41: Cosmic Ducks, Reverse Cannon, and Feywild Starbucks

D&Daniel: D&Daniel here, thanking all of our patrons, but especially Hedwig, Carlo, and A Socialist Hobgoblin, for their support. Thank you all so very much…

Tabletop Tim: (self-satisfied chuckle) Tabletop Tim here

D&Daniel: Excuse me, I was talking

Tabletop Tim: I know. I don’t care

D&Daniel: What

Tabletop Tim: Notice anything different about your D20?

D&Daniel: Oh god no

Tabletop Tim: That’s right. I put all the numbers in the wrong places

D&Daniel: Why do you do these things to me?

(opening music)

Pencil: Hello, and welcome to the Probably Bad Podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad. I’m Pencil

Paper: I’m Paper. And today’s probably bad RPG idea is…

(die rolling)

Paper: Super-optimise all the ducks in the campaign setting

Pencil: Before we start, I would like to apologise for the fact that I’m recording this from inside a tin can, I am moving, and all of my normal stuff is in storage. But! Ducks!

Paper: What I like about this idea is that it doesn’t specify what the ducks are optimised for

Pencil: Super optimise all the ducks to be perfect politicians. Entirely duck-based society

Paper: See that raises the question of, you know, what would a duck consider to be optimised? What would a duck look at and go “this is the perfect duck body”?

Pencil: So what it is is it’s a normal duck, except instead of a head it has a hoover that sucks up all bread within a mile radius

Paper: A duck that’s completely normal, except that its penis is also a normal shape

Pencil: (snort laugh)

Paper: That idea brought to you by lady ducks

Pencil: I like the idea that a super-optimised duck is just a normal duck, ‘cause ducks don’t have human self-esteem issues. Ducks accept themselves as they are

Paper: All ducks are beautiful

Pencil: All ducks are beautiful in their own way, unlike humans, who are all hideous meat piles

Paper: In their own way

Pencil: Yes. Technically whether you go to the upper planes or lower planes in D&D is determined based on how similar you are to a duck. The more duck-like you are, the higher your odds of going to heaven

Paper: So if I, say, covered myself in lanolin in an effort to be waterproof, would that increase my chances of going to heaven

Pencil: Yeah, that is how you achieve salvation. That’s what Jesus did to people

Paper: It was just mistranslated

Pencil: Yes

Paper: I mean, he was Oily Josh

Pencil: Yeah, that’s why. He was oiling people

Paper: Oh no

Pencil: I think we’ve entered the blasphemy stage of the idea discussion too early

Paper: We have. And also moved somewhat away from optimising ducks

Pencil: So

Paper: I wanna optimise ducks for combat

Pencil: Yeah, I feel like this is probably in the D&D sense of optimising them to be particularly good at their character classes, which implies you’ve got a wizard duck who just launches 15 fireballs around

Paper: Barbarian duck who’s just attached things to its beak to make it extra heavy for whacking

Pencil: Yeah. I like the idea of the big bad of this campaign being a group of super-optimised ducks

Paper: But the problem is, it’s hard to tell sometimes which ducks are optimised and which ones are normal

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Because they do have a druck…bleh

Pencil: They do have a druck

Paper: A druck duid. A duck druid, who can transform into different kinds of duck

Pencil: Yeah, a druck…a duck druid, or druid

Paper: (giggles)

Pencil: I think I like the idea of just like, you’re in the park, there’s ducks nearby, you throw them some bread, you sit down, and boom, one of the ducks turns into a bear, and one of the ducks uses its pact of the blade to summon a greatsword

Paper: One of them’s actually a wereduck, and just turns into a guy

Pencil: I like wereducks, because, given where ducks live, most of the time it’ll turn into a guy and just be naked in a river

Paper: So druids

Pencil: Yeah. Wereanglerfish, of course, have the worst odds of anyone

Paper: I mean I was thinking wereblobfish

Pencil: Hmm. I feel any weredeep-sea-fish is

Paper: Is gonna have problems

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Course the real question is…werewolf is a wolf 1-3 days a month

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: In most mythologies, and would identify themselves as human before a wolf, so is a wereduck a duck, or is it a guy who is sometimes a duck?

Pencil: I would assume it was guy who is sometimes a duck. When you turn into a wereduck, do you go on a…what rampage do you go on?

Paper: That’s a very good question. I mean, the only time I’ve seen a duck do a violence is when it bit my sister

Pencil: Ok, so when you turn into a wereduck you specifically track down Mod Paper’s sister

Paper: Well yeah it’s like, you know, vampires are really into virgins, wereducks are really into small children who just want to say hello

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Just trying to imagine how you would superoptimise a duck for something like a bard? What is the most charismatic duck?

Pencil: I think…to be fair there are more or less charismatic ducks. You ever been there and there’s one duck that is a hideous scraggled little monster, and then there is one beautiful duck who is stood there shining on a pile of garbage? So you take that duck, you train it to talk, you give it a lute, you probably do some stuff with feats and skill points or something, I’m not actually very good at the mechanical side of D&D. And then you have a duck that can force anyone around it to macarena for 24 hours

Paper: Forgot about that spell. Also I feel like the bard is probably a mandarin duck

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: They just have that look to them

Pencil: Yeah, they are very beautiful ducks

Paper: I’ve just sent Pencil a picture of a mandarin duck

Pencil: This means absolutely nothing to any of you

Paper: I mean, they can look up what a mandarin duck looks like

Pencil: Send us your

Paper: I just feel like this is a duck that would wander into a tavern and then immediately sleep with everyone in the vicinity. But, you know, in a duck way

Pencil: That is horrible. It is a duck that wants attention

Paper: That too

Pencil: I think duck warlock is the interesting one, because it does imply Asmodeus is seeking out the soul of a duck

Paper: I mean, we don’t know his life

Pencil: Asmodeus just there like “hell is too full of people and not enough ducks”

Paper: Because, as we’ve established, the less like a duck you are

Pencil: Yeah exactly

Paper: The less likely you are to go to hell

Pencil: Hell has very few duck-like entities

Paper: I mean, it doesn’t have to be Asmodeus

Pencil: True

Paper: I mean they just added, didn’t they, D&D, undead warlocks. Maybe Strahd just wants to hang out with a duck

Pencil: It’s the only thing that will sooth his tortured soul

Paper: He’s taking a break from his search for bizarre soulmate weirdness, and he just wants to bother a duck for a bit

Pencil: I raise you the soulmate, whose name I can’t remember, has been reborn as a duck

Paper: And then Strahd tries to get her interest by becoming her warlock patron

Pencil: Yes

Paper: I mean I feel like deciding a duck is your soulmate is the very definition of bothering a duck/ That would bother me

Pencil: Yeah, I mean that’s why he’s a villain, he bothers ducks, and thus will go to hell when he dies, for being anti-duck

Paper: Also I forgot that bothering a duck is not a thing that everyone thinks about, because it’s just from a tumblr post about a bionic hand

Pencil: I apologise to anyone who hasn’t put in the requisite reading for this podcast

Paper: I’m sorry

Pencil: Please fill out your tests and send them to probablybadpodcast @gmail.com

Paper: What would be the motivation of a big bad duck, beyond, you know, capturing all of the bakers and forcing them to make bread for it, even though we know that bread is bad for ducks

Pencil: I feel like, I like the idea that their motivation is completely unrelated to them being a duck. Like they’re the CEO of a company and they’re trying to destroy some virgin woodland and your druid party has to stop them, and the fact that they’re a super-optimised warlock duck is completely irrelevant to any of it

Paper: They’re going to war with the terrapins

Pencil: Hmm

Paper: ‘Cause terrapins eat baby ducks, and if that isn’t a villain origin story, I don’t know what is. This is full-on sad dad duck

Pencil: It is a duck whose parents were eaten by…not parents were eaten by terrapins. It’s a duck whose baby was eaten by a terrapin, at which point it made a bargain with Asmodeus for power, and is now using mind control to take over the kingdom’s one person who goes sitting at the park at a time in order to declare war on terrapins

Paper: Can’t help but feel Asmodeus in this situation would 100% go along with it, but purely just in a fuck around and find out kind of way

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: What happens when I give cosmic power to a duck? There’s only one way to find out

Pencil: To be honest I feel that that sentence is a good start for an RPG in general. Someone has decided they’re gonna give cosmic power to a duck

Paper: Yeah

Pencil: That someone is me, for our thousand patreon reward, I will bestow cosmic power on a duck

Paper: I like it, it’s a bold claim

Pencil: Yeah. At our $1000 patreon tier, choose one duck of your choice, I will give it cosmic powers

Paper: Our $1000 tier is just called “why would you do this?”

Pencil: For $10,000 I will bestow ducks onto you and fill your house with ducks, all of whom have cosmic powers

Paper: So this feels like a good point to move to questions

Pencil: For $100,000 I will surgically edit myself into a duck

Paper: As I was saying, this seems like a good point to move on to questions, and also a good point to say, ‘cause I don’t think we’ve said it on the podcast yet, our editor, Nick, has been working on a youtube poop of the first Dungeons and Dragons movie, and it will be posted on our youtube once we hit 50 patrons. We’re currently at about 20, so we’ve got plenty of time for it to be optimised like a duck

Pencil: Hmm. So, our first question is, from anonymous, I’m looking for a horrible idea for the eldritch knight I’m making to make it stand out a bit more. Any suggestions?

Paper: So I’m not particularly up on fighter subclasses, just ‘cause I find pretty much every other class more interesting, but there is an ability for eldritch knights which is that you have a magical bond with your weapon, so my first thought is just expand on that, and become best friends with your weapon, possibly lovers if you want to take it in that direction

Pencil: The weapon in this context is not a sentient weapon. It’s just a weapon

Paper: Well, you can be bonded with up to two weapons, so what if one is sentient and one isn’t, and it’s all just very awkward

Pencil: I think what I would go for is that, instead of being an eldritch knight, you are a fighter and a wizard who are tied together

Paper: You’re best friends with your weapon, who is a wizard

Pencil: Yes. You have grabbed the party wizard by the legs, and are swinging them at enemies

Paper: Like a 3-legged-race D&D

Pencil: Yeah. What it is, is that your character is a half-orc, and thus is very tall, so they’ve grabbed the halfling wizard and are using them as a bludgeoning weapon, as the halfling wizard casts spells while being swung

Paper: And in your other hand is a warlock duck

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: As you fight your way through the terrapin-infested dungeon

Pencil: When you squeeze the duck it does an eldritch blast out of its mouth like one of those squeezy duck toys

Paper: Do we know for sure that there aren’t any ducks that do that?

Pencil: I have never squeezed a duck

Paper: I have never squeezed a duck!

Pencil: If you squeeze a warlock, they eldritch blast

Paper: Well yeah, that’s in the PHB

Pencil: Yeah. Also, I like that…so eldritch knight gets an ability called “war magic”, which just means they can use…when they use a cantrip they can also attack, but I like the idea that they just have a cannon. Which you have a bond with. And it’s full of ducks

Paper: You don’t have a bond with the ducks. You don’t care about the ducks

Pencil: No

Paper: Which is good, ‘cause that would make what you’re about to do heartbreaking, but you’re friends with the cannon

Pencil: So I like the idea of being bonded with the ammo, so you have weapon bond but you’re not bonded with the bow, you’re bonded with one specific arrow

Paper: I feel like that would be less horrifying than being bonded with the ducks in the duck cannon though

Pencil: Well yeah, it would be less horrifying

Paper: Because the arrow might survive

Pencil: I just love the image of a dragon appears and you’re just sobbingly putting ducks into a cannon and firing them at the dragon

Paper: One of the ducks just puts its wing on your arm and says “I understand”

Pencil: I’m sorry, General Quackers

Paper: (laughs) Oh no!

Pencil: All the ducks have cartoo…

Paper: Don’t name the ducks!

Pencil: All the ducks have cartoonishly stupid names and you’ve got to tragically, heart-wrenhchingly say all of them as you put them into the cannon and they’re fired to their death

Paper: It does make every round take about 10 minutes in-game

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: But everyone just waits around to hear what the next duck name is. This is a version of eldritch knight with very high charisma, so that everyone will stop and listen to your duck names

Pencil: It does also help if you have high charisma IRL

Paper: True

Pencil: Ok, so the magical bond does mean that you can teleport it back to you, so you can fire the duck at the enemy and then teleport it back to your hand for a respectful burial. So you’re just stood next to a grave shooting ducks

Paper: Respectful burial of just some shredded roast duck

Pencil: Yeah, you’re stood next to a grave, you’re shooting ducks at the enemy, and after they hit, you teleport them back, put them in the graves, say a few words, again, to General Quackers, and then you put the next duck in

Paper: But the state that the duck’s gonna be in at that point, you might as well respectfully bury it in a pancake and some hoisin sauce

Pencil: So you’re sitting there tearfully eating the ducks as you teleport them into your mouth

Paper: It’s what they would have wanted! Eldritch necrocannibalism

Pencil: I mean, I feel this will certainly be a memorable knight

Paper: Yeah. Memorable in that you see it every night in your dreams and that’s why you can’t sleep

Pencil: Yeah, just like they can’t sleep ‘cause they’re still haunted by the memory of killing General Quackers

Paper: And also the ghost of General Quackers

Pencil: Yes. They can now teleport the ghost of General Quackers to their hand

Paper: Yes! We’re going back to the idea by optimising the ducks into revenants

Pencil: Then once you’ve got the revenant duck you put it in the cannon and fire that

Paper: And that’ll just make it more powerful each time

Pencil: I think every time it comes back it goes a level up of ghost, and I can’t remember all the levels ups of ghost, but it’s gonna get pretty powerful

Paper: What I’m imagining is it’s that one creature in Hitchhikers, that keeps getting killed by Arthur Dent and is on a multi-life vengeance quest

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: That’s what this duck is

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: So I guess we’re making your eldritch knight more interesting by having an undead duck occasionally come and challenge it to a fight to the death, and then you put it in a cannon that you’re best friends with. I think we lost the thread somewhere

Pencil: Unlike Sargeant Flaps, who doesn’t hold a grudge and comes back to say they understand. That was the one that put their wing on you

Paper: Oh yeah, Sergeant Flaps is a benevolent spirit who just hangs out on your shoulder like a parrot

Pencil: You have two bonded weapons, both of whom are ducks that you fired at an enemy. One of them hates you

Paper: There are two ducks beside you

Pencil: One of them hates you, one of them loves you, one always lies, one always tells the truth, and you have to figure out which of the two cannons you can put them in by asking them one question

Paper: Wait. So, one of the cannons fires them at the enemy, what does the other cannon do?

Pencil: Fires it directly into your face

Paper: Ok, so that’s the one you put them in when they’ve already been roasted?

Pencil: Yes. One of the cannons fires them at the enemy and one of them fires the enemy at you. It’s reverse cannon

Paper: Reverse cannon! Nonnac

Pencil: You’re two bonded weapons are, yeah, cannon and reverse cannon, and whatever the reverse cannon’s fired at you at high velocity. Yeah, admittedly this does require your GM be ok with weapons that are stupid and don’t exist, but!

Paper: I mean, a lot of things in D&D are stupid and don’t exist

Pencil: Like ducks

Paper: Like this is a game with a canonical item that can produce a gallon of mayonnaise every day. I don’t think we have to question the believability of an item

Pencil: Hey, I have a great idea for another bonded weapon you could have

Paper: Is it a mayonnaise grenade?

Pencil: No, what it is is a big box that you put over the enemy and start filling it with mayonnaise so they drown in mayonnaise

Nick: (quietly) The Hurt Locker

Paper: That’s…

Pencil: And then you take them out and you eat them with some roast duck

Paper: So you’re kind of marinating the big bad in mayonnaise

Pencil: Yes. Fatally marinate the big bad

Paper: I’m not sure what they would do to the meat

Pencil: There’s only one way to find out. I don’t think we’ve answered your question but…

Paper: This is what you get for being anonymous

Pencil: I hope you appreciate our ideas of kill your duck friends and marinate the big bad

(music)

Paper: So our other question is from cactme. “I want to use traditional fey rules in a fey-themed mission, I wondered if you had any ideas.” Hello, it’s one of my favourite subjects

Pencil: Turn your clothes inside-out. That’s it. Everything else is normal

Paper: Well the thing is when you say traditional, there are several traditions that have fey, including ones where you can appease them by giving them a piece of your pasty, or you have to spit on your hand before shaking hands with them because they really hate dirty things. Combine the two by spitting on your pasty and throwing it at the fey

Pencil: Possibly out of some sort of duck cannon if you have one available

Paper: I do feel like you could really mess around with some of the traditional stuff though, like horseshoes, what if you just expand that to “anything associated with horses fairies just won’t go near”

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: You’re town’s being terrorised by archfey and everyone’s just hiding in the stables. You clear a path through the fairy army by just slapping a horse on the arse and chasing after it

Pencil: I feel like…I just like the idea of you’re just wearing really shitty plastic horse masks

Paper: Like one of those rubber ones everyone used to wear in internet videos?

Pencil: Yeah. A fey can’t get you if you go “whinny” in a monotone

Paper: I feel like there is an important question though, if we do say that fey are repulsed by anything horse-related, because I believe that unicorns count as fey creatures in 5th edition

Pencil: They’re deeply self-loathing

Paper: Oh no! Just depressed unicorns just like “I can’t believe I’m a fucking horse”

Pencil: That is how a unicorn starts all conversations. If a unicorn says anything else at the beginning of a conversation, it’s not a real unicorn. The other idea is, I like the idea that the reason unicorns have so much respect among the fey is that the other fey are shit terrified of them, because they’re unicorns

Paper: Ok, so it’s less that they respect unicorns and more that they don’t wanna mess with them

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: See this, to me, creates a situation where maybe fey would actually like you if you slew a unicorn, because you got rid of this thing, this monstrosity

Pencil: They don’t trust it not to return from the grave. You get a mission to kill a unicorn, and it looks like it’s from some sinister person who, you know, is planning to kill a unicorn, and you come back with a unicorn horn and the mysterious hooded figure just breaks into five pixies and goes “we’re free!”

Paper: (giggles) I do like the idea of using the whole “don’t tell them anything real about you” and just using an entire bard party that basically has to pretend that the whole mission is a play that they’re putting on and completely ignore the fact that they’re taking damage. ‘Cause if they acknowledge that anything’s really happening the fey will gain power over them

Pencil: I do weirdly like the idea of, you’re told “yeah, you can’t give the fey any information about yourself, have you considered a VPN?” And then the entire thing is a sponsor

Paper: (cackles) Genuinely though, I think it would be an interesting challenge to just not say anything true in front of a fairy

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Or convince them that other things are true

Pencil: Everything you say has to be a lie

Paper: What if the reason fairies hate being lied to…’cause there’s the whole thing that they will tell you the truth, but they’ll twist it ‘round

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: So what if the whole thing is, the reason they hate being lied to is they cannot lie, and they just think it’s really shitty for you to do something they can’t, and then you turn that around by getting your non-magical players to call them out like “hey, you’re using magic and I can’t, and that’s not fair”

Pencil: I like if you lie to a fairy it doesn’t take vengeance on you, it just starts flying passive-aggressively like “bet you can’t do that, can you?”

Paper: Get called out by the fey

Pencil: The fey’s one weakness is they are vulnerable to callouts on twitter

Paper: Which is, of course, just the network of bird noises that they use to communicate over long distances

Pencil: Your fave is problematic: steals babies and replaces them with magical duplicates. I feel like I like the idea of combining the two, so you can’t say anything true to the fey, but you also can’t say anything false to the fey

Paper: You have to make purely vague statements

Pencil: Yes. Everything you say has to be just noncommittal. “So how about that weather?” Actually, in the general demographic of D&D people “you can only communicate with the fey in small-talk” would probably be a very difficult challenge

Paper: I mean, definitely among the ones that we know

Pencil: Yes

Paper: I am including myself in this, I am very bad at small-talk

Pencil: You can’t say thank you to a fey, and you extrapolate that to you constantly have to be massively rude to the fey

Paper: The real issue is responding to “thank you” with “you’re welcome”, because they’ll take that as a blanket thing, so you have to say “no problem” instead. And that’s why customers get really angry at people in retail who say “no problem” instead of “you’re welcome”, because they’re actually fey who were looking for a way in

Pencil: Regrettably, capitalism has entered the feywild, and your job is to stop Starbucks from infiltrating fairyland

Paper: I mean, when you think about it, dealing with the fey is basically just malicious compliance

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: It’s like, well, I’m gonna figure out the rules, and then I’m gonna use them against you in the least obvious way that I can

Pencil: So the campaign idea that popped into my head is, powerful elder fey, and it’s just your shitty manager at your minimum wage job, and you have to get through the working day without accidentally selling your soul to your boss, and I think that’s probably a Changeling: The Lost durance, which you can all have for free

Paper: Just imagining going into a feywild Starbucks, and they ask for your name, and then everyone stands there really awkwardly

Pencil: Sorry, I love the powermove of you go into a Starbucks, “can I have your name?” “yeah it’s Steve” “haha, fuck you!” and then they just run off

Paper: (chuckles) The perfect crime!

Pencil: (snorts) “Not any more!” They yell, and then they just jump out the back and ride away on a coffee machine

Paper: That does feel like a very fey thing to do. That is some pixie nonsense

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Sorry, for a moment I forgot how to pronounce an x

Pencil: It happens. You possibly traded that ability to the fey. Also, I love that we’ve gone from “what’s traditional fey lore?” “Oh yes, Starbucks!” That traditional institution of mediaeval Europe

Paper: To be fair, they just said fey-themed mission, and it’s still based in traditional fairy lore, so I’m counting it

Pencil: Also, to be fair, Starbuck cups have been discovered from neolithic times. As far as we can tell, Starbucks has just existed as long as humanity, and its current form is just its latest incarnation

Paper: The main difference, really, is that in the feywild, rather than being named after a character from a book, it’s named after the currency used by the gods

Pencil: Yeah. Yeah, Starbucks has existed for as long as sentient life has. So we’ve learned that fey hate horses, can’t be spoken to, just in general, and get very upset if you lie to them, because that’s rude

Paper: They also don’t like if you spit on their pasties

Pencil: I mean who does

Paper: I mean, especially these days. Back in my day we used to all spit on each other’s food and it was a grand old time

Pencil: Remember before covid when you just walked up to your friends and spat on their food? Remember before covid when you could be a massive asshole?

Paper: So, on that beautiful note, I think it’s time to end the episode, by telling you that we have a patreon. If you want access to a discord server where we play monthly one-shots based on…sometimes stuff from the blog, sometimes stuff from the podcast, but we have some fun one-shot times. You can go to patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas, that’s the basic level, you can also get access to bonus episodes and homebrew which, I believe the next homebrew to go up is gonna be the wild magic ranger, so that should be a fun one

Both: And remember to have a probably bad day

(military-sounding duck noises, which become a marching rhythm over the rest of the episode)

Pencil: Lieutenant Dabbles

Paper: General Quackers

Pencil: Sargeant Flaps

Paper: Lance-Corporal Splashy

Pencil: The Right Honourable Flip-flap

Paper: Major River Pigeon

Pencil: Reverend Damp

Paper: Lord and Lady Flatfoot

Pencil: Earl Flappers

Paper: Greg