Transcript:Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Tips

List of Transcripts

Pre-Show
MATT: Hello everyone. My name is Matthew Mercer, voice actor and Dungeon Master for Critical Role on Geek & Sundry, where I take a bunch of other voice actors and run them through a fantastical fantasy adventure through the world of Dungeons & Dragons. We play every Thursday at 7:00pm Pacific Standard Time on Geek & Sundry’s Twitch stream. Please come watch us live if you have the opportunity. Back episodes and future episodes will be uploaded on the Geek & Sundry website. You can also check them out there. In the meantime, enjoy! Welcome to first episode of Critical Role, and what this basically is is a continuation of our weekly D&D game. Me and a bunch of other likely nerdy and enjoyable voice actors gathering around, rolling some dice, killing some creatures, having some adventure. Now we have the pleasure of bringing it on the stream for you to watch, enjoy, and occasionally interact with. Before we get to that, to give you a little backstory on the characters you’ll be seeing this evening, we’re going to play some videos for you in a second. Do note, for all you hardcore gamers out there, a lot of this is house-ruled, loosey-goosey having a good time. So all you number crunchers, stop paying attention there, just have fun with it. Nevertheless, we have some background story on many of the characters you’ll be seeing this evening to help you jump into the story. Let’s go ahead and enjoy those in a minute, then we’ll introduce the players. So have fun!

TRAVIS: Right, listen up! If you have ale, then you have a friend in Grog Strongjaw! A goliath of towering height and size, this barbarian has an appetite for the two great loves in his life: combat, women, and ale! [record scratch] Wait. Easily the brains of the group, Grog is often consulted for his vast knowledge of shapes, colors, and shiny things! Also ale. In his early years, armed with his two-handed greataxe, Grog often enjoyed proving his might amongst the ranks of his family’s wandering herd. But after coming upon an unsuspecting elderly gnome in the woods, he objected to the killing of such an innocent life. A creature of impulse, Grog felt only pity for this– well, this terrified little thing. And his disobedience cost him dearly. Beaten bloody, and banished by the herd leader, his Uncle Kevdak, Grog was abandoned and left to die. Exiled from his herd, it was then that the relative of the very gnome he fought to save, saved him. It was the kindness of a gnome cleric named Pike that healed Grog, bringing him back from death’s edge. And they have remained close friends ever since. Most nights, Grog can be found challenging entire taverns to wrestling matches! Or accompanying Scanlan to the nearest house where you pay for lady favors. Also ale!

MARISHA: A first impression of Keyleth would leave you with little information on the half-elven druid. You might even think that her social awkwardness due to her sheltered upbringing is kind of sweet. Of course, it would be unwise underestimate her based on first impressions. (thunder crack) Under that un-intimidating petite frame is a vicious beast waiting to be unleashed, whose natural powers have made even the fiercest of champions pee their pants, literally! Born to the Air Tribe of the Ashari people, Keyleth was raised with a deep love of nature and the elemental magics. It is her people’s inherent duty to protect the delicate areas in Tal'Dorei where the four elemental planes begin to bleed with this realm. Since she was a little girl, she had quite a knack for air manipulation and beast shaping abilities. Well, if you consider kittens and flying squirrels to be little beasts...which, I do. Anyways, it wasn’t long before the headmaster of the tribe, her father, Korrin, realized her true prodigious abilities and she was inveterated to succeed him as the next headmaster. Just like that, her jovial childhood was stripped and replaced with endless spell memorization, teachings from ancient traditions, and exceedingly high expectations. Every druid leader-to-be must embark on a journey to seek out the sister tribes in order to introduce and establish respect amongst the fellow headmasters. They call this the Aramente, or Noble Odyssey. When her father felt she was ready, he set her on the path to truly discovering herself, not knowing when, or if, she will ever return. As she hiked down the mountain towards Stilben, she meditated on the task ahead. Part of the Aramente is proving yourself a strong warrior, a valiant protector, and a wise and compassionate leader. With this knowledge, one thought plays in repeat in her mind: Is she even worthy?

TALIESIN: Percy was the third child of seven children, born to a noble family who lived far to the north in the ancient castle of Whitestone. With so many siblings to share the burdens of lordship, Percy turned his attention to the sciences, engineering, and naturalism. One day, a mysterious couple, named Lord and Lady Briarwood, came to court. During a feast held in their honor, the Briarwoods violently took control of the castle, killing or imprisoning everyone who would stand in their way. Percy awoke chained in the dungeon, only to be freed by his younger sister. Together they fled, chased by the Briarwoods’ men. As they ran, Percy’s sister took several arrows to the chest and fell. Percy kept running, eventually jumping into a freezing river and floating unconscious to freedom. He did not remember waking up on a fishing boat. He barely remembered the next two years, as he slowly made his way as far south as possible. Then one night, Percy had a dream: a roaring cloud of smoke offered him vengeance against those who destroyed his family. When he awoke, Percy began to design his first gun.

ASHLEY: Pike grew up on the outskirts of town, near the Bramblewood. Her ancestors were a family of Deep Gnomes with quite an unfavorable reputation. Thievery, destruction, and trickery left them with the curse of the last name Trickfoot. Sarenrae, the goddess of healing and redemption, had other plans for Pike’s great- great grandfather Wilhand, who left his family at a young age after a dream. A dream that changed the course of the Trickfoot family. Wilhand devoted his life to Sarenrae and pledged from then on that him and his family would live a life of service and devotion. As a child, Pike seemed to have an affinity to heal, whether it was animals, people, or even flowers. She felt she had a purpose in making things whole that had once been broken. She studied and learned the ways to heal through divine magic. She lived a peaceful life, quiet and simple, until one day Wilhand was captured and almost killed by a group of goliath barbarians. One of the goliaths took a stand against the murder of the innocent gnome, and he himself was beaten, bloodied, and left for dead, abandoned by his herd. Wilhand went to Pike for help. She prayed and healed this barbarian as best she could, bringing him back to life. When he awoke, she discovered his name was Grog Strongjaw. After that, they were the best of friends, a rather unlikely pair. Little did she know that in a few years’ time Grog would soon return the favor and bring her back from the clutches of death. (roar, crunch) After being killed in battle, Pike felt angry. She wanted to be stronger so that it would never happen again. She spent four months at sea, training with the men and women aboard a ship called the Broken Howl. Gripping her holy symbol in one hand and her morningstar in the other, this time, Pike is ready.

SAM: Oh, you haven’t heard of Scanlan Shorthalt? Well, gird your loins, ladies, because he has his eye on you. A talented musician, master of disguise, and dashingly handsome in his own mind, Scanlan sings songs almost as much as he sings his own praises. Born a poor gnome, Scanlan used his endless charm and soaring tenor voice to croon for coin and support his single mother. One day, he was discovered by a half-orc promoter, and joined Dr. Dranzel’s Spectacular Traveling Troupe where he learned the ways of the world, and honed his skills as a bard extraordinaire. A loner much of his life, Scanlan has never quite come to terms with the violent death of his mother at the hands of a goblin invasion. While his years on the road provided many, shall we say, educational experiences with the opposite sex, deep down Scanlan yearns for the one thing he’s never known: the true love of a fellow gnome. Still, Scanlan considers himself a lover first, performer second, and fighter distant third. On the battlefield, he’ll support his allies, but rarely draws blood, unless it’s to protect fellow gnome, Pike. Count on Scanlan for a hearty laugh, a rollicking song, and a twinkle in his eye that melts hearts and makes the females swoon.

ORION: Greetings and salutations, I am Tiberius Stormwind. I hail from a town called Tyriex, located in the heart of Draconia. Born from a politically respected family, at the age of 15, I succeeded in passing the Sorcerer’s Rite, showing prodigy-like control of my magic. The judges and the Draconian high council were amazed at how powerful my spells were for how long I had been training. At 20 years old, I was the youngest appointed member of the magic guild in Draconian history. For the next few years, I almost went mad from the malaise of being a guild member, as it’s rather boring. However, one day I happened upon a chamber, unused for quite some time. In the room were stacks of books and maps of the surrounding cities and areas around the known world. For months, I would frequent the chamber, and learned of artifacts from legend. After a long period of research, I made a list of artifacts that caught my eye. I brought these findings to the high council and was told that all of the information in the chamber I had stumbled upon was either believed to be fiction, or unsolvable mysteries, and hence were lost forever. I found those answers to be unacceptable. A year later, I devised a ruse and managed to convince the city council to lend support in me leaving Draconia on a mission of peace and diplomacy for the surrounding kingdoms. Going from town to town and making friends and allies in and for the name of Draconia. Being a red dragonborn, I had quite the task on my hands in that respect, but it was exactly what I needed so I could explore the world and find these artifacts, as I felt the truth was out there. Some may describe me as buffoonish, but I say poppycock to all that. I am much sharper than most give me credit for. I just don’t pay attention to things sometimes. I’ve also been known to be rather cunning, loyal, happy-go-lucky, and well, dangerous. I can’t help but show my true scales every now and then. But overall, I think I’m quite friendly for a dragonborn.

LIAM: Never entirely welcome in the company of elves or men, Vax'ildan learned at a young age to skip past formality, preferring instead to invite himself in your door. Along with twin sister, Vex'ahlia, Vax was born by a chance encounter between elven royalty and human peasantry. Raised by their mother in their early years, the twins were eventually sent off to their father in the elven capital of Syngorn. But their cool reception among the elves there never warmed, and their time in the capital didn’t last. The siblings stole away one autumn night and set out on the open road. After a few years of wandering, they eventually decided to return to their mother, and journeyed back to the lands of their youth. But instead of finding their childhood home, they returned to a pile of rubble. Their mother was gone, their home burned to ash. Pressing the townspeople for answers, they learned of the day the dragon came. With their ties all severed, Vax'ildan and his sister set out to find their fortune together in Tal'Dorei. An outsider since birth, Vax quickly learned to solve life’s challenges in his own particular way, often by sidestepping them entirely. And when his knack for circumventing adversity isn’t enough, the way of blades the elves schooled him in more than makes up the difference.

LAURA: Like so many half-elves, Vex'ahlia has spent most of her life suffering the cool reception of a people who don’t fully accept her. Born of a human mother, and an elven father who only later in life took an interest in their existence, Vex'ahlia and her twin brother, Vax'ildan, quickly realized the only people they could truly rely on in this world were each other. It was at the age of ten when the two were taken from their mother, and brought to live in Syngorn, the isolated elven city for which their father was an ambassador. He quietly took them in, but always kept an icy distance, and after too many years of disdainful looks, the pair decided to leave his indifference behind, and set out on their own. Vax took to the cities, stealing small trinkets and learning the ways of the thief, while Vex kept to the woods. She preferred the isolation. Always the keen observer, she learned to hunt and to track, to spy and to shoot. Through a series of fateful events, earned herself a companion in the form of a bear– her own stolen Trinket – to fight alongside her and protect her fiercely. Also, he is adorable, and gives expert massages.

Part I
MATT: Hello, everyone! Sorry for the delay; we had a few folks that were in transit, but we’re all good. We’re all here now, and welcome to a very special episode of Critical Role. We have a number of members of our party that are on vacation this week, so as opposed to continuing a climactic endpoint of a long 11-12 week story arc, we’re going to hold off a week and have them return next week to pick up where we left off, just after the battle with the big bad beholder, K'Varn the Mad. However, this week, what we’re going to be doing is, essentially, a little workshop. A class, if you will, on Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games in general. For those of you out there that have never played before, for those of you who have played and want to pick up some new skills or ideas, and for many who are out there who have either had a hard time dungeon mastering or have been too scared to try being a dungeon master or game master, depending on your roleplaying game of choice, we’re going to try to dispel some of that and give some tips and tricks along the way. So, first and foremost, let’s go around the table and say hello to everyone who is here. We have Marisha Ray, who plays Keyleth in our usual campaign.

MARISHA: Hello!

MATT: We have Taliesin, who plays Percy in our campaign.

TALIESIN: Greetings. Hello.

MATT: We have Orion, who plays Tiberius in our campaign.

ORION: Good evening, everyone.

MATT: And the birthday boy, Liam O'Brien.

LIAM: Oh, hi!

(cheering)

MARISHA: May birthdays for the win.

MATT: So we have the support team here from Critical Role to offer suggestions, answer questions, and help these other guys here I’m going to introduce in a second with their character creation for the end of the evening. I’m going to completely improvise on the spot a short game for these fellows, and we’ll see how that pans out. For some of them, their first game of D&D. We shall see how that goes. So let’s go ahead and introduce on this side of the table. We have Dan Casey.

DAN: Hello!

MARISHA: Dan Casey!

DAN: How are you doing?

MARISHA: Dan Casey, everybody. Dan Casey in the house!

TALIESIN: There we go. Dan Casey.

MARISHA: Yeah, Dan Casey.

MATT: Right over yonder.

MARISHA: Hollywood Squares.

ORION: Oh.

DAN: Circle takes the square! What’s up, guys?

MATT: What’s your experience with roleplaying games?

DAN: I am sort of a lapsed D&D player. I played a lot of 3.5. I played some AD&D back in the day, when I had no idea what the term THAC0 meant, at all. I still don’t.

MATT: Nobody still, to this day, knows.

DAN: It’s an eldritch mystery not meant to be known by the likes of men.

MATT: Yes, completely agree. Thankfully, that’s gone now.

DAN: Exactly! Yeah. So I’ve been playing a little bit recently. I just started a Pathfinder campaign with some friends, so I have a working knowledge, but I’m a little rusty, I would say.

MATT: Okay. No worries. We’ll try and get you up to speed on that. We have in the middle here, dressed so eloquently, our fantastic overlord, Zac Eubank.

ZAC: I am the Snugglelord! There have been none before me and there will be none after. I am the Snugglelord.

MATT: It has been decreed, here and now.

LIAM: You killed and skinned a unicorn.

ZAC: You can stop.

ERIKA: Okay.

(laughter)

MATT: Our third party member of the newcomers tonight is in transit, as well, and should be here shortly. Should we introduce them or wait until they get here? What do you think?

ZAC: How are you doing, Ify? How’s it going, man? Oh, good.

DAN: Cloak of Invisibility.

ORION: It’s called “Giant Penis Jokes.”

MATT: There you go. We’ll have Ify here shortly. Ify, as I know, plays D&D and knows it pretty well, so we’re not losing any speed by continuing without him. To begin now, before we go, we have a few gifts here that came in.

MARISHA: We have more gifts?

MATT: I’ve got here an inflatable Cthulu beard for the dungeon master, so when I feel like going full eldritch horror on you guys, I’ll have a nice visual tool to help– I’m wondering if you can eat through it.

MARISHA: I kind of think that the idea was so that you can be Clarota.

MATT: Right! I’m totally doing that next game.

MARISHA: I kind of think that’s what they were going for.

MATT: That’s true. I should do that now.

TALIESIN: But can you eat through it?

MARISHA: But can you eat?

MATT: I can strain food through it, is what it looks like.

MARISHA: Can we blow it up? Can we try it out?

MATT: Go for it. Yeah. There are tiny mouth holes that are all segmented, so it’d have to be a fine paste or a liquid bakery item I could push through.

DAN: Just pull it forward slightly and pour soup in.

MATT: (laughs) Perfect. This will work out well.

TALIESIN: It will keep the bay leaf out. That’s very useful.

MATT: Also, somebody presented this fantastic glittery dragon dungeon master mug that I’m enjoying my delicious beverage out of. So this is delightful, and it’s getting all over my hands, so don’t question it later. It’s the mug. I haven’t been out late with strippers.

MARISHA: Uh-huh. Dragon strippers.

MATT: Dragon strippers. Those are the most expensive.

TALIESIN: They work for scale.

(groaning)

TALIESIN: There you are.

MATT: Also, this awesome crocheted beholder bag.

TALIESIN AND ORION: Oh my god.

MATT: As representation of our fantastic boss battle with K'Varn last week. I’m going to find many cool things to put inside of this. Or just wear it when I’m alone at home. And nothing else. It’ll be great.

ORION: And nothing else?

MATT: Yeah. Just this. (laughs) It’s got the right texture. No. This is awesome. Thank you guys so much. These are amazing. We had a few more gifts come in as well, but they’re party-centric, to the whole group, and I want to wait until we have everyone here before we distribute those, so for those of you who have sent those gifts, you know who you are, next week we’ll be unveiling those when everyone is present because I think they deserve it. Also, there was a letter that because our boss battle ran long last week, I didn’t get a chance to read on air, but I’d like to read it for you guys right now. From one of our fans.

MARISHA: That’s hot, right?

MATT: We’ll talk later. (clicks tongue) (laughs) “Dear amazing, talented, giving, friendly, sociable cast of Critical Role: With all those adjectives in the salutation, it might be hard to write a letter, but I will do my best. Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you for giving us so much of your time each week. I mention it frequently that your performances call back to the golden age of radio and the large-cast performance dramas of the ‘20s and ‘40s.” Those were awesome times! We’re all aware how busy you are, with work as well as family, yet you’re able to visit us each week. On the rare instances your obligations prevent you from entertaining us, you’ve frequently joined us in chat, and Liam has stopped in a couple of times during other shows, as well. Your frequent drops in during the week are always a welcome surprise. The amount of involvement by you and the community is surprising, considering how busy you are, although not unexpected when you make it so abundantly clear that you care about us and enjoy your interactions with us.” Aw. You make me all touched, here. “There is a more collective statement about the entire community that is Team Hooman, but I really lose myself in a sense of awe at this community and how much we give and how supportive we are.” Which is very, very true. You guys are incredible. “Thank you so very much for being part of it and contributing to it. You are all proving to be amazing examples of hoomanity and are inspiring us to ever-greater things. I’m writing this letter the night of your Q&A,” which we did a couple weeks ago, “when we crossed the 1000-shirt threshold and your generosity with your time and your honesty really creates a welcoming atmosphere. Your reactions when we, in our own small ways, contribute to the stream or the charity or the fandom, are enough to melt the coldest heart; and really, it only encourages us to do more. Watching you create this world, pulling out your character voices and hearing the amazing shit that comes out of Matt’s mouth.” That’s a phrase. It’s amazing shit.

MARISHA: Ify!

IFY: Hey!

MATT: There we go! In quotes, “Seriously, what the hell was that screech tonight?” Yeah, sorry about that. R.I.P. ears, I know. “Show everyone what D&D can be. Not everyone is a professional voice actor, but you don’t have to be a voice actor. You can make yourself more grandiose and gesture more. Your body language embodies the characters just as much as your voice does, even if you don’t realize it. I also have to thank you again for being generous enough to agree to sign the shirt for charity. I’m planning on cutting a loop of highlights to have running for people who might not be aware of Critical Role, but there are so many. Jolene is ecstatic that this will be a part of their auction and I can’t tell you how rewarding that single reaction has been for me. I can’t wait to see what they’re able to raise for charity with it.” So happy we could help with that. “I would ramble on about you guys for a while, but it would merely be the disjointed ramblings of an overtired fan.” That’s okay, we’re– most of our talk is disjointed ramblings of overtired performers. “Keep doing what you’re doing. It is clear that you’re all amazing people and are more than welcome to join the Team Hooman Facebook group. Ryon, Felicia, Zac and most of the Twitch hosts are already there and it’s generally a cool place to hang out and be supporting of everyone.” We’ll check it out. We’ll jump on that.

ORION: I’ve joined it already. Team Hooman.

MATT: “Thank you again for being such great examples of humanity and ambassadors of geekdom. It is a pleasure to be able to interact with you on the internets and occasionally via the Straw Poll.” (laughs) Engineering TPKs, well done. “Most sincerely, Scott Graupner, Useless Rogue.” Thank you so much, Scott, that’s a wonderful letter.

MARISHA: Thanks, Useless Rogue!

MATT: It’s amazing. Thank you so much.

MARISHA: Thanks, Scott.

MATT: This is sincerely, like, and I’m gonna take a moment here just to say, the community that has sprung forth for this entire Twitch stream, let alone from Critical Role, has been some of the most amazing and most invigorating examples of humanity I’ve experienced, not just on the Internet, but in life in general. And, in a world which is consistently beating down your faith in humanity, this is one of those bastions of light I think that lifts me up every day I wake up. So, thank you, guys, for being as amazing you are, for tuning in and for enduring us in a week in which we’re not playing games, but talking about them. So, uh–

ZAC: Cool. I’m gonna poop-caboose that.

MATT: Do it!

ZAC: And be like: Hey, guys, don’t forget to subscribe. We’re like seven or eight subscribers away from giving away a signed photo of the Critical Role cast and a signed Player’s Handbook, because that gets us at 3,150. Another 50 after that and we’ll do the giveaway all over again. So get that Sub Train going.

IFY: I love that since you found a name for it you call it out.

ORION: Ify.

IFY: How’s it going, Orion? Yo, I’m about to coop-wibba-coop-wib…coop poop. Coop-caboose.

ZAC: Nope. Nope.

(laughter)

ZAC: Nope! Nope!

MATT: (Bill Cosby voice) Y'see, have the poop in da caboose and then it’s overdone, y'see.

LIAM: Too soon, too soon.

TALIESIN: Way too soon. That just conjured up some bad–

MATT: I know. I know, I’m sorry. Hey-oh. So, introduce yourself! Ify, what you got?

IFY: Hey hey, I’m Ify Nwadiwe. You guys know me from Mulligan. Also, do stand-up comedy, acting and, y'know, kissing Zac’s hands.

ZAC: You don’t have– They didn’t see that; they didn’t know, and–

DAN: Nature’s moisturizer.

MATT: You can recreate it, though. (laughs)

IFY: All right, see, I grabbed– I was like, “Hey, Zac.” Thought it was a regular handshake. (kiss) Surprise! It’s a kiss among brothers.

LIAM: Well-roleplayed, well-roleplayed.

DAN: That’s alarming.

MATT: That is a gift that will haunt you for the rest of your days, Zac.

ZAC: I didn’t realize that by putting on this costume I was going to be inviting such behavior.

ORION: What, the Snugglelord?

ZAC: Yeah.

ORION: You didn’t think that would…

ZAC: I didn’t think it through, obviously.

MATT: Obviously.

TALIESIN: You get to make a wish if you touch the horn.

LIAM: Brings out your eyes.

MARISHA: I was gonna make a, “He was asking for it,” joke, but I feel like–

MATT: Yeah, no.

ZAC: Maybe, y'know– Maybe just– I mean, you kinda did.

(laughter)

DAN: Just took the long way around.

MARISHA: Took the long way around.

MATT: It is also the birthday of our fantastic half-elven ranger, Laura Bailey, who plays Vex in the show. The reason that their characters are twins is because they actually share a birthday and they created it that way, so that was kind of a cool little point there. But she’s off with her husband in Greece having great vacation times or whatever. Pfft.

LIAM: Boring.

ORION: Wait. Oh, they went to the country, Greece.

TALIESIN: I thought they went to the show.

LIAM: They are seeing Greece. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. North Hollywood.

MARISHA: No, I don’t think anyone does that anymore. Like, goes, y'know–

ORION: Well, I don’t know. They might have interests I’m not aware of. Just saying.

MATT: That’s very open-minded of you, Orion. Well done. All right, cool. So let’s get this started.

ZAC: Let’s learn!

MATT: So, we’re gonna start here with a little overview of character creation. So, for most RPGs, especially those in the fantasy realm, this will be a very familiar aspect where there are many different game types that run different things, but usually the point goes you choose a race and you choose a class. The race defines your physical background, your family bloodline and what attributes that adds to you. A class is essentially the job or the way you’ve lived your life going forward and what skills you’ve acquired because of it. So, throughout the Player’s Handbook– you can go ahead and turn through the first few pages; first couple sections. You’ll see there are certain races like the dwarf, whom I love. Dwarves are awesome. Underrepresented.

MARISHA: If everyone can turn to page 62 in the Player’s Handbook.

MATT: Exactly. It’s in the Player’s Handbook, my good man

ZAC: Technically, page 18. Page 18.

MATT: Dwarves are cool. They’re sturdy. They’re strong. They’re a little brash. They’re, y'know– If that’s something you guys are thinking about as you’re coming up with your character ideas, dwarves are fun for that reason. I’m gonna breeze through these ‘cause we don’t want you to spend 30 minutes on races. We have elves. Elves, you know elves. Lord of the Rings. Elves are cool. They have high elves which are a little more haughty and well-learned. We have the forest elves, or whatever it is they’re called. Or are they just the basic– All right! We have wood elf, there we go. Which are more of the Legolas-style, you know, in the woods, hunting, being stealthy. And then you have the dark elves, which are the drow, that are from actually the Underdark, where you guys have been fighting through, though you have not encountered any drow in the Underdark.

MARISHA: We haven’t!

TALIESIN: We had half a drow.

MATT: Stitch monster was elven, not drow.

TALIESIN: Oh, I thought it was a drow.

LIAM: They’re mostly bad. Most are bad.

MATT: Yeah. So, there are also halflings, which, you could say hobbit, but I think the Dungeons & Dragons version of halflings are a little more awesome, butt-kicking, a little less, “I just want to stay home and make little farm animals.”

ZAC: We found what Lucas is. Short.

MARISHA: Short?

MATT: We got humans, which are cool and well-rounded, all across the board. You got dragonborn, which have dragon bloodlines, like Tiberius over here. Get like a breath weapon. Get really strong, charismatic. You have gnomes, which we have two gnomes in our campaign. They’re the smallest of all the races. They’re also probably the most nimble and the most naturally resistant against magic types, so they can–

LIAM: Are they the shortest?

MATT: They are the shortest. Yes. Shorter than dwarves and halflings. You also have half-elves, which we have quite a few in our campaign.

MARISHA: Represent!

MATT: Happened through some drunken evening between a human and an elf.

DAN: Sick.

MATT: Get a little bit of both sides. Then you have the half-orc, which is half-human, half-orc. Generally a much larger, stronger, quicker to anger, ready for battle type. And then you have the tieflings, who are humanoid but have somewhere in their previous bloodline some contact with demonic forces that left them with some essence of the Hells in their bloodlines. Like horns, tails, yellow eyes– Think Nightcrawler from X-Men, that’s kind of what a tiefling would look like. Possibly with horns. So those are the races! So if you have some ideas, keep that in the back of your mind, and write down on your sheet what you think would be a cool race.

ORION: I think a new one is the djinn. Like there’s like a djinn race, like there’s an air, a water, and a fire and earth elemental– Like a half human and yeah–

DAN: Whoa, like an evil genie?

MATT: That’s cool.

ORION: I think the new expansion, like djinns, however you say it.

MATT: And of course, we also have the goliaths, which are half-giants. We’re not going to be working with that tonight, 'cause those were in the new Elemental Evil edition. That’s what Grog is. They’re big, strong guys. So keep in mind the race you want to play, which is cool. Classes we got! So, we got barbarian. Grog is a great example of a barbarian. Big, hearty, warrior types that shun armor for just pure aggression and anger. They use rage as a means of destroying their foes, upping their abilities in combat and preventing mental effects magically affecting them. We have bards. Bards are vastly skilled across the board. They have skills of all types, even things they don’t know very well; they know a little bit of everything, kind of a jack of all trades. They have some minor spellcasting. They also can inspire other people with songs, speech and help them out with certain skill checks. Bards are pretty cool. We got clerics. Your healers. But you say healer, you’re like, “I don’t want to be a healer.” Clerics also have access to really powerful divine magic, so while people may be, “Oh, Clerics are dumb, you heal the party,” they can also call down divine judgment, which is great.

MARISHA: Also, having a healer is really nice. Yeah. Nice being able to have a healer.

TALIESIN: The hell, dude? Yeah, we should’ve just worn the same shirt.

MATT: But don’t feel like you have to. This is a one-shot. You guys can pick whatever you want. We got druids, which do–

DAN: (laughs) Yeah. Total party wipe.

MATT: Exact– Oh, it could happen. I won’t feel guilty about this one.

(laughter)

ZAC: Thanks, man. C'mon.

MATT: Hey. First time in the game! Done.

DAN: I take the physical challenge.

(laughter)

MATT: Physical challenge, physical challenge. Druids also have some healing capabilities. They also have more nature-based magics. They’re cool and they control nature. And can turn into beasts, and creatures like that. Keyleth is a druid.

TALIESIN: Giant scorpions.

MATT: Indeed. We have fighters! Fighters are just straight-up fighters. Imagine what a fighter is. That’s a fighter. They can use all armor and all weapons. They can generally get more attacks than other classes. They’re generally like the marshal, the generals, the warriors, the pit fighters. They’re just more rough and tumble, let’s just damage each other. We’ve got monks! Monks. Crazy fast. Punch and do awesome damage with their bare fists. They can avoid things; they can do multiple hits per round; they can use ki points to inflict different types of attacks. Monks are basically: if you wanna be Ip Man in the middle of a D&D campaign, pick a monk.

ORION: And I believe like the monk and sorcerer are the only ones that have like the point system?

MATT: Yeah. We have paladins. Bastion of good and right in the world, paladins stand for law and wonder, and if anyone proves themselves evil they will be destroyed and smited by the divine energies of their god. So, they’re generally pretty pious; they fight for good; they fight for the underdog; they can– like a fight–

MARISHA: Just saw Zac perk up there.

ZAC: Yeah.

MATT: They have good fighting abilities. They can wear and use most armor and weapons, but they also get a little bit of divine cleric-based magic and they can heal with a touch.

LIAM: Total boy scouts.

MATT: Yeah.

MARISHA: Total boy scouts.

MATT: We got rangers, which is what Laura’s character, Vex'ahlia, is. They have good either two-weapon or ranged combat. They can pick a companion animal if they want to, that’s how Trinket came about. Y'know, definitely the Legolas of Lord of the Rings type. Arrow, arrow, arrow, everything’s getting arrows. Arrow’d! And they got rogues, which is what Liam plays in our game. Rogues are all about stealth, stabbing in the back, finding weak points of their enemies and doing serious damage with precision strikes by distracting their enemies and finding where their weak points are. They generally don’t have a lot of hit points or defenses, but if they can get in there sneakily, they’ll do some serious damage. Then we got sorcerer, which Tiberius is, which is a magical caster, arcane-based. Whereas a wizard is more of like the classic wizard you see with giant spell books– learning and, y'know, Harry Potter-style classes and that kind of learned magical ability– sorcerers have it innately in their blood from their bloodlines somehow. And their casting ability is kind of like an improvised thing they just learned and are good at, so imagine more of a less-learned, less-controlled wizard that mostly understands some magic naturally. Whereas the wizard is the, y'know, the well-learned spell book type; more studious; have a larger breadth of spells to pick from. But the sorcerer’s a little more improvised and can use points to instill power with it. Last but not least, we got a warlock. Warlocks are magical practitioners who draw their magic from making a pact with some otherworldly entity. It can be like demons or the Nine Hells and they draw more hellfire and infernal-type magics. They can make a pact with dark fey, which are basically like creepy Oberon-style, y'know, fairy elf people from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; or the Great Old Ones, like Cthulhu. Hi, Cthulhu, give me magic. What could possibly go wrong? Those are warlocks. So those are primarily your classes you get to pick. You choose a race and you choose a class. You guys have some ideas yet of what you might want to play tonight?

ZAC: Oh, most definitely. Yeah.

IFY: Oh yeah.

DAN: Oh, a hundred percent.

MATT: Well, what do you want to play? Let’s start with Dan. Dan, what do you want to play?

DAN: I’m going to be a dwarven rogue. Yeah. Rogue tumbler. Not the block.

MATT: All right, fantastic. How about you, Zac?

ZAC: I am the Snugglelord. I am a warlock tiefling. And I derive my powers from all holy overlord of Geek and Sundry. The evil overlord.

MATT: Okay. That would fall under Infernal. Okay.

MARISHA: This is feeling really meta.

ZAC: No.

MATT: Yeah, I’m gonna say that that most definitively falls under the Fiend Pact. Yup. So you’re in a fiend pact. And then, what do you got, Ify?

IFY: Ha! I'mma be Ulfgar Fireforge. Fighter. Dwarf. Two-handed swordsman. Cut your face off. Take your money.

(laughter)

IFY: a.k.a. True Neutral.

MATT: All right.

(laughter)

MARISHA: True Neutral! Do it!

MATT: This is gonna be a very fun, short game.

(laughter)

ZAC: We got this! What are you talking about?

DAN: Never made it out of that first tavern.

(laughter)

MATT: Aw, man, you guys–

ZAC: I set the place on fire.

(laughter)

MATT: Wait, we’re not there yet! We’re not there yet! Hold it– Hold it back, hold it back! Cool. So, for each of you guys, let’s go ahead and roll up some stats for you. So what you do to decide what your attributes are for your characters, that basically says how strong they are; how hearty their physicality is; how fast they are. And you have strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. Those are the six stats. So, for you guys, if you want to go ahead and take– There are different ways of rolling stats. Some people do a point-buy system where you start with a certain base stat and you can buy based on points. For this, we’re gonna use my favorite system to do, which is you roll 4d6–

IFY: Oh, my favorite, too.

MATT: Drop the lowest. Arrange as desired. So I guess for those of you who haven’t seen how the dice work, there are different dice values in the game. You have a d4, which is a four-sider dice. So it’s the little caltrop. Painful to step on. You got a d6, your typical six-sided dice; d8, which is a little more pointy, that’s an eight-sider. You got a ten-sider, which comes in two varieties: regular or additional numbers– this is if you’re doing percentage rolls, you know what the percentile dice numbers are. Pardon me. A d12, which is only really used if you’re a barbarian, apparently. It’s the saddest and the red-headed stepchild of D&D.

TALIESIN: I use a d12.

MATT: Oh yeah, that’s right, you use it, too! It’s great. I’m happy. It needs more love, it needs more love. d12 needs more love. And the d20, which is the most-used dice in the game. Most all decisions are based on a 20-sided dice. We’ll get into that in a little bit. So, for the statistics, I need you guys to go ahead and take 4d6– so four six-sided dice. We’ll start– whoever wants to start, go ahead and you–

MARISHA: I have the four– those four right up front.

ZAC: Right up front?

MARISHA: There you are.

MATT: You roll them, drop the lowest number–

DAN: Yahtzee.

MATT: Starting with a seven! Awesome.

DAN: Yeah! Big sev’!

MARISHA: Woo!

MATT: So, you can decide where you want to put your seven, in any of those stats.

MARISHA: If your stats are super crappy, we’ll roll again.

MATT: No, we won’t.

MARISHA: No, we won’t. Not tonight. Never mind. But normally if your stats are super crappy–

DAN: It’s not that kind of campaign! No, play it where it lies.

MATT: You can put it wherever you want to. Ten is an average score. An average person has a ten.

DAN: So C-.

MARISHA: What we generally do is roll all six and then write them down, and then decide where you want them. Okay.

MATT: What you got over there?

ZAC: I have 15 on my first one.

IFY: Eight!

MATT: Ooh! Nice. 15 and eight. What you got, Dan?

IFY: Oh. Sorry, that counts as a six.

DAN: Oh, there we go! Big 13. Big 13 in the house.

IFY: So that was– I’m sorry. Correction: 14, was that.

MATT: All righty.

IFY: Apparently, this was from a wild western and they have a bull’s head as a six instead of a–

MATT: There you go. All righty. And we’ll say for the purposes of this we’ll give you guys each, if you want to– Roll five times, not six.

ZAC: Five times, okay.

DAN: (laughing) All right, 12.

MATT: Okay, so roll five times, and then everyone, for the purposes of this game–

DAN: Oh, finally. 17.

MATT: There you go.

ZAC: All right, and then we choose where they go.

MATT: So, you rolled five times, you have five numbers, then take a 16.

DAN: Ooh!

MATT: You can put it anywhere you want.

ZAC: Why, thank you, good sir.

MATT: I figure for this, that way if anyone just rolls crappy, then they’re not doing too bad.

DAN: Get that seven, for a bit of character.

MATT: Dude. Lower stats are some of my favorites. Like, honestly, having something lower than ten, at least one, is great. That’s how Grog got his intelligence to six, Tiberius’s wisdom of four. Like, those are great defining characteristics of a character, so–

MARISHA: Yeah. I generally have a charisma of eight, but I have that circlet which is boosting me.

MATT: Boosts you to average. From below. (laughs)

MARISHA: Which just makes me average. Right.

LIAM: Everyone’s gonna play this game the way they want to, but I think if you’re playing it for like the numbers and maxing out your numbers, and the like, “How can I deal the most damage,” when you’re picking your skills, it’s less fun, Like, choose the things that draw you to it as a character or personality or– Be really weak with powerful magic or be totally musclebound like Grog with a– and be a, y'know, an idiot.

ORION: That’s why Tiberius is so bumbly sometimes and really doesn’t know shit. It’s his first time out in the world–

DAN: Unless you’re super into math, which I’m not.

MATT: But go math.

DAN: Yeah, if that’s your bag, do it.

MATT: Cool. So, once you have your stats arranged, from that point you can start going to your characters. And we’re gonna go ahead and just make level two characters. Relatively simple. For this first game. If you look to where your classes are it’ll have a hit point value, as well, and we’re gonna roll how many hit points you have. Everyone starts with, at level one, max hit point value. And I think, let’s see, for the rogue, we have a d8. So you start at eight hit points.

DAN: Oh, boy, I’m gonna roll again?

MATT: And you roll 1d8 to add to that for level two.

DAN: Two!

MATT: Two, all right.

DAN: A hot ten. Double digits. Don’t like to brag.

(laughter)

MATT: Now, what’s your constitution?

DAN: Oh, that will– I haven’t assigned them yet.

MATT: Okay.

DAN: But– 'Cause I wanted to– I know as a dwarf, I get +2 to my constitution. Correct?

MATT: True. Exactly. Yup.

DAN: Okay.

MARISHA: Yeah, you get certain racial stat bonuses depending on what race you choose.

MATT: Yeah. Yeah, what we’ll do is we’ll do a couple of choosing things and then I’ll have you guys go over and help them with actually building the minutia of the characters while I go over the Dungeon Master section of this.

MARISHA: Okay.

LIAM: You had to bring race into it.

MATT: I do. I know. Cool, so to just get the hit point roll out of the way, too, for you, Zac.

ZAC: Cool, so it’s a d8?

MATT: As a warlock, you are– (sings) you are rolling! A d8, as well. So you start with eight and then add this to it.

ZAC: Eight.

MATT: Cool. 16.

IFY: Nice. Good roll.

MATT: And you got a d10.

IFY: Ten. Ten, and then imma add five.

MATT: 15 on you. The warlock has the most hit points.

(laughter)

MATT: We’ll see where everyone’s constitution lies in a bit. So, stats? Ten is average, and then every two above a ten creates a modifier. So, like a 12? That stat, it has a +1 modifier. At 14, it’s a +2. At 16, it’s a +3. 18, a +4, and so on. And what that modifier is, is it’s the bonus you get to any ability or attempt you make towards something that falls under that stat’s category. Like, if you’re trying to break through a door, you’d roll a d20 and add your strength. Y'know? Or if you’re trying to, like a lot of the– The reflex saving– or the dexterity saving throws, it’s based off your dexterity, you’d roll a d20 and then add what your modifier would be for your dexterity. So those modifiers based on your stat are what affect your d20 rolls for most everything you do in the game. Let’s see. So those are the stats. We’ll get to skills here in a moment. Well, you guys will go over the specifics of that with them. But everyone should be at a proficiency bonus of +2. You should see at the top left of your sheet, it says proficiency bonus. Above your stats. Put a +2 in there. Now under each class, in your section, it’ll have a section for skills. It’ll say which skills you’re proficient in. Under proficiencies. And it’ll have you choose a few. What you do is, in the character sheet you have these nice little bubbles here that you get to fill in next to those skills. Those mark which ones you’re proficient in. So you can go ahead and choose those, and fill 'em in. Let’s see. I think for now, if you guys want to go over and help them get their classes a little underway of getting the minutia of that building process, I’m gonna jump into the next section of this.

TALIESIN: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, let’s do this.

MATT: All right, so you guys, feel free to go over there and help them.

LIAM: Okay. You’re gonna chat, while we–?

MATT: Yup.

LIAM: Great.

MATT: Keep it a little quiet. We’re gonna turn those mics down over there. We’re gonna keep on mine and I’m gonna go ahead and go over more of the actual Dungeon Mastering–

MARISHA: Who wants to pick who for their coach?

ZAC: I need all the help in the world.

MARISHA: Do we have like individual coaches?

ZAC: Who wants to be really disappointed at the end of the night?

LIAM: Me, me, me!

ZAC: Okay, help me!

ORION: Which one of you is a caster? What are you, Ify?

IFY: I’m a fighter, so–

MATT: All righty. So! Let’s move on to the next section here. Welcome to the role of a Dungeon Master, or Game Master of this. So, there are a number of things that you’re required to be when it comes to Dungeon Mastering. Largely, your goal is to be a fair judge. You take all the actions and the activities and the intent and the phrases that the players do, and you judge whether or not it was a good attempt or a bad attempt, and modify a difficulty based on it. Basically, for most things that are actively a challenge in the game, you as the Dungeon Master decide how difficult it is given the circumstance. If it’s a really, really weak door someone’s trying to kick through, like the door’s been dilapidated and rotting, you might say it’s pretty easy, so you give it like a score of seven to ten as the difficulty. And then whoever’s trying to break it has to roll equal to or higher than that number. If it’s an iron-reinforced door, that’s gonna be a much higher number. So a lot of what you’re doing is you’re judging how difficult a challenge currently is versus what a player is trying to do. The player rolls and adds their modifiers, you decide how difficult it is in the back of your head– you can tell them if you want to or you can keep it in your head– and then roll off and see if it succeeds or not. And then based on if it succeeds or not, you tell the players what the consequences are of the circumstance. Really low rolls can make for some hilarious botches; really awesome rolls can make for some great heroic moments. So you wanna judge that aspect a lot; it’s a lot of what your job is as a Dungeon Master.

You’re also to rationalize the world around them. So– If we can keep the volume down just a little bit, guys. It’s all good, it’s all good. It’s all good. So, rationalizing the world around them. Now, what I say about that is, when they encounter NPCs– which is a non-player character, anyone that’s not controlled by the players– and they have a conversation or they do something in front of them, that non-player character’s gonna have a reaction. So you as the Dungeon Master, or Game Master, you decide based on what they’ve done or what they’ve said, the personality of the character that you’re playing, how they would react to that circumstance. Favorably, unfavorably. And so a lot of your experience as Dungeon Master is rationalizing that relationship back and forth. If they’re a really charismatic character that comes, reads the NPC well and kinda sees that maybe– “They dress well, maybe they like a lot of money,” and so they open the conversation about money and how they can be paid. That’s gonna be a very favorable reaction, so if they’re trying to convince the NPC to do something, you might consider a relatively low difficulty. If it’s a progressive conversation and the player keeps bungling their words or rolling poorly throughout the conversation, that difficulty might get higher and higher by the end of the conversation for them to finally convince them to do something. So, you’re constantly gauging how well they’re doing in a social encounter versus how easy it is for the NPC to believe what they’re saying.

Also, you’ll find challenges that are conflicting or versus, where the player rolls versus an NPC. An example of that would be someone trying to deceive somebody, to lie to somebody, versus their insight. And so what you’d do is the player, if they’re trying to lie to an NPC, they’d go ahead and roll, add their deception skill and then me as the Dungeon Master, or you as the Dungeon Master, would roll a d20, add that NPC’s insight skill– and if you haven’t decided one, you can make one up on the spot based on how insightful that kinda NPC might be– and compare the two. If they lose, they’d probably believe the player. If they win, they don’t and it’s your decision whether or not they wanna show that card or go along with it, secretly knowing that they were lying and then have that bite them in the ass later on. So you wanna be a fair judge, and rationalize the world around them and how NPCs react to what they’re doing.

One of the biggest aspects of being a Game Master, or Dungeon Master, in my opinion, is understanding that you’re here to tell a story and you’re here to allow the players to be heroes. The reason you play this game is you want that heroic journey. And there are many people that enjoy games that are very versus, very conflicting, and very, like, Dungeon Master versus players, trying to kill them, they’re trying to survive; and that’s totally fine, too, just make sure up front that you and the players discuss what kind of game you want to play. Nothing’s worse than having a player sign on-board, make characters, get a few sessions in and realize that they’re now locked into a campaign that is very aggressive and very fight-and-survive, versus what they wanted was a very plain, happy, y'know, fantasy experience, so make sure that you’re very open with your players in the get-go what kind of campaign you want to run. In my opinion, it’s the most fulfilling if it’s a collaborative experience, where you provide challenges, you provide difficulty, you provide high stakes and there is that threat of death, but you never want the players to feel like you’re working against them. You want to be a, kind of, an impartial judge and be firm but fair, which is why it’s so scary sometimes when they get close to a TPK, because I set it up a certain way, they play it a certain way and you let the dice fall as it does. Or in some cases it works in their favor, like a long-standing boss fight you prepared a lot that they happened to roll really well on and kill your beholder. Totally fine. (laughs) Good for them. 'Cause who knows what’s coming next? So, present challenges, present difficulty, but never really with the intent to make the players feel like they’re unfairly being beaten down and you’re just trying to kill them off in some power-hungry spree, 'cause it just generally ends negatively and badly.

Also, in that same vein, you want to reward good thinking, guile, and good in-character actions and roleplaying, and punish reckless, against-character behavior. A good example was Pike, as a cleric, early in the game she was, y'know, beginning to be a little cruel and, y'know, while she is a war cleric, and combat and battle is not unfamiliar to her, cruelty was, and unnecessary cruelty began to fall into a negative point of favor with her deity, Sarenrae, causing the holy symbol to begin to crack and we’re kinda seeing where that’s gonna play out down the road. Conversely, if someone does something really cool in-character or something that really kind of changes the dynamic or has everyone else at the table going like, “Whoa,” that’s really great and maybe you want to reward them with an inspiration dice, which is– if you guys have seen the inspiration mechanics– you can lend inspiration dice to players, which allows them to give a bonus to one of the rolls they make. Our bard, Scanlan, can give those out as an ability, but you as the DM can also give those out if somebody does something really cool. And if someone does something really risky, but really crazy dynamic, even if it seems near-impossible, let them try, let the players try things that are crazy. They might have a really low chance of working and they’ll fail spectacularly, and those will still make for great stories and great memories in that game. So, y'know, let the players be heroes, present them with challenges, reward them for good in-character decisions, and try and detract them from making out-of-character decisions that take and rob the fun from the other players, as well. I mean, everyone can play as they want to. If you’re running an evil campaign or you have an evil character in a game that’s, like, starting to undermine the rest of the party, that can be interesting as long as all the players understand and are down with that type of experience. Once again, that’s the conversation you have at the beginning about what everyone’s trying to get out of the game.

Then, another job of the DM, and one of the other larger jobs, is you build the world. You build the world, you help the players tell the story and you work together to find where the story’s going from there. I’ll get into more detail with that shortly, but you– This is your tale. You can either buy an existing module which has a pre-built world and you can customize it however you feel; you can play it stringently as to how the module’s built; you can expand upon it; or you can do what I do with this and just build everything from scratch and see where it goes. It’s a lot of work and the DM does have a lot more time they have to put into the game, but it’s, in my opinion, one of the more fulfilling experiences you can have as a gamer, because you get to watch all these people play in your sandbox and build their own sand castles and it’s kind of exciting to watch them flourish in your own creative space and play off of you. So I, y'know, while I do complain on occasion I don’t get a chance to play too often, the experience I have watching other people, y'know, find these moments, they– Y'know, it’s– To me, it’s fascinating and very rewarding, so– I know it’s a lot of front-loading on this, but (laughs) just trying to explain to you the gist of this.

So as a Dungeon Master, you want to be a fair judge; you want to rationalize the world around them; you want to try and make sure the players have the opportunity to be heroes and have those heroic moments; reward them for doing good, cool things; try and detract them from ruining other people’s fun or doing things that are out of character; and build a world for them to play in. So, in these books, and in any RPG book, there are many rules about how to do combat, how to do social interactions, and you can read up on that. You can take a look at what’s in there and, understand, you can play these by the book, completely as they are inside, and it’s a great rule system, it works really well. But everything in here, in all these books, are guidelines. Anything can be changed, anything can be altered, anything can be customized to how you want it to be. If you don’t like how movement or actions work in the game, you can change it however you see fit– and just notify the players that’s the case, of course, otherwise they might feel a little, y'know, taken advantage of if they don’t understand the changes you’ve made– but, you can change and alter anything you want in the game. It’s just guidelines for you to play off of. I know I’ve homebrewed a few things and occasionally aspects of being used to Pathfinder bleed over as well, but you just take it as it comes.

The bottom line is, as a Dungeon Master or as a Game Master, it’s your world and you can– your word is law. People can’t really argue with you unless it’s a rules question that you didn’t clarify before, in which case you kinda have to go in the favor of the player if it’s something you didn’t clarify, but for the most part you play the part of the overall god of this world and the players also have to respect that what you say goes. That’s kinda that weird dynamic between the players and the DM, it’s kinda– it’s a respect mechanic, you don’t want the players to lose respect for you because then they stop– well, partially enjoying it, but also they start feeling that antagonistic relationship which can be a little stressful for both points. So, customize the rules as you see fit. We homebrewed Percy’s gunslinger class over from Pathfinder, because we just– when we converted over, there was no equivalent and so we made something up, and we’re trying it out, it’s a work-in-progress, it’s by no means perfect but it seems to be doing okay and it keeps it fun for him without completely changing the dynamic of the character he already created. I know they’ll probably release a gunslinger equivalent in the future or something and it might be vastly different from what he has, but we’re gonna stick with this because it’s what he’s used to and it’s what he’s built his character’s personality and combat around. So yeah, just keep that in mind.

The next bit, and this is kind of a big suggestion point for a lot of you guys. A large part of the DM’s time is spent worldbuilding. I say worldbuilding, it’s creating all the little details and the aspects of the world you want the players to play in. There are parts that, like, creating a society, building towns and villages,

designing dungeons and encounters, all that crazy

stuff all comes together into that world that

you’re creating. Shh shh shh shh shh shh shh.

Thank you. We have to keep everything down a

little bit. But you want to start somewhere and it

seems very daunting as a Dungeon Master,

especially a new one, to say, “How do I– How do I

create all this– How do I– Where do I start?”

And that’s a difficult question. Sometimes, for

your first couple games, it doesn’t hurt to look

at a module, go out and pick up one of the

existing Dungeons & Dragons adventure books that

outlines for you how a city would be built, how

NPCs would be built, and how they would play out

and respond to certain circumstances. It’s a good

way to train yourself to see how that process

would look when it’s finished, so if you decide to

create your own campaign or customize aspects you

know where to build off of. If you’re building

your own world, I’d recommend starting with a

small society, a small village or a small town.

And you’re like, “Okay, I’m gonna build a small

"town. Where’s this town gonna be? What’s the

topography?” You’re like, “Okay, it can be like in

"a middle of a forest village,” that’d be more

natural-based, kind of farmer society. Or it could

be your archetypical urban environment with a very

thriving trade society, a mercantile-run, y'know,

people. It could be a port town, it sees a lot of

trade but also has that kind of travel aspect,

it’s a mixing pot of cultures. Or it could be just

a small farm town that’s constantly under siege.

But you want to start with some bastion of

civilization, some place where the players can meet

other characters, find adventure, find quests and

find conflict. So you decide, “Okay, where do you

"want this small town to be?” As an example, we’ll

say this is– y'know, we’ll use the first town

they started in the campaign: Stillben. Stillben I

built as a swamp town. It is a port town, but it’s

built in this clutch center portion of a large

swamp to the far east of that continent, so you’re

like, “Okay, it’s a swamp town. How big is it?”

You think about it. You’re like, “How many people

"do you think live there? Let’s say, maybe– maybe

600 people.” It’s not a huge town. It’s not very

happy living conditions 'cause it’s very humid

there. The swamp air itself is not very enjoyable

to be around, so it doesn’t have a huge

population, but those that do live there,

consistently, they make a good living 'cause they

can live through this whole horrible-living swamp

experience and can make use of the trade that

comes through. So you’re like, “All right, about

"600 people or so.” Then you start breaking down

into what factions there might be in that city.

“Is there a thieves’ guild or an element of shadow

in the town? Is there a merchant guild? Is there a

"builders’ guild? Is there a sailors’ guild?” Think

of what type of work would be available in this

town and you start building factions based on

that. When you have a faction, then you can start

fleshing out NPCs, or non-player characters, that

fit in that faction. “Is there a thieves’ guild?

"How many people in the thieves’ guild? Would it

have a leader?” You don’t have to worry about

fleshing out every single member of the thieves’

guild, but consider like two or three main NPCs

that might be part of that thieves’ guild. So you

can say, “All right, one of them will be, we’ll

"say, a female tiefling who’s good with

longswords.” She’s trained into longswords. You’re

like, “All right, cool.” So you can just write up

her name. Come up with a random name– you can

look up online for random NPC name generators–

and write down her name. We’ll say, for this,

she’s taken her “virtue” name of Edge. We’ll call

her Edge. So, Edge is a female tiefling leader of

the thieves’ guild. Now Edge, what about her,

aside from being good with longswords, is a

dynamic aspect of her personality. Well, is she

ornery? Is she very sly and charismatic? Is she

the kinda person that lets everyone else do the

dirty work and just stays in the shadows or does

she like to be kind of the face-man of the

thieves’ guild? Kinda just decide some sort of a

personality aspect to her of those or many other

types. You can go ahead and say, “All right, we’ll

"say she’s charismatic as some tieflings get a

bonus in charisma.” So she likes to be kind of the

speaking mouth of the thieves’ guild. So you’ll

say, “She’s charismatic; she’s well-spoken; and

"she does well in social environments.” A few quick

notes about her personality just to remind you

later on, if she pops up, how she would play out.

“She’s charismatic.” Then you think, and this is

one thing that I think every NPC you should write

down some aspect of, “What do they want? And what

"do they fear?” You can make a shit-ton of really

simple NPCs with just the information of their

name, what race and class they are, what they want

and what they fear; and that’s all you really need

to branch out any conversation or encounter they

go through. So for Edge, what does Edge want? Edge

wants respect and money. As Edge– respect and

money, 'cause as the head of a thieves’ guild

those are the two things that guide her. Yes?

ORION: Are you gonna do the backgrounds for them?

MATT: We’ll get to that when you finish all the

rest of the stuff.

MARISHA: We’re doing backgrounds now.

MATT: Well, you can do your backgrounds on your

way, then. We’ll go through it. It’s fine.

MARISHA: Yeah, but do it. Do the background–

MATT: It’s fine. So! So she wants respect and

money. What does she fear? She fears being exposed

to the masses for her demonic blood, knowing that

this is a suspicious town. You can go that route.

Or you could say she fears being discovered by her

long-estranged, demonic father. Or you could say

that she fears– she fears being alone, and she

surrounds herself by thieves and folk that fear

her because it allows herself to feel like she’s

in control of an aspect of her life. These are all

different possible fears you can go with. I’m

gonna say she fears being found by her demonic

father. And so, those notes there say she’s a

female tiefling, she’s a rogue with longswords,

she seeks money and respect, she fears being

discovered by her demonic father. These are all

you need to now play that character and you just

need to put those notes aside. And if the players

ever find their way in that town asking around and

discovering where a thieves’ guild might be or if

they’re finding where, like, they can find a fence

to sell stolen goods to or to find information

about the seedy underbelly of the nearby town of

Stillben in the swamp, they might find different

people willing to give that information depending

on how their social rolls are. If they’re

persuading well or, if persuasion doesn’t work,

you can intimidate the information out of somebody

in which they scare someone enough to eventually

give up a name, and they’ll say, “Edge. Edge is

"the one you want to talk to.” When they ask around

and start finding more information about Edge,

they could decide to infiltrate the thieves’ guild

and find her personally. That might be a little

aggressive and you consider, “If a person breaks

into a thieves’ guild, the thieves’ guild will

"take that as a sign of aggression and will

probably meet them with battle.” If they instead

try and find a member of the thieves’ guild and

parley with them, they could persuade them to

speak to Edge on their behalf, in which case they

might actually have the opportunity of speaking

with her one-to-one in a not-quite-as-aggressive

circumstance. It can go any which way and that’s

kind of the– The interesting part of being a

Dungeon Master is you never know what the players

are gonna do. You set up these characters, you set

up this world and you kinda let them play, and all

you’re doing is reacting to everything they do,

rationalizing how the world would react to what

they’re doing. So, let’s say the players are like,

okay, they asked around, they found somebody who

did some work with the thieves’ guild, they

intimidated some information out of them about

Edge; you then find somebody you think may be

associated with the thieves’ guild and you pay

them a lot of money and persuade them to go ahead

and speak to Edge on their behalf, asking that she

would meet with you at this inn at this time. Your

party then goes to that inn room and waits for a

while. Over a short period of time, it seems like

she’s not gonna show up, based on how you think

she would react to that experience. I’d say she’s

curious enough that someone sought her out that

she would want to hear what they have to say,

'cause there might be money in it. Let’s say the

party has gained some renown in the local village,

perhaps she wants to align herself with these

upcoming adventurers, there’s always money to be

gained there. So you have her knock on the door.

As the party enters the door, there’s nobody

there, but at that same moment they hear the

sliding of glass, turn around, notice that she

slipped in through the back window and is now

leaning against the back wall with her arms

crossed, waiting expectantly for them to start the

conversation since they so openly sought her

existence. So now they’re in a conversation with

Edge. You can decide how to play their

personality. If you want her to be as charismatic

as you said before, she would bow deeply; you

could say that she was happy to introduce herself

and, while hearing some things about the party,

she’s eager to understand what it is they might

have to do with her. Let the party explain now

what it is that they want from her. Then you

decide: does it fall within the respect and money

she wants? She could tell them, “I’ll help you

"with this circumstance, as long as you pay me this

much.” Or, conversely, “I’ll help you with this,

"as long as you can talk to so-and-so in the town

and get them to drop this bounty on my head.”

Y'know? You think of what things would fall into

her wants and needs the party could do for her and

in turn could help them. However, if they’ve

talked around the town, they may notice that she

has demonic lineage, and they might bring it up in

conversation and see her reaction. She might be

very good at hiding that aspect. She might be able

to, y'know, to say, “Well, yes, I’m a tiefling

"indeed, but, y'know, that is not of my own doing.”

The players could then go, “Huh. She seems

uncomfortable. I’m gonna roll an insight check on

this,” then roll an insight check– they roll a

d20, adding their insight skill. The DM then, you,

privately would go ahead and roll a deception

roll, or a persuasion roll depending on what you

thought was the circumstance for that, versus

their roll and let them know what they read off of

her awkwardness. If they roll really low, you’d be

like, “She just seems put off by the fact that

you’ve never seen a tiefling.” If they roll really

well, you could tell them that at the notion of

tiefling and demonic blood, she fidgets and looks

over her shoulder, seemingly like she’s afraid

something’s following her. Then the party can

press her in that regard, and begin to say things

like, “Well, if you aren’t gonna help us, we have

"a warlock friend who does dealings with the

infernal and we know your name now. If there’s

"someone chasing you, y'know, we could call them on

you unless you help us.” Now it becomes– as

opposed to a persuasion, it becomes an

intimidation-based experience; and if they can

manage to convince her to help out of sheer

intimidation and fearing for what she doesn’t want

to happen, she becomes an ally, although a much

more tenuous relationship. So that’s an NPC that I

just made up right now and fleshed out. But

really, the basis you need for an NPC, to build

off any of those circumstances, is: a name, a race

and class, what they want, what they fear. Those

are some of the biggest things you need to–

everything else can be improvised on the spot.

Like I said, it’s all reactionary as a DM, which

is great, because once you set the world, the

players drive the story, and you just react off

what they’re doing and rationalize how the world

would react to it. I understand this is a lot of

information up front, but I’m trying to get as

much information into this talk as I can 'cause we

have a limited time and I’ve had a lot of

questions today I’m trying to get through for you

guys. So I hope this has been helpful. We’ll get

to questions in a second so I can answer things

specifically to you. So that’s an NPC you can

create. You can create the same way for like a

local cleric, a barkeep. You could be like, his

race, he could be a dwarven barkeep. He’s not even

a fighter; or maybe he once was a fighter, but he

gave up the life, used his winnings in some sort

of a brawling ring when he was younger to buy this

tavern, and that’s all he really does, but he’s

well-connected and has information. What are his

wants? He wants money, but he also wants to

possibly purchase a tavern across the town that is

failing that he thinks could expand his business.

What does he fear? Being closed down, or possibly

getting arrested because of maybe some things he

did in his past that are a little shady that he

hoped nobody would remember. So now, when someone

talks to that innkeep, there are many different

ways they could take that conversation, and many

different little ideas you might have as gives as

to what they’re seeking and what they’re afraid

of. And those are just cool little notes you make

to yourself down the road that if they ever decide

to enter that tavern and talk to that NPC, you

look down and you immediately know where they

stand, what they want, what they don’t want and

how they can help or hinder the NPC– or the

players based on what they do. So that’s building

a very small town and a small NPC. You flesh out a

couple and then you build off from there. And it

takes some time, y'know? You can crank out a few

NPCs; and you can railroad it as much as you want

to. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time

building a big sandbox game for all your players,

you can play a pretty standard, straightforward

story. You can decide the players are gonna go to

this tavern; the players are gonna go to this,

y'know, this home here; they’re gonna go to this

one mercantile– this kind of textile warehouse

where they’re gonna find a hidden underground

passage that leads to an altar to some forgotten

god. In which case you can decide, no matter what

happens, you can send the players– let them

wander a bit and have fun, but let them know very

early in, “You hear that there is some shaky

business going on in this town. People in the

"tavern are whispering about these murders that

have been happening in the village. You’re like,

'Huh?’” They’ll start asking about the murders and

that’s when you can point them towards, “Well,

"we’ve only heard, y'know, that these people have

been being killed when passing around this part of

"town; and they arrested one man last week, but he

was let go from the suspicions and he lives at

"this house.” Now the players will be like, “Oh,

well we have to go talk to the guy at that house.”

You lead them to that house. They go talk to the

guy. The guy might be like, “I don’t know what

"you’re talking about.” You press him for

information, you find out that he used to work for

this textile business and he– Eventually you can

either drive that he helped with these murders or

that he knows who is and they work with this

mercantile. Then, now you send them straight to

this warehouse that contains all this, y'know,

cloth and textile woodwork-type materials. They

might break inside, search the place, find

nothing, but if they roll well enough they’ll find

the trapdoor that leads down into the altar. So,

that was an example of a very thorough line to a

story that you could drive them towards and let

them play within that zone. If you have a lot of

free time, you could build that; you could build

one storyline that deals with one of the local

lords that is in danger of having his home

completely taken by him because of debt; or you

could do another side-story at the same time that

has something to do with a local inn, that their

basement has recently had a sinkhole collapse

underneath the bottom of it that opened up a

cavern of a bunch of strange, mutated, y'know,

rats that are coming out of some terrible-smelling

cavern. And all of these can be just aspects that

are in the town at all given points in time the

players may find. And you let them discover that.

It still takes a little more time to prepare that,

but that’s up to you as a DM as to how much your

free time is and how much you can prepare for.

Y'know, don’t be afraid to, if you don’t have a

lot of time, to railroad the players a little bit,

as long as you make them feel like they’re–

(laughs) they’re in control of it; and they are in

control of it, too. And I’ve had a lot of games

where I’ve prepared a bunch and the players

decided to go this way, and completely get

around everything I prepared and it turns into

this big improvisation experience. And that can be

very uncomfortable for a lot of people that aren’t

experienced in a lot of improv, and that’s where

preparation comes in and kind of your comfort as a

DM. I recommend, if you’re playing and DMing or

GMing a game for the first time, maybe run them

through a story that’s a little more linear, a

little more direct, so you just get more

comfortable with the experience, both combat with

the players, more experience with how NPCs

interact with them and being prepared for those

circumstances. Then, as you have more experience

as a GM or DM, you can begin to be a little more

freeform with your storytelling setup and letting

the players kind of play in that sandbox that is

the world you’ve created. So those are some

guidelines for like a small village. The factions

are fun to create, because you can have factions

that are allied, factions that are enemies, and that

automatically leads in a really cool idea for some

story hooks where you have maybe a thieves’ guild

has a huge rivalry with the mages’ academy. One

believes that, you know, shadows is a real way to

get business done in the local politics whereas

the mages feel that it’s more arcane understanding

that both socio-political aspects can be

controlled by the arcane. Maybe you have one

played against the others. The players can choose

a faction to align with and there’s a whole quest

line that way. But now they’ve made enemies with

the opposite faction and now they’re having to

steer clear of their side. Or they can try and

double-agent for both but if that ends up going

horribly awry they have now earned the anger of

both sides and might have to flee the town and

never return. So these are all different cool ways

that you can set up faction versus faction or

factions working together to give the players

story and investment in the world that you are

creating. Now, from that small town, you can build

an even larger city. Meaning all those same

elements I discussed you just expand upon. You

build more NPCs. You build an entire district that

is shops and stores, maybe in a giant bazaar. You

can create a whole district that is just about

worship of different gods and deities, and you

have different temples assigned to each god and

you can find, you can use the gods that are in the

book. You can create your own gods that have their

own backgrounds and specialties and guiding

principles and religions around that. It’s up to

you. But as you build a larger city, you have to

consider how many different people and cultures

it’s now having to house and facilitate. So it’s a

little more of a time investment to build a city

that much larger, but it’s a really cool

experience to then have the players wander through

that, to continue to discover. Like, the main city

of Emon, which you guys have heard about a little

bit of, but I’m sure we’ll come back to soon in

the campaign, you guys will have the opportunity

to see it in person, is a vast city. Much like the

classic Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter, it’s the

central capital city of this entire region and

they’ve only maybe experienced a fifth of it after

a whole almost entire year of exploring it, so

there are a lot of examples of that urban

expansion that they can go through. And to be

perfectly honest I’ve detailed and fleshed out

maybe about a third of the village with loose

notes for all the rest. So if suddenly one of the

players veered right again and decided to go all

the way to the far northern slums, which I have

nothing really specifically planned for, I can

look through my notes and find out a handful of

NPCs and some loose story elements that I made

notes of about those northern slums and I can kind

of improvise based on those notes and where they

want to go in the story to still make it a fleshed

out story, and if it’s a really heavy story thread

that they’re following I can just find a way to

tie it back into the original thread I was trying

to tell, and not necessarily guide them back on the

path, but have it still fold into the same story

they’ve been discovering. You never quite know

where they’re gonna take you. Sometimes the

players take you on a ride and you just kinda have

to go with it. You don’t want to deny the players

too much, because you’re all in this for that

storytelling experience, and they want to feel

like they’re guiding their own path. If you force

them too hard against their wishes in the game,

then it feels more like the DM is playing the game

than the players are, and that becomes a very

tenuous relationship going forward in a campaign.

The cool note is, the players never know whether

or not you’re bullshitting or you had it all

planned, so even if you go off the rails, as long

as you have some notes or are at least acting like

you know what you’re talking about, for the most

part you’ll be fine. I’ve had whole games that

have gone by, I’ve run by the seat of my pants

improvising and I just, I don’t know what’s going

to happen and it works out in a really crazy way

and finds a whole new story path and you just

don’t tell the players that that happened.

(laughs) That’s a fun little aspect there. So we

talked about urban environments. We’ve talked

about cities a bit, you know, which, in those

cities you want to also be mindful of what ruling

class there is. Is it an oligarchy? Is it a

lordship? Is it a kingdom? Is there an elected

official? Is it a township? And that political

structure will also be a very, very good way to

build those factions below it as well. So the

larger your city is, the more elements of that

social structure you have to consider and how many

layers there are beneath it. Is it a very wealthy

city universally? Is there a very, very, you know,

high disparity between the upper class and the

lower class? These are all really cool ways to

flesh it out and give you ideas on where NPCs can

be and where tension is in that society. Also

remember, just because you’re in a city doesn’t

mean there aren’t dungeons. Castles and keeps

have dungeons. Some cities are built on the ruins

of older, older cities that may have underground

cavern networks that have been long forgotten or

tombs that haven’t been touched in years since a

strange wave of necromantic energy began to rise

things from the grave and they just seal it off.

But who knows what lurks beneath there. Or, like

earlier at that tavern I told you about that had a

strange sinkhole, that’s a really cool story arc

to lead into an underground cavern network to something

that may have caused the sinkhole. Something long

forgotten beneath that inn that now threatens the

inn or possibly the town its entire self. You

know, don’t be afraid to have players in a city

environment still find creepy, interesting, weird

terrain within that city environment. In Emon the

players managed to fall through a cistern into a

deep, dark underground cavern network that led

them through an ancient ruined city, finding a hag

that managed to make a proposition with them,

whereas for information leading them out she took

a bit of Tiberius’ luck– he still doesn’t know

what that means and it still floats above his

head. I think he’s forgotten about it, but a

portion of his fortune has been stolen by this

hag, it still resides in that realm. So, urban

environments can be urban but don’t be afraid to

explore avenues above and below. How you doing?

How we doing?

MARISHA: Pretty good.

MATT: Cool bit. I’m gonna finish up here real fast

with some other ideas. So those are cities. Those

are towns. What makes them so special is, in the

D&D world, and in a lot of RPG worlds, outside of

those bastions of civilization is a very dangerous

world. And you can change that up however you see

fit, but I find that it definitely makes for a

better environment if the players understand that

in the wild you find things that are wild. There

are creatures that roam free. There are monsters

and beasts that call these places home and need to

eat and survive. There are intelligent entities

that are building their own civilizations in the

darkest depths of the mountains or in the shadowed

patches of the local forests and going outside of

a town, most traveling caravans need to have

muscled support hired to come along the way. If

you travel alone there is always the possibility

of bandits ransacking you on the road or some

sort of large hulking beast comes tumbling out of

a nearby cavern structure and attacking the, you

know, the people. There’s so many different ways

that you can incorporate a dangerous, wild world

around these bastions of society, these little

points of light, that makes the game feel more

dangerous. It heightens the stakes for the players

whenever they have to travel, and it makes

returning to a town that much more of a breath of

fresh air. Then, consider villains. Villains are

NPCs that inherently have very selfish goals that

are detrimental to society at large and/or the

players. K'Varn being the Big Bad of the recent

arc. He is definitively one of the main villains

if not the main villain of this arc. You can

create villains that are kind of one-offs like

this. They eventually found K'Varn and they killed

him. You can create villains that are

long-standing and recurring. Like earlier in the

campaign, the Dread Emperor was always present,

but they didn’t even manage to find him until the

very end. That was a recurring theme throughout,

kind of built that tension about that villain. And

not all villains get killed. Some villains, when

they’re damaged, they get the heck out of Dodge

and return later even more prepared and more

ready, you know. But sometimes the players can be

clever and keep them in there– and don’t deny the

players if they’re really smart and prevent your

villain from escaping when he tries to. 'Cause you

don’t want– you want to reward the players for

being really smart. Remember, good villains are

also very smart and usually have a pretty strong

exit strategy if everything goes to shit. So

villains are a really cool thing to flesh out

their persona and their personality. You look at a

lot of great literary archetypes that can expand

on that for you. You consider like, you know, the

Chaotic Evil-type villain, which is the Joker from

Batman. Someone who just like loves the idea of

violence and destruction and ruining the world

around them for their own personal enjoyment and

personal gain. You have the Lawful Evil villain–

more of the Darth Vader types– that work in a

structure of law but use it to their advantage.

They twist people’s ideals of honor and society

and relationships to put them in a position of

power in which no one can really contradict, what

they say goes. And through that, they maintain

power and they maintain control over people around

them. Then you have just general evil. You have

all sorts of different types of evil archetypes

you can play with in there, but have fun fleshing

out a villain and having them be as sadistic or as

controlling or as charismatic and enjoyable for

the players to encounter, as much as they hate them, you know,

you can have a vast variety from there. But

recurring villains are a fun theme and generally

up the experience more than just having a Big Bad

every session that they go in and kill, get the

loot and leave, you know, it’s fun to have that

recurring element. I’m gonna cruise through a

couple of points here for you guys, so we can

start getting to these guys to playing here. Or

any questions they have for the story. Story

hooks. Story hooks are essentially what gets the

players to start seeking the story, and there’s a

lot of great examples in the Dungeon Master’s

Guide here, if you guys pick up a copy, that

explains a lot of different ideals of how you can

get the players invested in your story. Let’s see

if I can find it real fast back here, but

essentially a story hook could be when they enter

a tavern they notice that someone in the corner is

hunched over and eventually falls forward off

their stool. The party goes and inspects and finds

out that they’ve been stabbed and are bleeding

out, and in their dying words they reach up to the

player. They whisper a name, like, oh shit, what

is that name? What does that mean? And someone in

the room is like, that name, that’s the name of

the leader of this one temple of Pelor, the God of

the Sun, the God of Light. Okay, well, the players

now have the idea that someone got murdered and

their last words were the name of this person.

Let’s go find out what their relationship was.

That’s a story hook. Someone got murdered

mysteriously and you only have a name to go off

of. That’s an example of a cool story hook that

the players might be interested in pursuing. Some

players might be, “Ah, fucker died. Whatever.” and

that story hook goes away. But that’s up to the

players and that’s going to put them in the

territory of being a little more neutral to evil

than good players. So if they make good characters

and they do stuff like that, repeatedly, they

might start pushing into the evil territory and

maybe drawing the ire of other NPCs nearby that

are good. The captain of the guard rushes in and

inspects, “What happened to this man?” and you’re

like “I don’t know, he died.” He’s like, “Grrr, I

"don’t like the look of these people who don’t care

about the lives of others.” Maybe going forward,

whenever they encounter the captain of the guard,

he immediately mistrusts the party, and they’ve

already established that relationship negatively.

So let’s see, what’s some other good examples of

story hooks they have here in the book? (sings) 71

and 72. We’ll see if they’ve got that up. All

right, bear with me as I pan through. And like,

there’s a lot of great breakdowns for villains and

NPCs and stuff in the Players’ Handbook, guys, so

if you’re planning to Dungeon Master a game I

highly recommend you read through. It’s a really,

really great resource. Ah, all right, 71. All

righty. So there are a bunch of cool dungeon goals

and wilderness goals, like “foil a villain’s evil

"scheme”, “destroy a magical threat inside a

dungeon”, “acquire a treasure”, “rescue a captive”

– these are cool dungeon goals. They have it

broken down into wilderness goals as well, like

“establish trade with a distant town”, “map a new

land”, “find a natural resource”, “escape the

"reign of a tyrant”. And you have other cool ideas

for goals. “Defending a location from attackers”,

“retrieving an object from a caravan”, “infiltrate

a fortified location”, “successfully travel

"through an obstacle course to gain recognition or

reward”. These are all very loose, very simple

story hooks and goals that you can then weave a

story around based on how you’ve built your town

and you’ve built your NPCs. So don’t be afraid to

go ahead and grab a copy of these, this can kinda

be used as an example if you’re feeling a little

lost through their story. You can actually just

roll randomly on these players and be like, “All

right, what are they doing today? Oh well, ah,

"looks like they’re infiltrating a fortified

location. Let me come up with some bullshit that,

"you know, justifies what they’re doing.” So you

can, technically, DM a game randomly by just

rolling off these and improvising from that point

forward. That’s a little more of an advanced

Dungeon Master technique if you really feel like

just winging it from there. But that’s a really

cool resource to have at your disposal. Another

question, another thing I wanted to bring up with

you guys was encounters. So when you do get into

battle or when players encounter creatures or

monsters or villain characters and they want to

fight, you then go into an encounter, and you want to

consider when you prepare for encounters, you

think, where are they? Are they fighting in a dungeon

or are they fighting in forest or are they

fighting in a swamp? Are they fighting in an open

plain? And you go through a book like the Dungeon

Master’s, or sorry the Monster Manual, and find

creatures that you think would live in that type

of topography. So if they’re in an open field, you

can think of more wild beasts or, you know, clans

of roaming orcs. If they’re in deep, deep

mountains you can find creatures that burrow and

naturally live in more earthy-based terrain, and

you build encounters around that. There are some

really great websites online that have encounter

calculators where you can basically tell how

difficult an encounter is based on how many

players are in the party, what level they are, and

you can build the encounter based on that. That

way you don’t end up accidentally making something

that’s too difficult or too easy for the party.

And you don’t want to make everything too hard.

Some battles can be fun and easy and really kind

of have the players enjoy being badass and rushing

into combat and just killing things really easily

and being, 'Ha-ha! I ruined everything! That’s

great! I am powerful!“ And you can have some

battles that are pretty, "Phew, that was close.

That was a good fight.” And then occasionally you

want to throw them a curveball and have something

they really have to struggle through, so when they

finish that battle they really have to take a rest

and realize, “We almost lost one or more people in

"that fight,” and that makes the stakes that much

higher at that point, but you don’t want to

constantly be hitting them with super-hard

battles. You don’t want to be making things

consistently too easy because it isn’t a fun

challenge for them. And consider terrain for

combat, too. Not every battle is just you versus

monsters. Sometimes there’s a big cliff involved

and the battle could be at a distance. Sometimes

there’s pits of lava in the middle and that

becomes a danger or a tool depending on how you

look at it during the battle. Sometimes,

especially in urban combat, you have rooftops and

alleyways in which you can use that to your

advantage to avoid things, or push guys off a roof

to fall and get hurt. Or fall onto things, you

know. There can be traps involved that you know

are there that you can then push guys into.

There’s a really cool way of building encounters

that are beyond just hitting things and doing

damage. Which is fine, too, don’t get me wrong.

Also, if there’s a monster in the Monster Manual

that you like– like, this is a really cool

monster, but it’s too easy, like the players are

all level ten and this is a level three monster,

you can customize the monster. You can make the monster

more powerful. Add more hit points. Raise the

stats a little more. Give it a couple of unique

attacks that you think would be fitting for it. If

you don’t like the fact that the bulette only has

like a bite and stomp attack, maybe you decide

that this bulette actually grew up or was raised

around some sort of arcane, natural arcane relic

that infused it with a resistance to magic and a

capability that it has like electrical charges

around it, and now when everyone, whenever anyone

starts their turn next to it, they get shocked.

It’s an electric bulette! That’s kinda cool. Why

not? You can customize and alter any aspect of any

creature in the book. Once again, all guidelines.

You can go with the basis here, and it’s a lot

easier if you don’t have a lot of time, but don’t

be afraid to customize and alter things to fit

certain aspects of your world or your story as you

see fit. It’s great. I had the players in this

campaign fight a proto-lich when they were level

three or four. Liches will wipe the floor with

pretty much anything, but I considered it would be

cool to introduce that powerful undead aspect if

it was like just barely cresting out of its

initial ritual to become a lich, in which case it

was in a very weakened state. So if they had

waited a day or two, that lich would have ruined

them. It was still a tough battle, but they caught

it when it was still essentially birthing, which

made it a very, very weak lich. That’s not in the

books. I just took what was there and scaled it

way back. That made for a really fun encounter.

So, all guidelines. You can customize as you see

fit, and there are great communities online of

people that create creatures or beasts and have

suggestions or feedback for anything you create.

Don’t be afraid to reach out there. Once again, I

apologize, because this is a lot of information up

front for trying to squeeze this in for you. Also,

maps! You see in Critical Role we do combat with

maps that we draw up of terrain and we have

everyone has individual models and the creatures

have models. That is not necessary. I have found

it’s very helpful for our campaign because we have

eight players, which makes it very difficult for

everyone to keep in mind spatial awareness during

the battle, who is who and what they’re doing and

how close monsters are. I grew up playing Dungeons

and Dragons and other RPGs without maps or models

at all. It was all theater of the mind, all in the

brain, which is a lot of fun, but when you get a

certain critical mass of players it becomes

unwieldy, so the the models became necessary for

us, but what we’re doing tonight when we play our

game, there’s going to be no battlefield, no

models. It’s all going to be just keeping it in

your head and me letting you know what’s happening

and where you guys are, so don’t feel like it’s

absolutely necessary to do that. I just find it

makes it easier when you have more players. And

it’s fun to draw maps. Sometimes it’s a lot of fun

to do that. Another question that has come up a

lot. Experience points. So, monsters that are

killed or defeated in battle give you experience

points. They don’t necessarily have to be killed

to get that experience points. If the players still

win the encounter, meaning they forced them to

surrender, or they managed to fight them to the

point where they have to retreat. That is still a

victory and the players should still get the

experience for that encounter. You may give them a

bonus if it’s a big boss fight and they killed it

and then get to reap the rewards of it. That’s

cool. That’s totally up to you as a DM, but, you

know, if they still successfully complete an

encounter they still get the experience. If they

flee from an encounter and the players technically

lost the battle, you can still give them a little

bit of experience to gain from that, but it would be

largely docked by that, and that’s totally up to

you. That’s combat experience. What about

role-playing experience? That’s arbitrary based on

what you want to do as a DM. You can just write

down, well that’s cool, they get five hundred

experience for that social encounter. You can make

it up on the spot, and I recommend keeping an eye

on what level the players are and what the

experience values are for each level, so you know

how much they need to get to the next level. That

allows you to kind of build a structure. Now for

me, to keep track of roleplaying experience, it’s

an endeavor with eight players, so what I do is I

have what I call a hatch marks system, where

whenever anybody does something in the game that’s

a cool roleplaying experience or they save a

circumstance I will give them a hatch mark next to

their name. Or multiple hatch marks if it was

really, really clutch and really kind of changed

the dynamic of the circumstance and saved their

bacon. Or if they failed miserably at something

but they gave it a really, really good try and it

was a cool idea, I might still give them a hatch

mark or two, 'cause it was a good shot. And so at

the end of each game I have a kind of an equation

for myself where I multiply their level by 25, so

right now they’re all level ten, it would be 250

experience and that’s– I give them that many, I

multiply it by the number of hatch marks they get.

So if somebody gets three hatch marks in a game,

right now, they would get an additional 750

experience points at the end of that session based

on the roleplaying experience. So that way I don’t

have to think too much about the math in the game,

I just go, “That’s cool.” Hatch mark. “That was

"really cool!” Hatch mark hatch mark hatch mark.

And then at the end of each session I’ll go ahead

and multiply the level by 25 and then multiply

that by how many hatch marks I’ve given them and

that’s their total roleplaying experience. That’s

worked well for me. It’s not for everyone, but I

think it’s a good way to quickly add up those

moments and make sure players don’t feel like

you’re slowing it down to keep track of who’s done

cool shit. That’s a really condensed overview of

Dungeon Mastering. Um.

(laughter)

MARISHA: An hour later. (laughs)

MATT: They’ve asked me a lot of questions via

Twitter and that’s kind of what I’ve built this up

for, so I apologize for you guys. Thank you for

being patient. We’re going to take a couple of

questions from the chat room, and then we’re going

to go ahead and start the game here in about 15,

20 minutes or so. So, as I said, I hope that’s a

lot of information for you guys, but Dungeon

Mastering, it’s a lot of fun. It takes some time.

You have to kind of set aside some time. I say

generally it takes about an hour of gameplay per

hour of preparation, so if it’s going to be a

six-hour session it might take anywhere from three

to six hours to set up for that properly, but it

doesn’t have to be that long, that’s just me being

super thorough, which I’m obsessive about. But

yeah, be open to improvise, be open to let the

players play and let them guide you sometimes in

an off-direction, and have fun. Let the players be

heroes. Let them try anything, just know that if

what they’re trying is really ridiculous, they

have a really, really low chance of succeeding,

and most of the time they’ll fail and it’s a

spectacular failure and you’ll all laugh about it.

If they succeed that roll, that is an epic fucking

moment that you’re all gonna remember, because

that player pulled off that third-act amazing

maneuver that completely changed the dynamic of

the story and that’s really what this game is all

about. I still remember and tell stories from our

campaign like it was something we all personally

did and experienced. It’s really weird. It’s

weird! I love it! But it’s weird. So, I love it.

Playing the game is great. Learning the rules is

great. Dungeon Mastering is a lot of fun. It’s

scary at first, but I guarantee with a little bit

of time, it’s really rewarding and it’s really,

really not that hard at all. So yes. Let’s answer

a few questions in the chat room, guys, let’s see

if you can chime in on this. We’ll take about ten

minutes of this and and then we’ll jump into the

game with you folks. And once again thank you

for– Thank you for your patience.

MARISHA: I’m pretty stoked for the characters

MATT: I am excited.

MARISHA: We’ve got some good stuff going. We’ve

got some good stuff going.

MATT: Actually, as a note to remind you guys, too,

one of the cool things about Fifth Edition, two

things they did, they got rid of a lot of the

floating modifiers that previous editions had,

like you know Pathfinder was one, was a great

system but I found in battles, especially with a

lot of players, you’d be like, “All right, so I

get plus one to hit damage from the Bless spell,

"and the bard gives everyone plus two to hit and

damage, oh no it’s just hit, no it’s to hit

"damage, okay, and you’re going to plus one from

that ability, but only within ten feet of them–”

MARISHA: Don’t forget Enhance Ability!

MATT: “Right, Enhance Ability, all right, is that

a plus two from–”

MARISHA: Hey don’t forget, hey!

MATT: “– so it’s plus seven to hit plus nine to

damage on that?”

MARISHA: The Hunter’s Mark. Hunter’s Mark! Don’t

forget Hunter’s Mark!

MATT: Well, we still have that problem, but that’s

Laura.

(laughter)

MATT: But that became an issue with a lot of big

battles, I found, especially with eight players,

so they simplified that in this edition. Most

modifiers to hit and damage are pretty consistent.

You don’t have a lot of crazy things. What they do

have is advantage and disadvantage. If an

experience or a circumstance in the game puts you

in an advantageous position, you get to roll two

d20s and drop the lowest, so you get the higher of

the two rolls. If you have disadvantage, you have

to roll 2d20 and drop the highest, which is rough.

So that’s a really simplified way of kind of

playing spells to give you the advantage or get

enemies disadvantage in that circumstance, which

is great. Another big thing to consider for Fifth

Edition is, and you guys went over it a little

bit, backgrounds. Not necessary. Players that are

new to the game might find it very interesting,

but when you ask about your character’s background

and what they’ve done, where they come from, and

how that builds them as a character, you can

completely come up with whatever you want to. You

can say they came from this background, they did

these things, and this is all in my head in how I

plan the character. Some people either are having

a little bit of writer’s block with their

character or they don’t know where to start or

they just don’t have a lot of experience, there’s

a great section in the new Player’s Handbook about

backgrounds, which you get to choose where your

character comes from, where they grew up. They

could be a folk hero, they can be a charlatan,

they can be an acolyte, they can be a soldier from

a war long past. They can be an entertainer, and

that gives them bonus proficiencies in their

skills that pertain to their background, and it

gives you examples of certain personality traits

that you can choose or randomly roll from. For

example, go to the background section of the

Player’s Handbook over here, you can find– where

is it?

MARISHA: Actually, Dan made his character with his

background this way.

DAN: It’s true.

MARISHA: So we can just hear about his background

as an example.

MATT: Right, so let’s go ahead and hear about your

background, Dan.

DAN: All right. (clears throat)

MARISHA: But he did roll a dice to randomly

generate it.

DAN: I did. I generated it randomly. Flip the

appropriate page. (Scottish accent) So I’m Salty

Pete, the first mate of the Obsidian Helen. A

sailor by trade. A scoundrel by nature.

(laughter)

DAN: The captain gambled with the ship, so I fed

him to a long-beaked squid with razor-sharp teeth.

Spent times on pontoon cigarette boats, skiffs,

whoring, snoring and deploring across the land.

I’m married to the sea but me best friend is a

hermit crab named Terrence.

(laughter)

DAN: The only left-over I have from the Helen is

her flag, which I wear like a cape. I’ve met many

friends over a buttery glass of chardonnay,

sailor’s choice.

(laughter)

DAN: But I’ve lost many more. If you step to me,

you best come correct. I’m on a quest to regain

the Helen. I play for pink slips. Looking for

clues at the bottom of a glass, oh you bet your

arse I did. And now I fell in with a failed

warlock named The Snugglelord.

(cheering)

MATT: And all that of was based on randomly

generated information in the background section.

MARISHA: He clearly fleshed it out. Which is

incredible.

DAN: I added some flesh.

MATT: It gives you a great basis to build off of.

Like, I assume you were the sailor.

DAN: Yeah, I went for the sailor archetype. It’s

super cool because I really liked stuff like that

back when I used to do campaigns because it gives

you a great basis just for, you know, if you’re not

sure what you want to do with your character, it

gives you good branching-off points and they you

can just sort of add meat to that skeleton.

TALIESIN: Well, it’s also one of the questions I

hear from like people who haven’t played the game

before, when you first start with character

creation is like, well, what are the rules on what

I can be, and kind of trying to get them out of

that, there are no– Forget about the rules. What

do you want to be? This is like, this gives them a

little set of rules that they can kind of grasp

onto desperately for like their first game.

LIAM: We’ll never–

MARISHA: Some of my favorite– oh go ahead.

LIAM: But we’ll never forget– oh and I’m eating

chicken. You go ahead, I’m eating chicken.

MARISHA: I’ll go first. Some of my favorite

characters that I’ve played with have all been

people who decided what they wanted to be first

and then picked a race and a class around what

they wanted to be, so our good friend Paradox

really wanted to be, like a roadie who–

(laughter)

MARISHA: He wanted to be a roadie, essentially

like a traveling circus, who was like the curtain

guy for all these bands and so he made a monk who

had these ropes and he had a whip and all of his

abilities he would grapple people and tie people

up with his ropes, and that was like what he

based, he had an idea first and then built a

character around. So, 'cause the system is so

flexible, you can– it’ll allow you to be pretty

much anything you want to be.

MATT: Yeah.

MARISHA: So, one of the things I like, in

Pathfinder there’s like, you can make a geisha

dancer who did damage with fans, so you can pretty

much be whatever and then

figure it out from there.

MATT: If it’s not in the books, you can create it.

You can build it. We made the gunslinger off

Pathfinder here for that, so like, it’s totally

open and the backgrounds are a great way. They

have a whole section for personality traits and

you can roll for a personality trait, or multiple,

and ideals. So things that really drive your

character in their life. Bonds: things that really

hold them, you know, via loyalty or to an ideal

beyond that. And then flaws, which I love. Like

right here I rolled a two as a sailor. “I’d say

anything to avoid having to do extra work.” That’s

a great flaw for a sailor. Probably not great for

his work ethic, but you know. But those are really

useful things, the backgrounds is a really cool

addition for those who want a jumping point for

building their characters’ personality. Ah, let’s

answer a few questions in the chat while we’re

going about this.

CREW: Manoose asked: “How do you handle magical

items?”

MATT: How do you handle magical items?

TALIESIN, MARISHA, AND MATT: Very carefully.

MATT: The Dungeon Master Guide actually has a

really good breakdown about, in the magical items

section, about the cost and rarity of magical

items. I’m just going to pull it up here real

fast. There’s common. Common magical items cost

between 50 to 100 gold pieces. And it says

“character level: first or higher”. Uncommon, also

first or higher, but around 100 to 500 gold

pieces. Rare magical items are from fifth level or

higher, around 500 to 5,000 gold pieces. Then very

rare, and then legendary which get higher and

higher from there. Legendary being 50,000 gold

pieces and more. And so that helps you kinda gauge

how easy or hard it is for players to find

something of that level, and each one of the

magical items in the book tells you if it’s rare,

uncommon, any of those type of circumstances.

However, it gives you a range, so you as the GM or

DM, you decide based on how powerful the item is,

how much it’s worth if the players wanted to sell

it or buy it, and generally you consider if

players are selling magical items, they’re selling

lower than they would buy it from, like any sort

of pawn shop-type thing, they might get a quarter

of what it’s worth at a store, but if they’re

really charismatic and they’re really good with

their persuasion rolls they might be able to get

more money than that, or conversely lower the

price of items they want to buy. So, you wanna

make sure you don’t want to give too out too many

items throughout the campaign quickly because then

the players either get too powerful, and then any

items you give them down the road seem not as

interesting or flippant. I like to run a campaign

that has, you know, occasional upgrades, just a

little slow trickle with bursts of good item use,

that way when you, they do find something truly

magical, it’s a, “Aw, nice!” as opposed to, “Oh,

"it’s another boots, who wants the boots? That’s–

I’ve already got like three, here, you have that.”

You know. It becomes less interesting and less

special to me, so I like to trickle them out and

keeping tabs on what players have, what they’re

missing, and then eventually kind of incorporate

aspects of what they can upgrade their characters

with down the road. Or they can create them for

themselves. There are rules for creating magical

items if they have an arcane practice

to their class.

TALIESIN: We’re sponsored by a store in-game,

too.

MATT: You are sponsored by Gilmore’s Glorious

Goods. Those of you, though you have not been

there yet, so–

MARISHA: Oh my God, I forgot we’re sponsored by

them.

TALIESIN: We are sponsored by Gilmore.

LIAM: Eventually, you will all have the pleasure

to meet Gilmore.

ORION: Gilmore is fantastic!

MARISHA: I love Gilmore.

ORION: Fantastic fellow.

LIAM: He’s a little sweet on me.

MATT: Gilmore is a fan of Vax.

MARISHA: A little thing for Vax.

CREW: NSFThermont asks, “To what degree do you

allow/encourage the players to contribute to the

world’s lore?”

MATT: All right, so, how much do I allow the

players to contribute to lore? For their character

backgrounds, I like them to contribute a lot about

where they come from and what their stories are.

Everyone’s backgrounds you see in the opening

videos, they wrote themselves, and then I take

those and I incorporate that into the world that

I’m creating. And occasionally they’ll cross paths

with aspects of their personal history and in the

future will as well. Some of them will just be

breezing through encounters, some of them will

actually find moments in the story that will

directly be part of their personal goals, that

will, we shall see. I like the players to

incorporate aspects of their history, but beyond

that, I don’t want them to flesh out too much of

their current or future aspects of the world

because to them that takes out some of the mystery.

What I think is great as a player is knowing where

you came from and not knowing where you’re going.

So, like, for instance, Tiberius

ORION: Yeah, lot of you asked about my Mending

Wheel, 'cause I’ve used that a bunch. And the

Mending Wheel is part of something that Tiberius’

personal quest is about, that I wrote and gave to

Matthew. It’s like this is–

MATT: Like two years ago.

ORION: Yeah, it’s like over two years now. Wow,

it’s been a while. But I said, “Here, this is what

"his goals are, this is why he’s travelling with

this group of people.” And that is like, when I

found that thing, he doesn’t make it, you know,

very difficult, but he doesn’t make it easy

either. Like when we came across it, there was

this NPC witch, right?

MATT: It was a hag. You heard me mention her

earlier.

ORION: And we had this interaction where he– it

was about something else, our main quest that we

were doing and he said, he was describing her

place and he said something-something wheel.

Just, and was listing things, and I was like,

“Wait a minute, that’s one of my things I think I

"wrote about!” And I then as Tiberius inquired

about it, then that became a conversation between

me and the NPC and I had to– does that apply now?

Is that gone?

TALIESIN: No, that’s not gone.

ORION: (quietly) Oh, no.

MARISHA: That piece of fortune you handed over?

ORION: I had to negotiate some of my fortune

which, I still don’t know what that means.

MARISHA: No, that’s gonna fuck us so hard one of

these days.

TALIESIN: Oh, one of these days, it’s just gonna

hurt.

ORION: But I had to give that to the witch NPC in

exchange for the Wheel of Mending, which is the

very important thing in my quest. So–

TALIESIN: And it’s been helpful for everybody.

ORION: It’s great.

MARISHA: It’s been very helpful.

ORION: It’s been great.

MARISHA: One of these days though, you’re gonna

like, get a–

ORION: Really horrible–

MARISHA: You’re going to roll a 20 and something

terrible is going to happen.

ORION: But the cool thing is, I didn’t describe

what the wheel did. I named what they were and

Matthew then decided if it, a) if it was existed,

b) what it did and, you know, how it worked and

all that stuff. So, that’s– it’s cool.

TALIESIN: You know, having details but having the

DM– giving the DM discretion to decide how it

plays out is really awesome.

ORION AND MARISHA: Yeah.

ORION: Because then I’m surprised and I’m the one

expecting to see it. I’m still surprised,

and it’s great.

MATT: Well, like, well, for instance, the city you

came from: Draconia. The society– you’ve given me

a lot of information about how you grew up there

and kind of how you saw this society and then you

sent me that outline and now I’m taking what you

had come up with and I’m fleshing it out and

building it into the world and then running with

that essentially, so, Tiberius’s memory serves

right to what his experience was in Draconia,

we’ll see how that continues going forward when he

eventually returns to his people. So–

MARISHA: And I did something similar with like, my

four tribes of the Ashari. You know, I’ve got,

I’ve got the fire tribe and the earth tribe and

the air tribe and the water tribe, but from

Keyleth’s perspective, I’m from the air tribe, I

don’t really know a whole lot about the other

ones. They’re there, so I gave him the idea of the

tribes and the backstory that they exist and now

he’s fleshing it out for me.

TALIESIN: Yeah, and like, I don’t know what the

people who came to my parents’ castle wanted. They

were looking for something and like, I gave him

details on what they were doing, but not

necessarily what it was all about because I don’t

know, but he knows, because he gets

to figure that out.

MATT: Yeah. It’s fun.

LIAM: Laura and I spent three hours in a diner

fleshing out our family history.

MARISHA: That’s so cool.

LIAM: It was great. It was great.

MATT: Then you ran into your estranged father and

his new family. (laughs)

TALIESIN: Oh, that was so great.

ORION: Yeah, that was like, their father was a big part

of one of our main quests. It was insane.

LIAM: It was very frosty.

MARISHA: It was very frosty, yeah.

CREW: Skyfalls1 asks a specific about Trinket. I’m

just gonna generalize the question. How do you

handle player-controlled allies and their level

progression? Are they part of the character who

controls that ally, such as Trinket being the

bear, a familiar or something. Or do they have

their own independent leveling guide?

MATT: For this system, and it’s different from

system to system, in this system, that companion

Trinket is part of the ranger class, the

beastmaster that Laura went into, and Trinket’s

progression is tied towards her progression. As

her level gets higher, Trinket will have more hit

points, Trinket will gain better bonuses to his

attacks as her proficiency bonus gets higher. So

Trinket will advance pretty much alongside Vax–

or Vex. You’re not wearing your shirt. Shh.

(laughter)

ORION: You need to always just wear that shirt.

MARISHA: See, I’m not the only one.

TALIESIN: Gonna get a tattoo.

MATT: I’m usually very good about that. It’s been

a long week. I always say that. But yeah, so

player-controlled PCs like that– those are tied

to the class. As far as NPCs that I control that

aren’t part of the party, those I keep tabs on

separately entirely, so. We can get a few more

questions in here.

MARISHA: Don’t saw off Ify’s arm. Don’t– nope.

MATT: He needs that.

DAN: Just some real chill LARPing.

MARISHA: Put it down.

LIAM: How will he make himself happy at night?

MARISHA: Drop it. Drop it.

LIAM: That’s the good hand.

ORION: While we’re waiting, I’d like to address a

couple things that I’ve been tweeted at about

roleplay, and what I think about roleplay, and how

I’m super hardcore about it. I always tell people

who’s kinda like wanted– my friends who are like,

“I have no idea what that is,” and I was like, the

best I can explain how I roleplay is as soon as I

sit down, and as soon as he says the narration and

then we get into it, I immediately just pretend

I’m like 12 years old again. And I’m this guy, I’m

this kid and I have my– or ten or 11–

however, I don’t know age anymore– ten.

TALIESIN: Seven.

LIAM: 11 and a half.

MARISHA: 12.

ORION: Where imagination is the strongest. Where I

put on my sheet, and wrap it around and that’s my

cape, and I have my flashlight and that’s my

lightsaber or whatever the hell and I go outside

and play 'til my mom comes to go have dinner or

whatever, and I’m dirty as hell when I come back

inside. Everybody’s done that, we’ve all been

kids.

MARISHA: Well, that was like two weeks ago for

you.

ORION: I’m just saying. Also, when I play D&D.

TALIESIN: I’m wearing my underoos right now.

ORION: That’s where I go. It’s just– when

everybody’s not thinking about any kind of thing

other than having fun, that’s my best advice. To

just kinda roleplay. Just have fun.

TALIESIN: And I’ll say something that actually

came out. I was very, very proud of this that this

came up recently in some conversations, as we were

talking about the nature of playing a game like

this and about risk. And as a player, wanting to

be adventurous and wanting to do things you

wouldn’t do in real life. And one of the essential

things that a good DM, that you get to learn with

a good DM, is the DM is not there to kill you. The

DM is there to turn you into a hero.

ORION: Um, by the way, I have been playing this

wrong all the time

TALIESIN: I’m just kidding!

(laughter)

TALIESIN: You play awesome, shut up!

ORION: Because– no, 'cause we had this

conversation yesterday.

TALIESIN: Just like, we were gonna die and he

doesn’t want to kill us. (laughs)

ORION: And I was like, “I don’t understand!

Mercer’s trying to kill us all the time!” And he’s

like, “You’re wrong! He wants to make you a hero,”

and I’m like, “What?”

(laughter)

ORION: But that means everything– I’ve been such

a dick!

TALIESIN: He’s hilarious.

MATT: Some DMs do want to kill you

TALIESIN AND ORION: Some DMs do.

MATT: Which is fine, as long as the DMs and

players agree upon that at the beginning. And

they’re like, “This is the relationship. I’m

trying to kill you guys. Good luck surviving.”

Like Tomb of Horrors. It’s a perfect example of

Gygax going “Fuck all y'all! You’re gonna die.”

That’s where that stems from, and for some people

that’s a lot of fun. But for this game, death is

very real, challenge is there, and I present

circumstances that, depending on what you guys do,

may or may not end in success or death. But I’m

not trying to outwardly kill you. Usually.

MARISHA: He’s not trying to outwardly kill you.

ZAC: Spiritually kill you. Obviously it’s had some

effect on you.

TALIESIN: He’s God, it’s scary!

MARISHA: He is scary.

ORION: It’s just like an armored, fucking

enchanted horned beholder motherfucker. Yeah sure,

he’s not totally trying to kill us.

MARISHA: We say “fear the wrath of god” for a

reason.

TALIESIN: If a giant god appeared tomorrow, and

like just pulled out a d20 and rolled it and

looked at you, you’d freak out. That’s a really

scary thing to happen.

ORION: But it is a good point, like, I should’ve

been more– I shouldn’t have been

so fearful as I was.

TALIESIN: It’s just a different way at looking at

the situation.

ORION: I’m literally thinking, “He’s–”

TALIESIN: I know, because he gets that look.

MATT: It’s part of the fun.

TALIESIN: His smile is so terrifying.

LIAM: I think I play– I court death on purpose.

(laughter)

LIAM: The way I look at this is, either this month

or next year, my character’s going to die, I know

that’s going to happen, and I would never grab a

rope and jump off the side of a flying device to

save my actual sister. Yes I would.

MATT: Yeah you would.

LIAM: Yes I would. That’s a terrible statement.

Yes I would.

(laughter)

LIAM: But I don’t think that I would leap off of

things to my detriment constantly, and like,

that’s the whole reason we’re doing this, is

'cause we’re 12 and we get to pretend we’re the

heroes, so I’m constantly trying– I fully expect

you to kill me someday.

MATT: It may happen and I’m gonna feel horrible.

MARISHA: D&D has a lot of life lessons in it.

We’re all gonna die someday. YOLO.

TALIESIN: Three ranks in YOLO.

MATT: You can be as careful as you want in a game,

but you get to a certain point where you have to

have those hero moments where you take that

high-risk, high-reward–

MARISHA: It sounds like you’re being a little bit

racist right now.

LIAM: Hold on, hold on, hey, shush. Say that

again.

MATT: Being careful is great and working your way

through a situation carefully is fantastic, but

you reach a certain point in a game where you have

to let yourself jump into those high-risk

high-reward circumstances, because not only is

that what you don’t get to do in your day-to-day

life, but those make the best stories, success or

failure. There might be serious ramifications for

failure, but god damn if you won’t be talking

about it for the next two or three, ten years, for

the one time that you did this and it failed and

your character got smashed in this horrible way,

and two years after, your party would clamor to

the gods your lost character’s name whenever they

charged into battle against a great foe. Like,

that’s the kind of storytelling you don’t get

unless someone takes a risk like that.

MARISHA: By the way, when one of us dies, we’re

all gonna fucking bawl our eyes out.

ORION: I know.

TALIESIN: Oh yeah.

MARISHA: It’s sad.

TALIESIN: But Scanlan and the stained-glass window

will live with me forever.

ZAC: I’m gonna feel really bad laughing from the

back of the room when that happens.

Haha, this is great.

LIAM: You’re wearing a unicorn suit!

CREW: So I’m gonna do two more.

MATT: Two more questions, okay.

CREW: First one, I can’t remember who’s asking it,

but I’ve seen it a couple times. They’re asking

about DM player characters. Your opinion on DM

PCs.

MATT: DM PCs, if they’re a very good DM, can be

fine. I, honestly, the main reason I became a DM

was because my first DM had a PC who then somehow

got all the best loot, and was a paladin in Second

Edition but also somehow had the samurai kit,

which I don’t know if that can be a paladin, so he

was dual-wielding magical katanas, and whenever an

upgrade came up that he randomly rolled on the

table, he went, “Oh, cool, I’m taking that.” Dude,

I don’t even have a magical weapon. He’s like,

“I’ll fight you for it.” I’m like, oh, good

paladin, fuck this shit, I’ll make my own game.

Sorry, Ray, I love you, but that was a terrible

game.

(laughter)

MATT: But I think if it’s a good DM you can, but

the problem is, as a Dungeon Master, you know

behind the scenes, you know where it’s going, you

know what’s coming, you know what you’re gonna

fight, you know what to prepare for, you know

what’s gonna drop, you know so much that having a

player character almost defeats the purpose.

LIAM: Almost? Completely. Completely defeats the

purpose.

MATT: There are circumstances where it might work

with certain creative types, but I think it robs

you of the fun of actually being a player in the

game if you’re also the DM. Conversely, it also–

MARISHA: Well, you also, I mean, you have this

handy screen deliberately so we don’t see what

you’re doing.

MATT: Conversely, the other players feel removed,

then, because they have this strange magical

god-entity that also is fighting alongside them

that has the benefit of knowing what’s coming.

DAN: Sort of a tangent to that question. How do

you feel about another player playing someone

else’s character by proxy when that other player’s

not there?

MATT: I think that’s totally fine if the players

agree upon it. I tend to just NPC players if

they’re not there, or try to find a story reason

as to why they can’t be available so it doesn’t

rob them of the experience, but that is totally a

viable thing, as long as the players agree to it.

Or if the person was a real ass last game and

they’re not there, like, you know what, fine, you

control the character.

(laughter)

MATT: See how they like that. But for the most

part, if players are okay with that, and there’s

somebody at the table that they trust to

understand what the character would do to play

them properly, then fuck yeah, go for it. Great.

ORION: Matthew, that’s why I’m going to be showing

up next week.

MATT: Okay.

ORION: I will be. I’ll be here.

CREW: So, for the last question, “I want players

at my table to be more–” This is CometCalvin, by

the way. “I want my table to be more immersed in

the story, like instead of saying to me, 'So I

”'tell them to go west.’ Are there any tips on

stimulating people?“ To rephrase it, how do you

encourage people to roleplay more and get into

character rather than simply just direct commands

at each other?

MATT: Right, right. So to get people to roleplay,

for one thing I wanna mention, it’s not necessary.

If you want that in a game, that’s different.

MARISHA: Bullshit.

LIAM: There it is.

MARISHA: It’s a roleplaying game. It’s in the

title. Come on.

MATT: Let me clarify.

MARISHA: Go ahead.

MATT: Some people don’t have the comfort level or

have the social confidence to be able to jump

straight into character. And so for them, it’s

more comfortable to play it that way, where they

can remove themselves from the character and

control them almost like a video game and say what

they’re doing as opposed to actually performing

and acting it out. And there’s nothing wrong with

that. If anything, that’s almost a baby-step

version of them eventually becoming comfortable

with fully immersing themselves in the character.

So I don’t think that you should be down on

somebody who plays that way necessarily. If you

want to immerse them more as a DM, it’s an

invitation. You mention to the players, guys,

going forward, I would love for us to be a little

more into the circumstance. If you’re feeling

comfortable, please feel free to speak in

character, or sometimes, if they’re down for it

but they have a hard time committing, put the law

down. Anything you say in this game is in

character if it’s conversational. To where if they

turn to somebody on the side and be like, "I can’t

believe you stabbed them in the back,” be like,

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” And then you start

treating everything as character conversation,

then they are put into a circumstance where they

have to treat it like that. It may not be

comfortable at first, but just like getting into

the very, very cold water in a pool, at first it

sucks, but over time they get used to it and they

don’t realize that they’re there anymore after a

while, you know, it just becomes natural. But for

you as a Dungeon Master, you really have to, it’s

an invitation, a comfortable invitation, please

come with me on this, I’d love to have you be more

involved in this, and it’s your job as the Dungeon

Master to also bring your NPCs to life in the way

you want them to roleplay, and when you ask them a

question, don’t ask it out to the whole group,

pick somebody in the group that NPC’s looking to

and go, “You! What are you doing in my tavern?”

LIAM: I was just passing by, I thought I could

have a drink.

MATT: “Yet your eyes seem to belie some sort of

strange negative connotation. You carry a blade

"out of its scabbard. What is it you want with my

belongings?”

LIAM: Nothing, my father gave it to me, I was just

thirsty and passing through– okay!

MATT: “Your father.”

LIAM: My father’s name was Arthis. He was a potter

and he asked me to come to you and ask you for

your allegiance to our clan.

MATT: “That’s all you had to say. Come have a seat,

we’ll discuss this clan’s allegiance.”

LIAM: You’re a very nice fellow. Could I also have

a drink?

MATT: “For a gold piece you can.”

LIAM: Here’s two, here’s two, I’m rich.

(laughter)

MATT: “I see you speak tavern well.” So like,

that’s a circumstance where you’ve kind of put

them on the spot and they have to react to it, and

like I said, it might be weird at first, but

they’ll eventually get into the deal. That’s my

suggestion. It might not always work, some people

just aren’t comfortable with that, and you have to

be okay with it.

TALIESIN: You do setting really well, too. Like,

when we would play, the lights go down, the

candles come out, the music turns on.

MATT: That’s one thing I do miss about this

situation is, it’s hard to adjust the lighting

based on circumstances.

ZAC: We’re working on it, man, all right? We’re

working on it! We’re getting there!

MATT: It’s all good.

LIAM: In a dark fantastical cave–

ZAC: We’re working on it.

LIAM: – also known as Travis’s dining room.

(laughter)

ORION: But we put a nice tablecloth on the table.

LIAM: Can’t you also use, I’m DMing for my

eight-year-old son and these kids, I haven’t done

this yet, but the DM book talks about rewarding

them with inspiration dice, so can’t you like, as

a carrot, just start, anytime anyone shows even

just the barest glimpse of roleplaying like that,

go boom, inspiration dice to you.

MATT: Yep, yes. I mentioned that a little earlier,

and I’ll expand upon that. On top of making sure

people get bonuses and little bumps for cool

experience moments, if someone does something

really cool in character, you as the DM can reward

them a d6 as an inspiration dice. An inspiration

dice– and they can only carry one at any given

time– but at some point later in the game, if

they have to make a d20 roll, like an attack or a

saving throw or a skill check, they can add the d6

to their final number to give them that extra

little hero push towards succeeding at something.

So it’s another cool kind of carrot-on-a-stick

bait to step a little harder into their character

and really play out that role. Good point, Liam.

We may have time for one more quick one, since

there were a lot of questions coming through, and

then we’ll jump into the game.

MARISHA: I will say, while you’re looking for a

question–

CREW: When’s there gonna be another shirt? Are you

guys planning on doing another–

MATT: We’re planning to do more shirts. Geek and

Sundry’s putting up their actual store soon, and

so we’re going to be–

ZAC: I would like to take this time to say that we

do have shirts for sale right now that support

Geek and Sundry’s overall Twitch channel, if you’d

like to purchase some. They are the HR emote human

resources stapler for whenever you say something

inappropriate like 'penis’. There you go. You have

a shirt for that.

ORION: That’s inappropriate? Penis?

ZAC: Well, I mean.

DAN: In this context? Yeah.

(laughter)

LIAM: We’re playing a board game.

ZAC: Depending on where you put it.

ORION: Oh, sure.

MARISHA: Yeah, just like real life. Anyway.

MATT: I saw one good question I wanted to address.

Someone asked, suggestions on running a complex

system for a bunch of new players? Which is a

challenge, even sometimes in our game still. But

it’s one of those circumstances where you have to

be patient. And honestly, you can simplify the

rules. When I say you can customize anything in

this book, you can leave out a lot of the rules

and just keep it very simple. If you don’t want to

have, if you think a movement, an action, and a

bonus action’s too much? Get rid of the bonus

action and just consider things, find another way

to work it in. Or if you want to keep it a little

more free-form and just keep it open to– it puts

a little more work on you as the DM to do so, so

you have to rationalize what they’re doing so it

doesn’t seem so broken, but you can just minimize

a lot of the rules, you can cut out half the

skills if you don’t think they’re necessary. You

can get rid of feats, you can get rid of

backgrounds. You can halve the spell lists, if you

want. If you want to narrow it down, you can go

through and trim and trim and trim until you think

you have a nice, simpler system for everyone to

start with, and then you can start rolling out the

more expanded aspects of the system. So don’t feel

like you have to verbatim hand everyone this book

and be, read it all, let’s go! You can go ahead

and pick the few rules you think are important to

play the game, teach them to your group and just

start with those, and then slowly as time goes on

let them research and discover more

as they go on.

LIAM: And learn together.

MATT: Yeah.

ORION: To what you’re saying, too, what Matthew, I

don’t how to say this. What Matthew allows me to

do is, for all you casters out there, if the spell

isn’t in the book, ask your DM if you can craft

them. I’ve– Matthew has– if it doesn’t exist,

he’s let me make spells. That’s what Glacial Blast

is, it doesn’t exist here but I was like, hey, I

wanna do this thing that doesn’t quite, isn’t

described in here, so you can ask your DM and he

can figure it out with you. I of course always

give him way-too-OP stuff, he’s like no, and then

he gives me an actual spell. It works.

TALIESIN: Everything I build is literally just me

handing him a slip of paper going eh? Eh?

MATT: And the players, as they submit custom

things, they have to understand that you do your

best to balance it, and if they try it out a few

times and it’s still kind of overbalanced, it

might be scaled back a bit, 'cause you’re still

trying to find what works and you can’t really

tell how balanced something is until you try it.

But that’s kind of the relationship you establish

with your DM if you want to customize and create

things on your own, is like, can I do this? Sure,

but make it like this. Okay, let’s try that. Play

a few games. Yeah, it’s a little powerful, we’re

gonna scale this back a little bit, and don’t be

like, come on! You said it was okay! Be like,

okay, okay, cool.

DAN: Also, earlier, talking about customizing

monsters for the encounter. It’s either in the DM

guide or the Monster Manual, there is an algorithm

in there to properly scale a monster up and down

to fit the needs of the dungeon. I don’t know where

it is in there, so that’s a tool that they do

allow you to have.

MATT: It’s in the book, it’s nice.

DAN: It is in the Monster Manual?

MATT: I think so, yeah.

DAN: I think so. I was trying to– I remember

flipping through it, I knew it was one of those. I

just wanted to mention that.

LIAM: It’s in the Facebook terms of service.

DAN: Page 94, section A-3.

MATT: All righty. So let’s go ahead and–

MARISHA: Should we trade places so that some of us

are sitting next to them–

LIAM: We’re not us, aren’t we just spectator?

TALIESIN: We’re just spectators.

MATT: You guys are spectating for this.

MARISHA: But I didn’t know if we wanted to help

them.

TALIESIN: Phone a friend.

MATT: All right. So. Let’s go ahead and begin, and

I’m going to preface this, letting you guys know

that I have nothing prepared. This is an entirely

improvised session. I’m curious to see where it

goes. This is a perfect example of

flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants

dungeon mastering.

LIAM: (whispers) It’s going just like how you

rehearsed.

ORION: Whose line is it anyway, Matt?

MATT: This is a prop-based skit. Carrot Top’s

Dungeons and Dragons, ladies and gentlemen.

LIAM: Oh god.

MATT: I know. All right, so, Dan, we saw your

wonderful character, your sailor dwarf.

DAN: Salty Pete.

MATT: Yes, correct.

MARISHA: Salty Pete.

MATT: Zac?

ZAC: I’m gonna let him go first, actually.

MATT: Ify, what you got?

IFY: Yo, this is Ulfgar Fireforge, I’m a

sellsword, ex-pit fighter, I’m slow to trust and

quick to kill. Money talks, bullshit walks. Just

so y'all know, I’m in it for the money and I play

a mean flute. It’s sharpened at the end, so if you

get too close I might stab you in the neck. But

just know I’ll do anything for a buck. Anything.

DAN: Anything.

IFY: Anything.

MATT: What was your guy’s name again?

LIAM: I can’t wait for Zac’s monologue.

DAN: Salty Pete.

ZAC: I am the great Snugglelord. A charismatic

charlatan from, as a warlock tiefling individual,

hailing from the land of Sippletint. I became

bored with my homeland after impregnating all of

the impregnable and decided to pledge my loyalty

to the overlord of a faraway land and set off to

do his evil bidding. I’m not really evil, though,

the overlord himself asked me to do a lot of very

evil things. At least, that’s what the voices tell

me. Along the way, I learned that I was more of a

lover, not a fighter. So I lied to these two

assholes about the pleasures that await them at

the Overlord’s chat room. They’re dumdums and fell

for it, and now act as my personal bodyguards.

Basically, in short, I convince everyone with

intimidation and my great charisma, but I’m very

broken and weak physically on the inside.

(laughter)

ZAC: Actually, I’m hearing some voices from

Overlord right now. I believe we’re at 3,162

subscribers, and the chat, I told you the chat

room was real. And if the chat room could respond

with the keyword 'Snugglelord’–

CREW: It’s not working.

ZAC: I heard from one of Overlord’s minions that

the giveaway is not working.

LIAM: (creepy voice) The giveaway is not working.

ZAC: And there’s nothing that he can do about it

in his current situation. So we’re going to ask

that the great fellow lad Nightbot pull the winner

for us for the giveaway.

IFY: I don’t know what the hell this dude’s

talking about, but he paid me, so.

ZAC: I brought a lot of money. Lot of money with

me on this trip. That’s all.

MATT: Great. So you promised them, what awaits

them at the Snugglelord’s, or the Overlord’s–

ZAC: Basically the seven virgins of the chatroom.

MATT: Okay. Got you. All right. And so we’ll,

okay, all right. So. Here’s how we’ll start.

LIAM: The gears are turning.

MATT: Upon your chance meeting one evening in a

darkened, drunken tavern in a darkened, drunken

state, upon spinning tales of your backgrounds,

your ears perked up at the promise of not only

great riches, but great soulful, gratifying

angelic entities promised to you from the realm

beyond, this Overlord, this Overlord that keeps a

very, very carefully hidden temple of worship not

too far from this city, no more than two and a

half days’ travel on horseback. You mention to

them that there is a place, a grand place where

this temple could be found, and deep within

resided the secret of contacting and being taken

into the riches, the eternal vault of what is the

Overlord. Upon this agreement, a small bit of

change was exchanged, you managed to finagle the

local stable out of a couple horses and found your

way traveling before daybreak. You ride and ride

and ride for the next two days. An awkward series

of camping circumstances allow you to find you

don’t have a lot in common based on conversation,

other than the love of money, and the love of this

promise they give you. And the further you travel,

the more and more the baneful eye of mistrust

begins to fall upon one Snugglelord. As the beads

of sweat drip down your face, but you know the

city is mounting soon, there will be a time where

you can prove to them that, in some way, shape, or

form, they have helped you find what it is you’re seeking and

you can possibly kill them before they have the

chance to take you out. Nevertheless. As the

second sunrise hits, you crest over the last of a

large, hilly landscape, the high grass brushing

past your boots as you push through these

grasslands, and you see upon the fabled city of

Rockmarr. Rockmarr, not really that fabled, it’s a

small farming village, he seems to be talking it

up as this grand city. So there’s a moment of

disappointment as you look over and see what may

be anywhere from 60 to 70 houses to hovels to a

slightly dilapidated farmland. Bit of confusion

hits you and you look over to Snugglelord as he

puts his hands up.

ZAC: Yeah, it was– the voices– I mistranslate

them sometimes.

DAN: You mistranslate. It’s 60 fucking hovels!

ZAC: 600, 60, like one–

DAN: You dropped the zero.

ZAC: Well. It’s an accident.

DAN: Great.

ZAC: It won’t happen again. Look, you’re a great

dude, I like you, dude, I get along, you’re great,

you’re great.

DAN: Hands off the keg. You’ll smudge it.

ZAC: You got my back, though.

IFY: You pay me? I’ll kill him right now. Hey, you

pay me right now, he’s dead.

DAN: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

IFY: I’ll kill you right now, I told you. You pay

me more, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill anybody for some

money.

DAN: I’ll put in my pink slip, this is a bit I’m

willing to take.

IFY: Yo, how much money you got right there?

DAN: Let’s find this Overlord’s stash.

ZAC: Did I really have to pick the two dumbest

assholes to be in my group? I mean, really.

DAN: I’m getting so tired of this outer monologue.

Let’s find this, it’s gotta be one of these 60

hovels, let’s find it.

IFY: All right, let’s do it.

ZAC: What are we looking for again?

DAN: You’re the one who’s supposed to know! We’re

looking for your mythical chat room, whatever that

means. As far as I know, it said something about

virgins, about riches, about ladies–

IFY: See, that’s all I care about.

DAN: Right, I’m looking for Helen. Who’s a ship.

It’s more of a metaphorical lady. But I’ll take

any port in a storm.

(laughter)

IFY: You give me that boat, I’ll kill him right

now.

(laughter)

IFY: You give me that boat, I’ll kill him right

now.

DAN: Oh, we’ll talk.

IFY: All right. I like boats, man. Shit.

MATT: As the tides of your relationships quickly

seem to turn, as you head towards the town, you

notice– and you’ve traveled here once before and

(laughs) while you understand that secretly,

beneath where this hidden chat room is, is a cache

of money that your previous employer hid amongst

other riches, and probably murdered most of your

allies before you managed to escape from his

clutches, and probably the only person of your

band of roving thieves and miscreants to not fall

to the Shadowed Blade, you know that his riches

are held there, you know that there are a number

of traps set within this dark underpassing, and

you know that once you can just get there, safely,

you can probably make it out alone. So just hold

tight to your position and you should be fine. As

you ride up to the outskirts of town, you can’t

help but notice that, strangely, what was once a

bustling farming town seems fairly empty. The

nearby grass seems to have turned from a brightish

healthy green to a dull, crackled brown-grey. The

farms themselves, the lands have turned dark and

cracked. The landscape appears to have been

untended-to for many a month, and aside from a

couple of scratching sounds and a distant cawing

of crows overhead as they flutter off into the

distance, there doesn’t seem to be much of a sign

of life in this village.

LIAM: (whispers) Psst, the music changed.

ZAC: (whispers) I heard it.

LIAM: (whispers) Be careful.

ZAC: (whispers) Yeah.

MARISHA: (whispers) It’s a clue.

MATT: As you begin to step into the village

proper, there is a small thoroughfare that leads

from the main area towards the center part of

town. As you ride in slowly, the clomping of your

horses hitting against the rock, and dried dirt

beneath your feet, you catch what looks to be a

handful of individuals gathered towards the center

of town. Maybe no more than 150 feet away, you see

four figures, all different heights, dressed in

ragged rags and clothes that seem to have been met

with some sort of hardship and long, long nights

without any sort of cleaning agent. They gather

around in a circle over what looks to be a well.

DAN: Hello, there! What are you looking at in that

there well?

MATT: As soon as you say that loudly, the heads

suddenly spin to you.

DAN: Creepy.

MATT: Look amongst themselves. And they all begin

to scatter away from the well.

ZAC: Can I make– can I give him some money to go

check and see what’s in that well?

MATT: Okay.

IFY: You can give me money to do anything.

ZAC: Here’s some shillings, there, dude.

DAN: It’s a local currency!

IFY: Okay, man, you just wasted your money,

'cause I was just going to check to see if there’s

money in this well anyway, so. A little more would

be go, though.

DAN: For wishes.

IFY: I’m gonna look down and see what’s in here

right now.

MATT: So, as you approach, the figures have

scattered off into what looks like two different

alleyways on the opposite side of this small

thoroughfare, you glance over the edge, and the

first thing that catches you is this very, very

acidic smell, this pungence that hits your

nostrils, it’s like long-long-rotting citrus

combined with almost an iron-like scent. You

glance over, and currently you can only see a few

feet into the darkened well, and it’s too dark for

you to see anything beneath. However, you are, as

you are a dwarf, you have dark vision, and in the

low-light circumstance from the noonday sun, you

are able to look down and see that the brackish

liquid, what would be a normal watery well,

instead is very thick and viscous in the way it

slowly moves. And from what you can gather, the

water is disturbed. Recently has been disturbed.

IFY: Huh, that’s good. Are there any shiny

trinkets there, like there might be some coins in

the bottom?

DAN: Anything glittering through the thickness?

MATT: Make a perception check.

ZAC: I think there might be coins in there if you

want to jump in and see what’s at the bottom!

MATT: So go ahead and roll a d20, add your

perception skill.

IFY: So, my perception, get plus two. 19.

MATT: 19.

IFY: Nice.

MATT: You take a moment and you curl your fingers

along the outside of the stone well. You place

your head down, and while the scent is not

pleasant, the need for gold is stronger. And what

little bit of light trickles through, you can see

what looks to be a semblance of a step or

something within the well that catches your eye,

and indeed you see a handful of gold coins. You’re

not sure how long they’ve been there, tossed in

either as a wishing well or something more, but

there are apparently some coins within the

liquid.

IFY: All right. I learned a few years ago you just

can’t stick your hand in any kind of water, you

know. Your hand might get bitten up. Maybe I might

throw a piece of rope in there, see if it

disintegrates. If not, that gold’s mine, I saw it

first. You will die if you touch it.

DAN: Ah, the old rope test. Classic. Nature’s

litmus.

IFY: My man Sam over here knows about that rope

test. Yeah, I’ll throw a rope in there.

ZAC: Who’s Sam?

IFY: My man Money Sam over there.

DAN: It’s Salty Pete, but Sam’s me nickname.

(laughter)

MATT: So, as you go through your pouch, you pull

out a small wrapping of hemp rope, begin to lower

it into the liquid. As it hits the surface,

there’s no hissing sound or immediate reaction. It

seems, you just kinda lower the rope a few feet

in, let it sit for a second, and as you pull it

up, you notice the rope itself has a very black

color to it, and as you pull it up, you can see

there is a very, very slight dissolving reaction

on the rope itself.

IFY: Can’t get my money.

ZAC: You might be able to jump in, get a handful,

and we’ll pull you up and

you could survive that, maybe.

DAN: I mean, it’s hemp rope, your hand is

stronger.

ZAC: Yeah, I mean, you’re a big dude.

IFY: See, usually when two people are trying to

convince me to do something and they’re not trying

to do it, that means I shouldn’t do it. So. We’re

gonna sit here and we’re gonna talk about this

water, how we’re gonna get inside it and get that

money.

ZAC: All right. Well, you’re the seafarer, what

water, what do you do with that?

DAN: I know a brackish liquid when I see it. This

is nothing I’ve seen before, not molasses, not

swamp water, this is nothing the like I’ve seen

before. But I never back down from a challenge. I

thrust my hand in to grab the coins.

MATT: All right. They’re about seven or so feet

below from the top of the well.

DAN: Oh, shit.

MATT: So as a dwarf, you’re on your knees like

(grunts).

ZAC: You need a little help there, buddy?

DAN: It’s all right, I’m highly acrobatic.

IFY: Yo, man, you better find my money, man, you

got me excited thinking you were about to grab

that money. You got nowhere near my money!

DAN: I forgot me stumpy arms.

MATT: With the aid of someone else, you could

probably get in there if you want–

DAN: Would you be so kind as to dangle me?

IFY: Oh yeah, you know I’ll dangle you.

DAN: It’s a dwarf thing.

MATT: So (laughs) as Ulfgar grabs you by the

ankles and slams you over the front of the well,

you dangle down, your fingers just reaching in

towards the liquid. You grab at the coins. It’s

very, very cold, the liquid, but it warms quickly

as a strange tingling sensation begins to rapidly

encase your hand as the feeling begins to go numb.

Your hand gathers a handful of coin, and I want

you to go ahead and make an athletics check.

IFY: All right.

DAN: Don’t fuck this up.

IFY: It hit the pencil.

DAN: He fucked it up.

IFY: The pencil messed it up. 14.

MATT: 14, okay. So you feel the sweat beginning to

pour down the side of your head, your muscles are

tense, but as soon as you see that gold vanish

from beneath the liquid, you know it’s in the

proper hands, you pull him up out of the well

without much issue. You come up to the surface,

hand clutching the gold, and as you open your

fingers you look and see, indeed, the coins are as

clean as the day they were, almost like just being

in that well took any sort of tarnishing material

off of the coin itself. Also looking down, you

notice that your hand has gone

from numb to burning.

DAN: Oh no!

IFY: Get my money first! I take the money out of

his hand and put it in my sack. He’s on the

ground. Throw some dirt on him! I throw some dirt

on your hand.

MATT: You take two points of acid damage as the

corrosive liquid eventually subsides the horrible

corroding of your hand, but not without its

impact.

IFY: Thank you for helping me out. I throw you a

gold piece.

DAN: Oh, thanks for the tip.

IFY: Yeah, you know.

ZAC: I’m sitting on my horse laughing my ass off.

This is hilarious. I’m just so glad now that I

teamed up with these dumdums because this is gonna

provide me with so much entertainment on my trip.

IFY: You know we can hear you, right? You say it

out loud, we know what you’re saying.

DAN: We speak Common.

(laughter)

IFY: What would it take to pick up the Snugglelord

and dip his head, just the tip of his head–

DAN: Oh, what about the gold piece you just gave

me?

IFY: Yeah, just dip his head in, just a little

bit.

DAN: Listen, I want to find this chat room. Let’s

find where those scampering scabs got off to.

IFY: All right. But after this, I’m dipping your

head in the juice, man.

MATT: All right, so. Glancing over, I want all

three of you to go ahead and

make a perception check.

ZAC: Okay, so what do I roll?

MATT: Roll a d20, which is the most round of the

dice, and add your perception skill to the number

you roll.

DAN: 14.

IFY: 15.

ZAC: 16.

DAN: We are not clever.

MATT: 14, 15, and 16. All right, so. You, being at

sea for a long time, the salty air seems to have

taken its toll and your eyes are still a bit

fuzzy. As you take to rubbing them to try and get

a proper view, the two of you immediately see

that, in one of the nearby buildings, a door is

slightly ajar, and the moment that your heads turn

toward it, the door shuts almost reactively.

ZAC: Weird.

IFY: I say we go check that out.

DAN: Did you see something?

IFY: Yeah, yeah, a door shut. It smelled like

money.

DAN: Oh, great. Let’s find it.

MATT: As you approach the door, you go ahead and

reach for the knob. As you give it a turn and a

tense push, the door is not opening. It looks like

the knob itself is either locked or being held,

and the door is held in place.

IFY: Well, it looks like somebody might be trapped

in, let’s bust down this door, man!

DAN: I can pick the lock.

IFY: All right.

DAN: Your choice. Don’t want to take this

experience from you.

IFY: I think I’m gonna try to bust down this door

first.

DAN: Have at it. Leading with your shoulder.

IFY: All right.

MATT: Go ahead and make a strength check, so just

roll a d20 and add your strength modifier.

DAN: Did you pull something?

IFY: Eight.

MATT: You get a nice running start. Foot goes

right into the door, and it solidly hits you and

sends you falling right back onto your ass, nearly

knocking the wind out of you.

IFY: (out of breath) No, go ahead and get that

lock first.

(laughter)

DAN: This must be a powerful door.

MATT: Strong, reinforced wood and iron.

DAN: All right. We’ll let Mrs. Buttersworth and

the lefty try this one. I’m gonna take my thieves’

tools out and try to pick the lock.

MATT: All right, roll a d20 and add your dexterity

plus thieves’ tools.

DAN: Okay. One.

(laughter)

MATT: As you stepped over–

MARISHA: This door is gonna be the worst boss in

the entire game.

MATT: Pushing your dwarven ally aside, you pull

back your sleeves, pull out your fine masterwork

thieves’ tools, and jostle for a moment, and you

hear that wonderful sound, that click, which

displays the unlocking mechanism. As you pull

back, you realize that wasn’t the mechanism, that

was the end of your lockpick breaking in the

lock.

DAN: Oh, Christ.

ZAC: How’re you dumdums doing down there?

DAN: Uh. Great. It’s a powerful portal.

IFY: Oh man.

DAN: I dinnae think it can be traversed. We should

go around to the back, find a window.

IFY: Oh no, I’m gonna deal with this house real

quick. Let me just deal with this house.

DAN: Can I grant you a synergy bonus, whatever

that is?

IFY: I’m gonna see if there’s something in my

dungeoneering pack that can

light this house on fire.

DAN: Classic. We’ll smoke 'em out.

ZAC: I actually think that’s a really good idea.

Let’s burn it.

IFY: All right. I’ll just check it out. Wait 'til

I look in my dungeoneer pack, see what’s up here.

MATT: As he’s looking through his pack, you,

Snugglelord, know that you as a fiend-pact

warlock, have the ability to use a cantrip called

Thaumaturgy.

ZAC: That’s what I was looking for.

MATT: That allows you do all kinds of slight

things, especially, you can create fire pretty

much within torchlight or a small handful of fire,

on command. So as he’s looking through his pack–

ZAC: I’m gonna let him keep looking for a little

bit longer, because it humors me.

MATT: Fair enough.

ZAC: Did you find anything there, little buddy?

IFY: Yeah, I got a tinderbox in here. Uh.

ZAC: Before he can finish his sentence, I cast the

fire onto the house. I don’t know.

DAN: Are you serious? You could do that all

along?

ZAC: All while sitting on my horse and smirking

smugly.

MATT: With a flick of his wrist, a spark emerges

from his fingertips, and a burst of flame collides

with the upper echelon, the upper portion of the

rooftop. The thatched, dried-out roof begins to

immediately burn brighter and wider and wider

until about half the roof itself has caught flame.

Part of the wood surrounding the upper beams of

the front panel where is the door is, also begin

to catch, and you start hearing some subtle

coughing on the interior of the building.

DAN: Gotcha.

IFY: All right. Yeah, so now I’m gonna go punch

his horse in the face, and

then we’ll wait by there.

DAN: Classic dwarven maneuver.

IFY: Right in the face as he laughs.

MATT: Roll a d20, add your attack bonus.

IFY: Goodness gracious.

MATT: Your strength and your proficiency.

IFY: That’ll be 11.

MATT: 11. Horse is pretty easy to hit at that

point. Go ahead and roll a d4 and add your

strength modifier.

IFY: All right, d4.

DAN: Instantly decapitated.

IFY: Four plus, what is it, my strength?

MATT: Your strength modifier, yeah.

IFY: So that’s seven.

MATT: Seven. Wham! Socks your horse across the

face as you’re laughing, mid-laugh, the laugh is

pulled from you as you go, “Hahaha– whoa!” as

your horse falls immediately over onto his side–

ZAC: Son of a bitch bastard!

MATT: – sending you tumbling from the horse, five

feet from it, on your side, face in the dirt,

coughing for a moment as your dwarven friend wipes

his hands. Ulfgar kind of chuckles over you.

MARISHA: That poor horse!

ZAC: Has the fire weakened the structure enough

for us to basically jump into the building?

DAN: Into the inferno?

ZAC: I have a fire resistance spell.

MATT: That’s true. So looking at it, you can see

the flames are starting to get– and you notice

the door is trying to be opened, but whatever lock

mechanism has been jammed.

DAN: Sorry! That’s on me!

MATT: You hear (banging).

MARISHA: I’m pretty sure this is about to be

manslaughter.

MATT: From the opposite side of the door.

IFY: I go over to try and help this dude out,

because I still think I’m the hero in this.

ZAC: Yeah, thanks for punching my horse,

dickhead!

DAN: It’s all about perspective.

ZAC: I had a plan!

DAN: Oh, you should’ve seen your face. He’s gonna

punch me, oh it’s my horse!

IFY: Yeah! Look at your horse, laying there like a

sack of–

ZAC: You punched a horse, what is wrong with you?

IFY: Nothing. Not a damn thing is wrong with me,

now let me help this dude out of this house that I

lit on fire–

ZAC: I lit on fire, you couldn’t do shit!

IFY: Whatever, I’m gonna help him out this house

real quick.

DAN: It’s a strong door.

MATT: Make a strength check again.

LIAM: Oh, burn the people in their homes, classic

dwarf move.

IFY: Six.

(laughter)

MATT: As you go charging, headfirst this time,

towards the door to headbutt through, a second

time you land on your back. However, whatever the

impact, you managed to jostle free whatever part

of your lockpick was stuck in the door, which

suddenly swings open, smoke billows out into the

midday sun, and you see a cloaked individual,

probably about a little shorter than you in

height, comes rushing out, coughing outward, just

trying to get a breath of fresh air.

DAN: I saved you.

IFY: Who set your house on fire, man? Ah, shit!

Yo, your house got set on fire, dude!

DAN: Is that door made of mithral?

ZAC: You look really weird, why couldn’t you just

say hello, you looked weird, and we tried to get

in, we couldn’t, you look weird.

MATT: Make a deception check.

MARISHA: Deception check?

IFY: Oh, of course, now I do good. I rolled a 19.

MATT: A 19. Okay. The individual pulls back the

hood, and what you can see, it was a ragged gray,

essentially a cloak that was placed over with

them. You see their pants are kind of torn, and

when the face is revealed, it’s an extremely

malnourished female halfling. She looks like she’s

seen some rough, rough days, she could probably

pass for mid-twenties or so, but due to her

current state of health she looks much, much

older.

ZAC: I feel like a real dickhead.

MATT: She finishes coughing, she goes, “Thank you.

Thank you for saving me. I appreciate the assist.”

ZAC: Well, to be fair, I mean, he did fall on his

ass twice. And he punched a horse.

IFY: Yeah, well, that horse was just collateral

damage.

DAN: This is pure conjecture and hearsay.

IFY: The horse, actually, I’m gonna give you the

full story, the horse was blocking my way to help

get you out of this house, this ugly-ass horse,

all in my way, anyway.

ZAC: Is there a way to convince her that I’m the

only person here she should trust?

MATT: Yeah, tell her.

ZAC: I’m like, look here, little girl, these guys

are idiots, you don’t wanna talk to them, just

talk to me, like look me in the eyes, talk to me,

let’s talk this through, like what’s going on with

you, what’s up with you–

IFY: Yeah, trust the guy who looks like Lord Hades

himself.

MATT: Roll a persuasion check.

ZAC: What’s that?

MATT: Persuasion roll.

IFY: Look at this guy over here.

MATT: d20, add persuasion.

LIAM: C'mon, tiefling.

ZAC: Okay, now, how do I add these numbers

together?

IFY: What is it, persuasion?

DAN: Yeah, persuasion.

DAN and IFY: So plus four.

LIAM: It’s high, it’s high.

DAN: So 21.

ZAC: 21.

MATT: Okay, she glances at the other two dwarves,

who are both kinda like, (growls), just general

stature and nature two rather ragged-looking

swarthy gentlemen. Looks to you with your

immediately dangerous-looking tiefling face, but

there’s something about your voice and the way you

spoke to her that is strangely welcoming,

especially in the chaos of this house nearly

burning down around her. She reaches out and

touches your hand gently and goes, “Thank you.

"Certainly. We’ve been lost in this region for over

a month now. We’re looking for food. We’re not

"from here, but when we came to this village it was

empty. Everyone was gone. No bodies, no one

"killed, just missing. Just vanished. But it seems

the further we get from this place, there’s

"something that draws us back to it. We get

thirsty. We get hungry. Like there’s a curse to it

"that won’t let us leave.”

IFY: Oh, well, honey, that’s just you, that was

the rapture from the lord Bahamut just raising up

all his dragonling followers and all that such and

things.

ZAC: Again, he is not to be trusted, he is an

idiot.

DAN: Where are you drawn back to, specifically?

MATT: “It’s hard to say, we’re continuously

brought towards the center of this village.

"There’s a large platform, where it looks like

there used to be more of a presentory stage where

"small events or at least the township would

discuss, but right now there’s something that

"keeps calling us back to that place. We’ve set up

tents there to survive in the meantime. We don’t

"trust the buildings about. I can show you.”

ZAC: That would be great. I’ll pretend to be your

friend until we get there.

DAN: Why would you say 'pretend’?

IFY: Why would you say that out loud?

DAN: Are you fucking serious? Show some

discretion.

ZAC: You really want a friend, don’t you?

MATT: “I do.”

DAN: How does this work every time?

IFY: I don’t know, man, I think it’s the demon

horns using demon powers and stuff, you know? I

need to go to church on Sunday.

MATT: “Follow me.” And she turns around and kind

of puts her hood up and she darts down the

alleyway to the right of the burning building,

keeping away from the flames that are now

beginning to completely envelop the structure.

IFY: Oh, excuse me.

ZAC: Sorry about that, by the way. That was an

accident.

IFY: We don’t know, yeah, who’d do that?

DAN: An accident by nature. Nature’s accident.

IFY: Why do you keep bringing this up when nothing

happened, man?

DAN: Yeah, it just caught fire.

IFY: Anyway, do you have any gold in that house?

Is there any money in that house?

ZAC: We’re moving on to bigger and better things,

don’t worry about the house.

DAN: Yeah, take us to these tents, they sound

great.

IFY: If there’s gold in the house, y'all can keep

walking, I’m gonna go get that hot gold, man.

ZAC: Keep your eye on the prize, man.

IFY: Yeah, we gotta look at this juice, anyway.

Tell her to take us to the juice.

ZAC: We’re going to the tents.

IFY: Oh, all right.

DAN: Juice is a common dwarven term for tents.

It’s slang.

MATT: As you keep walking along, she’s darting

ahead, keeping an eye out, she turns around and

goes, “By the way, Lily.”

ZAC: Oh, you have a name!

DAN: Or a favorite flower.

ZAC: One or the other. Name?

MATT: “That’s my name.”

IFY: So I’m Ulfgar, you know, I’m a sellsword

ex-pit fighter, put your money where your mouth

is, slow to trust, quick to kill. Money talks,

bullshit walks. (laughs) And I extend my hand out

for some dwarf dap.

MATT: She reaches out and pats the top.

DAN: Classic halfling. They always mess it up.

IFY: It’s all good, it’s all good.

DAN: I’m Salty Pete, but some call me Sam.

MATT: “All right, Sam.”

DAN: You can call me Salty.

MATT: “Salty it is, all right.”

ZAC: I get the idea that you probably are without

a father figure. From the look in your– you can

call me Dad if you want.

IFY: Yo, you’re getting creepy, man!

MATT: “We’ll get home and meet my father.”

ZAC: Oh, that’s, I’m Snugglelord, that’s fine, I’m

sure he’s a great guy.

DAN: Close one.

MATT: As she continues now with an awkward side

glance–

ZAC: I can’t bear children, you know this!

DAN: So sorry.

ZAC: I got it all out. There’s nothing left.

MATT: As the alley opens up into this central,

essentially a small square to this village, you

can see what she was talking about. There’s an

elevated wood platform, although it’s partially

collapsed in the center, it looks like either

something heavy was laid on top of it and it

eventually gave way, or something heavy smashed it

from up top. And around the outskirts of this, you

see what look to be about six or seven tents that

are kind of a very small ramshackle tent city.

They appear to be made from scraps of cloth that

seem to have been salvaged from nearby houses or

storage facilities, but as you approach, she gives

out a voice and says, “Stoic! Serling, we have

"guests, please!” At which point one of the tents

opens up and you see what looks like an elderly

woman, human-ish from what you can see at this

distance. Looks out and goes, “Oh, is that right?

"Are they here to help?” And she says, “I think so,

I think so,” and she rushes out and helps the old

woman out of her tent.

ZAC: Yes, yes, we’re here to help.

MATT: At which point a secondary tent opens next

to that and a large burly halfling steps out,

older, looks to be the one temporarily in command

of this small group of people, steps out. “So

"you’re here to help, you say.”

ZAC: (high-pitched) Yeah.

DAN: Aye, messir. We’re here to help.

IFY: Yeah, if you got the money to pay us–

ZAC: God.

IFY: Big money. Hey, so, I’m gonna let you know,

I’m a sellsword and ex-pit fighter, slow to trust,

quick to kill. Money talks, bullshit walks. Let’s

kill somebody.

DAN: We’ve got to get you a fucking business

card.

LIAM: Love that dwarven dialect.

MATT: The gentleman kind of steps forward and

looks at the three of you–

DAN: Don’t leave him hanging.

MATT: (laughs) He sort of just stares at you. As

you’re waiting, the (laughs) the young halfling

girl, Lily, comes up and pats you on the hand

again, kind of alleviating the tension.

DAN: Oh, too slow.

MATT: The man takes a step forward. This time, you

can see definitely posturing a presence of

masculinity and control of the situation. Looks

about the three of you and goes, “All right. So if

"you’re here to help, show me what weapons you’ve

got.”

IFY: Oh, my favorite part.

DAN: Show me mine, I’ll show you yours. Or

vice-versa. Sorry, the salt has addled my brain.

ZAC: Idiots.

IFY: All right, so I pull out my two longswords,

so, I got two longswords, I use 'em at the same

time. I like to call this one Regina and this one

Lindy, you get it, right, left, haha, I’m

hilarious. And then I got this crossbow right

here. I use it with one hand, it’ll bust somebody

in the face. Any questions?

ZAC: No, I have no questions, that’s very nice.

DAN: I didn’t know their names, that’s beautiful,

that’s great.

IFY: Yeah yeah yeah.

ZAC: Just after right and left, no–

IFY: You know, I like making jokes up, it’s good

to pass the time when you’re

cleaning your weapons.

DAN: I’ve got several blades, a shortbow, and me

trusty cape, which can come in handy

in case of emergency.

ZAC: I merely have this little axe, it’s no big

deal, it’s not really a big deal, and a crossbow.

I’m not really that good in a fight.

MATT: “All right.”

ZAC: These guys, though, they’re great, you can

use them for whatever you want.

MATT: “And you’re the leader.”

ZAC: Yes.

(laughter)

DAN: He’s the employer.

MATT: “Right.”

ZAC: Same difference.

MATT: “Here’s what you need to know. We’ve been

stuck in this place for at least two weeks now.

"We’re withering away out here, little to eat, no

aid’s coming. Whatever darkness has taken root in

"this small town, I’ve come to believe, has

infiltrated the water, has infiltrated the ground

"beneath us, the very earth itself. As far as I can

tell, each night when we sleep, the dreams, the

"nightmares get worse. And worse. I daresay if this

continues for long, I’m liable to lose my own

"sanity, and I want to keep my daughter safe from

me. So. All the cash I have, not more than a

"simple 120 gold, will be to you to distribute as

you see fit.”

(background noise)

MATT: “Turn that down.”

MARISHA: I made it silent.

MATT: As the elderly woman goes, “I’m sorry,” and

she puts her small violin away that she was

playing as her mind slips.

ZAC: I was really enjoying the music, it’s quite

fine.

IFY: Yeah, you’re speaking my language right now,

and I’m ready to do anything for you right now.

DAN: I’d say you’re right about the water.

IFY: Yeah, yeah.

ZAC: Let’s– the water is strange.

IFY: First off, it’s the juice, obviously. They’re

drinking the juice, they ain’t got no other kind

of water, the juice making you crazy. So we need

to go up there and maybe you can use some arcana

to look at that juice in there and see what’s up

with it. And we could get this money.

DAN: I think we should check the area around the

stage and see if there’s an opening or somewhere

that we could get beneath.

ZAC: Yeah, let’s try that.

IFY: Yeah, but if you–

ZAC: I’m also a little concerned about your hand.

DAN: It’s fine.

ZAC: You’re not, you’re not like–

DAN: Listen, I’m sorry I don’t exfoliate like you

tieflings do.

ZAC: I’m just, you know, like no weird things

going on up there?

DAN: No, just the thought of getting my ship back

and my shit together.

ZAC: All right, all right, okay. No, we’re cool,

we’re cool.

IFY: No so, do you want your ship back or your

shit back, that accent funny as fuck.

(laughter)

DAN: Oh yeah. My accent. Dwarves, am I right?

IFY: You ever come up to the mountain with us

mountain dwarves.

DAN: We hillfolk are a different breed.

IFY: Yeah, yeah, man, this is the mountain

dwarves, we keep it real.

ZAC: I’m terribly sorry, I swear their muscle goes

a lot further than their brains do, though.

MATT: “Best be, for the coin I’m paying for this.

But we’ll see. Prove your worth. Follow me.” He

leads you over towards the central stage in the

middle of this open area. You can see now, the

stage– Upon closer inspection, it hasn’t

collapsed, it hasn’t been smashed, it looks like

the central area beneath it has been pulled down,

there is an actual what looks almost like the top

of an anthill, like it’s slowly sinking into what

appears to be some sort of a funnel that

disappears beneath the surface of the earth.

DAN: Well. That looks unsettling at best.

ZAC: A little scary. Just throw your other hand

down there and see what happens to it.

DAN: I’m gonna try a different tactic. I’d like to

gaze into the abyss with my Darkvision.

MATT: All right. So you have to step underneath

the large wooden platform, move through the broken

portion of it. You can see where elements of it

are jammed into this gravelly sand texture that

formulates this small funnel. It’s roughly about

12 to 15 feet across, and part of it does spill

out into the opposite side of this open area. As

you glance towards the edge, you feel the sand

give a little bit under your foot.

DAN: Uh-oh.

MATT: Go ahead and make a dexterity check.

Dexterity saving throw.

DAN: So that would just be–

MATT: Saving throw, which should be at the top.

DAN: Gotcha. A hot nine.

MATT: As you look over and step, you find the sand

begins to slip from underneath you. You reach up

to try and grab one of the wooden platforms to

keep yourself stable, however, your other foot

that you had your weight on also slips as the sand

and dirt seems to give out under you entirely. As

you hit your side, you feel it actually beginning

to cave inward and pull you deeper and deeper into

this small recess in the ground. You’re now up to

your waist, being pulled underneath the surface.

You guys watch him being sucked in–

DAN: A little help!

ZAC: Grab him, grab him! Get in there, get in

there.

IFY: Damn! Oh my god! Damn! He’s in there, that’s

deep!

ZAC: Jump, just jump, I’ll grab you–

IFY: How much are we gonna get paid for this? I’m

gonna jump inside, I’m gonna jump inside!

ZAC: I don’t know, just jump!

IFY: I’m jumping inside, come on, follow me!

ZAC: All right!

MATT: As you leap, which at this point you’re just

past your face and nose under the sand, you leap

onto and grabbing onto the sides of his head just

as it passes his eyes, as you grab it, you now

plant your feet to pull. What you’re used to, you

know, when you get a nice firm foothold and pull,

there’s no firm foothold. Your feet go into the

sand and you just continue going underneath with

him, until eventually you yourself are completely

submerged and disappear beneath the surface of

this, now leaving you alone, staring at this now

slowly stopping funnel of cascading sand.

MARISHA: Oh, shit! What you gonna do?

ZAC: Well. Fuck it, I’m going to jump in after

them. Oh, this is stupid! This is stupid stupid

stupid. Yeah, I’m gonna jump in after them.

MATT: All right. You run and you leap, and with an

impact sound, your tiefling self dips and

immediately disappears beneath the surface.

There’s a few moments of very scary breathlessness

as all of a sudden suffocation hits each of you.

The darkness, you’re unable to see, you’re unable to

move and there’s just this constraint of earth

pressing around you, and for a good five to ten

seconds you begin to come to terms with your

mortality as if this is your

final moment on this plane.

ZAC: Well, this sucks so far.

MATT: Then you feel this strange lightening

sensation in your feet, almost like the pressure’s

beginning to alleviate, and with that, you now

fall. You’re falling in darkness.

IFY and DAN: (yell)

DAN: God no, I’m gonna die without seeing my Helen

again! Oh no!

ZAC: I use my Darkvision to kind of see what’s

below me.

IFY: Where’s my money? Where’s my money?

MATT: Unfortunately, there’s no light source down

here at all, so you don’t even have dim light to

work off of, it’s pure darkness. However, I want

you all to make an acrobatics check with

disadvantage.

DAN: How do I echolocate?

MATT: So roll 2d20 and drop the highest.

IFY: Whoa, what? Roll–

LIAM: Roll twice and use the lowest one.

ZAC: Oh, well.

DAN: Rolled a two and a three.

ZAC: Also two.

DAN: I got an 11.

MATT: Okay.

IFY: I rolled a–

ZAC: Wait, so what do I add that to?

DAN: Acrobatics, that’d be plus one.

ZAC: (laughs)

IFY: I rolled a 17.

MATT: 17.

ZAC: Three.

DAN: 11.

MATT: Three. All right. So you both impact on soft

sand and in the immediate point of impact you just

instinctively have, learning how to fall and

tumble, you manage to go with the momentum and

step out of the way of an impact, minimizing the

damage. You each take– actually, you take two

points of damage, you take one point of damage.

You, however, go face-first into the top, taking a

significant amount of impact to your spine, your

neck, and your shoulders. You take four points of

damage from the fall and are now head buried like

an ostrich in the top of the sandpile with your

legs and arms dangling going like (muffled

yelling).

ZAC: (muffled) Get me up, get me up you son of a

bitch! Get me outta the ground!

DAN: Oh, I got sand-burn on me bairn.

IFY: Oh my god, that shit, I know. Oh, look here,

look at it, let’s not help him, just look at it.

ZAC: (muffled) Damn dwarves! I hate dwarves!

DAN: I’m gonna try and pull him out.

MATT: It’s not very hard, you yank him out at this

point. It is nearly pitch-black in this area, you

can barely see a couple feet in front of you. But

you can hear immediately, there is this distant

sound almost like the ringing of very very gentle

bells. It seems very out of place and perpetual,

and the tone shifts and overlaps.

IFY: Yo, y'all hear that?

DAN: Yeah, someone’s playing crystal bells.

IFY: Nah, that’s some money clinking right there.

ZAC: That’s not– I don’t think that’s money.

IFY: You ever clink some money together? And hear

that clinkling sound? Money be clinking.

ZAC: No, I think this is a great idea, run

straight towards it, why don’t you? Just see, go,

run right to it.

IFY: Nah.

ZAC: It’s probably money, it’s probably money.

IFY: Last time we did something like that, we

ended up in a hole, and your head was

upside-down.

DAN: That was a great moment. I loved that.

IFY: See, it’s moments like this that make

memories, you know what I’m saying?

DAN: I’m gonna see that when I go to sleep later.

IFY: Yeah.

DAN: So the room we’re in, it’s mostly sand. Does

it seem like there’s–

MATT: You can only see a few feet in front of

you.

DAN: Okay.

MATT: Anyone have a torch or any sort of light

source?

IFY: Yeah, I have a torch. (sings) Got a torch in

my dungeoneer’s pack.

(laughter)

DAN: I love your theme songs.

MATT: You light up a torch. As the light source

breathes out into the room, you can see there’s a

large dome of sand that is slowly caved in from

the top surface of this small cave-in. However,

about 30 feet down it comes to rest in what looks

like some sort of a slightly toppled stone

structure that has been breached on this side,

almost like there was something deep under the

ground that has crumbled inward and the sand has

slowly poured into it. Also seems to be the source

of this strange ringing sound, this faint

ringing.

DAN: I’d like to investigate the stone object and

use Stone Cunning to go ahead and see if I can

find its origin.

MATT: Okay.

IFY: Use that Stone Cunning?

DAN: You know I know my stones.

IFY: Yeah, yeah, yo, and I give him dwarven dap,

because that’s some dwarven stuff right there.

DAN: Dap it up proper.

IFY: That’s that D shit right there.

DAN: Oh, look at me, I’m a halfling, like get

real.

IFY: I know, yeah.

ZAC: Regardless of what you are, you are quite

useful in these situations.

IFY: Hey, my man Snuggle, look at the rock. You

can’t tell me shit 'cause you’re not a dwarf!

(laughs) You can’t, man, you can’t tell me shit

about rocks.

DAN: 'Cause you’ve been burnt.

ZAC: Oh yeah, your hand’s looking really good

right now.

DAN: Yeah, like your self-confidence. Now let me

look at the stone.

IFY: I know.

MATT: (laughs) Go ahead and roll an investigation

check.

DAN: 15. Do I add anything for Stone Cunning?

MATT: I would say I’ll give you advantage on the

roll, so you can roll a second time. Sure.

DAN: Okay. All right, I’m sticking with the 15.

MATT: All right. So as you step up to what looks

like the little bit of this stone outcropping

that’s slowly peering out of the earth, it looks

like this is the upper corner of a stone chamber

that has crumbled in a little bit, and you’re now

peering into it from an elevated position outside

of the chamber. Looking at the structure of the

stone, the way it’s built and carved and wedged

together to form the almost brick-like pattern of

its making, it’s definitely not dwarven in make,

but it looks very old, and it looks like the

material itself is almost like a sandstone, and a

lot of civilizations that long existed before

proper stonecutting could be used, where stone

could be moved from nearby mountains or even the

dwarven stonecutting techniques were spread across

this land, this was a very primitive way of

building subterranean structures. You gather this

interior is probably very, very old, well over a

thousand years. And as you peer down into it using

the torchlight, you can see down within the

chamber, it’s rectangular in shape, there appears

to be a trough with some sort of liquid that is in

an ovoid shape around a raised platform in the

center, and in the center of this platform, on top

of it, you can see a very, very dull blue glow

from this crystalline spherical orb that is

resting on it and is giving off this very, very

faint blue light. And the further you walk towards

it as you inspect the interior from the top of the

hole in this stone structure, you hear that

musical ringing sound get louder and louder as you

step towards it.

DAN: Got you. How big does the crystal look,

roughly in size, shape, and weight?

MATT: I’d say roughly baseball size, it’s about

that big around. It’s about 25 feet from you

currently.

ZAC: Can I check the room for traps?

MATT: You’re welcome to, if you want to step up to

the corner.

IFY: You’d better do that quick, because that’s a

big-ass crystal–

DAN: Oh yeah!

IFY: – and that looks like it’s worth a lot of

money.

DAN: I was just gonna say.

IFY: Yeah, you know.

ZAC: I really wanna check for traps before this

guy–

DAN: And I’m a rogue.

MATT: Make a perception check.

IFY: Yo, just hurry up and check it, man, 'cause

I’m about to run in there.

DAN: Plus perception. That’s plus three. Yeah.

Perception.

ZAC: Okay. 22.

MATT: 22. As you step towards the edge of the

corner, you can see the sand that has spilled into

the room allows you a small decline to step into

the room if you’d like to. As you get to the edge

of the sand, you glance at the nearby panels and

you can see, there are small language runes that

are carved into portions of the floor, many of

which seem to be just situationally part of a

hieroglyphic storytelling aspect, like the whole

room, but a language you don’t understand. What

languages do you guys speak?

DAN: Common and Dwarven.

IFY: Yeah, Common and Dwarven.

ZAC: I have no idea.

MATT: We’re gonna say you don’t know it, 'cause it

keeps mystery abound. But you do notice that there

are a handful of runes across the floor, primarily

at the North-South-East-West-type portions of the

stone flooring surrounding the crystal, and where

that small water trough surrounds it. On the

outskirts of that water, on those positions, those

four corners, the runes are deeper-carved into the

stone and seem to almost have a quartz-like

texture to them, almost like there was something

quartz set into the stone floor.

ZAC: Hm. Hm. Totally clear, you should run down in

there and see what it’s all about. Yeah.

DAN: Sounds great. I’ve got an idea. Does any of

you have something similar to the size of that

there gem?

ZAC: That’s a good i–

IFY: Yo!

DAN: I’m gonna get a running start, I am going to

throw–

IFY: You sound like you’re taking ideas from some

type of lore that may not exist on this plane, and

it sounds like a dumb-ass idea.

DAN: No, no. It’s gonna be great. Trust me.

ZAC: I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this tale many,

many years ago, and I don’t think it

works out too well.

DAN: This is anything but derivative. I don’t know

what you’re talking about.

ZAC: You’ve read the tale too, right?

IFY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ZAC: Yeah, there will be a giant boulder that will

come rolling down towards your face. I don’t think

it will work.

IFY: Yo, how about this: rope test 2.0, okay? So

we’re gonna get a rope, we’re gonna throw it on

the floor. We’re gonna throw the rope on the floor

and then, if anything happens, we know it’s a

trap. If not, I’m gonna get my new gem.

ZAC: As long as you throw the rope, I’m okay with

this plan.

IFY: Swerve. All right, I’m gonna throw some

rope–

DAN: (laughs) More classic slang. Love it.

LIAM: It works for anything. (Scottish accent) Oh,

kitten masturbation. Classic dwarven slang.

DAN: You have to see it to believe it. Sounds like

these bells.

MARISHA: (Scottish accent) Vehicular manslaughter.

Classic dwarf.

MATT: All right, so as you step down into the

room, you take a little bit of the rope, you cut

if off with one of your swords, you take it, and

you toss it towards one of the small quartz-like

runes on the ground. It hits and comes to rest

over the small central quartz-type rune. A few

moments pass. No reaction. Then the room shudders

for a second, you feel the entire structure shake

with a sudden impact.

ZAC: Well, not good.

MATT: A little bit of the sand comes down and

settles to rest for a moment before you start

seeing certain blocks on the opposite sides of the

room begin to glow.

IFY: Fuck.

DAN: Great.

MATT: As they glow, they begin to drift out of the

walls, almost suspended in the air, and begin to

lock together in different places, until

eventually it forms a haphazard humanoid figure in

a matter of seconds.

IFY: Oh, what is that? Damn! Whoa!

DAN: Oh, wow.

IFY: This is some, like, weird, some, like…

what?

DAN: You took the words out of my mouth.

IFY: Oh, damn.

MATT: At which point, this hulking humanoid form,

probably standing at close to eight and a half,

nine feet tall, made of these sandstone blocks

that’ve been pulled from the wall, hands in place,

unmoving, the crystal on the side of the room

flashes with a vibrant blue light. As it does, in

the center of this chamber where the eyes and the

mouth of this humanoid would be, a similar blue

light suddenly flicks on, like it’s been given

sudden sentience, at which point this large

sandstone golem-type entity begins to charge

towards you. Roll initiative.

(laughter)

ZAC: Okay, so what number’s this?

MATT: So you roll a d20 and add your initiative

modifier.

DAN: Roll and add initiative modifier, it’s gonna

be plus one.

MARISHA: We fought some golems before.

ZAC: That’s all I add?

DAN: Yeah.

MATT: All right, so.

DAN: 20.

MATT: 20.

ZAC: 16.

IFY: Six.

MATT: (laughs) Nice.

IFY: I like to call that the ringer, baby.

DAN: Clean up.

MATT: All right. So we’re gonna say at the top of

the round, Salty, you got first up.

DAN: Oh, great.

MATT: You’re still on the outskirts of the room

now, the only person who’s really stepped in at

this point are the two of them, you’re kind of

still in the back corner. So you see it charging

more towards these two, but you have the top of

the round, so.

DAN: I’d like to slink off to the right, draw my

shortbow, and try to shoot

an arrow at the crystal.

MATT: Okay, cool. So as you kind of slide down the

sand decline, you come around the edge, pull out

your shortbow, let it fly, go ahead and roll for

an attack.

MARISHA: San-de-cline? Eh? Sandy cline?

LIAM: He’s showing his legitimate D&D roots.

DAN: 11.

MATT: 11. As you release the arrow, the shuddering of

each footstep of the golem itself is very

upsetting and in the chaos you let go of the

arrow, missing by a mere inch as it disappears

into the darkness.

DAN: Ah, so close.

MATT: You hear it richochet–

IFY: You ain’t no elf, man, you ain’t no elf.

Shooting arrows.

DAN: I wake up every day ashamed.

IFY: Where’s your weapon?

(laughter)

MATT: So that takes you to rest inside the

chamber, kind of off to the right of where the

rest of the party is. Next up, we have

Snugglelord.

ZAC: Okay, so.

MATT: It’s coming towards you.

ZAC: It’s running towards me really fast, I look

around me and I freak out and I go, “Oh shit!” And

I cast that Thauma–

DAN: Thaumaturgy?

MATT: Thaumaturgy?

ZAC: Thaumaturgy and make myself appear to be a

massive giant-like individual with a booming voice

and I intimidate him and go, “You are beneath me,

you foul creature!”

IFY: Yeah, make him punch you first.

MATT: So, for a moment this frightened, shaking

tiefling individual grounds himself, and this kind

of greenish energy begins to build around his

body. As it does, his physical form seems to

almost rise two to three feet, his shoulders

broaden, his face grows dark, his eyes begin to

spark with a fiery red light. The voice booms out

throughout the hallway, and the entirety of this

room’s structure, catching you off-guard. Go ahead

and roll an intimidation check.

MARISHA: Oh, shit!

ZAC: Oh, fuck.

DAN: (laughs) Well, it could be okay.

ZAC: Eight.

MATT: Eight?

ZAC: Yeah.

MARISHA: Total?

ZAC: That’s with a plus six.

MATT: Neither the speed, gait, or power of the

golem seem to have slowed, it continues to barrel

towards you.

ZAC: This was a bad idea, you guys. (panicked

yelling)

IFY: You just made him bigger. You just made him

bigger, man!

DAN: Oh no!

ZAC: Go go go, I’ll pay you more money, I swear.

IFY: Ah, that’s the magic.

ZAC: All of my earnings from this, like, that

dude, that dad, that bad father obviously, I’ll

give you all of it, just take care of this for

me.

MATT: As you’re saying this, the golem reaches

forward before you finish your sentence and goes

to grab you. What’s your armor class?

ZAC: Studded leather, and 13 armor class?

MATT: Okay. You take five points of crushing

damage as the hand reaches, crushes down on your

shoulders and body, and lifts you off your feet.

You are now considered grappled.

ZAC: Motherfucker, this hurts! This hurts, get him

off of me! (high-pitched yelling)

DAN: He picked him up. He just grabbed him.

ZAC: Do something, you stupid dwarves! Do

something!

IFY: So if I’m swinging with two weapons, do I

roll twice?

MATT: You do use your bonus action for a second

attack, you just don’t add your strength modifier

to the second attack.

IFY: So that’s going to be 18.

MATT: 18, okay, and roll the second attack.

IFY: All right. Oh, and because I have the

two-weapon fighter, I still get to add the

strength modifier.

MATT: Oh, you do, awesome, so you can do both,

nice.

IFY: Oh, that one is going to be 12.

MATT: 12. 12 misses, unfortunately, but the first

attack does ring true. Go ahead and roll damage.

IFY: All right. Where are you, Mr. Eight? You are

not Mr. Eight. There it is. I swing for– plus

strength, 11.

MATT: 11 points of damage, nice. So after it grabs

and picks up the tiefling, you can see the fingers

actually crushing as he’s screaming, you pull the

weapons out, swing one that manages to pass under

its arm. The second one goes straight into its

torso and carves out a portion of the stone. Even

though the sandstone is a very hard surface, you

manage to find a portion between the bricks that

jammed together and actually carves a chunk of

brick out of the side of its torso. You can see

the structure kind of shifts a little bit on one

side and now it’s kind of standing a little

off-kilter, but is still solid in its current

physical form. But well done, you carved a

sizeable part out of it. Brings us–

DAN: Break it!

ZAC: I’m still being crushed, you dumbass, do

something!

IFY: Got some extra money.

MATT: Top of the round, Salty.

DAN: I’d like to reload my bow and take another

shot.

MARISHA: Reload that bow.

MATT: Go ahead and fire again.

MARISHA: Dat bow though.

ZAC: Is he trying the same thing? I can’t see

anything, there’s a giant hand covering my face!

DAN: You bet your ass. 13.

MATT: 13?

DAN: Mm-hm.

MATT: As you swing and release, this does hit the

crystal, but at a certain angle that causes it to

just glance off–

DAN: Oh, come on! It hit the rim.

MATT: It did. It is a spherical object,

unfortunately it deflects coming piercing very

well. That close, but not quite enough to get to

it.

DAN: Rats.

MATT: Do you want to move, or are you gonna stay

where you are?

DAN: I’m going to, yeah, I’m gonna move back, I’m

gonna move closer by ten feet to the crystal.

MATT: Okay, so you shift up. You’re now at the

outskirts of that liquid that’s surrounding it.

DAN: Yeah.

MATT: Okay. It’s only about five feet wide, so you

can leap over it easily. But you stop there? That

ends your turn. You’re up, Snugs.

ZAC: Okay. Can I use the Hellish Rebuke on him?

MATT: You can.

ZAC: Am I allowed to do that?

MATT: You can. That’s the Hellish Rebuke, as the

ability here– pull it up real fast, because I

don’t have any tieflings. Here we go. Hellish

Rebuke. That’s a reaction you can make in

response. So you actually could’ve done that as

he’s crushing you, which we’ll say you do right

now. So as he’s crushing you, you do that as a

reaction immediately. You point your finger and–

So as you’re being crushed you’re like ahh, you

point your finger at its arm.

ZAC: Eee!

DAN: The wet willy.

MATT: As you awkwardly finger the sandstone

golem’s brick structure, it fails its saving throw

so it takes 2d10 fire damage.

DAN: What’s on that finger?

MATT: Go ahead and roll. So ten-sider twice.

ZAC: Ten-sider. Okay.

MARISHA: Had some habanero sauce recently?

DAN: Yeah, it’s a spicy fingerblast.

ZAC: Two and four.

MATT: Two and four? So six points of fire damage.

As your finger enters the portion between the

bricks, there’s a burst of flame and it looks like

an impact of some sort of internal arcane

explosion, causing the sutures between all the

different bricks to shake for a second. You see

dust and sand settle between the portions of its

torso that are holding its limbs to it. A pretty

sizeable impact from an unexpected position. So

that was your reaction. Now what do you wanna do

for your turn?

ZAC: Okay, great. So the cantrips can be used–

MATT: As many times as you want.

ZAC: – as many times as I want.

IFY: Yeah, do some more of that fire stuff, it’s

working, man!

DAN: Cast a spell, it’ll be great! Do more of that

finger stuff!

ZAC: I’m gonna use the Poison Spray on him.

MATT: Okay, okay.

ZAC: See if that does anything.

IFY: Yo, you trying to poison some magic stuff?

DAN: Sandstone’s greatest weakness. Poison.

MATT: (laughs) All right, so. You bring your hand

out towards the creature, you release this sudden

burst of poisonous gas–

ZAC: I’m panicking, assholes, I’m freaking held up

by the top of my head, this is really excruciating

pain, I may have made a poor decision, I don’t

know, I’m just doing something!

MATT: As the cloud swarms around the entity, it

does not seem to be affected by the presence of

poison, as its physical form does not fall under

the category of a natural living entity. However,

you can use your movement to try and break free of

the grapple.

ZAC: So I try to run away–

MATT: Okay, so you try and break out. Go ahead and

you can make either an athletics or an acrobatics

roll, your choice.

ZAC: Well–

DAN: You should acrobatics. (laughs)

ZAC: Acrobatics.

MATT: All right, go ahead and roll acrobatics.

ZAC: Okay, that’s 12.

MATT: 12? All right! You manage to just squeeze

out of its grip, land on your feet, and get back

about five feet. It’s still right in front of you,

but you’re no longer in its grasp.

DAN: Slippery bastard!

MATT: Okay, so as its turn it’s going to do

Frenzied Punches, it’s gonna do an attack on both

of you. Just giant fists, it clenches its fingers

together into two giant hammers of sandstone.

ZAC: Ah, dammit, no, I can’t take this kind of

punishment! You’re supposed to take these!

MATT: That’s going to be a 16 against you.

IFY: My armor class is 16.

MATT: It just manages to impact. So as one fist

goes, bang, hitting you right in the breadbasket,

you can feel the armor absorbs a lot of the blow,

but it still nearly knocks the wind out of you.

DAN: Not the basket.

MATT: You take seven points of bludgeoning

damage.

IFY: God damn!

MATT: From the sheer impact and force of the blow.

As it pulls its fist back,

it backhands towards you.

ZAC: Of course, yeah, it gives me the backhand.

MATT: That’s gonna be an eight. What’s your armor

class?

ZAC: 13.

MATT: 13. You duck beneath the arc, and it swings

wildly, missing you entirely.

IFY: All our luck’s been wasted on you, man. That

hurt.

MATT: Ulfgar, it’s your turn now, as you recover

from the blow.

ZAC: You got this, you got this!

IFY: Oh, nobody punches me in the chest and lives

to tell the tale. So I’m gonna go ahead and

slice-and-dice. All right, Regina! I swing for–

DAN: His right-hand sword.

IFY: – 21.

MATT: 21 hits. Roll the second attack.

ZAC: You announce it. “His right-hand sword!”

DAN: I just love color commentary.

IFY: And Linda! And with Linda I swing for 19.

MATT: Both hit. Go ahead and roll damage on both

strikes.

IFY: Oh yeah! (laughs) So, um. Regina smacks for

five.

MATT: Five damage.

IFY: Linda smacks for 11.

MATT: Nice! So you bring both swings down

simultaneously, streaking an X-mark strike across

its back. As you do, you carve a sizeable rock

from the side of its back. As the stones tumble

off of its torso, and its shoulder area, it hits

the ground and they just turn to dust upon impact

with the ground. You can see now, within the

sandstone in the center, there is kind of a

crackling arcane energy, almost like a spider-like

electricity that is holding its form together that

is the same color as the stone in the center of

the room. Do you want to move at all, or are you

going to stay where you are?

IFY: I think I’m gonna stay there and actually use

an Action Surge to swing

at the innards of this beast.

MATT: Okay, go ahead and roll another attack.

MARISHA: Oh, snap!

DAN: Like the Magic School Bus, going inside.

IFY: That is going to be 14.

MARISHA: I knew I should’ve stayed home today.

MATT: 14. With this action-surge strike you go, and

you bring your sword down. As your sword gets

within a few inches of the back, a bit of that

blue energy arcs out and hits the blade, causing

your hand to recoil instinctively. You drop the

weapon for a second from the sheer shock of it,

realize what you’ve done, and reach down and pick

it up again. It manages to knock your attack out

of use, unfortunately.

IFY: Oh. Go for the crystal! I think the blue

stuff might work!

DAN: Yeah, you think?

MATT: That brings us up to the top. Salty, you’re

up.

DAN: All right–

ZAC: Do it again, I know I said it was stupid last

time, but go for it!

DAN: I’m gonna believe in myself. I’m gonna sprint

towards the crystal, leap through the air, doing a

flip, grabbing it, and taking it out of its hold.

IFY: Is the flip just natural? You just had to add

the flip?

MATT: All right.

DAN: Go for broke.

MATT: Go ahead and make an acrobatics roll.

DAN: I got a one.

(laughter)

DAN: This die is terrible. This is hot garbage.

MARISHA: Another die!

MATT: You back up, pushing off the back wall of

the room. You go into a ninja sprint, leap through

the air, over the moat of brackish liquid around

the orb. You reach out and realize you’re about a

foot and a half too high. You reach down for it,

pass through your fingers, you tumble over and

land back-first into the other side of the moat.

(splash) Splashing liquid all over your back and

torso, you tumble off, slide across to the side of

the room, slam!, hitting the opposite side of the

wall on your back, your feet, ass-up,

ass-over-teakettle.

DAN: Never believe in yourself.

(laughter)

MATT: You are considered prone and you take three

points of acid damage from splashing

into the liquid.

DAN: Oh, god.

MATT: Snugglelord, you’re up.

MARISHA: Believing in yourself is a lie. Once

again, D&D teaches real life lessons.

ZAC: It’s coming for me!

DAN: I almost got it!

ZAC: I know! Man. It’s a–

DAN: Are you casting a spell called Friends?

ZAC: Oh, no I can’t, no I can’t. I can’t do it

because he’s hostile towards me. I cast fire into

the weak spot on the back to see if fire does

anything to disrupt the energy that’s inside it.

MATT: What spell are you using for that?

ZAC: Thauma–

MATT: Thaumaturgy?

ZAC: Thaumaturgy.

MATT: Okay, as you focus for a second, you raise

your hand up in the air, using your demonic

heritage to call forth some infernal fire that

bursts for a second in the center of where that

electricity is. It sparks up and then is snuffed,

no seeming effect.

ZAC: Am I allowed to move after that?

MATT: You can move after that, yeah.

ZAC: I move a couple steps back, like, whoa, shit

shit shit shit shit.

MATT: Okay, so you carefully step away. It takes a

swing at you as you step out of its range. That is

gonna be–

DAN: Attack of opportunity.

MATT: – 11. Which I believe misses you.

ZAC: Yes.

MATT: So as you step out of the way, it comes down

with a giant fist hammer-blow style, as you

sidestep out of the way, as it cracks some of the

stone on the ground.

ZAC: Can we all take a second to laugh at how

great what Salty just did was,

because that was amazing!

DAN: It was pretty great.

MATT: Ulfgar, you’re up.

DAN: I’m in so much pain.

IFY: All right. Am I close enough to the crystal

to run towards it?

MATT: You can, you’d probably take an attack from

the creature, but–

IFY: All right. Yeah, I run towards it, safely,

not trying to do any fancy flips or anything.

MATT: Okay, so as you rush past, it swings out at

you. That’s gonna be a 14. I think you said your

AC’s 16?

IFY: Yeah.

MATT: So you just, it glances off your shoulder,

you take the blow but keep pushing forward with

the sheer force of your dwarven physical self.

IFY: Woo!

MATT: As you leap just over the liquid, I’m just

gonna make you, have you do a

quick athletics roll.

IFY: All right. I rolled 24.

MATT: 24.

DAN: Oh, come on.

MATT: You leap across, three-point landing.

IFY: Kobe!

MATT: You stand up, the orb’s there in front of

you. You wanted to grab the orb, you said? You

wanna grab the orb, you said?

IFY: Yes.

MATT: Okay. You grab the orb, you pull it off the

pedestal. Make a constitution saving throw.

DAN: (laughs) Classic slang.

(laughter)

IFY: I, so, constitution. I roll a god damn 24.

MATT: 24. As you clutch the orb, you can feel for

a moment the electrical energy surging through

your forearms and into your body, and for a second

your muscles tense and you feel like your physical

form is being slowed down, but you shrug it off

for a second as you’re clutching it in your hands

right now. You’re looking at it, you’ve pulled it

off of the pedestal. As you pull it off the

pedestal, it leaves a couple trails of sparks off

the top that stretch out between the pedestal and

where you’re pulling the orb off. You look back

and the entity currently is looking like it’s

slowing in its physical ability to move around

when it’s in your grasp, but it’s still turning

around towards you, kind of looking, noticing that

you’ve now grabbed something that is inherently

connected to its physicality.

IFY: All right. Then I break it and say, “I own

you!”

MATT: Make an attack.

(laughter)

DAN: Great breath control.

IFY: 14.

MATT: 14? All right. You take the orb, you spike

it on the ground, and you see it crack upon the

impact. It doesn’t break, but a big solid crack

suddenly spiders through the entire interior of

the orb, as it rolls off and into the liquid on

the outskirts. You can see the electrical center

in the center of the sandstone golem flicker and

flash with light, and you see one of its arms hits

the ground behind it and scatters into dust and

sand. It’s still keeping its form together, and

it’s kind of lurching towards you with its other

arm rearing back for some sort of an attack, but

it looks like it’s having a really hard time

holding itself together. That’s gonna end your

turn. Salty, you’re up.

IFY: Salty, you gotta put your hand in the juice

again! You gotta put your hand in that juice, get

that orb.

DAN: You can’t be serious.

MARISHA: Believe! Believe, Salty!

DAN: No, it never works.

IFY: Just put your hand in the juice!

DAN: I’m going to– so if I’m not mistaken, I can

expend a hit die to regain some health,

is that true?

MATT: You can during a rest, not in the middle of

combat, unfortunately.

IFY: (laughs) You got this, baby!

DAN: All right. I’ve got, I think I have three hit

points left, maybe? Five or three. Somewhere, I

think I’m at five. So, sorry, the orb is in–

MATT: It’s currently– he slammed it into the

ground, it cracked, and it rolled into the moat on

the– to you it would be on the right side of the

building right now.

DAN: Oh, come on. All right. I’m going to take my

cape, wrap it around my arm, and just run and

scoop it.

MATT: Okay. So you use half your movement to get

up, and you rush towards, you can get just to the

outside of it, 'cause you can see a little bit of

the blue interior. You reach down inside, you pull

it up. I want you to go ahead and make a

constitution saving throw.

IFY: You got this, Salty!

DAN: Not using that die again.

ZAC: I kind of believe in you!

DAN: Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. That’ll be

a seven.

MARISHA: Oh no, Salty.

MATT: So as you pick up the orb, you grab it

triumphantly in your hand, you can see the liquid,

it’s not touching your skin for once. However,

there is a surge of electrical energy into your

body, and as you grasp it you can feel the muscles

in your arm and shoulder and back all tense up.

You find yourself held in place, unable to move.

DAN: Guys, little help?

MATT: That ends your turn. That brings us to

Snugglelord, what you got?

ZAC: Shit!

IFY: It’s the orb, break that orb, man! It’s the

orb.

ZAC: I pull out my crossbow.

IFY: Oh no, no! Anything but that!

DAN: I always knew it would end like this. That’s

what the gypsy woman said.

MATT: You have other spells.

ZAC: Not really, I picked terrible spells for

this.

MATT: Your first-level spells, you have three you

should have.

LIAM: Wait, what’s your melee weapon?

ORION: Eldritch Blast, Eldritch Blast!

ZAC: I have a handaxe.

MATT: Do you have Eldritch Blast?

MARISHA: Do you have Eldritch Blast?

LIAM: No, he doesn’t have Eldritch Blast.

ZAC: No, all the spells that I picked are all

based on me lying to people.

I am worthless in a battle.

LIAM: Smash it!

ZAC: Okay, I’m gonna smash it, I’m gonna run up

and smash it in his hand.

DAN: Please, no!

IFY: Don’t worry, don’t worry, Salty, I’ll drink

to your name!

ZAC: I’m honestly not worried about his hand, he’s

already lost a lot of use of it, the skin is gone,

like, he’ll be, it doesn’t matter, you’re not

gonna masturbate with that thing anyway anymore.

DAN: I never did.

MATT: So Snugglelord’s tiefling form darts in and

in the shaded interior of the room runs across. Go

ahead and just make an acrobatics check real fast

as you cross the moat.

LIAM: Oh, sever his wanking hand, classic dwarven

move!

DAN: Classic tiefling betrayal!

ZAC: Okay, all right. 19.

MATT: 19. You leap over without an issue, you

actually tumble and roll on the ground. As you

come up, you use the inertia to swing your axe in

a wide arc down towards his hand. Roll an attack.

IFY: I’ll drink to your name, man, 'cause you’re

about to be dead!

ZAC: Okay, what do I add on these?

DAN: 15? You beat a 14 armor class, you hit.

LIAM: Dan Casey, still in character, holding up

the orb.

MATT: Okay, so go ahead and roll damage for the

axe.

DAN: Oh, this is gonna suck.

ZAC: What do I do for damage dice?

IFY: 1d6.

MATT: 1d6 and add your strength modifier to it.

ZAC: Well, that’s nothing.

IFY: Zero.

ZAC: One.

LIAM: No!

ORION: That’s for the attack.

MATT: One’s all you needed.

MARISHA: One’s all he needed?

MATT: The crystal is already heavily damaged. You

bring the axe down.

DAN: Ah, god!

MATT: It shatters the crystal into a hundred

pieces across the room. I want you to go ahead and

roll another damage attack on his hand.

DAN: Fucking great.

MARISHA: How many hit points did you have left?

DAN: Five on a good day. Three more

realistically.

ZAC: Low roll, low roll, low roll.

IFY: Five.

ZAC: Five.

(laughter)

DAN: That’s a whammy!

MATT: So as the crystal shatters, you can see the

golem form, which is coming up behind you with a

giant piston-like hand, suddenly just vanishes

into dust and sparks as it scatters across the

ground. The axe swings through, and you’re

extremely excited at the impact as you look up and

see what is a fingerless half-hand now bleeding

profusely.

ZAC: Haha, you look better now!

DAN: Oh, everybody’s a fucking comedian.

MATT: Which is the last words you say before you

fall unconscious on the ground from the severe

shock and blood loss.

ZAC: We did it!

IFY: Aw man, I really liked that dude, man.

ZAC: He’s fine, he just lost some fingers.

MATT: So as he’s now unconscious on the ground,

bleeding out, does anyone wanna try and help him?

IFY: Yeah, I’m gonna try and resurrect him in some

way.

MATT: All right. Go ahead and make a medicine check.

Do you have a medicine kit or anything like that?

ZAC: I don’t have one.

ORION: Yes, say yes, Thaumaturgy.

IFY: I just have the dungeoneer’s kit.

MATT: All right, make a medicine check.

DAN: Cauterize the wound.

MARISHA: Are you trying to say stop the bleeding

with Thaumaturgy? Is that what

you’re trying to say?

DAN: Yeah, cauterize my stump.

MARISHA: By screaming at it?

LIAM: He could stick a dagger into the end of that,

he’ll be fine.

ZAC: Or that spicy fingerblast.

IFY: I rolled 17 for medicine.

MATT: 17. Okay. We’ll say between the two of you

working together to bring out some material, you

rip off part of a cloth you had stored in your

bag, you use Thaumaturgy to go ahead and cauterize

the wound, eventually you stop the bleeding, you

wrap it up, you wait a few moments and he comes to

slow consciousness, sore, worse for wear, but

alive nevertheless.

ZAC: You did good.

IFY: Hey, man.

DAN: I beat the golem. I did it.

ZAC: You did all of it, it was all you.

DAN: I’m going to cough blood.

MATT: And he does.

IFY: Just want to get you guys invoiced, that gem

that you guys destroyed was probably worth like

500 gold, so y'all both are in debt–

ZAC: You’re still getting paid, you’re still

getting paid.

DAN: Classic dwarven accounting.

ZAC: We’ll just go back to the bad father, he’ll

give you your money.

IFY: Yeah, yeah, you totally gave up your share,

so it’s between me and Salty.

ZAC: I remember that.

MATT: You do notice as you’re on the ground,

looking around, suddenly the brackish liquid

that’s surrounded it seems to have lost a lot of

its darker viscous aspect and now it’s kind of

clear, smooth, pure water.

DAN: I am gonna plunge my mangled paw into that

clear-ass water.

MATT: It is cold and slightly helpful in soothing

the pain, and you are glad for once since you

arrived here to see some water that is not

absolutely terrifying.

DAN: Thank god for that.

IFY: Yeah, man, we did it.

DAN: It’s good, it’s good.

IFY: So do you want me to pick up your fingers,

or?

DAN: Yeah, that’d be fucking great.

IFY: All right, so I put his fingers in my pack.

DAN: I’m a little shorthanded.

MATT: Go ahead and make a perception check.

MARISHA: Finger-scouting mission.

LIAM: One, two– where are the other three?

IFY: Perception– ten.

MATT: You find two fingers. God knows where, the

rest are buried either somewhere in the remains of

the sand creature or somewhere else in the room,

but after a good five minutes of scouting you

manage to find two of the digits.

LIAM: He can still rock on, though.

ORION: That’s all you need.

DAN: It’s all I have. Surf’s up.

MATT: As you guys slowly find your way back up to

the top of the pile of sand that led you into this

chamber, you look up and you can see there’s a

small bit of light, and you hear a voice echoing

through going, “Hello? Hello?”

ZAC: Yeah, we are down here and all the trouble

seems to be gone.

MATT: You’re alive?

ZAC: Yeah, well–

DAN: You could say that.

ZAC: We’re kind of okay.

MATT: “Okay, hold on!” And eventually over a few

minutes you see a small rope being let down.

IFY: Oh, that’s what I like to see.

MATT: One by one they pull you up.

ZAC: You know, I do like those ropes.

MATT: One by one they pull you back up through the

surface. You find yourselves at the center of the

town, and everyone’s gathered around with what

seems to be a slightly more positive demeanor to

them. As you guys all get up there, Lily runs up

and gives you all an immediate hug and says,

“Thank you. I felt it lift. I felt the darkness in

my mind disappear. Whatever you did, it worked,

"you’ve lifted the curse.”

ZAC: Please, please, please, don’t shower us with

all of your riches and food and foul women–

IFY: This guy’s delirious, we’re fighting on

gold–

ZAC: If you must, if you must throw all of those

things at us as some sort of reward for the good

deed we have just done, that would be wonderful

and great.

MATT: All of them kind of look at each other, and

you can see there are a few people now stepped out

of the tents, some of them almost lepers in the

way that they’re bandaged, just going, uh, and the

old woman goes, “We haven’t much in the way of

food, but we’ve pooled our resources.” And she

looks to the halfling male, apparently the father

figure to Lily, who says, “A promise is a

"promise.” And he reaches back and he pulls out a

pouch. You can see it’s hefty, full of coins. And

looks to who to plop it to immediately.

IFY: It’s over here. He gave it away in the

battle.

ZAC: He’s not gonna catch it. He’s not gonna catch

it.

DAN: Oh yeah, great, make fun of the cripple.

IFY: Yeah, all right. You know, Lily, I just wanna

say, I really liked these moments we shared

together. I think that we make a good team, and

I’d love for you to continue on this adventure

with us so we can get to know each other.

DAN: The sandstones on this one.

IFY: You know, it’s like, you know, it’s like an

adventure date.

MATT: Make a persuasion roll against her father.

IFY: Nine.

MATT: She looks at you at you with a smile, looks

at her father who goes–

IFY: No, man, I saved your town.

MATT: “And you’ve been paid for it.”

IFY: All right, all right.

DAN: What about this? We want the crone with the

violin.

MATT: She looks ecstatic at the prospect that

somebody even noticed her playing, goes, “Can I?

"Can I?” Looks back at her and goes, “Certainly.”

“Great, I’ll get my stuff!”

ZAC: Are you sure?

DAN: I love music. Play something baroque.

MATT: She grabs in her tent and pulls out a small

sack, throws it over her shoulder. With the other

hand she pulls out this tiny, crappy-ass violin

that looks like it’s seen better days on the road,

and begins to play against the side of her

shoulder this withering 'eeeeeee’.

ZAC: Great, we now have the saddest fucking

traveling group of misfits I’ve

ever seen in my life.

IFY: Hey, let the dude with the nubs have his, you

know–

ZAC: Yeah, you got all the money, you handle the

money.

DAN: Classic dwarf dabs.

ZAC: He’s without fingers, I’ve got nothing out of

this.

DAN: I’ve got seven. Lucky number.

MATT: And with that, the legend of these

journeymen continues forward into the annals of

history. Well-played, guys.

(cheering)

MATT: So what is the name of your party? What is

the title of your traveling band?

MARISHA: What is it? Party title, party title.

ZAC: Nub 'n’ butters.

DAN: Nub 'n’ butters?

ZAC: It seems like something this guy would say.

IFY: The good, the rad, and the nubbly.

ZAC AND DAN: The good, the rad, and the nubbly.

MATT: The good, the rad, and the nubbly? I like

that.

MARISHA: All about that.

MATT: All right, you’ve seen and enjoyed the

adventure of the good, the bad– the good, the

rad, and the nubbly. Completely improvised

roleplaying experience.

ZAC: I’m the good.

MATT: Well done, guys, that was awesome, that was

fun to watch.

ZAC: Thank you, Matt, that was a lot of fun. This

was my first roleplaying experience ever.

TALIESIN: It was so good!

ZAC: Never done one before.

MARISHA: You looked so happy.

ZAC: This is fun. It’s a lot of fun. I didn’t have

friends growing up, so I never got to play this.

IFY: Should’ve went to those–

ZAC: No, there weren’t enough people, I lived in

the woods.

IFY: No, see, what I did is I went to the Gaia

forums, if you went to the Go Gaia forums–

DAN: Gaia? That little anime avatar? Super sick.

ZAC: We didn’t have internet. I didn’t know these

things existed.

MARISHA: I was the same way, I feel your pain.

LIAM: Classic tale of childhood innovation.

DAN: That’s so sad.

ORION: That’s gonna have to be integrated

somehow.

ZAC: All I hope is that the fans of Critical Role

got some enjoyment out of that and that we get

even an inkling of the fanart that you guys get

when you do your show.

MATT: Oh, I’m sure.

LIAM: Please, please, something!

MARISHA: I really wanna see Salty Pete with his

cape.

ZAC: Yeah, we didn’t really get a good description

of what you look like.

IFY: Oh, basically, you know, I look like a dark

iron orc, which is like a grayish stone skin, I’ve

got a Kimbo Slice beard going on.

DAN: Hell yes!

IFY: I have an iron chain around my neck at all

times over my chainmail and I got a stein with

brass knuckles as the handle.

(laughter)

IFY: And I always wear my gold sack just out.

DAN: Flaunt it.

IFY: So people know how much money I’m rocking

with.

ZAC: I basically look exactly like a tiefling

wearing a unicorn onesie for no apparent reason

whatsoever. I did cut a nice little tail-slot out

the back, though.

MATT: Good. That wasn’t confusing at all for the

horse you’ve been riding this whole time.

ZAC: Well, that horse has seen better days now.

MATT: Yeah.

MARISHA: What do you look like, Salty Pete?

DAN: Well, Salty Pete strikes an imposing figure,

he cuts a mean swath. Basically he’s wearing a

battered leather jerkin, some rich woolen pants to

get him through those salty nights on the open

seas. He also has a velvet doublet because you’ve

gotta treat yourself right every now and then, and

of course he’s never seen without his signature

black cape, which was once upon a time the flag

flying high above the masts on the Obsidian Helen,

the ship that he lusted after. He also has a

grizzled gray beard, not Kimbo Slice-esque, more

like Ser Davos Seaworthean in stature and size.

MARISHA: Nice.

MATT: Fantastic.

ZAC: We basically look like the most hilarious gay

bar troupe you could ever see.

(laughter)

ZAC: Straight out of central San Francisco.

MATT: I would party so hard with you guys.

ZAC: I’ve got these two on metal chains.

DAN: Well, I’m a polar bear.

MARISHA: (laughs) Metal chains. I’ve seen that at

anime conventions.

MATT: Get on it, artists.

ZAC: I’m pretty sure in West Hollywood I’ve seen

somebody walking down the street

in this exact getup.

MARISHA: I’m pretty sure I have. So here’s my

question. 'Cause was this your first time playing

D&D too, Dan?

DAN: No.

LIAM: No, hell no, you can tell.

MARISHA: But this was your first time.

ZAC: I’ve never done this, this was great.

MARISHA: Did you feel like it was intimidating,

the roleplaying aspect of it at first, and how–

did you feel any awkwardness easing into it?

ZAC: Well, we are on the internet in front of a

lot of people that are silently judging me. There

is that small factor. Also, there’s usually the

people sitting here that are fucking

professionals, so there is a slight bar that’s

really, really high, like, a little intimidation

there. The roleplaying part’s really fun. What I’m

intimidated by is just, this is a lot of stuff,

this is a lot of information and it’s a lot to

learn, I’m excited to learn, and I want to know

what all this stuff is, because I don’t want to

feel like a dumdum, and I feel kinda like a

dumdum. But this is great, this is so much fun.

But yeah, a little intimidated by how vast the

knowledge is that’s incorporated into this.

MATT: Yeah, it’s a lot to throw you at once. You

did really good with what was thrown at you.

TALIESIN: It does start to feel smaller. It does

eventually start to feel, it’s like learning how

to juggle, you’re like, ahh, and then suddenly it’s

like, okay.

DAN: Once you learn the basic math, it’s basically

just applying that to every situation, and once

you get that down, it’s just a matter of getting

into the minutiae. And that’s something that took me

a while, 'cause math was not my strong suit–

ZAC: Oh no.

DAN: Unless it’s the number one, which I’ll roll

all day everyday.

ZAC: Yeah, you were throwing number ones, man.

DAN: I thought it was golf. No, once you learn

that basic system, it’s really cool, because you

can extrapolate from that and apply it to every

situation.

ZAC: Nah.

IFY: What?

DAN: I mean, that’s literally how it works.

ZAC: I was gonna say we could elaborate on Ify’s

D&D experiences, but I’d prefer to not travel down

that trail.

IFY: Nah, I’ve been in a few groups. I’m currently

in a UCB group, and I usually tend to play, I’m

the guy who starts the fights all the time.

MATT: I had a feeling.

ZAC: Hector was in your group, and you guys killed

him off, right?

IFY: That was actually Dale, it wasn’t Darren,

he’s our only cleric and the one fight, the DM

told me that, like, the fight initiated, monster

went for Hector, critical hit, dead one shot, at

the beginning of the encounter.

DAN: Brutal, brutal.

IFY: And so the guys that I play with decided,

because Hector missed a few, so, we’ll just

resurrect him when he comes back. And so we were

playing last Sunday, and I was like, oh, what

about Hector? And he goes, yeah, how long until we

have to resurrect him? He goes, oh, it’s about ten

days. And I was like, how long has it been? He’s

like, in the game, it’s been about a month. So his

corpse is rotting.

MATT: Should’ve put that in my iCalendar. Oh

well.

MARISHA: Oh, we missed that resurrection

appointment. Reschedule.

ZAC: Can I take one small moment to say, I saw we

were at 3,170 subs, 30 more, we’ll do another

giveaway of a book and a picture. It will take us

a little bit to get the books, though, guys,

because I’m pretty sure you guys had something to

do with this, but in the last two weeks, all the

D&D handbooks on Amazon have been out of stock.

And they weren’t a month ago. We keep trying to

add them to our wishlist to get more, and they’re

just out of stock. So we’re working on getting

some more so we can do them for giveaways and

stuff, but when we get to 3,200, we’ll give away

some more. So sub if you can, it supports all of

us.

MATT: Thank you guys so much for watching. Any

last comments you want to make before we sign

off?

ZAC: Thank you, coaches.

LIAM: I would love it if, what was your name

again?

DAN: Who, me?

LIAM: No, the group, the group.

MATT, DAN, AND IFY: The good, the rad, and the

nubbly.

LIAM: The good, the bad, and the nubbly.

ZAC: The good, the rad, and the nubbly.

LIAM: The good, the rad, and the nubbly could come

back somehow and intersect with us.

DAN: A multiverse.

ZAC: If we cross your path, run away, just run the

fuck away, all right?

MARISHA: Oh shit, it’s the good, the rad, and the

nubbly. Run! Run! They’re the fuckups of Emon.

ZAC: You’ll see us coming from a hill a long way

away, the guy on the horse with the two dwarves on

chains and leather behind him.

MARISHA: You’re just that adventuring party where

whenever you roll into town we’re just like,

(sighs heavily)

TALIESIN: It’s like the Blue Beetle and Booster

Gold of the Critical Role–

DAN: Classic skates.

TALIESIN: Thank you, thank you.

ORION: And I’d like to say to everybody who’s

watching that had those questions about how do you

roleplay, how do you have fun, you just saw three

dudes with different levels of experience having

all an amazing time. And we loved every second of

watching it, so.

TALIESIN: Doing something totally different than

what we do.

ORION: No game has to be the same, you play it how

you want, and that’s a good time.

MARISHA: I actually had someone tweeting at me

being like, you know, talking about us mentioning

how you shouldn’t be intimidated by roleplaying,

they said yes, but, conversely, not everyone’s an

actor. And I just want to address that, like,

roleplaying has nothing to do with acting.

ZAC: I am not an actor. Not an actor.

MARISHA: Roleplaying isn’t about acting, it’s

about playing pretend. It’s about make-believe.

With emphasis on “playing”. So just play. It’s not

about coming up with a character and a motivation

and any of that. It’s just about playing.

ORION: Or that money.

MARISHA: Or that money.

IFY: It’s about the damn money, baby.

ZAC: Sometimes motivations are easy to come

by, just tap that different part of yourself–

IFY: Throw them gold pieces on the table. Throw

them gold pieces on the table.

ZAC: There’s a character inside each of you guys,

just tap into that inner Ify and just put it out

on the table.

MARISHA: As sarcastic as Zac is being, it’s

totally true.

ORION: It’s true, it is.

MARISHA: It’s totally true, like, if you guys

notice, they made their characters while Matt was

talking about DMing, and then they had fully

fleshed-out characters by the time they started

playing, and mainly that’s because they just had a

few solid ideas, and then their characters built

as the story unfolded. And that was great. That

was awesome.

MATT: And like I said earlier, if you are still

intimidated, don’t worry, you don’t have to come

out of the gate being completely open to it. Just

find your way in, play as comfortable as you are,

and work towards getting to that point where

you’re able to talk as that character, and just

notify the rest of the party and your DM that

you’re working on it. And let them be respectful,

and eventually you’ll find your way comfortable to

talk like it, if that’s what you want. Some games

just wanna be, you know, Diablo-style

dungeon-crawlers, kill shit, get loot, and that’s

totally fine too.

MARISHA: And seriously, if anyone judges you

because of your roleplaying, fuck them, they

shouldn’t be in your game anymore.

DAN: Sneak attack. They won’t expect it.

ZAC: Sneaky Pete 'em!

MATT: 5d6!

ZAC: Sneaky Pete 'em right in the face.

LIAM: Just be willing to be stupid, because that’s

half the fun.

DAN: Friendly fire is on.

IFY: I’m a big proponent of friendly fire.

DAN: Oh, Zac, do you like friendly fire?

IFY: Basically, quick story, last Sunday in our

group we kidnapped a guy 'cause we were

questioning him, and he just never was intimidated

by me because early in the game I tried to bluff

check to try and get him to give me 200 gold for

no reason, and rolled a one, and so we had him,

and so Dead Strongjaw is a barbarian, huge

barbarian, like I rolled hot that night, I had 21

strength, so I tried to punch him to knock him out

'cause he started screaming for help, we ran

inside his apartment, and I broke his jaw and we

dragged him into a nearby cave and–

MARISHA: Where is this going?

IFY: – so the whole time–

DAN: That man was Kanye West, through the wire.

IFY: So through that, our, we had this warlock or

wizard who summoned this infernal mastiff to ride,

and he was talking all this shit, so I rolled and

punched his mastiff, and since it was a spell, I

punched it out of existence, and that’s when the

archivist came to, and he was like, he just sees

me punch it, and I kept saying we are good people,

because I realized that I’m neutral good, so I

didn’t want to torture him. And then that’s when

the DM was like, just so you know, he came to, you

punched a devilish mastiff out of existence, and

yelled, “We’re good people!”

over and over to him.

MATT: That’s a way to get it across. That’s the

kind of shit that happens, yeah. Well guys, thank

you so much for watching. I hope it’s been

semi-informative, at the very least fun to watch.

We’ll definitely be up next week for the

continuation of the Critical Role storyline,

picking up where K'Varn was defeated in the depths

of the Temple of Yug'voril, the Illithid city deep

beneath Kraghammer and see where the party goes

from there.

ZAC: Yay, I’m excited!

(cheering)

MATT: A big round of applause for our coaches and

hanging out here tonight, big round of applause–

ZAC: Happy birthday, Liam!

ALL: Happy birthday, Liam!

ORION: Where’s your cake?

MARISHA: Where is your cake?

LIAM: I dunno.

ZAC: We had a cake for Liam. We gotta sing happy

birthday. We have to sing happy birthday

with the cake!

MARISHA: The non-licensed happy birthday, at

least.

ZAC: Oh, fuck it, we’re gonna sing the licensed

one, what are they gonna do?

MARISHA: Yeah, fuck you, Twitch!

ZAC: Do you really think that we’re so on key

that–

DAN: Winston Birthday is gonna sue us. Please.

MARISHA: (laughs) Winston Birthday.

ZAC: Oh my gosh. We also have shirts for sale,

guys! It’s so hard.

DAN: That was an amazing segue.

ORION: That was very Paul Blart, dude.

TALIESIN: No, no.

ZAC: My brain never stops thinking about how in

the world we’re gonna make this thing survive

forever. Gotta get those subs and sell those

shirts. By the way, guys, omgsteve from Team

Hooman came by today, here’s here now, he’s been

watching, hope you had a good time. You wanna wave

hi to everybody?

MATT: Yeah, come on, say hello!

ZAC: Come around back and say hello. Omgsteve is a

great member of our community for Team Hooman, we

have the best community–

(cheering)

ZAC: He brought Liam cake and tasty treats, like,

thank you so much.

ORION: Oh, you’re responsible for the potato

balls! Yes!

TALIESIN: Oh, thank, oh it was amazing.

MATT: You saved my ass. I didn’t have enough time

to get lunch today, and I came in and you’d

brought all that, I was like, ahh, thank you.

TALIESIN: We were waiting in line for potato balls

and–

MARISHA: And we had to leave.

TALIESIN: – and then we got here and there were

potato balls.

MARISHA: I locked my keys in the car.

ALL: (sing) Happy birthday to you, happy

birthday to you, happy birthday dear Liam… and

Laura, happy birthday to you! (cheering)

MARISHA: Cake attack.

LIAM: That’s mine right there.

TALIESIN: Classic birthday.

MARISHA: Classic birthday.

DAN: Classic pastry slicer.

(laughter)

MATT: Thank you guys so much.

MARISHA: Huzzah!

LIAM: Goodnight!

MATT: Have a wonderful evening, we’ll see you next

week.

ALL: Bye!