character.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 So totally take that if you

Speaker 2 since you've been talking about playing a new character.

Speaker 2 But I guess it does seem like, yeah, the DM did not ask this player what sort of character they want.

Speaker 1 This character just, I mean, this player just sounds a little high maintenance. They're like, I actually want to play a new character.
And then they're like, but not like this, though.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Actually, maybe I likely gave more if the barbarian's not here. So

Speaker 2 this works for me.

Speaker 2 It's also

Speaker 2 when it's within story and stuff, though, though, and it is like, it can be hard to pick up on things sometimes. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 Unless the DM is really like, wink, wink, this is for you specifically. I have definitely in character just been like, somebody else going to do it? I don't know.
Like, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because sometimes it is like, because you're playing a group game. Sometimes, like, I feel like sometimes you'll get items and you're like, well, I'm going to make sure.

Speaker 2 everyone else

Speaker 2 see if everyone else wants it first because i don't understand if i'm the only barbarian that uh attacks with strength, but surely this axe could be better used by someone else, right? You know,

Speaker 1 the bard really likes the axe.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm going to turn it into a guitar.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It must have been meant for them all along.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm of two minds on this goblin because I love the sappers from Warcraft 2, especially.

Speaker 1 But they aren't showing respect for the copyright.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 right. You can't let that.

Speaker 1 I think you're letting the sappers cloud your judgment.

Speaker 2 It is. It is, 100%.

Speaker 2 What's the worst class in World of Warcraft? Or, like, what's what's the most boring character or class?

Speaker 2 Well, Warcraft 2

Speaker 2 is like different because it's real-time strategy. And I thought this story was going to be that the goblin sacrificed himself because the sappers blow up every time they attack.
They just die.

Speaker 2 So I thought that that's what this story was going to be. But no, it's that the sappers are not involved enough in the story to

Speaker 2 win the story. And the goblin's not the heroic type.
Yeah, not the heroic type.

Speaker 1 This player, I think, came in with a different idea of what DD is. They see a different path.
They want to take the other path, but I think you have to drag them onto the other path.

Speaker 2 I do. You silently hold their hand.
You got to put another basin in.

Speaker 2 If you're going to do something huge, if you're going to do something like somebody changing characters, somebody changing class or something, I do think you have to talk.

Speaker 2 outside of the table and be like, I'm going to,

Speaker 2 you might be like, you know, you don't want to do spoilers or anything like that, but I think you do have to tee it up enough to be like, I will put you in a position where you can change characters.

Speaker 2 I think DMs often overlook how obvious, like, an alley oop is from that because sometimes, yeah, as a player, you're just like, oh no, I'm just caught up. I'm listening.
What are you?

Speaker 2 You're doing your thing.

Speaker 2 I didn't know this was a duet yet. And also, hit him over the head with it.

Speaker 2 Also, they said that this one player that was most invested stepped up and was the one who drank the water and like to like essentially, because they like swap places with like the dead teammate, right?

Speaker 2 So they're like bringing back the dead teammate.

Speaker 2 Of course, you're like most

Speaker 2 noble player is going to do that.

Speaker 1 You know what I'd also say is if I'm in your shoes, I'm not going to be worried because now I just have someone whose friend sacrificed their life to bring them back in the story.

Speaker 1 We don't even need to worry about backstory. The actual story is now deeply complicated.

Speaker 2 That's definitely true.

Speaker 2 I do agree that the focus should be the main story that's like driving this thing now, not backstory. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I think,

Speaker 2 yeah, it sounds like this, the sapper is a little bit of a piece of work.

Speaker 1 Because they're seeming particular, I would just ask them outside.

Speaker 2 Hey, how do you want to wrap up this character?

Speaker 2 Yeah, super focused, just like, yeah, all meta, just actually talk about what the player wants to do because it seems like they're having a hard time articulating what they want.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and if you keep on guessing, you're just going to shoot yourself in the foot and campaign even more.

Speaker 2 You might have guessed a big troll who's always yawning and you can just jump right in the mouth, holding two sticks of dynamite as your character and blow them up from the end. There you go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, about that. That's perfect.

Speaker 2 This player, I mean, yeah, the character could also just be like, I didn't have a backstory in mind, but you like your character did live, so you could come up with a backstory now.

Speaker 2 You don't have to throw out the whole character just because you're like, I didn't come up with enough of a backstory. It's like, you just didn't talk about your backstory yet.

Speaker 2 You still came from somewhere. Okay, Goblin.
So why aren't you the heroic type? Yeah. Let's talk about it.
Why are you scared?

Speaker 1 Do we think, though, that they were doing whatever voice you were doing? That was an impression of it. And they were just like, I can't keep doing it.

Speaker 2 I can't keep doing this. I mean,

Speaker 2 and the thing is, the sappers are the heroic type. So that is.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's tough.

Speaker 2 They will sacrifice themselves for the horde. So how,

Speaker 2 wow. Okay, so I think I'm now biased against them, weirdly.

Speaker 2 Wow. Okay, so I guess lightly I'm going to be like, I know this.
player is a piece of work, but I do think the DM maybe handled this wrong.

Speaker 2 Yes. Light late ruling against you, um, but just yeah, it's true.
Unfortunately, they did the wrong thing, but it was all kind of in your head.

Speaker 2 There was no, like, there was not a major, there wasn't a perfect path for them to do that. Part of the problem, too, is just the bar is on the floor.

Speaker 2 Like, when you said someone sent me two sentences, I thought they were going to be like, My name is Penis, the garbage troll.

Speaker 2 The fact that they were like, I'm from a fantasy property, it's like, wow, that's awesome. A plus.

Speaker 1 I think I'm ultimately going to kind of rule against you, unfortunately, just because I think that they couldn't read your mind.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 You know, we need to do it, but I, I'm, I feel like really, you already got the punishment, which is you learned a little lesson that you in the future, yeah, you'll just talk to it's also such like a powerful role play moment.

Speaker 2 Like, it sounds like a really cool thing and a cool way to honor like the death of another PC, but part of that is that the story of it is so good that I don't think they were seeing the wink-wink, here is your chance to play a different character.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 I think that situation needs to just be like, you see a cool Ranger at the bar.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're not as dialed in as you want them to be. So we're not going to get your hint.
Got to be over there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're fucking sappers. Why is it hard to think of a way to have them come up with another character? The sapper should fucking blow up.

Speaker 2 The dynamite just fucking blows up.

Speaker 1 And maybe when you ask them, how would you like to

Speaker 1 move on from this character, they'll say, I would like to blow up.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's not hard hard to, yeah.
In fact, I would bet they will. Okay.
Should we sentence them to play all of Warcraft 2? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Scanning the campaign.
Wow. Tides of Darkness.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Get inspired by the sappers.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 2 And I hope you're ready to have fun. Okay.
Our next case comes from Rob E

Speaker 2 to my second, third, and fourth favorite judges and my number one baby bailiff, Chake. That's

Speaker 2 it. These are freaking bad.
Number one, baby.

Speaker 2 That's right. That's huge.
I'm number one.

Speaker 2 I was starting a game of the Witcher, TTRPG, at a local game night, and we agreed on a rule about raising your hand when speaking out of character.

Speaker 2 Since I was playing a dwarf in the Northern Kingdoms, my character was subject to some nasty looks from patrons at the tavern we were starting the adventure at.

Speaker 2 I described how Torin, my dwarf, didn't let the negative atmosphere get him down, and he silently stared back at the patrons, proud he's a dwarf. However, since I had not raised my hand,

Speaker 2 the jam told me that Torin said all of this out loud to the tavern, which made the patrons really angry. No, this

Speaker 1 I think they were trying to be funny. God bless.
They were trying to be funny, I think.

Speaker 2 I guess so.

Speaker 1 They were trying to be funny by throwing you under the bus.

Speaker 2 It's so funny. It's such a bad idea to just be like, we need to go so hard on the fantasy racism that we

Speaker 2 get on you for not raising your hand. Like, that's the hill I want to die on as a DM.
That's funny if you do it once and then also retcon it so it didn't happen.

Speaker 2 This is the sort of thing where you say, like, haha, just kidding, but like,

Speaker 2 presumably, it's going to go terribly because they wrote into DD court. Exactly.
The GM then said, ha ha, just kidding. It's all good.
Okay, no, no. Not really.

Speaker 2 Torin was then jumped outside the tavern and left with a broken leg, which halved his speed for the rest of the game. Oh my god, they punished you for saying that.

Speaker 2 Never mind, they weren't trying to be

Speaker 2 justices. This was my first ever session of a TTRPG.
Hell. Oh, that's not normal.

Speaker 2 We're going to break this DM's leg.

Speaker 1 I have to say, I have to say, like, the hand-raising aspect, I feel like that level of rules, treating it like a classroom when it's supposed to be kind of like a hangout board game night, I think does not foster.

Speaker 2 That's not the game. You were not playing the game.
If you have to raise your hand when you're not speaking in characters, I think that's

Speaker 2 fine if you want to be like, let's try to do that or something like that.

Speaker 2 Like, if you're so in character and we're out of character a lot, I prefer to play a lot out of character because that just makes the game like we're all sitting here eating fucking snacks and shit when we're not on Mike, you know?

Speaker 2 I think there's like there is in character and then there's out of character, but then there's this in between, which is like you're an internal monologue for your character.

Speaker 2 I think that's still in, I think that's still in character at this point. Yeah, you're right.
You're just

Speaker 2 speaking as Torrin. They're just dictating what Torrin is thinking and feeling.
Because being like, how much HP do I have left is different than being like, I sit there solemnly looking at my drink.

Speaker 2 Like, that is in character. It's just not doing my voice.

Speaker 1 It feels like a rule for a kindergarten class. Yeah.
So I'm like really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this would be something to not only be excited about, but even be punished.

Speaker 2 And it's one thing, it's one thing that if it was, I think you get your $20 back.

Speaker 2 If it was done kind of as a joke, and then all of the NPCs are like, hey, whoa, this guy is weird or something like that.

Speaker 2 But they broke his fucking leg.

Speaker 1 My generous read is that the DM was like, I need to.

Speaker 2 Witcher needs to be so fucking badass. Everyone needs to be fucking like...

Speaker 2 get legs broken when they joke around. I think that we've had this suggestion before where the DM needs to write a book.
I think this DM needs to write a play if this is what they want.

Speaker 2 They got to be a playwright now, unfortunately. Okay.
I guess so. If they are asking people to like speak in character voices all the time, like you don't want a TTRPG,

Speaker 2 you want to be a kindergarten teacher.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was going to say maybe we should send them to be a kindergarten teacher because if they want hands being raised, yeah, but then just being so into breaking people's legs over like minor things probably isn't that much.

Speaker 1 So maybe high school teachers.

Speaker 2 High school teachers, that's fine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. You have to be a high school teacher.
There you go. Because you're a bad DM.
You love

Speaker 2 DMs.

Speaker 2 That's the worst punishment we've ever given anybody. You got to teach high school and college.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think what the toughest, the toughest room to teach would be.

Speaker 2 Like the most brutal teenagers. Sophomores, I think.
I think, yeah, sophomores right after lunch, so they're all really sleepy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And like a really rowdy class that they've like figured out that getting in trouble at school isn't that huge of a deal.
I bet sophomore year

Speaker 1 is tough to teach history to.

Speaker 2 I think, yeah. Full class full of cool kids

Speaker 2 that have gotten in so much trouble that they know that, like, unless they get expelled, it really doesn't matter. No nerds at all.
Yeah, zero nerds. You weeded out the nerds.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then the kids are going to break your leg.

Speaker 2 You're the nerd. You're the nerd.
Somehow, they're all the varsity football quarterback. I don't know how there's that many quarterbacks.

Speaker 1 And somehow, every time they raise their hand, it still feels like it's mocking you. Yeah.
Like it's malicious compliance.

Speaker 2 They call you teach, but not in a cool way.

Speaker 2 It's such a, like, what a red flag and a weird move to be like, this, like, my character standing up to people, giving him weird looks is you talking out of character.

Speaker 2 It's, it'd be so different if you were just as a joke being like, haha, you yell, I cast fireball as you cast fireball. And everyone goes, what? What's fireball? What's mana? What's spell slot?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's table banter. And you want that as an NDM in the new group.
You're like, oh, yeah, now we're having fun. We're laughing.
Now I'm jumping the dwarf for saying they were proud of the.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what the fuck? It's not a black box theater. Yeah, what a, yeah, wow.
Okay. Yeah, you got done so dirty.

Speaker 2 Yeah, jeez. Yeah, we've had a couple ones that were like, I don't know, cutting it pretty close.
This one's pretty clear. Yeah, yeah.
This one's pretty clear.

Speaker 1 But it's okay because a class of sophomore year cool kids is going to absolutely destroy this DM.

Speaker 2 Nobody's sitting normally. Truly.
Yeah, everyone's. Oh, man.
They're all on the desk. They're all on the desk.
Everyone's sitting Slater style.

Speaker 2 The good kids are sitting Slater style. That's how bad the class is.
The kids in the back are sitting on the windowsill. The kids in the middle are sitting on the desk.

Speaker 2 And the kids in front are sitting Slater style. Some kids brought hammocks.
Some kids are drilling hammocks into your wall.

Speaker 1 Oh, and the bureaucracy at your school is terrible.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. The

Speaker 1 principal is on you about your, I don't know what they're on about.

Speaker 2 You got to buy your own coffee. You're bringing in your own K-cups to the teacher's lounge.
You got to buy your own coffee. You gotta park a mile away.
It's absolutely fucked. Okay, so ordered.

Speaker 2 Hey there, Nat Poles. So I've got a question for all the gamers out there.
Are you seriously going to miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year?

Speaker 2 I mean, these are Black Friday prices we're talking about. So it's not just another sale.
I took a look, and this is some pretty big bang for your buck.

Speaker 2 You know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there with systems at the top of reviewers list. Give yourself a new Alienware 16 Aurora gaming laptop.

Speaker 2 I mean, this thing has got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core processors. And even better, you can get it during Black Friday starting at $899.99.

Speaker 2 Plus, you save on all kinds of displays and accessories like the Alienware 32, 4K, QD, OLED gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity.

Speaker 2 These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance. So I'd visit alienware.com slash deals soon and grab what you can before their biggest sale of the year goes dark.

Speaker 2 Hey there, Nad Poles. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money.
Do you ever feel like your money just disappears each month?

Speaker 2 Like it's easier than ever to overspend from subscriptions piling up to impulse buys after seeing an ad on your phone to ordering takeout a few times a month?

Speaker 2 Well, Rocket Money helps you rein it in by showing you where your money is going and helping you make better decisions so you can keep more money in your pocket.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money shows you all of your expenses in one place, including subscriptions, so you don't forget about them. If you see a subscription you no longer want, Rocket Money will help you cancel it.

Speaker 2 If you've got a goal you'd like to save for, Rocket Money can analyze your accounts to find the best time each month to put extra money aside and they will even try to negotiate lower bills for you.

Speaker 2 The app automatically scans your bills to find opportunities to save and then goes to work to get you better deals. They will even talk to customer service so you don't have to.

Speaker 2 Rocket Money has saved users over $2.5 billion,

Speaker 2 including over $880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features.

Speaker 2 So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash Pawpaw today.
That is rocketmoney.com/slash Pawpaw.

Speaker 2 Rocketmoney.com/slash Pawpaw. Thanks, everybody.

Speaker 2 And our next case comes from Austin. To the exceptionally adorable judges and bailiff Papa John, I present a case.

Speaker 2 I love you. Have they ever called you that? I don't think so, only because it's not even close to my name.
It feels really right, though.

Speaker 2 Really? I feel like, I guess I am a dad, and my name's Sergeant Jay. Papa John's has been under some hot water recently, and maybe you should be in charge of Papa John's.
You have to take it over.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they actually do need a reorg and a rebrand.

Speaker 2 What's your top Papa John idea, Jake? Backwards pizza? The crust is in the middle.

Speaker 2 Is that interesting?

Speaker 2 That's interesting.

Speaker 2 You got called not full backwards pizza. Okay, wait.

Speaker 1 You don't want to be like monkey bread.

Speaker 2 I think that sounds good.

Speaker 2 Not a meat.

Speaker 2 Wow. Okay.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Pop. I like this.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. Now I just need to do some controversial stuff on the side to rust in the middle.
To fill the roll.

Speaker 2 Okay. I present the case of the incontestable check.
Playing a game with a couple of friends and a DM we found online. Oh no.

Speaker 2 God bless. Our party took a job from a shady fellow to get a valuable item from the back room of a casino.

Speaker 2 My plasmoid circle of stars druid, yes, I'm actually playing a guid, eventually got to the back rooms alone and found the item we needed.

Speaker 2 But I was attacked by the same shady fellow we had taken the job from. What?

Speaker 2 I got hit with a bunch of damage from a single-thrown dagger, so I retreated with the item and Misty-stepped under the door back to my friends.

Speaker 2 As the DM allowed me to do this, he rolled a sleight of hand check at the same time and got a nat 20. Ah, okay.
He then exclaimed, I misty-stepped and appeared by my friends, but the item was gone.

Speaker 2 I didn't know how he was able to make it in the first place, being at a distance when he attacked. I debated that since I had it directly in my hands, it should have at least been a contested role.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I would have also had to roll a nat 20, but the DM didn't even let me try.

Speaker 2 Later on in the session, because we rolled digital dice on roll 20, I could see the sleight of hand modifier for the shady fellow was a plus 20. I was a level

Speaker 2 6 character. Hello.

Speaker 2 So I had no chance of beating it regardless.

Speaker 2 Was I roped into an unwinnable situation facing a plus 20 sleight of hand? Or was Dice Christ against me by giving the DM a nat 20 anyways?

Speaker 1 Because also I'm kind of like, if you misty step away, like DMs, would you let your bad guy as a reaction try to steal?

Speaker 2 No, that's straight up just not how it works.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's an action.
Yeah. Yeah, that's an action.

Speaker 2 At first, I was like going to give the DM a little bit of the benefit of the doubt and be like, if it provoked an opportunity attack, which it doesn't. So first off, the DM's just wrong.

Speaker 2 Like, this is just, never should have had any kind of shot. Okay.

Speaker 2 Could, if you put everything out in front of the table and were like, if the person ran away but didn't disengage, you were like, they're going to use their opportunity attack, but they're a master thief.

Speaker 2 So they're going to do it as a swipe and try to grab it. That's cool.
And even then,

Speaker 2 I believe that would be justified. That would still be fudging the rules, but it would be like, look, if they can punch you, they can swing out and try to grab something.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's that weird. Yeah.
So if you wanted to fudge it for that, I think you put that all out in front of the table, being like, hey, here's my reasoning.

Speaker 1 Opportunity attack to

Speaker 2 steal this. It still would be contested.
It would still be contested. Yeah.
And the fact, yeah, this DM did so many fucking things wrong.

Speaker 2 You're throwing knives, so they're not within reach. You're Misty stepping, so you're not getting a reaction out of them.
You're not getting an opportunity attack.

Speaker 1 Oh, but do we think actually, though, the DM didn't specify this, but they probably threw a knife to pin the object against them.

Speaker 2 Oh, perfect. Yeah.
Oh, which is actually really perfect. Which is actually a perfect Ryan Irfey move.
Yeah. I mean, a nat 20 plus 20 is 40.
So that's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so that's so that's another thing that pisses me off is that this person rolled a nat 20, but ultimately it didn't matter because they already cooked their character to make it so they couldn't lose no matter what.

Speaker 2 And they're also, they're just make fucking making up rules.

Speaker 1 Although, Murph, I've never seen any of the

Speaker 2 monsters that we have. Oh, my guys have a plus 20 sleight of hand.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So this is what you do.
I'm cheating. Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is how you keep drama. All of your characters do exactly what you want them to do, and that's how you define the story.
That's cool. Yeah.
That's really cool. Yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 1 The dice are there to tell your story.

Speaker 2 The dice are there for me to write a book while you guys fucking listen to me.

Speaker 2 If you look at the character sheet, there's a little M next to some of the stats, and that's for Murph Stratisse, yeah which gives you plus 10 to a stat i think that you should feel good because it sounds like you were not supposed to get this thing yeah you almost got it

Speaker 2 clearly yeah the dm was like covering their tracks i know that's

Speaker 2 but that see that's what pisses me off about this right is it is like i do give dms a certain benefit of the doubt when they're like it's clear you're panicking and you made a bad choice literally everyone does that this was pre-planned because the the uh bad guy has plus 20 sleight of hand.

Speaker 2 So they knew you were going to get it and then they were going to steal it back. And no matter what, their guy was going to win.

Speaker 2 So this was pre-planned. This is premeditated, shitty DMing.

Speaker 2 We sentence you to the maximum sentence of watching. Just being a high school teacher.
Being a high school teacher.

Speaker 2 You have to keep doing it until you get tenure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You have to dress up as pennywise. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 The kids are going to put you in your place daily.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, the fortitude to interact with teenagers daily.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they've got a plus 20 to taunting you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The only time I've ever had a plus 20 to anything, it was because I had a level 14 character who was a bard. So they had expertise.

Speaker 2 They go.

Speaker 1 And early in that campaign, I had gotten a magic item that gave like a plus five, or maybe like got like double expertise. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Double expertise. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But so then eventually by the time you're level 14, so then I had, I was a bard with double expertise in something. And that was how, and I was level 14.

Speaker 2 Right. So there you go.
That's what this

Speaker 2 perfect buttoned up. Emily just

Speaker 2 exonerated them.

Speaker 1 That is not on the level with a level six character.

Speaker 2 Right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, which is why you're a high school teacher forever now.

Speaker 2 Okay, so ordered. All right.
And our next case comes from John L. To the all-knowing justices and the all-lowly bailiff, I present the case of the caving roof.

Speaker 2 I'm playing my first ever campaign as a monk. My party was facing one of the campaign's big bats, a vampire queen with a wendigo and her minions.

Speaker 2 The fight was occurring indoors, but it was during the daytime, and I asked my DM if the roof was a material that my character would be able to punch holes into.

Speaker 2 My DM agreed. Okay.
And on my turn, I took out and drank a potion of flight I'd gotten earlier on in the campaign. I flew up to the ceiling and proceeded with my plan.

Speaker 2 I wanted to bring sunlight into an area so the party would have a place of safety and we wouldn't get surrounded. I like it.

Speaker 2 My DM agreed to this, but when I rolled my attacks and punched into the roof, he said that it was going to cause a large part of it to collapse down and damage my party.

Speaker 2 When I questioned him that punching a few holes wouldn't cause a total collapse, he ignored me and told the party they all took damage from the falling roof. Whoa.

Speaker 2 This made our fight much harder as the enemies were powerful to begin with. The other players were annoyed with me for tying the spell.

Speaker 2 Should I have been punished for what I thought was a creative way to help turn the tides or was my lack of roofing knowledge punished accordingly

Speaker 2 I humbly await your response well you punched a structural beam so that's on you bud

Speaker 2 did you punch a joist or whatever

Speaker 1 I'm not opposed to like the um it potentially making some terrain a little difficult yeah but it sounds like something that it's more like warning this could happen and then you guys all coordinate and you're like great I'm gonna hold my turn for you guys to go

Speaker 2 I think you could. And even them taking damage, there should have been a save or something.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 the DM should have just, once again, fucking set expectations. When you say, can I punch a hole in the roof?

Speaker 2 They can say, okay, but it's going to be this level DC to do it and just do it in this area.

Speaker 2 It's going to be this level DC and you do it, but like a beam falls down or like some of the thatched roof collapses in. Yeah, take notes.

Speaker 2 You know, like make it so that the person knows what they're doing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And also, I just think it's, look, like a superhero character, like these high-level characters that are fighting like vampire queens and shit, they can punch through a wall.

Speaker 2 These guys can fly and shit. Like, you can punch through a wall and not knock down the whole roof.
Yeah. It's not out of bounds for this character to.
try to create a fucking beam of sunlight.

Speaker 2 I like it too.

Speaker 1 I like your strategy too, because you were kind of like, I want a safe space that she won't come to. Like that seems like a kind of fun addition to the battle.

Speaker 2 It is really fun. It like makes the field more interesting.
The DM should be like, that's a blessing. Like, okay, great.
Now my battlefield is interesting. That's such a great point.

Speaker 2 Like, it taking terrain into effect makes everything more cinematic. When someone says, I want to go on the roof, I get so psyched because I'm like, great, now this is a multi-tiered fight.
Somebody,

Speaker 2 so much more interesting for her to like, like, have one of her goons climb up and try to pull him through the ceiling or something like that.

Speaker 2 Like, actually, use the terrain instead of just doing bullshit. Like, this player gave you a gift.

Speaker 1 Well, it seems like they tried to honor it. They just, I think they just kind of fumbled it.
I bet the DM isn't even super proud of this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Although, you know what? The other, the other player's getting mad at you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's weird. That's messed up.
That's messed up.

Speaker 2 I don't understand this because it does make sense that you could say, look, you're punching through a roof. We're going to set DCs where you might cause a bigger part of it to collapse.

Speaker 2 And that's fine. But this to me reads like a DM that wants to get one over on their player.
That's like, ha ha ha, you dared ask me to do something creative. I'll get you, you creative asshole.

Speaker 2 I'll make the rest of your party hate you. You wish you just used an action to take two attacks.

Speaker 2 You should be surrounding my vampire queen and just hitting her.

Speaker 1 Do you think Ryan Nurphy would DM like that?

Speaker 2 Well, Ryan Nurphy, the thing is, is Ryan Nurphy's on the side of good. Right.
So I, as Brian Murphy, of course, would have been like, you pushed Murphy at you. Murphbot might have DM'd like that.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, Murphbot would have fucked it up, but thank God Ryan Urphy was there because he would have caught all the rocks on his back, and he's immune to rock.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're right, because Ryan Nurphy would have had like an NPC there who, like, oh, this is a chance for an NPC to show.

Speaker 2 So, Murphbot,

Speaker 2 Murphbot would have had you guys fall through the roof and then would have had a super-powered NPC to save you, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he uses one of his three reactions, yeah, because Murphbot loves nothing more than an NPC Dave sex machine.

Speaker 2 That's how every fight goes.

Speaker 2 Programmed for that. You punch through the wall and destroy its supporting beam.
It goes to fall down on you and does. How much HP do you have? It does 340 damage.
Oh, man. I'm dead out.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're not dead because you actually see

Speaker 2 coming from the shadows. He has a cool cloak on.
You see it is your friend from the tavern, Ryan Irfey. He catches the rocks and eats the rocks before they even hit you.

Speaker 2 So instead of 300 damage, it does 90 damage. How much HP do you have?

Speaker 2 10. Oh, sorry.
No, it actually doesn't do 90 damage. It does, it heals you for 9 because he is a rock cleric and can turn the rocks into potions.
Oh, that's cool, I guess.

Speaker 1 As a reaction, he can change classes.

Speaker 2 As a reaction, he becomes a cleric and revivifies everyone.

Speaker 2 And that's where we'll end our session.

Speaker 2 It's 6:30 p.m.

Speaker 1 I'm picturing Murphbot doing a what happened last session recap, and it's just all about what Ryan Nurphy was doing. And we're like, we weren't even there for that.

Speaker 2 Wait, what did he do?

Speaker 1 He joined at the very end of the fight.

Speaker 2 He romanced the vampire queen. Last time, Ryan Nurphy had sex with everyone who is cool and hot and became level 25.
Yes, you can become higher than level 20.

Speaker 2 While you guys were sleeping, he didn't have to sleep. He can trance while he walks and even runs and

Speaker 2 trance while he has sex with hot people.

Speaker 2 He gets his spell slots back by fucking. He has infinite spell slots because of all of the cumming he does.

Speaker 2 He has nine ninth level spell slots and he can get extra because of doing 69. That's why they call it 69, because he gets sixth and ninth level spell slots back.

Speaker 2 And with that,

Speaker 2 shall we move to church?

Speaker 2 Yes, that was so sacrilegious, but let's go to church.

Speaker 2 Take us to church, bot. Grace H.

Speaker 2 Writes, I come to Dice Christ to ask for guidance. Guidance? Ooh.
My current DM enjoys punishing nat ones more than anyone I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 I've rolled a nat one on initiative and had my first turn skipped. What the fuck? Why?

Speaker 1 They better be giving you two turns when you roll a nat 20 then.

Speaker 2 Why does everyone fucking hate their players so much? Why?

Speaker 2 I rolled a nat one. Why can't players just treat their players the way that Murphbot treats?

Speaker 2 You rolled a nat one. Your character takes 90 points of damage.

Speaker 1 Ryan Derfeet rolls a nat one. It becomes a nat 20 because of a weapon.

Speaker 2 He's going to use one of his portent rolls. He that he gets as a level 25 fighter.

Speaker 2 He comes so hard, he gets 100 HP back.

Speaker 1 He has five portent rolls. All are nat 20.

Speaker 2 he cast wish to shorten the refractory period so we can talk again

Speaker 2 i have rolled a nat one saving throw and had to argue not to be stunned for two rounds instead of the regular one

Speaker 2 hardly any nat one is rolled without punishment which is fun i would argue it's not which is fun until it means skipping turns in combat or incurring damage for no real reason yeah this has made me wary to share when i roll the nat one yeah instead maybe I should just say I failed.

Speaker 2 Would this be a lie of omission? Should I simply submit to the nat one punishments or gear up for the argument every time? Priest of the fickled dice Christ, what should I do?

Speaker 1 I actually don't hate this. I would never ever turn away.
It's more like if it's, if you only did it for, if you just said, I failed for when you're failing on a stun.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like if it's something that you know.

Speaker 2 It's a rotten road because you are saying like, well, the DM's cheating, so I'm going going to cheat a little bit.

Speaker 2 I feel like you just talk to your DM and be like, hey, if you want to do something where like while we're attacking in combat, if you roll a not one on an attack, you like drop your sword or something.

Speaker 2 That kind of makes sense. But saying, you know, you get stunned for several rounds or it sounds like there's a lot of punishments where you do nothing.
Yeah. Which fucking sucks.

Speaker 2 It'd be one thing if like you, I don't know. It's also like you lost your reaction or something like that.
It was just like sort of a brutal campaign, I guess.

Speaker 1 That's also the two things you cite is you're like, oh, I'm stunned for two turns. Oh, I miss my.

Speaker 2 I've literally taken stun out of our games because it's such a fucking unfun mechanic. Guys, don't nerf your players.
Murph your players. There you go.

Speaker 2 Take his advice for how to make your game hard but enjoyable and fun. Yeah.
Lying by omission,

Speaker 2 here's the humiliating thing that's going to happen.

Speaker 2 Oh, is you're going to fail a bunch of times and at some point you're going to get caught because you're very clearly a nice person and you don't want to lie to anyone. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you're going to say you fail and then they're going to be like, why are you being so vague?

Speaker 1 I was going to say as someone who can't lie, I would probably the first time I tried to say it be like, I

Speaker 2 failed. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're going to get called out.

Speaker 2 How? Well, you could lie with your modifier. Like, because a lot of times you roll a nat one, but it becomes like a two or a three or five.
But then they might figure that out.

Speaker 2 And that's fucking humiliating that you got caught lying at a DNT game as an adult.

Speaker 1 Also, I think it's going to feel like shit.

Speaker 2 Yes, Yes, it's going to, yeah, you can't do, you do need to talk to the, because look, people act a lot of times like a Nat 1 or a Nat 20 are these like incredible rare occurrences and they literally happen one out of every 20 rolls, oftentimes more.

Speaker 2 Like the odds are 5%, which like ain't bad.

Speaker 2 I think maybe, honestly, the solution here is just like, tell your DM about Pathfinder because they have these rules in there. There's

Speaker 2 scales of success in Pathfinder. Get them on that shit, and maybe this will

Speaker 2 help them see the light a little bit.

Speaker 2 I'm on board with the idea of Nat ones being like really cursed in a particular campaign.

Speaker 1 But you have to have Nat 20s be equally blessed.

Speaker 2 And you can have Nat 20s be equally blessed, but even if, even if you were like, we're going to make Nat ones a huge deal, and you had, you know, story reasons for this, it's like, okay, Nat 1, you're caught flat-footed.

Speaker 2 So the enemies will, like, the first person who attacks you gets advantage on the attack or something like that. That to me is more fun,

Speaker 2 I guess. I don't know why you're going to make that ones more brutal.
The game can already be pretty hard.

Speaker 1 I think maybe just try to, maybe you could just reach out and say, like, I think this, yeah, it sounds like we, um, can we make it fun?

Speaker 2 If you're going to make Nat One's bad, can it be creative and not just I don't do shit for three rounds? Yeah. Or everyone has their own DM screen.

Speaker 2 Just everyone at the table has their own little screen and they just all roll behind it. So you can lie.
So everyone can lie.

Speaker 2 You could choose two things. Yeah.
You could get rid of the dice and just say the number that you want.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You can say whatever you want, actually. Pick up some rocks outside, toss them behind your screen.

Speaker 2 Oof, yep, that was a 25. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 It sounded like you threw a handful of bottles.

Speaker 2 Here's a thumb drive. Tell me what you guys think.
Yeah. Does that sound like a dice? Kind of.
Kind of. Yeah, it's not an dice.
That's an 18. Yeah.
That's an 18. So it's a 22, dude.

Speaker 2 this is a pin. This is another 22.

Speaker 2 Such believable roles.

Speaker 1 Nat 20.

Speaker 2 Whoa, nat 20. That's too much.
No, not like that. Another nat 20.
No, Emily.

Speaker 2 Three nat 20s on.

Speaker 2 Mike, show her how it's done, Jake. Show her how it's done.

Speaker 2 Jake, this is going to be a DC 18 grappling 18.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Shit, that's a 16.
Oh, I have a plus four. Dirty 20.
There you go.

Speaker 2 That's so believable. Yeah, okay, wait.
Let me try. Okay.
What is it? Is it grappling? Okay, yeah, it's a grapple. He got an 18.

Speaker 1 Okay, I have a plus 11 to grappling.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 You don't have to see your paper.

Speaker 1 Okay, I actually got a 21.

Speaker 2 Okay. Oh, actually, Murph, I'm going to use Flash.

Speaker 1 My dice says 21.

Speaker 2 I'm going to use Flash of Genius to help Emily out real quick. Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, yeah, that doesn't sound like dice. I feel like Jake's the only person who gets his.
Yeah. Plus 13.
Yeah. Okay.
Plus 13, you don't. I can see your paper.

Speaker 1 Wait, does my pencil sound more like it?

Speaker 2 Not 20.

Speaker 2 Too bad. Another nat 20.
That's really good. Not 20.
Another nat 20.

Speaker 2 three in a row six we're at seven with with disadvantage two nat 20s okay we've perfected canceled my we perfected it thank you all so much for listening uh we'll be back next week back to trinival extra um damn right you can listen to us uh we're going to be doing um more bonus cases over on our patreon patreon.com slash natpod that's any ddpod don't sing yet

Speaker 2 uh does anyone have anything they'd like to plug yeah i'll plug some stuff cool uh got some p.o.

Speaker 2 box stuff to shout out someone uh sent us some Sonic the Hedgehog magic cards from that Secret Layer drop. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Notice that hasn't made it to our house yet.

Speaker 2 I'm going to start playing magic, I promise. I'm building a Sonic deck.

Speaker 1 Secret Layer drops are incredible, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's so much fun stuff. I've just been,

Speaker 2 the way I play Magic is I just kind of look at the cards and go, huh, neat.

Speaker 1 I think that's actually like 90% of magic.

Speaker 2 I'm halfway there. Awesome.

Speaker 2 Let's see. Oh, somebody sent us Emily BR, aka Cheese Whips, sent us a Gin Z stitch blind box.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
So we have to open that next episode because it's incredible. Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 Also, they made a bunch of cool stickers. I actually have one on my water bottle now.
It's a clown that has the words Grumpy over it.

Speaker 2 Which I feel like it's like me and Murphy fused together.

Speaker 2 Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 Oliver, shout out for sending along your strahd story and the picture of gins in his legally blonde attorney costume. Wow.
I really love reading reading everyone's straw stories.

Speaker 2 Just seeing how everyone else derails the campaign to try and start a burger restaurant is very funny. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then, last but not least, Sarah at the Woodland Public Library sent us a care package with mugs, stickers, and shirts featuring Henrietta, the library cat. Whoa! Whoa, Henrietta!

Speaker 2 They have a library cat. Shout out to the Woodland Public Library.
I've been using the mug. It's great.
Sarah runs games for kids and teens at the library. Shout out to libraries.
Libraries rule.

Speaker 1 Brave enough enough to DM for teens.

Speaker 2 That is real. Wow.
No, but that's the good teens, not the teens that sit on the chair backwards or sit on the desk. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anything else? That's it for me. I have something to plug.

Speaker 2 If you are not a merch club member, and if you've ever been thinking about it, I think this is the time to do it because we're finally offering a dice pickling kit.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not a kit, though, it's just a jar.

Speaker 2 This is a jar. Well, that's all you need.
No pickling seasonings.

Speaker 2 You've got to go to Whole Foods for that.

Speaker 1 You got to bring the kosher salt.

Speaker 2 Included in the kit are a jar and inspiration. Ooh.

Speaker 2 The jar has got the right label, and there's a pawpaw fridge magnet. Yeah.
This is one of my favorite merch clubs in a minute. So check that out.
Yeah. Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 And you can follow us on social media that are me and Rena used at Seuss ShortsMe, at Callist Caldwell, at Africa's Emily, and at Jake Worth is Jake.

Speaker 2 And you can talk about the show online using hashtag NATPOT. That's NADDPOD.

Speaker 2 We are, we are.

Speaker 2 Youth of the nation. We are, we are.

Speaker 2 Youth of the nation.

Speaker 2 And would you look at that? It's time to thank our benevolent council of elders.

Speaker 2 They are Brad D, Jeffrey S, Lord of the Fjord, later Mick Skater, Matt M, Cutter W, Jeff C, Daniel G, Danielle, The Dastardly Dame, Carpe Liam, Victor T.

Speaker 2 Balnor's Boy, Hoyt's Friend, Justin I, Danny Danster, TJM, Trele the Cray, Christopher B. D.

Speaker 2 Rohy, now you have to say it, Jordan L., cyborg version of Josh the Cobalt, Targat, Stevie Wags, Hellish Rebuker, the NBDM Ph.D., Jory S., Jack L, Nicholas C., star of every film ever made in Bohumia, Mike Hightower, Alka Smeltzer Plus, Great Value Gemma, Tyler F, Cece Lulu, Bald Byrne, Hercule Poirot, the Rabbit Folk Detective, Timmy R, Jake's Jerk Jelly, Hashtag CCC, Cass Skateboard, Cass, Stephen C., still looking for that drunk Asimar who swore a blood oath to him once.

Speaker 2 Nick W, Nico, the underpaid English teacher, Big Bad Beardo, the Mad, Anarama, Percival, Frederickstein, von Mussel, Klawowski, Di Rolo the Third, Jay Dragonborn, Guardian of the Vibe, Honoring the Cock, Impressive, Dongle, Ben A, Dave H, Not That Nick, Danny F., Hawkeye Pierce, Big Bad John, DPC is Awesome, Sean, the Shapedree Mechanic of Zeldar, Summer RG, Mark, the Dark Lord's Taint, Cat C, Misa of House and Zunza, Ariel, the occasional mermaid, Selena N, aka Velacie Raptor, B.

Speaker 2 Perky Always, Pat L, Lauren H, Serve 16, Annie, the Fay Wild Therapist, Pierogi, Frenzy, BioCourt 7, Bean Rat was innocent, Jack H, King of the Mole People under Iron Deep, dressed in blue and fighting his way through a bracket-style tournament, Valen, Paj, the bitch and bunny bard, Druidic, Peyton, Carlin C, Amri M.

Speaker 2 Noah, the gentleman fister, hashtag honor the cock, James G, everything bago, the Eladron who just wants to hang out with his pet badger, Stripey, Reverend Chatterbones, Han, Eric B, Marcos, PhD, Eventually, Learns the Balance Druid, Frida M, Maggie, Grim Waller, Executive Chef of Bohumia, Bud Heavy, Russell H, a monk named Dilgo, yes, the whole thing, yes, every time.

Speaker 2 Cody C, Lorelei, the succubi, and Kira the succulent snack, Cow Go Truckin', your friendly neighborhood, yacht and uncle, Andrew and Sid, don't skip over Thanksgiving, John Adams loves it, 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, Barpo, Good barrel bard barian charlie brown's best friend renee the monster captain olivia the enchanting bard and jared the soap opera cleric who are playing the wedding march for onyx blue ash fico garret the artificer j k guard fancy matt the fairies have returned to debauchery and must now go to the carnal corner cantrip dumbledore the bare onesie wearing barbarian lexi h mj the bfg roger l no drog the pass of fist barbarian lagusto John Luca, Leon K, legendary hero of Bahumia from a future campaign, shenanigans, O'Connor, Mios the Great, Joshua S., Alexander, Lance W, Sky the Wise, aka the lone dungeon master, the spud fucker himself, Johnny Dude K, the mischief of Nadpod's familiars, Pabu Eskinor, the Goliath Paladin, providing service with a smile, Jakewell Murphaly, Tim M, Dragon Knight86, Scrungle, the main event, TR, MLG, Cheeto, Shelby, Ken's first favorite, Spike Girl, thank you for the incredible D20 Tour Moss.

Speaker 2 Vegas was my fave manifesting my first NADPOD live in 2026. Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 Jet S, Snailis, the Eldritch Snail, Death to Tyrants, Pawpaw Skydays, Mimos Skydays, Megan N., Genevieve of the Sea, Anthony B., Balnor's best friend, Steve, Stephanie of House and Zunza, Benjamin A.

Speaker 2 Gimli, the Corgi, Pawpaw and Foster's canine friend, Mikkel A, SSS tier crick water enjoyer Josh H pilot of the nightmareverse flight the two crew blew through Ethan the mailman maple the shy bookworm Nick AJ Ashosaurus Seth the stroker bearer of all hog related burdens Billy B Tori the tungsten dragoose accidental sharer of recipes Michael L.

Speaker 2 S.

Speaker 2 the second meow meow kitten Carl B Plumber of the Realm Ace Dregs High Lord of Critzberg Vinn Diagram Cadamilius the consumed Cam the Vampire, Frogman, Dean, Jake W, High Mom, Tuesday Cross, only here for the Surf and Murph.

Speaker 2 We love you, Rat Jesus, Nadpod fan, and Bar Mitzvood Man, it's Davo, Steve L., Tyler McM, God Dog, Zibby DeBaccery, Kaylee, Katarina C, Misty, the crispy giddy, really hates flame skulls.

Speaker 2 Grey W, there's so many of us now, but hey, you're doing great, and we love you. Baruch Thunderhelm, 5th Generation Minotaur, working as an abandoned labyrinth tour guide.

Speaker 2 Chupak, Aubrey, Boney is dead. The Waterworth, your four-legged Greg companion.
Nick, Amy, Aegis Kunari, Ignition, class Pedalstorm. Not a DJ, but will still take the gig, DJ Drama mean.

Speaker 2 My favorite patron makes me say penis on my show. Chef Julie B, Mama Mayhem, still waiting for Emily's first sub stack.
Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 Gen Rules, Kinda, Caitlin H, Buttwax, Thomas C., Dark Lotus Creations, Joshua H., Jacob M., Louie H, AJ Dinko, and of course, Ben V. Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 3 That was a Headgum podcast.

Speaker 2 What's going on? It's Lamorne Morris.

Speaker 3 And Hannah Simone.

Speaker 2 And we host The Mess Around, a New Girl rewatch podcast now on Headgum. Now, here's the thing.
Every single week, we chat about an episode of New Girl, and we really get into it.

Speaker 2 Like, we get up in there. We get up in there.
You know, we reminisce about our times on set. We share behind-the-scenes tea.
We react to re-watching episodes that we haven't seen in years.

Speaker 2 We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog f ⁇ .

Speaker 3 That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet.
I'm talking Prince, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

Speaker 2 We're just two BFFs having a good old time, okay? Sometimes we even talk to other co-stars like Zoe Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Waynes Jr.

Speaker 2 And your dad, we talk to your dad on this show as well.

Speaker 3 Make sure you subscribe to the mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.