Probably Bad 27: Pencil, Paper and a Live Show

D&Daniel

It’s a very special time of year you know the one, the anniversary of the probably bad podcast.  To celebrate it, we did a live show on the information superhighway, with the loving support of Hedwig and Carlo, and you, whatever you are

\*opening music\*

Paper

Do-do we have faces?

Nick

We have faces

Paper

We have faces!

Pencil

2020’s looking up

Paper

Welcome to our faces

Pencil

Welcome to our livestream! I’m Mod Pencil, this is what I look like

Paper

\*giggles\* I’m Paper and this is a livestream which is definitely bad

Pencil

You’re now going to hear what we sound like when Nick can’t edit out all of the terrible things that I say, so I apologise for that

Paper

I give it 10 minutes until one of us forgets how the English language works

\*goose noise\*

Pencil

Making a cup of tea was a good move I can just do a tea sip every time someone says something

Paper

And chat has discovered the sound alerts. Shall we do an idea before we drown in geese and Godzillas?

Pencil

We can! Everyone feel free to listen to the idea if you have like a spare time between Godzillas. So our first idea was submitted by TD Whisperer

Paper

It’s also one of the most popular ideas that we posted in 2020

Pencil

So congratulations TD Whisperer, you win a live show. “A dragon who runs an orphanage. Their horde is the children they raise

Paper

So I seem to remember, this spawned a whole discussion about whether the dragon kills parents and then adopts the orphans, or just goes around finding orphans, and I feel like it’s important to establish which is true

Pencil

Like, I feel what you have, is you have a dragon that kills parents and adopts the orphans, and then a second dragon who shows up to rescue those orphans and adopt them itself

Paper

That makes sense because the first dragon is

Pencil

So it’s a cycle of

Paper

Probably a bad parent

Pencil

Yeah. Someone has asked whether the provenance of orphans really matters that much. I feel it does when the provenance is “I’m doing a murder”

Paper

I would argue *legally* the provenance of orphans is quite important

Pencil

The reasons a technicality, whether or not someone is an orphan because you murdered their parents, it shows up on some forms sometimes I think

Paper

I think it’s under the Baudelaires Law?

\*loud noises\*

Pencil

Sorry my neighbours have decided to join in the livestream

Paper

\*cackles\* So there is also the question of when they become adults do they still count as orphans for the dragon’s purposes or are they all just kicked out at 18? Or possibly consumed at 18

Pencil

That’s..if the dragon takes the orphans like

Paper

‘Cos if the dragon’s adopted them, it has total control over their diet, so it can flavour them just right

Pencil

I like how we’ve gone from a fairly wholesome like y’know the dragon’s adopting orphans to the dragon is fattening up orphans in order to eat them at 18

Paper

It’s farm to table!

Pencil

What happens when...if you were an adult when your parents died and now a dragon’s trying to adopt you, says Hedwighood. I feel you’re getting adopted by a dragon is what’s happening there

Paper

Yeah good luck stopping the dragon from adopting you

Pencil

Like, a dragon is just like...I feel there’s at least three dragons. So there’s the dragon that makes orphans, which is a lovely euphemistic way of putting it, there’s the dragon that adopts orphans, and then there’s the final dragon who at the age of 18 adopts those orphans

Paper

Oh so it’s like a halfway house for when they’re making their way into adulthood

Pencil

But run by dragons. I guess the other alternative is the dragon like, lets them out when they’re an adult, but by dragon standards, so when they’re like 200

Paper

That is a good point! What if the dragon’s like “none of my children make it to maturity” and ends up having OFSTED called on them by another dragon who’s concerned for the children’s welfare

Pencil

So the campaign idea is you are OFSTED inspectors trying to inspect this dragon school in a cave

Paper

I’m...I’m just concerned whether the dragon can adequately provide for the welfare of all of these orphans

Pencil

Like, ok. I’m not...not to like be a downer but I’m 100% sure that this dragon cannot provide for the welfare of all of these orphans, it’s a dragon, so like a giant flesh eating lizard who lives in a hole

Paper

Hey some dragons live in forests! You’ve heard of forest schools

Pencil

Ok so maybe the dragon, ‘cos dragons are rich, so the dragon just pays people to come and look after its orphans and I think what I’m making here is dragon Batman? Ever since the dragon’s parents were shot in an alleyway, the dragon has been adopting orphans and making them into little dragons in like, cardboard dragon costumes and sending them off to fight whatever dragons fight, knights I guess

Paper

The problem is though modern media really likes to focus on the origins of Batdragon rather than what it actually does once it has all of the orphans

Pencil

There are too many people who associate with Joker-Manticore, its arch-nemesis

Paper

What would Alfred be in this situation, because I’m imagining a kobold in a tuxedo

Pencil

I’m either imagining a kobold in a tuxedo or just exactly the same, it’s just an old man who is just there waiting on this dragon

Paper

Michael Caine is just in a cave

Pencil

To be honest I would watch a movie that’s just Michael Caine in a cave trying to emotionally support this dragon. I’d also love one where Michael Caine is a kobold but he’s just wearing a bad plastic halloween lizard mask

Paper

YES! I reckon he’d be up for it, he did Miss Congeniality, he’d be up for it

Pencil

Ezriel von LMA in the chat “broke: dragons want young princesses because they eat them, woke: dragons want young princesses because they need occasional babysitters”

Paper

But then when they go out they destroy the princess’s castle so that the princess is now an orphan, and then adopt her. It’s self-perpetuating

Pencil

I adopt all my babysitters

Paper

Doesn’t everyone?

Pencil

There’s a sentence that’ll be interesting out of order...out of context. Already losing my grasp of English, guys. Yeah so how...ok so we’ve got Batdragon...sorry I was going to go onto other ideas but why does Batdragon assume people’d be more scared of bats than they will be of a dragon? I feel when

Paper

It’s the one thing that dragons fear, it’s like when humans are afraid of mice, which is just like a smaller? A smaller one?

Pencil

Yeah bat...dragons have like damage resistance against everything except being hit with a bat

Paper

Dragons see one bit of guano and put bat traps all around the cave, they don’t wanna see that

Pencil

So it’s like spiders to humans I guess

Paper

The difference between a bat and a rat is one letter and one pair of wings

Pencil

Like every year 500 dragons are just devoured to the bone by a single bat

Paper

The statistic that the average dragon eats two bats a year is inaccurate. Bat Georg, who lives in a cave…

Pencil

So I feel we’ve got a pretty solid grasp of the identity of our dragon adopter, which I think is “weird princess kidnapping batman who is terrified of bats and is a dragon and has a kobold looking after them”

Paper

This is just a straightforward story idea there

Pencil

Yeah. So how would they show up in an actual D&D campaign?

Paper

I mean I think the obvious answer is someone keeps killing parents

Pencil

Ok yeah I suppose that is a plot hook. I do like the idea of you go to a town and just every single person there is an orphan because of a tragic dragon-related accident

Paper

If someone gets pregnant in the town presumably they hide it for as long as possible, ‘cause as soon as the dragon finds out they’ve had a kid…

Pencil

It’s like Hot Fuzz except that it’s dragons instead of like middle-aged white people. Hang on it’s not like Hot Fuzz at all what the fuck am I talking about?

Paper

I was wondering. It’s more like Children of Men

Pencil

So my reasoning was Hot Fuzz is like oh there’s all these accidents and it actually turns out it’s this secret cult, and it was going to be like that except it’s a dragon and then I realised there’s actually quite a lot of things happening in Hot Fuzz that are not really related to orphans

Paper

I mean very little of Hot Fuzz is related to orphans I would say

Pencil

I only watch movies for the parts that could theoretically cause an orphan. I just gloss over the rest

Paper

So we’re gonna take some questions from the chat, but we do have one from one of our lovely patrons to start off with. So Anceline wants to know what was the first campaign that we played in?

Pencil

So the first campaign I played in I was...I was playing a genius orc, and we were going into the woods, and we were going to solve mysterious disappearances that were happened. It wasn’t dragon related sadly, and I, being not a particularly good D&D player at that point, decided to set the forest on fire just to see what would happen. What happened was that the powerful druid who we were meant to be fighting showed up pissed off. We had to fight them. We tied them up and then gave them to the town guard, who were like level 1 or 2 as opposed to this level \*inaudible\* druid, and then we just left. We were informed by the GM that shortly after that the town was destroyed by a level 15 druid as soon as they woke up and were no longer, like, unconscious. But we weren’t there, so it still counts

Paper

You tried

Pencil

Yeah, it was saved for the period we were there

Paper

Yeah?

Pencil

And isn’t that what matters

Paper

I’m just...is this a pattern with you though because the first game I was in with you a forest was burned down

Pencil

Forests are just very burnable, y’know

Paper

I mean they are quite flammable but that’s...it’s weird that it happened twice

Pencil

I invented the gender reveal party in RPG campaigns

Paper

Oh no. So my first campaign was somewhat less whacky. My character was a gnome ranger, because I liked that it sounded kind of like Lone Ranger, I was not very creative. But we ended up going through an entire dungeon backwards, ‘cause we ended up finding the wrong entrance first. Which was an interesting ‘cause there was kind of stuff like “ok we’ve gone through this empty room and now there’s a trapped dorway that’s gonna set off a trap behind us”

Pencil

I mean, if you’re in a trap-filled dungeon that’s a weirdly good move? You step on a pressure plate and just behind you an axe comes down and you’re like “ok. That’s fine” then you just keep going

Paper

I mean it’s a good way to trap someone in a dungeon

Pencil

Also all the monsters will be expecting to see your face and when they don’t they’ll be very confused. I don’t know why I’m picturing you physically walking backwards through the dungeon but it is what I’m picturing

Paper

I mean it did also mean that we ended up meeting the dragon of the dungeon many levels too early

Pencil

So it was just like you go to this door, open it, and there’s just a dragon setting up a boss battle

Paper

Basically. And we just kind of went around it?

Pencil

We’ll come back in a few levels, sorry for the bother

Paper

I mean, we did. We ended up killing it by like, blasting glitter in its eyes and shooting it just a whole lot, by that point I had a thing where I could shoot six arrows in a turn…

Pencil

That is a lot of arrows

Paper

Because 3.5

Pencil

And now who will save Gotham

Paper

Don’t worry that wasn’t Batdragon, that was Banedragon, who was born in darkness

Pencil

All dragons are at least one Batman character. By listening to this pod...livestream you have made that canon in your campaign I’m afraid

Paper

Yeah it’s weird but we don’t make the rules, we just enforce them

Pencil

If you check Twitch terms and conditions...don’t bother checking that but it does say it in there. Does anyone else have any questions or do I have to like, be creative

Paper

Yeah we are opening up to questions from chat

Pencil

This is probably a mistake but we’ll see what happens

Paper

In the meantime did you know that we have a patreon?

Pencil

It has

Paper

It’s right down here! We have bonus episodes and...what else do we have? We have a server where we’ve played some D&D

Pencil

We have homebrew made by us!

Paper

Yeah this months one was clowns

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

You ever wanted to play a clown?

Pencil

You’re like one of the five people our podcast is targeted towards

Paper

(addressing chat) Is “why” a question or just a reaction?

Pencil

To answer the question, someone had to make clowns. Right, actual questions

Paper

I’m like Batman, I made the clowns so I could be less afraid of the clowns

Pencil

To be fair every night Mod Paper does dress as a clown and go fight crime

Paper

Yeah it’s...I mean it’s been difficult to do that while being covid compliant but I’m quite good at archery

Pencil

That’s why you have the clown lens. Anyway we should answer questions rather than discussing your secret identity

Paper

Yes!

Pencil

Ok

Paper

An actual question

Pencil

G...Jim...Jimcewind says “how are you so awesome?” Repeated human sacrifices

Paper

I don’t have a funny answer. I just do things and sometimes people like it?

Pencil

Ok. Hedwighood. “Favourite bit of worldbuilding you’ve ever done for one of your campaigns?”

Paper

Oh gosh

Pencil

Let me think. Like, I’m doing a superhero campaign at the moment set in Mutants and Masterminds, and you have the trope of oh you have Evil World, you have Everyone’s An Animal World and so forth and so forth and somehow they all turn out the same even though a world where all the heroes are villains and vice versa would be wildly different, and you also have the question of like, you have an infinite number of universes, and you also have dimension travellers, and why do not all keep bumping into each other? So yeah I managed...I came up with like, you have the real world, and then you just have infinite possible worlds that don’t actually exist until someone goes there. And thus you can have an infinite dimensional travelling thing, but you don’t actually have to worry about an infinite number of me dimension travelling across dimensions as well, and because the worlds are based around you as they are created, that’s why it’s like oh it’s an Evil World and so forth. So that was my vague attempt to make a common but when you think about it completely nonsensical trope work

Paper

I like that a lot

Pencil

But yeah, so yeah, thing...it’s also why you can have time travel travel to the future without all of you meeting because they come from a potential future which is only made real once someone time travels there

Paper

You can tell you’re a philosopher with all of the \*inaudible\*

Pencil

My philosophy degree came in useful for precisely one thing

Paper

I’m struggling, it’s probably...so I recently made a new setting where I was trying to have the, the races sort of act a bit differently to how they generally are, and in the process ended up making imperialist halflings

Pencil

I do...halflings should have more chance to be the villains

Paper

Well the thing is, ‘cause I was thinking about how halflings are very like, y’know especially in the more sort of obviously Tolkein rip-off stuff they’re just kind of “we just want to leave well enough alone, and observe our traditions” and I realised that they sound like Tories. So I just kind of went from there, and now they’re incredibly oppressive and backward people who don’t let the other races within their sort of continent follow their own culture because it’s different and weird and they’re trying to change things and we don’t like it

Pencil

Yeah the orcs are like the technological race in The Lord of the Rings and it would be interesting to have a sort of progressive orcs vs Tory hobbits. Also yeah, Merry and Pippin both did vote Brexit

Paper

That is canon Tolkein’s ghost told me

Pencil

Next one. “Which class is the worst, just like the absolute worst?” Bourgeoisie

Paper

Just trying to get us cancelled

Pencil

I think, like monk always just seems weirdly superfluous and sort of \*inaudible\* abilities, and vaguely racist. I don’t know if I would say it is racist but it’s a bit weird, it also doesn’t do a huge amount

Paper

See I was thinking fighter, ‘cos you, you’ve already got all these different things of “I fight this way” or “I fight that way”, like especially since you’ve got the barbarians as well? Like you’ve got fights-with-weapons-and-is-strong covered I think? And then you just have fighters that’s like “hello, my class name is the most generic, I’m gonna punch something now, with a sword”

Pencil

Yeah I feel fighters definitely need more cool things, like 2 swords

Paper

Yeah none of the subclasses inspire me at all

Pencil

No. Honestly what I think you need is magical fighters

Paper

I think one of the newer subclasses is kind of a magical fighter but I mean if you want a magical fighter you could probably just make that a subclass of one of the many many magical classes

Pencil

My controversial D&D opinion is I actually really liked Tome of Battle, which is the one that gives all of the fighters the ability to fight so hard they can shoot fireballs at stuff

Paper

See that’s more interesting that just “hi I have a sword and my ability is I can sword good”

Pencil

Yeah if you fight well enough you can do magic. I don’t know how well we answered that question but we certainly...yeah fighters suck

Paper

I mean do we ever really answer questions well? We just kind of talk until we run out of words and then do another question

Pencil

Speaking of which our next question is “how do you effectively homebrew spells?” Bold of you to assume we do that

Paper

I’ve done it a couple of times

Pencil

I meant effectively

Paper

Oh

Pencil

I was doing a self-deprecation. Yeah I think generally the way I homebrew spells is I think the main thing is to focus on...because there are a lot of spells in D&D

Paper

Yeah there’s ever-increasing numbers of spells

Pencil

So I think the main thing you want to focus on is why would someone choose this spell? Because if you have a spell that just does straight damage people are just going to go for magic missile or fireball, they’re not going to read through the dozens and dozens of spells that just do damage, so I think the most important thing is just why would someone - apparently my name on screen says Paper

Paper

Yeah mine says my actual name I just didn’t bother to change it

Pencil

Yeah why would someone use this spell, why would someone go to the time of remembering what this spell does. I think that is...because then like all of the stat stuff can usually like go by ear

Paper

Yeah like if you find something that has a sort of analogous effect or level of effect and then sort of basically make sure you don’t exceed that in terms of cost or sort of power. Feel like it’s hard to make the answer to this funny but it’s genuinely just “sit down and think for like half an hour”

Pencil

To make up for the lack of a joke please have this dab. So, next question is from Blue Flame Spirit “what class do you want to see in D&D?” A man who shoots snakes from his hands

Paper

It’s tricky I think because most of what you would want to do, if we’re talking D&D specifically, is covered by one of the existing once, but it’s subclasses where you can have fun, like how I wanted a sin eater subclass that was more historically accurate so we just made one

Pencil

Yeah I think that if there is anything that sort of is missing from D&D it might be a monster class, like you can play monsters but it’s always been a bit clunky, and yeah maybe a class that was specifically ah yeah you’re a troll or something. I think

Paper

So sort of a class whose whole thing is “I want to cause problems on purpose”

Pencil

I guess yeah, a class whose whole purpose is you deliberately ignore what the DM says

Paper

That is the worst RPG idea

Pencil

It is, it is essentially a thing anyway, might as well lean into it. Like you have a move where every time the GM says “this happens” you can say “no it doesn’t”. Like, “a dragon attacks you” “no it doesn’t”

Paper

I guess a class that is very very minor god could be quite fun

Pencil

Yeah. That’s the sort of thing that I was thinking like, would maybe lead to the problem of it being a bit too chosen-one-y like if one of you is a god it’s a bit sort of...but yeah

Paper

I mean it depends how good you are at being a god

Pencil

True. Blue Flame Spirit in the chat has said that they want to see a warlord class which actually yeah some kind of a leader/general/noble class might be…

Paper

Yeah because you get it as a background but then it always feels weird to be like “I have all of these followers and resources and theoretically a whole bunch of skills but am also level one”

Pencil

Actually yeah a class whose whole thing is “I work through minions” might be interesting

Paper

Or possibly like, like a playable commoner class

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

Where you start out as just some random person and you pick up like, actually useful lifeskills and are basically the party adult

Pencil

Yeah it’s been...sure you can shoot fireballs from your hands but do you know how to do the washing up? Didn’t think so. Yeah you still wanna be like...it’s something we’ve vaguely attempted to do, but just a grabbag class where rather than like oh yeah I am good at one thing it’s like oh yeah I can do a little bit of magic and a little bit of fighting and so forth and so forth

Paper

Yeah I think, I think that would be interesting, like a jack of all trades kind of thing

Pencil

Yeah everyone is suggesting the mum-friend class as well. I have plus 10 in competence

Paper

‘Cos think is like I know that a lot of it would be sort of RP to actually have that role, but right now it’s basically if there’s a cleric or a paladin they’re also the grown-up, and i think there should also be a grown-up class, so that you can have wacky clerics and paladins! Like yes I’m lawful and I’m nice but I’m also a dumbass

Pencil

Like, have you seen the post about that’s like how well-adjusted people don’t go on quests and it’s like “come see your...come abandon your family, come fight a dragon with me” and then it’s like “no, fuck off”. It’s just that. You’re just that guy who’s just like forced to go along on the quest despite having no applicable skills but does know how to pay taxes

Paper

It’s Bilbo Baggins

Pencil

Yeah you’re Bilbo Baggins essentially is what we’re saying. Having left the Shire after they voted for Brexit

Paper

They...you’ve left your Tory hobbit-hole and you’re applying your general life-skills to keeping this band of brave idiots alive

Pencil

Bilbo Baggins is like the one woke hobbit

Paper

That’s certainly a claim you’ve made there

Pencil

Tolkein is dead and cannot refute me

Paper

The author is dead, long live fanon. Gandalf would be the grown-up except sometimes he’s too busy getting high with his wizard friends

Pencil

Like, yeah Gandalf’s the grown-up who every so often you see wearing a rave shirt, smoking a blunt, and doing other cool things which I’m aware of what they are and it’s just “oh yeah you’re actually just a mystical fuck-up wearing and old person suit” which

Paper

(in response to chat) Oh god it is the rallying cry of Supernatural. Also, not related, but related in my brain I keep thinking today about how ear poison in Hamlet is fanon and everyone has just decided that that’s what happened and it bothers me and entertains me in equal amount

Pencil

Hope you’re enjoying coming here for all of the hottest Hamlet takes

Paper

I mean, I didn’t even do English at A-level but I’m married to an English grad, so...who has validated my opinion that ear poison is fanon

Pencil

Mpanghetti asks “when you start with a character concept and import it to D&D how do you decide whether to homebrew it…” sorry halfway through your question it jumped to the bottom of the screen “how do you decide whether to homebrew a new class rather than multiclassing or flavouring the hell out of an existing class?”

Paper

Generally I don’t really like homebrewing on the fly

Pencil

Yeah i think

Paper

‘Cos generally I think it’s a question of do I have something or can I find something that fits, or am I just gonna heavily season a warlock or something

Pencil

Yeah generally when I go for wacky classes what I do is I pick either a wizard or a warlock and like just choose spells and reflavour them. I think that the ability to reflavour your spells in D&D is a thing that they should have. Like if I homebrew I think I’ll make one that’s like entirely around homebrew, like, if that makes sense. (tripping over words) for example you could do a more sci-fi thing with warlocks where you have an alien symbiote and it gives you like mutations and stuff if you reflavour it enough that could be a thing, or you could do a fighter and reflavour it so you’re a puncher

Paper

Yeah ‘cos it’s like in the campaign that I’m just starting to run we have someone who, rather than a...what’s the word...I’ve forgotten the name of the class, the one where you make things

Pencil

Artificer?

Paper

Artificer! Rather than an artificer class he’s gone for wizard but reflavoured it so he has little inventions and machines that do the spell effects, and I think something like that is really interesting ‘cos it’s like “I want this effect and this flavour so I’m just gonna sort of mix them up together”

Pencil

Yeah, like I saw a D&D...I don’t know why my voice has stopped working...I saw a D&D just complete reskin where the classes were just magic person, sneaky person, and fighty person, and you just refluffed those however you wanted, which is maybe a bit far off the point but it’s an interesting technique

Paper

Yeah I think that’s where sort of non-D&D systems come in, where there’s a lot more room to mess around, like something like FATE where it’s like this is my character’s personality and here’s where I can do things

Pencil

And here’s where I punch people with it. Okay. Sorry I’m not getting a huge number of jokey answers but you’re all asking sensible questions like nerds. From Hedwighood “favourite RPG system that is not D&D”

Paper

Oh gosh it depends what you want

Pencil

I really like the cipher system

Paper

Which system?

Pencil

The cipher system

Paper

I don’t know that one

Pencil

It’s essentially a system where everything just has a ranking from 1-10 and all your things are just like low in the rank and if you’re low enough you can just do it like automatically and it also has like, like all of character things just different powers so it’s very easy to go “this is what you can do, this is how it applies” and you also have a bunch of random magical objects you can use. Also if I may be incredibly hipster the system I’ve been playing a lot lately is role-playing game/creative writing exercise called wretched and alone where the premise is you are some person who is in a terrible situation you must survive and you need to record your story of trying to survive this and it has a lot of things that are like you have a jenga tower and a deck of cards and if you draw a wrong card you die and if the jenga tower falls down you die and if you run out of cards you die and there’s like one very narrow way that you might survive but it’s trying to kill you. It is good but quite a lot of the sort of settings are free

Paper

Yeah it sounds interesting. Possibly not for me but it sounds interesting

Pencil

Yeah like it is a solo RPG. ‘cause that’s what 2020’s driven me to, sitting alone playing D&D in my room

Paper

You say that like you’re not in like 4 different RPG campaigns

Pencil

I am in so many RPGs, I joined a new one..but yes what is your favourite system?

Paper

I’m torn because I think it really depends what kind of game you want to play. Like for one shots it’s...I’d go for something like roll for shoes where it’s just your character is basically your name and then you build skills as you use them, but then also stuff like powered by the apocalypse systems can quite fun if you want a more sort of serialised adventure it’s just...I don’t know I don’t think I can pick a favourite. It’s like being asked your favourite film it’s like, well what am I in the mood for

Pencil

Fair enough

Paper

‘Cause like...yeah. There are some genuinely I never want to play this again kind of systems but then there’s stuff like, I really like dramasystem but if I’m in the mood for something light I don’t wanna play dramasystem.

Pencil

Ok

Paper

I dunno it’s an unhelpful answer but...yeah

Pencil

(noises) Next question, where is the questions, I’m good at this

Paper

I like that we’ve just got one that I think came up in a recent episode but is relevant for some reason, but yeah keeping stakes without escalating to the world ending is definitely just make it personal

Pencil

Yeah, you know what Supernatural did? Don’t do that

Paper

Don’t set up a whole 15 year long campaign about subverting fate and taking control and then have everyone have the endings you’d expect based on the first episode

Pencil

Yeah, don’t introduce mega-super-turbohell because people are coming back from regular hell too much and then send the one gay character there

Paper

“What if all your edgy players made orphan characters?” If by the point you’re needing to escalate the threat your characters, your players haven’t like, the characters haven’t formed connections then, I’m sorry, your party are murderhobos and must be destroyed

Pencil

Like at that point the threat to the world is your players

Paper

Yeah, I think at that point you make a new set of characters who are going to take down your old characters because they’re clearly the worst

Pencil

I, in a moment of extreme silliness, have noticed I’ve not plugged my laptop in to charge so I need to quickly go do that. Feel free to ask more questions I won’t see for about 20 seconds

Paper

Let’s talk about Pencil behind her back. I think she’s really good at RPGs. Oh I like that idea

Pencil

I return!

Paper

“After a long campaign ends, the DM creates new characters for everyone to play, who are the children of the old characters, based on the DMs character ships and unrelated to whatever happened in the campaign story.” Did you mean Legend of Korra? Sorry, I have feelings about Legend of Korra

Pencil

I have never seen Legend of Korra but I, I’m just gonna blindly agree with whatever Paper says

Paper

I do think though I...just the they are the children of the first campaign characters I think would be interesting just because you have, I mean you have that your party already knows each other which is quite helpful, and you probably also...because the average party I think generally only contains one of any specific race, I think you would end up with basically having to homebrew a lot of like, half-halfling half, I dunno, goliath characters, which I think would be quite interesting

Pencil

What you have to do, is just put all of the players names into a hat, and then just pull like them out in pairs and those two got together and had babies

Paper

The question is, does every paring from the campaign have two children so that you can have the same number

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

Or is there like some with one and some with three, or do you just, you assume that your party became a polycule, and you pull out two characters and then put them back in each time, so that you could have any paring at all

Pencil

Like, this is sort of leaning towards, do you know those evolution simulators where you create like a hundred slightly different like, you know, animatronics or something and they all go out and replicate, it’s like that but every time you just produce a hundred slightly different character concepts, run the campaign see which one they live longest in. And then eventually you get the ultimate D&D character

Paper

The idea of running a party with a hundred characters terrifies me

Pencil

I feel like if you have a hundred friends, and they all like...I think probably...hmm...I probably should not be figuring out how to plan a hundred player game

Paper

That is a definitely bad rpg idea

Pencil

Party polycule is...I feel all D&D parties are either like polycules, or reverse polycules where every person is the mortal enemy of every other person. Like every D&D party is either a polycule or one step from murdering each other

Paper

Or sometimes both!

Pencil

Yeah or both. Think I might have missed out some questions earlier, roll up and see. Roll up? Scroll up, and roll up in my cool car. I cannot see any missed questions, if I have missed yours post it again

Paper

If your question vanished, blame Nick, they’re in charge of picking out the questions from the chat. So another idea that was really popular in 2020. “Create a cosmic-level enemy whose attack damages the players not just on a surface level, but on all layers of reality. If it successfully hits a character, just punch that character’s player in the face IRL.”

Pencil

Yeah this one got really popular, I think it was mostly from people looking for an excuse to punch their players in the face IRL

Paper

Yeah but I was thinking about the different kinds of damage, like some of them are obvious like you know, fire damage you can set your character on fire. I think for psychic damage you just tell them the date and they’ll go “what, already?”

Pencil

Like psychic damage is one of those ones where it’s really hard to picture what it actually looks like in universe, like it makes sense it just…

Paper

It makes you sad

Pencil

Now your character is upset. But yeah...for sonic damage you just yell really loudly. Or for Sonic damage you curl up into a little ball and spin into them. I might also just to you then, if it takes all levels of damage, you then go punch God

Paper

How would you do necrotic damage in real life? Beyond like, give your player gangrene

Pencil

Throw a corpse at them

Paper

Just a whole corpse

Pencil

Just take one out of your corpse jar

Paper

I guess there are, like there are animals that could be said to do necrotic damage, like throw a spider at them

Pencil

Just load up your spider machine gun and get into it

Paper

(incredulous) spider machine gun?!

Pencil

It fires spiders

Paper

I think I would be concerned for the spiders’ wellbeing

Pencil

I would be concerned for the people being shot by spiders

Paper

Well I think the spiders would mostly be vapourised so the people would be fine but then you have just vapourised some spiders which isn’t very nice

Pencil

Also witchcatcher suggests financial damage. Which I like, partly because it implies that you have a monster that just punches you and you lose 20 quid. It just beats up

Paper

Just a really violent pickpocket. Wait that’s just mugging!

Pencil

What we’ve invented as a concept here is mugging people. I like really violent pickpocket, barbarian who like just puts all of their points into sleight of hand. Does use sleight of hand they just punch you, and then while you’re distracted by the punch they just pick your pocket

Paper

That’s what happens if they get a nat 20 on sleight of hand, they knock you out so that you don’t notice anything they’re doing

Pencil

Yeah, you successfully avoid any witnesses by just yeeting them into the sea

Paper

The perfect crime

Pencil

Anyone who subscribes 10 thousand to our patreon gets to throw a spider at us

Paper

I feel like you can just do that

Pencil

Yeah like ok granted you can just throw...actually you can’t, you don’t know where we are. If you submit 10 thousand on patreon we will send you a message telling you where, what car park to meet us in for a spider fight

Paper

If you throw a spider into a river, it’ll probably eventually end up in the sea

Pencil

That is true

Paper

I didn’t mean for that to sound so much like a revelation but sometimes I can’t control how my voice goes

Pencil

It sounds like a weird proverb. If you throw a spider into a river, eventually it will enter the sea

Paper

It’s like inspirobot

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

Weirdly deep, just like the sea

Pencil

I feel the sea is like, the amount of deep i expect the sea to be

Paper

I dunno, some of it’s really deep. Like you could fit a whole building under there

Pencil

True. The spider is wearing like, a little life jacket and scuba costume. Scuba costume? Scuba gear

Paper

I mean it would have to be a scuba costume though because of how insects breathe

Pencil

Yeah it’s just wearing a little scuba bubble

Paper

That’s adorable. There is a kind of spider that does that. It’s like…’cause there’s...so there’s a pokemon that’s like a spider with a big like orb around its face? There’s a kind of spider that actually does that like makes its own little diving bell

Pencil

And you should all be playing it. M Panghetti asks “if goldfish grow to fill up their bowls, why aren’t they as big as the ocean?” They are, how big do you think the ocean is?

Paper

Have you not heard of whales? They’re what happens if you let your pet goldfish go

Pencil

That’s why you have to put them in bowls, otherwise they would be too powerful

Paper

They have to be contained

Pencil

Or they, yeah

Paper

Nerf the whales

Pencil

Bears are OP

Paper

Did you just say bears are OP?

Pencil

Yeah. “What are the best sea PCs?” from studying fangirl. Dwarf

Paper

I really like sea elves, but I don’t know if that’s just ‘cause they can...they’re elves that have weird coloured hair, and I also have weird coloured hair

Pencil

I think like I would, I feel I would go wereshark. It adds a time limit to any of your adventures

Paper

That would be fun ‘cause every...like you’re in a desert and it’s a full moon and it’s like…“hey guys? Does anyone have create water?”

Pencil

There was, sorry it’s only semi-related, but in D&D second edition there was werewolf-leopard hybrids. Wolf-seal hybrid even, who every full moon would turn into a seal with a wolf’s head

Paper

That’s so specific

Pencil

Yeah like, they were going for evil water were-creature but rather that like, sharks, or even like you know leopard seals or something, some kind of big bitey seal, it was it’s a seal but it has a shark’s head

Paper

Sure

Pencil

A wolf’s head. Sorry I keep trying to instinctively make it a sensible were-hybrid but no, it has a wolf’s head. I think ultimately, I like the suggestions in the chat which are all just various random animals. I think I would go for shoal of fish working together to like carry a stab(?)

Paper

So like a fish hivemind?

Pencil

Yeah. Or like each fish has collectively...like a warlock which is a thousand fish, each of which has made a deal with a different patron

Paper

A swarmkeeper ranger, but it is a swarm of dolphins

Pencil

I feel like swarmkeeper implies smaller things like “I’m a swamkeeper ranger and…”

Paper

(forcefully) Baby dolphins

Pencil

Here’s my swarm of tarrasques. Like, I guess you could do swarm of piranhas, that’s like the cliché swarm of water things

Paper

Swarm of electric eels

Pencil

Then you can use that to start the technological revolution

Paper

Yeah. Like imagine what you could do with power over a swarm...I’m still calling it a swarm, it’s not a shoal anymore, a swarm of electric eels. You could probably do quite a lot of damage

Pencil

Yeah. “Does the swarmkeeper swarm need to keep its own swarm to stay together or is another swarm running it?” Swarmkeepers all the way down. Like there’s a swarm of swarmkeepers, each of whom has its own swarm, and also a metaswarmkeeper whose swarm’s the swarm of swarmkeepers

Paper

I mean, there is a character in one of my games at the moment who is a bee person with a swarm of bees. What if the queen bee is also a swarmkeeper, with a swarm of regular bee people?

Pencil

My mind just interpreted that as a human swarmkeeper with a swarm of babies. Or like a swarm of toddlers I guess?

Paper

Oh gods!

Pencil

Which is one of the most horrific images I’ve ever had to send to fight a dragon

Paper

The most destructive force known to man

Pencil

It’s just...my adventuring is just me and my box of 10 thousand toddlers I unleash upon my enemies

Paper

Like, in the before times my job involved groups of about 20 toddlers, and that has to have been at least three swarms, you don’t need a lot of toddlers to make a swarm, like two is basically a swarm

Pencil

There’s some inspirational life advice from the probably bad podcast. “You don’t need thousands of toddlers to make a swarm”. That also sounds like really weird deep motivational. “You don’t need thousands of toddlers to make a swarm.”

Paper

(responding to chat). Why would I make a system based on Bee Movie when world of darkness already exists?

Pencil

Vampires, werewolves, mages, and those weird bee people. Also witchcatcher suggested Kinderguard as toddler swarmkeeper

Paper

Congratulations, witchcatcher wins.

Pencil

Yep this is your podcast now, we concede defeat. But yeah I do love how Bee Movie just suddenly came back

Paper

Did you say how D&D suddenly came back?

Pencil

Bee Movie

Paper

Yeah...thing is it’s not an awful film?

Pencil

yeah...I quite liked Bee Movie when I watched it. There was admittedly a bit where a woman tried to fuck a bee, but otherwise

Paper

Yeah, it’s the thing. It’s like that and the first Paul Blart. It’s like, these films are memes, and rightly so, but I kind of enjoyed them

Pencil

Sorry there’s just a load of question marks in the chat

Paper

I assume that’s at liking the Bee Movie

Pencil

It not bad

Paper

It’s not the best film because you know

Pencil

The bee movie

Paper

Jerry Seinfeld, but it’s alright

Pencil

Also someone is making a confession in the chat so this is (inaudible)

Paper

I mean we don’t know that she fucks the bee, just that she wants to

Pencil

Ah, witchcatcher cannot own the podcast

Paper

There’s always something, isn’t there

Pencil

I guess we’ll have to keep podcasting

Paper

Terms and conditions, it turns out, apply. “A moose would make a really good sea PC character because people don’t know they can dive to a depth of 6 metres.” Yeah!

Pencil

I didn’t know that!

Paper

It’s like, the two biggest predators of the moose are humans, and killer whales

Pencil

I think if you’re doing a sea fight game, a sea exploring game, first fight should be mooses. You alright?

Paper

See now I’m just wondering…’cause we made werehorses. You probably wouldn’t need to do much to it to reskin it as a weremoose

Pencil

I think what you need is inverse mooses, who like swim in the earth, but can rise up 6 metres onto the surface

Paper

That’s horrifying

Pencil

You’re just sitting there, and then a moose bursts out of the ground, rises 6 metres into the air, and then is eaten by a flying killer whale

Paper

Argh now you’re just making me think about Sharknado

Pencil

I want to stat up a sharknado

Paper

People have, it’s spectacular. But the thing about...ok, the thing about the sharknado movies, is in like the third one, they set up this thing of sharknados can happen inland now because there are sharks just living in the water in the atmosphere, like in the clouds, which is kind of a cool concept and terrifying and then it never comes up again. They set it up at the like end of the third one, and then there’s three more Sharknado movies and they never mention the fact that there are sharks in the clouds! And this bothers me

Pencil

I think more movies should just casually mention “oh yeah the clouds are full of sharks” and that just never comes up

Paper

It’s like The Room! It’s just like oh here’s a major plot point I’m just not going to bring up again

Pencil

I did like the bit in The Room where Tommy Wiseau was killed by a sharknado. “Which is worse, Sharknado or Toddlernado?”

Paper

That depends. Does Toddlernado end in the same way as Sharknado, because that would be a horrifying

Pencil

How does Sharknado end?

Paper

So, mute the stream for a second if you don’t wanna be...if you don’t want Sharknado spoilers. He does get eaten by a shark and then chainsaw his way out. If that was a toddlernado that would be all kinds of horrifying

Pencil

just ...does like, the toddler open its mouth real wide and swallow you whole?

Paper

Like a snake?

Pencil

Yeah. Add a sense of moral complexity to your game by forcing your payers to chainsaw their way out of a toddler. I’m pretty sure based on existing media moral complexity means needlessly fucked up

Paper

See it’s not horrifying in Sharknado because the way it’s done is kind of funny, because Sharknado knows exactly what it is, like the second one had cameos from multiple professional wrestlers and Jedward, it knows what it is. If it was toddlers it’d be a whole other level

Pencil

What I want to see is a reboot where Sharknado is a serious horror movie. It’s all shot in edgy black and white and they try and keep

Paper

Found footage Sharknado

Pencil

They try and keep the sharknado hidden for as long as possible, but they don’t do very well because it’s a sharknado

Paper

They just have people hiding in old log cabins and they can hear like THUD THUD CHOMP and they look outside and all the trees have been bitten down...oh god The Meg

Pencil

We’re getting further away from...what’s The Meg?

Paper

The Meg is a monster movie about a megalodon which is basically a giant prehistoric shark. It’s alright

Pencil

I assume it eats people

Paper

I mean yeah it’s a giant prehistoric shark. Importantly though it does not eat a dog. You think it’s eaten the dog but the dog is fine, and that’s important

Pencil

I have also not eaten a dog. Yeah we should possibly go back because this is just getting further and further into we just talk about things. So, world of darkness. How about that vampire the masquerade? What was the actual question

Paper

I don’t know

Pencil

Oh yeah punching your players punching your players punching your players in the face. Like, I think like obviously punching your players is a bad idea but is there something where...I’m just imagining spraying your players with a little like spritz bottle every time they get hit so they have a Pavlovian

Paper

You could do acid damage

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

Just spray them with dettol

Pencil

Every time your players...think what we’re inventing is torture? Every time your players do something murderhobo-y just spritz them with a spritz bottle. How to ensure your players follow the hero’s journey at all times

Paper

You railroad them through the plot of Star Wars

Pencil

I did read one of the most unbearably pretentious roleplaying games I’ve ever seen, it refused to acknowledge that it was a game and referred to itself as a “legend making experience” but like, players only got experience when they fulfilled one of the steps of the hero’s journey, that was how you got experience, so you were mechanically forced to act out the hero’s journey, lock step, in order to level up

Paper

So the answer is just railroading is what you’re saying

Pencil

Yeah the answer is bad and naughty players have to stay at level zero unless they, what’s it called, enter the belly of the whale. I think there might have been a penalty for doing them so your just standing outside the big fight waiting for a scene where you can go to the next step of the hero’s journey

Paper

So if you meet your magical mentor too early

Pencil

That campaign’s over, go home

Paper

No! You can’t go home, that’s the final step, the journey home

Pencil

It’s just the GM sat there like well, we’re not leaving until you’ve done all...is it 21 steps of the hero’s journey?

Paper

I think there’s multiple different ones. I feel like we should bring Nick in, they have an English degree, this is the only thing they’re qualified to do

Pencil

Nick, hero our journey!

Paper

Journey my heroes!

Pencil

But yeah surprisingly the game of the hero’s journey was not popular. Hedwighood “You step outside the house to put the bins out and can’t come back until you’ve defeated the great evil” It is a recurrent problem. I do love the idea that you’re accidentally on like a quest. Like, you joined the wrong party when you left the place and instead of going home you go and stop Lucifer

Paper

Yeah I feel like there are definitely ways to do it, but I feel like the sort of ones where it’s like...you know those stories where it’s like well I have to get the water to wet the stone to sharpen the axe to cut down the tree?

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

It’s sort of like that where you respond to a fairly simple request on like a noticeboard. But then to do that one you have to do another one, and then before you know it you’re fighting a dragon just so you can get someone’s cat home

Pencil

The dragon has moved from stealing orphans to stealing cats

Pencil

I...I feel like the way you do this, sort of, to enforce roleplaying, is you don’t choose a gaming group, you kidnap six people

Paper

That makes sense

Pencil

And they can’t go home until they’ve defeated your campaign

Paper

Which also fulfills the first step of the hero’s journey, the call to adventure

Pencil

Yeah!

Paper

And then when they say “no let me go I’m going to call the police”, refusal of the call. That’s two steps down already

Pencil

Yeah, this gives you two experience points to spend on things that’ll help you keep these six people kidnapped while you force them to do your RPG

Paper

It all makes sense now

Pencil

Yeah, the game was the everlasting, you all play immortals. It was really weirdly tonal, like tonally dissonant, in that you had...you could essentially play Legolas, Dracula, Lancelot, and Cthulu all in the same party, which I feel clashes a little bit

Paper

I feel like I would entirely ruin that game by playing the Dracula from Dead and Loving It

Pencil

I mean that’s a good way to ruin any game

Paper

I would like to play that character in world of darkness actually, just to see how far i could get it, before I had to do something edgy

Pencil

Playing a vampire who pointedly refuses to come to the darkness, and instead just dances

Paper

What if you had an RPG party that was just all Leslie Nielson characters? You’ve got comedy Dracula, you’ve got the guy from Airplane, you’ve got the bad guy from Surf Ninjas, you’ve got the guy from Police Academy. That would be an interesting party. Police Squad not Police Academy

Pencil

I do think...you just pick a random actor and all of your characters are just the people that they play. Like every person they’ve played. You pick Sean Bean and you’re dead, Sean Bean has disadvantage…

Paper

Some Sean Bean characters live

Pencil

Huh?

Paper

Some Sean Bean characters live

Pencil

That’s a lie

Paper

I can only think of one but there must be others

Pencil

Sean Bean has disadvantage on all death saving throws

Paper

Rolls a special die that’s all ones, except for one 20, and that’s the character Sharpe, who probably should die, but did not

Pencil

Question for the chat, who do you think the best actor or actress to play for “I’m going to be every person this character has ever played” would be? Yeah. “Party is different interpretations of Dracula” I’m gonna be skateboard Dracula with sunglasses

Paper

Just reminded me, a couple of halloweens ago me and Nick watched just a bunch of different Dracula films and it was really weird, ‘cause like, just based on the same story there’s so many different adaptations. I would like to be Spanish Dracula, who is very similar to the Bela Lugosi Dracula except also has a comedy sidekick

Pencil

I think I would be baby Dracula...I would be Hotel Transylvania Dracula just, I’d just tell jokes and be vaguely racist

Paper

I don’t think that would be a good idea

Pencil

no...I mean racist toward humans

Paper

Alucard!

Pencil

Sean Connery, ‘cause you get at James Bond and Indiana Jones’s dad. I like get at. This is my flirting technique

Paper

Is it Zardoz, where he wears the red thing

Pencil

That is an incredibly vague description

Paper

He wears like red bondage gear, and then he has a ponytail, and that’s his outfit

Pencil

Oh yeah you’re right

Paper

I’ve not seen the film but I’m very familiar with the outfit ‘cause it keeps popping up on tumblr

Pencil

I literally don’t know the context

Paper

Well Mario will not go to Zardoz with me

Pencil

Aww, sad. Like, I don’t know anything about Zardoz other than Sean Connery dresses in a weird bikini thing

Paper

Yeah i literally just know the bondage gear

Pencil

I think it’s a post-apocalyptic thing

Paper

I mean post-apocalyptic stuff does have a lot of bondage gear

Pencil

It’s one thing I saw online that’s just “why did the apocalypse happen in such a way that the only thing left behind was a sporting goods store and a BDSM club”

Paper

That is a very good question

Pencil

I hope this counts as like, content for all of you. Post apocalyptic campaign where everyone has to choose between the sporting goods store and BDSM gear, those are like the two alignments

Paper

What about a post-apocalyptic game where your classes are based on different post apocalyptic films

Pencil

That could...like I like the idea that all the apocalypses happened but they’re in different like sections of the world so you can wander from the zombie apocalypse to the post-nuclear like, wasteland

Paper

Yeah and there’s just one guy from Waterworld who’s just like “well I have a boat” just sat in the middle of the Mad Max wasteland

Pencil

I love the fact that we’ve gone I’m gonna play Mad...I’m gonna play Waterworld boat character man. “It’s set in a desert.” I’m going to play a Waterworld character in a boat. And you just drag the boat along

Paper

I guess maybe you could adapt the boat into some sort of land vehicle

Pencil

You just walk into the desert and just turn around and a pirate ship is charging towards you at full speed

Paper

I mean if you add wings to it as well you’ve basically got post-apocalyptic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Pencil

Which is also a game I would play

Paper

Yeah I would 100% play that

Pencil

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins, and Winnie the Pooh try to survive the apocalypse

Paper

I feel like I’ve played a game similar to that with you

Pencil

Yeah that would have been the Disney princesses World of Darkness game

Paper

Yeah that was a fun one. My main memory of it is platonic bondage

Pencil

Yeah I don’t know why everyone was tying each other up

Paper

Just for funsies

Pencil

For the context that was the characters tying each other up

Paper

Yeah, should clarify

Pencil

Our games do not get that wild

Paper

I like that Hedwig has brought us back around to the grown-up character class

Pencil

In the apocalypse you must search for the one remaining grown-up to rebuild society for you. A plague that only spares chucklefucks

Paper

Ok but I would play a game that’s basically “We Need to Find All of the Competent Adults”

Pencil

In a world where there are less than 100 competent adults left on the planet, you must go and find them before someone tries to eat the water filtration system

Paper

One small group of fighters in bondage gear, need to find the person that knows about buildings

Pencil

Just, you need to find the one tailor so you can stop wearing bondage themed sporting gear. Please make us an actual t-shirt or something

Paper

I’ve heard of this wonderful thing called a skirt

Pencil

There is like…”how to play a competent adult character when you’re not one”...so stat up and go and find a competent adult

Paper

So what I like about a lot of DMs is if you don’t have a skill but you need to roll for it you can just say, you know, I spout off some facts about dragons. I explain how a loom works

Pencil

Yeah. What I do is I just sit there and think “what would I do in this situation” and then I do the opposite of that, and that’s how I’m competent

Paper

I do feel like it’s the same problem as playing a high-int character when you just don’t know shit

Pencil

Yeah I have the recurring problem of trying to play a high intelligence character but also I’m a dumbass

Paper

Yeah i have i guess a similar but opposite problem where

Pencil

You’re just too much of a genius

Paper

I like high wis characters, but am also quite impulsive

Pencil

Yeah i like playing

Paper

So i just sit there like ok, I’ve had my three bad ideas, now what would this character actually do

Pencil

When you said you had the opposite problem I thought it was going to be something like “oh yeah I have the problem that as an incredibly high IQ genius I have a problem playing normal people” and I was worried I was going to have to throw something through the screen, but, yeah, I think yeah the fundamental problem is all of my stats are like an 8 IRL so I try and make a smart character and regrettably they don’t know shit

Paper

There’s also the problem of trying to play a high charisma character when you have social anxiety. Like, yes, I go up to these important people and say something witty and profound

Pencil

You just go up to them and say “if you throw a spider in a river, one day it will end up in an ocean”

Paper

I might have to try that the next time my character tries to be charismatic. I’m playing a paladin in one of my games, I need charisma practice

Pencil

Like, there is the genuine problem of how do you play a superhuman intelligence, and it is a problem, because you have a lot of superhumanly intelligent characters but also, you know, how do...you physically can’t do it. “How would you express executive dysfunction in stats” via like four partially made rule systems I forget about because I keep trying to do more of them and then failing

Paper

I like to think that’s what happens when you roll a 1. You just...your character wants to do the thing but it won’t happen

Pencil

Yeah when you roll a natural one your character just can’t

Paper

Yeah when...if you roll a 1 in combat it’s like “I’m telling my arm to swing the sword but my arm isn’t moving”. Alternatively just every time you want to do something you have to roll a D10 and if you get a ten you just sort of stand there. Or if your game is set in 2020 you flip a coin

Pencil

Yeah if your game is set in 2020 you just sit there

Paper

Oh Witchcatcher that is...that is a heavy question

Pencil

“How to do LGBTQIA+ representation in the characters right both as a DM and as a player”. So I think a lot of this is sort of the same as like with writing and what have you and it depends a lot on whether you are one of those people, which both of us are, and/or whether you are cis-het and trying to do good representation. I think, yeah the general advice I’ve heard, which I think still works, is if you are cis-het to include queer characters, preferably just characters who are there, but it’s probably very...best not to delve too deeply into telling a queer story if that makes sense? Like, have a trans character, but don’t delve incredibly deeply into a story about transitioning. Whereas if everyone is queer, you know, everyone tell their own therapy sessions through D&D

Paper

Yeah that’s the thing like, I make a lot of like, trans or bi or whatever characters because I am these things like, most of my characters are nonbinary and use “they” pronouns because I use “they” pronouns

Pencil

Yeah. I think roleplaying is like, useful for kind of presentation...not presentation what am I thinking of. Roleplaying is useful because it involves taking on a different identity. I think it’s underexplored as kind of a queer hobby. Like I definitely think that like…’cause I was sort of playing a lot of female characters while coming to terms with things. I am trans, by the way, hence appearance, but, yeah, I think that there’s definitely like a lot more that can be done with that and it’s just a matter of how we can get people to do it in a way that isn’t offensive

Paper

Yeah I think also just having NPCs who just happen to be queer in some way

Pencil

Yeah I think that that’s sort of...I think that’s probably the main thing is just, like basically if you have NPCs and most of them are cis-het, ask whether they have to be cis-het or whether like you can make, because usually you can make some of them queer, it’s very rarely a case that like...sorry...very rarely is it the case that the characters who exist have to be cis-het. Like usually you can...you can make someone queer. So there you go I hope that is a non-offensive answer to your question

Paper

Yeah I think there is also the thing about...cause I think there is a thing a lot of straight writers, ‘cause I’m basically talking about this in terms of writing but it applies to DMing, do the bury your gays thing because they basically have *a* gay character, and that character is killed off

Pencil

Yeah

Paper

Personally I’m not opposed to gay characters dying as long as there are other gay characters

Pencil

Yeah I think there is a difference between a character who’s gay or trans dying, especially if you’re in say a horror setting or a war setting where death is very likely to happen, and the one gay character we have dies. So yeah I think the important thing is don’t have *the* gay character or *the* trans character die, have a bunch of gay and trans characters. It also means that anything you do is less likely to be stereotypical. Like, if you have \*tripping over words\* if you have like a deceptive trans woman that can be deceptive if they’re the only one whereas if there are like 20 of them it becomes more that’s a trait of this character rather than this is putting forth a view on that group of people

Paper

Yeah, like absolutely have a flamboyant slutty gay twink, as long as it’s not the only gay character

Pencil

Yeah. Obviously also don’t make all your gay characters slutty gay twinks. But yeah, basically yeah have a lot of queer characters, have incidental queer characters, and have a lot of queer characters

Paper

Yep. That got weirdly...that got heavy

Pencil

Yeah so there you go, actual advice. So! Dice and wackiness

Paper

Yeah. I feel like this is maybe a good point to wrap up the stream

Pencil

Yeah unless anyone has any more burning questions they want answering, speak now or forever hold your peace. Someone has complimented out hair, thank you Studying Fangirl

Paper

We do have excellent hair

Pencil

Yeah between us we have good hair

Paper

My hair is 94cm long

Pencil

My hair is less long than that. We’re now just being complimented in the chat

Paper

We are, I’m enjoying it

Pencil

Ooh! “How do you handle retroactive causality/time travel without being able to predict your players’ actions?” I…

Paper

That’s a question!

Pencil

I would normally either have the time travel sort of...like either have it a case of like, ah, like the time travel happens off screen and things have been changed and this is the timeline that we’re going with, or you have the players who were...the players are somehow immune to time things so when time somehow changes like, ah, this is what they’ve done now. Like I guess for a time loop it would have to be at the end of the thing it’s reveals haha this was a time loop, so in universe their actions had already happened, and out of universe they’ve still got to choose

Paper

Yeah there is also the Star Trek approach of by going back and changing something you’ve created a new timeline so everything else is now irrelevant

Pencil

There’s also you just massively railroad your players and when they complain you’re like “No it’s time travel, in universe I have to railroad you”. Like you can finally use all of your railroading things like “No I’m just staying consistent with the lore”

Paper

I mean isn’t time travelling just railroading the universe, just forcing it into whatever timeline you wanted

Pencil

Hedwighood has said there is also the simple solution not giving you characters retroactive causality time travel. You could also do that

Paper

But that is the cowards’ solution

Pencil

Yeah, I think what you need to do is yeah either do it all off screen or just sit there and hit your players with a rolled up newspaper every time they deviate. You’re like “this is what paradox feels like” and you hit them with a newspaper

Paper

It might be what paradox feels like, they don’t know

Pencil

Yeah have they ever been caught in a temporal paradox? I didn’t think so. I’m hitting you with a newspaper some more

Paper

“I’m not sure if I have” “You’d know it feels like being hit with a newspaper”

Pencil

Every time you get hit with a newspaper that’s because someone went back in time and altered your history. There is a bit of reality worldbuilding there for you guys

Paper

I think reality worldbuilding is just information

Pencil

Reality worldbuilding, or “doing things”. Every time the spritz bottle is sprayed a paradox occurs. I want to know which way round that is

Paper

It does remind me of like watching those charity adverts as a kid, it’s like “every time I snap my fingers a child dies.” Well stop it!

Pencil

Every time...every time...yeah. Like there was the one where yeah keeps applauding, “every time I clap a child in Africa dies” just yell “stop doing it then you bastard”

Paper

Pay me to stop

Pencil

You just hold the spritz bottle and keep spritzing it until time is broken, and that’s how we got 2020. Every time a paradox occurs time gets faster

Paper

That’s it, that’s what happened

Pencil

Yeah I think on the note that we caused 2020 so sorry about that guys

Paper

Every consequence has an action

Pencil

I don’t think we’ve answered your question at all, I’m afraid, about retroactive causality time travel, I think what we’ve done is descend into gibberish

(crosstalk)

Paper

Thank you everyone for watching

Pencil

Yes I hope you enjoyed our first livestream. If it is wanted we might do more

Paper

Yeah this will be up as a VOD for a bit and we’re going to put the audio up as an episode around December, when we’re theoretically like, talking to family and things

Pencil

Also, you might notice my sound doesn’t sound like actual garbage, I have a microphone now. So look forward to that on podcasts

Paper

It’s very exciting. The next episode to go up was recorded before Pencil got a good microphone but after that it’s gonna sound good

Pencil

Yeah after that I will sound coherent, so that’s good!

Paper

So yeah check out our patreon and our new merch!

Pencil

If you want a D&Daniel of your own, for some inexplicable reason, you can!

Paper

Thank you for watching and

Both

Remember to have a probably bad day

\*end music\*