Transcript:Talks Machina 13: A Bard's Lament & Daring Days

Thanks to a fanmade CR transcript for the "After Dark" segment!

After Dark
BRIAN: Good evening welcome back to the same show on a different network owned by the same company. We're back on Alpha. Project Alpha. Questions from the Alpha chat.

SAM: I'm posting a picture right now.

BRIAN: Sam.

SAM: Yes.

BRIAN: Let me find one for you at once. If Scanlan and Tyrion meet –

SAM: Taryon.

BRIAN: I pronounce the names on this show – would Matt have to play one or would it look like a fit of schizophrenia? This is from Samuel… Deiter?

SAM: Matt, how do you do that? Have you ever had a situation like this before in any of your games?

LIAM: Just compare to all the other D&D shows before this one.

MATT: I talk to myself all the time. I could see you pulling it off, but that'd be a discussion we'd have to have about what you'd be comfortable with.

SAM: Is that like before we were talking about, Taryon and Scanlan would talk about what they're comfortable with sexually first?

MATT: Yes, because you don't want to make you or you uncomfortable.

SAM: Taryon's cool with it, but Scanlan's not.

LAURA: Full-on graphic description.

SAM: …he strokes the shaft…

(all groaning)

SAM: Of the flute, of the flute.

BRIAN: This show is on the internet, but not that internet.

SAM: I'd be down for schizophrenia. Or I bet he could do a mean impression.

MATT: I don't know. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

TALIESIN: I enjoyed the cadence. I was having a lot of fun trying to fake Scanlan.

SAM: You did great.

BRIAN: G. W. Morris 68 wants to know, how did the cast feel when Ty-ron revealed he didn't know anyone's name?

LAURA: It was appropriate.

TRAVIS: Loved it.

BRIAN: I loved everyone going “…”

LAURA: Oh shit, we never said our name.

MARISHA: It just seems like something we'd do.

LIAM: He learned my name.

LAURA: Yeah, of course he did.

BRIAN: Sam how did it feel changing to a smaller mug and where is the bucket now?

SAM: As you ask that question, the mug is behind your head on the shelf right now. It's literally right there.

(all laughing)

SAM: I can see it. It's literally behind you.

Brian turns to look.

BRIAN: That's the same one?

SAM: Yep. That is the mug. Sharing television space with you.

LAURA: Is that [the one he's using now] the one I gave you? I gave you the little gold one.

SAM: I only own one of those, so yes.

BRIAN: Where'd you get it?

LAURA: I don't remember.

TALIESIN: Bed, Bath & Beyond?

LAURA: Something like that.

BRIAN: Ren Faire, probably. One of the free ones they give you.

SAM: The big mug was there to give a sense of size to make me seem smaller and now I don't need that anymore and so I'm– yeah yeah, I don't need the big mug.

BRIAN: Now you can get coffee in your bleached goatee out of a regular-sized mug like the rest of us.

SAM: Which the Bee Gee that I gave as a reference, Max? Uh, Matt? For–

LAURA: You just called him Max.

SAM: Yeah I did, that's my son's name.

MATT: Aw, thank you!

LAURA: I told you, he's like a dad!

MATT: I don't honestly know any distinguishing characteristics between any of the Bee Gees. They're just a bunch of guys with beards and feathered hair.

SAM: I gave one of the Bee Gees as a visual reference.

BRIAN: The guy with the hair and the super-high voice?

SAM: Yep, that's the one.

LAURA: The main singer, right?

Denise says something offscreen.

BRIAN: What Denise?

DENISE: Barry Gibb?

SAM: Barry Gibb?

MATT: Sure.

SAM: Sure, maybe.

TALIESIN: They have names?

BRIAN: Denise are you big on fucking Bee Gees trivia? What the hell? Denise is a closet Bee Gees fan.

MATT: Do not free Denise.

BRIAN: Can't free Denise, she'll drive around town blasting fucking Bee Gees.

MATT: It takes all our effort weekly to keep her from escaping. Do not free Denise.

BRIAN: For everyone, does Tearie get Scanlan's room in Greyskull keep now?

ALL: No.

TRAVIS: That's hell.

LAURA: There's a guest room. A couple guest rooms for statesmen that come to visit.

TALIESIN: There's also the cells in the basement.

MARISHA: That's like mom's boyfriend moving into your old room after you go to college.

BRIAN: Laura, how hard was it trying to do the right thing and give Grog his deck back with him being so blindly trusting you already had?

LAURA: I know, right? At the time it felt right, it felt like something Grog didn't need to have, but after everything with Scanlan and realizing how shitty it feels when your trust is betrayed. She didn't want to do that to Grog. And you [Travis] had just fucking guilted me and said Vex is one of the only people he trusts.

TRAVIS: I did. You stemmed games and games worth of guilt trips I'd planned.

TALIESIN: I feel a little cheated.

TRAVIS: I made you suffer for it as long as I could in that transaction.

LAURA: Yeah. I appreciate that. It was shitty that you didn't know I took ‘em. And then you didn't get that I was giving them back.

TALIESIN: I was going to give you a bunch of fake cards like flash paper.

LAURA: Dammit, we should've talked about it.

BRIAN: I don't know if it looks like this to the folks at home, but it looks like the crew during break brought all their cars in and turned theIir headlights on. Matt, question for you.. that disappeared because I just got sent a bunch more and it's moving without me touching it. The power of technology is amazing. What's the difference between Exalted and Awakened vestiges?

MATT: That will go into further detail in the campaign guide. I defined it as we got the vestiges. As you guys began to find them, I liked the idea of them growing.

LAURA: Some never will never exalt.

MATT: You got them when they were already exalted.

LAURA: Mine wasn't.

MATT: Yours was.

LAURA: Mine's exalted?!

MATT: Yep.

LAURA: But mine doesn't say exalted.

MATT: Because when I gave you the sheet I hadn't defined all those things yet.

TRAVIS: She has been trying to be so good to get that shit exalted.

LAURA: Fucking hell, I've got all this fucking shit I've been working on–

TALIESIN: You mean character development?

ALL: Ohhhh!

LAURA: Mother fuck.

LIAM: Lawful Good is the only way.

MATT: There are the three tiers. There's dormant, which is like levels…level 7 or so. Then there's Awoken which is level 8 to 14ish or so recommended level range, and then Exalted is the third, legendary epic.

BRIAN: What's Cable's Ruin?

MATT:

LAURA: Exalted, right?

MATT: Just got exalted, yeah.

TALIESIN: I'm looking forward to talking to Kit about the design of that.

MARISHA: Your dope cloak?

TALIESIN: Yeah.

BRIAN: Question for Liam. Since your beard is shaved can you divulge what the project was?

LIAM: I cannot.

BRIAN: Moving on. Marisha and Laura: Boulder, Parchment, Shears shirt coming soon?

(all talking)

TALIESIN: If we do symbols instead of words it doesn't matter.

(shirt planning)

MARISHA: We'll talk about it.

SAM: How do you define a boulder versus just a rock? Put a little man next to it?

(all talking)

BRIAN: What do we do about the intro?

MATT: We shot the intro specifically not naming the characters, just the actors, so if any character died or were replaced, it was still about the actors and the characters were just a Vox Machina setting for that.

BRIAN: Can we still blur him out though?

LAURA: Just a big X on the screen.

SAM: The Family Feud X? I will gladly reshoot ‘cause I want to be a handsome Andy Gibb.

LAURA: It would be pretty great.

TALIESIN: We could talk to Brian about getting some obnoxious armor.

LAURA: Honestly, we'd just need Ashley. Reshoot you and Ash.

MARISHA: We'd have to re-edit the whole thing.

LAURA: Oh yeah, it'd be a huge fucking problem.

LIAM: What if Pike was hit with love at first sight with Taryon?

TALIESIN: Don't even go there.

SAM: That would be amazing.

BRIAN: Any advice for someone trying to homebrew naval combat rule and ship stats? I apologize in advance for giving Matt ideas.

MATT: Know a lot of things about naval combat that I don't? So look those up.

BRIAN: Will Friedel knows everything about naval combat.

MATT: Get Will Friedle to help you with your homebrew rules and ask him when he's a guest on Talks Machina in the future. Search online, there's a lot of great communities online that have already home-brewed that. Find what you like, what works, and just extract them.

TALIESIN: What's the website you go to find this stuff?

MATT: There's the DM's Guild, a community for people to upload projects and set prices or support artists. A lot of great forums, EN World, D&D wiki [ed note: do not go here for anything]… Google's your friend. Hate to be that guy, but it has better answers than I do.

BRIAN: Even when you're that guy, you're still great, Matt. Question for Vox Machina: was it intentional that no one made an insight check during Tary's sob session?

LAURA: Just distracted. That's why I did an insight check later on him because I thought about it immediately afterwards.

SAM: My acting was too captivating.

LAURA: It really was.

BRIAN: We have to do one more question and then we have to leave so Denise can get off to her meeting.

SAM: I will say this Brian. Spoiler, I was not ready to tell you guys any of that stuff.

BRIAN: That's cool. Would you say your comfort with the current host helped you open up to share that kind of stuff?

SAM: I support that statement wholeheartedly specifically because ‘current host' implies there will be another host.

BRIAN: There will. They gave me that contract where it was like Conan O'Brien in the 90s, week by week. Every Tuesday I get in and there's this conference table, really, really long. Total blackness at the end. Picture a beautiful, highly intelligent technical director named Denise petting a dark, scary cat–

SAM: Picturing mid-80s Vannah White.

BRIAN: I see late-90s, but mid-80s… Well, that's all the time we have for tonight. Thank you again for watching Talks Machina… During Dark. See you next week. Goodnight everybody!