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The Naturolls is your seat at the table for a Daggerheart TTRPG actual play. Listen in as a group of friends from around the world tells campfire stories (and puns) in The Shatterlands, a once-divided kingdom whose 100 years of peace is unexpectedly ended by a dangerous threat.
All right, everybody, welcome back to another brand new episode of the natural Today we're taking a little break from our campaign missions, campaign episodes, I guess. And we're going to sit down for just a little while with one of our players Fate Walker. I'm gonna let him introduce himself in just a second. But um if you don't know who Fate Walker is, uh he's a friend of mine. I've known him for quite a few years, and he is on the unnatural side of things playing the Dragonling Erithean. So, uh, Fate, if you would start And um give us a little bit about I don't know who you are, what you're into, like um just for anybody who doesn't know you the way that I do, like what what kind of things Catch your fancy maybe outside of playing on a a Daggerheart podcast. What what kind of things do you like? What do you do in your free time? Tell the people about yourself. Well, hi. Fate Walker, uh also known as John. The nice plain John. Uh I'm I'm a streamer By somewhat nature on how I met everybody, I've been streaming for since twenty fifteen. Um Twitch for most of it and then Mixer a little bit of it. But I like games. I like I like playing a lot of games. And then I liked also like helping people understand games, which I think is where my current iteration of myself is. I also enjoy help building other streamers up and and vibing with them and riffing off of them. Uh outside of that, I live in the good old state of Florida, so I have the opportunity to go to Disney every once in a while and um I I go down there when I can uh to just kind of sort of people watch and just and just vibe. Um nothing crazy exciting. I don't do like any kind of skydiving or anything. We've got two pups, Faiton Starbuck, and then my amazing wife Faye. Um I don't know if we're gonna ever reveal her real name, but uh we'll we'll go with Faye for now. Um yeah, and and nothing nothing nothing too crazy. I I just enjoy helping people and and playing games. I I've been doing role playing games since I was a teenager many years ago 'cause now I'm gonna say how old how how crazy old I am, um, which is crazy old I am. Um I think I've been playing my age is this and then I've been playing for this thirty years of I don't know if I play I started with uh second edition D D with FACO and all that craziness. Um jumped and I've jumped into many different genres. I didn't just stick with D. I've I've done uh I'm trying to think of all the different ones. The Mutant's Masterminds, uh the Bezum, Star old Star Wars one. Just a little bit of everything, learning different rule sets and and just really trying to transform a little bit of my day into some other character and playing fantastical fantastical scenarios. So that's that's a little bit about me. Um Met Revealing uh in the Avengers age when we had a ton of fun in the Avengers stuff and Mm haven't really looked back since. It's true, it's true. I was actually you actually covered a few things I was gonna ask you next, so we might Dive in a little bit deeper. No, no, no, that's okay. You're you just we've known each other for so long, you know where I'm going. That's awesome. Um My my next thing, I guess, was gonna be like uh when I asked you to be on the show first on kind of like a one-shot and then um kind of dropped this. Hey, I I'm thinking about I guess a little glimpse into my mind is I think that one of the hardest things Sometimes is scheduling, especially when you have a regular podcast release. And uh we release once every other week. And as you can see right now, because we're releasing a few bonus episodes Uh even when we're releasing regularly and playing regularly, sometimes people go on vacation and have events at work. So yeah, and work. So we We have to make some uh some allowances. Um, but I thought that having two parties on the show would be a good way to kind of allow it for if some if one of the parties has a month where they can't play. the other parties can probably play and stuff like that. So, um one of the reasons that I asked you is I mean one of the reasons is just I've known you for a while and we're friends. Uh but another reason that I asked you is I know that you have been playing tabletop games, as you said, for a long time. And um I don't know, I think that's an interesting thing and I would love to know what drew you into tabletop games? What's kept you playing for so many years? What uh I guess maybe even if you want to expand into this, like when I was like, hey, I want to add another thing to your already busy schedule, what about that was appealing? Um, so I'm just kind of curious what it is because I think it's interesting finding about people's intro into this and like what keeps them there. So I think the natural progression from hardboard crack took me into role playing as as Magic, the Gathering in the mid n mid to late nineties, um, had a little ebb and flow for us. And as we started getting bored of playing Magic, 'cause Some of our friends were a little bit better off than we were and could get the cars that they needed before like the whole this whole crazy trading thing. Like we didn't we didn't have like a uh a place to just go online. 'Cause this is pre-internet, right? We'd have a place to go online and um just buy the cards at a cheaper value to get the deck you wanted. So whoever had the most money kinda sort of ended up in having having the bitter deck and that gets a little boring so uh after during school uh four five of us Kinda was like, okay, what are we gonna do next? And we're we're geeky nerds and we turn to DD and doing fancy stuff after school. We'd instead of going home Um uh especially especially around I was I was in the marching band and when mar when band season ended, um a lot of us just hung out at school until our parents came to pick us up. Um Mostly unsupervised 'cause that's the nineties and the craziness of what it is today is is what it is today. But uh we would sit in the cafeteria, roll dice and uh play games. Um and then that bled over into going to other people's houses and that was sort of my early high school years of just Um, either going over friends' houses and playing on the N sixty four when Zelda released the door, we would get together and and just D and D. And sometimes we would be stupid and go outside with sticks and and uh uh weird sheets and stuff and do very, very, very primitive LARPing. Um and just kind of sort of that thing where We we just try to transform the world around us into something fantastical and fun uh and sort of pass the time kind of thing. I I lived a little bit in the country and there wasn't a whole lot to do other than campfires and going out in the woods and I wasn't uh I wasn't one of those guys that got into hunting and stuff. I w so we just went the other route. did nerdy stuff and computers were again fifty six K dial up not crazy like it is now we weren't always connected so we Went and got books and learned how to play D D and that's how I got started. I sure I've just forgot all the other questions to follow up and I cut I kinda had like a real sequence of questions for you. So b before we move on to the the other pieces, why don't we Let me ask a question. This is probably gonna show my I don't know, my lack of knowledge about what it was like many years ago to play. Because I I didn't start playing until recently. Like Um, I played some D D before the podcast, but most of my most of my experience with Tabletop is is on the podcast and that's kind of intimidating. So here's my question. Um When you would play with your friends growing up, was it were were you running like pre-made modules sort of thing? Or were was it just Friends making up stuff for other friends? It was it was it was friends making up stuff. We did there there weren't modules. And if there were, we we wouldn't figure out how to follow it. It was it was um Just I mean I remember my Star Wars one, I was carrying around an X-Wing cannon. I was like, let me just dump everything into strength and I'll just carry around this cannon and like the first thing he wanted us to fight was a t uh like a giant not a Tarask, but a the the equivalent of a Tarask. We I mean I'm sure we didn't play by the rules correctly at it. It was it was We we took the rules that we could uh almost almost as if like we took the rules as like uh here's your sandbox and then we kind of sort of brought our own pail and shovel and then built the world around it. Um removed rules that we didn't like and had rules that we did. Uh no one really ruled Lawyered a lot that at that point in time. We i it it was I don't I don't know if kids have ever had that thing. Just that thing where you went out into the playground you're like, I'm Spider-Man and I'm Doc Ok and and then you c start calling out things that you do and you're like oh you can't do that da da da da like Just that whole it was sort of along those vibes, except for now we had a little bit more rules that we could kinda sort of port to point to every once in a while. Um we we could we couldn't say, oh my my gun does twenty thousand billion damage. We had dice. Numbers that that associated with it. Um and and it gave us a little bit more structure around it, which then allowed us to do do deeper diving than just trying to one up each other. So Yeah, I it you you touched on what's funny is you touched on Almost exactly what I would describe as my entry point into tabletop games, which is that it is the closest that something has felt to just being able to play pretend. With your friends, like on the playground, like there's obviously rules, there's things that you have to kind of abide by, but if if you ever listen to an episode of the show, or in your case, if you're If you're uh you're playing and you wonder why maybe I allow someone to do something that's a little bit outside of the intended rules. Uh a good example of that is If you listen to the latest episode, you may notice that um Tiddley, uh Almathara, is using the like minor illusion spell maybe in a slightly unintended way, more of more of as like a disguised self. And the reason for that is I is because it's sounded cool. And um I, you know, I want my friends to have fun and get to do cool things. And uh it is technically not within the rules, but like I I'm not necessarily here to follow every rule. Um, take the dragonling, right? Like Yeah. Well yeah, exactly. And that's a that's a good that's a good transition into the whole the whole reason Aerathan has wings is because I had to go down the serif serif route because I couldn't quite make s with the current rules of Daggerheart, I couldn't quite give him scales and fairy wings, right? Mm-hmm. Um so we had to Benagle some stuff. I know at some point we kinda sort of want to make our own or I want to make my own custom rules for a dragonling and give them a little bit more of that so you can be something other than just a serif Dragon. Um I I definitely pictured them more toward the elemental type, but I light can be an element Um darkness can be an element, so I sort of playing around with this with using the rules that we have loosely to allow a dragon to fly and have ski have a Dracana scales and an elemental breath and stuff like that. Yeah, and I think for me, like the reason that I'll allow like something like that or allow Almathara to like in my mind, using that minor illusion, she was using it on her armor and that's That's how she took on the visage of this guy. Um, and obviously that's not a uh, you know, maybe once again, like I said, not necessarily in the rules, but the reason I allow that is I hope at least that I As the as the GM of these games can adapt what I had planned to these slightly off-book moments, because I think there's a lot of magic in those. So to kind of inside baseball a little bit. Um that episode, I intended you guys to hide when that guard came bursting through the door. And because we had this moment where we didn't quite follow the rules. All of a sudden a whole scenario that I had never conceived of was starting to play out, and I think it I think it led to some really amazing moments. Um So yeah, anyways, that was a little bit a little bit of a tangent, but I just think that like being able to play with your friends is is really the appeal of this and um I'm hoping I don't often get caught up in rules. Maybe on the player side, I get more caught up in rules because it's like I need to convince the GM to let me get away with something. I don't know, but Just really fun to play. It's Daggerheart's been a really it has been at least unique in the sense of all the other games that I've played because it's it's very um uh more in line with improvision and and coming a little bit off of the cuff when it comes to the different scenarios than going because a lot of the ways I used I normally play is Here's the scenario. Here's all the things I can do. What does my character think? Um in in DD, a very structured one in Then you get dagger heart, you're like, here's the sort of scenario, what do you sort of wanna do? Good luck. Then you kinda sort of make it up as you go. It's very it's not as very structured in the sense of what The the a lot of the um worlds that I tend to have lived in before Uh where where the DM has has the onerous task of building the whole world a lot of times. Now we get to sort of participate in doing that, which has been a fun, different, unique way to play to roleplay, which improv, once you get used to it and it starts settling in, it's one of those things that you gotta kind of keep working at it it gets it gets easier as you go along with a lot of other things but I know improv has its own bunch of hurdles to kind of sort of break out into and start really Feeling a mastery of it, even though I don't think the true people who improv ever feel like they're ever a master of it. Kind of right. Yeah, I imagine that, you know, it's always a thing where you feel like you can get better. I uh I I definitely that's actually a great topic as well. Um I Took a group of people who, up until playing with me, basically um you you you mentioned a lot of different things that you've played, but I think everybody else in the party Before me, maybe or like before playing with me maybe only played DD? Potentially might have played other things, but mostly DD. And I've kind of dropped them in a situation where I have basically said, you walk into this room, tell me what this room looks like. And I think that's kind of a little bit of a scary thing to kind of put in front of people if they're not expecting it. So I've kind of, as we've been building this party, I've warned you guys a lot of like, hey I'm going to ask you some questions that don't necessarily affect the the story, but they're about your character's experience of the world. And um I don't know, I just I think that's like you said, one of the really unique things about Daggerheart is it encourages me to say, hey, what's in this room that you're walking into? What do you see? Um So Yeah, and I think as we keep playing, you're gonna see that becoming much more comfortable in us not take those mini breaks of uh some one of us is going to jump on, oh I've got a great idea of what this is and you know If it ends up being me, I'm gonna try to put some crazy funny twist on it. Maybe throw an Easter egg or two in there. Um Hopefully hopefully I get to the point where it ends up being so weird and off the wall that when I go, okay, I can describe this one every I'd like the whole group to go, okay no I've got this. That's that's gonna be my goal. I want to be so off the wall that someone goes, I've got this. Kind of and and you saw a little bit with that last episode. Uh spoilers, uh stop here Go listen to the last episode unless you want to hear the spoiler. I'll give you five more seconds to go do that now, or you're gonna get slightly spoiled. Alright, so when I jumped into the uh fishing area and there was the fishing nets that I decided to make a hammock for myself and tangled myself up in. Probably not the best position to put my dragon in, but you guys let me do it. And it was their fault for letting me do it, but it's there now because they they Someone painted it as a fishing thing and didn't paint it enough to where I had enough liberty to add my own little flare in there. And I'm gonna keep doing that until someone tells me not to. Well, I think like one of the one of the great things is you have yourself an entire party of people who um I think are a little bit willing to be off the wall a bit, as we can keep pointing to Episode three, but almost everything that happened in Episode Three was uh a lit at least a little unhinged. Straying all the way to the top with With Aerathan's entrance into the combat, uh or at least his kicking off of the combat with uh with his unprecedented Well, we had that episode too where I was like, I just take the guy and I'm gonna just fly off with him. Yeah. Yeah. Or or the the We're just like we're gonna go kill those guys or the off-the-wall of literally on the wall. We're just gonna climb on the wall and hide Yeah. Yeah. It's Yeah. It is uh I mean I I purposefully reached out to people that I thought were going to Like I really feel like in a lot of tabletop gaming there is a very real temptation to try to um optimize or min-max or whatever you want to call it where it's um let me do the best thing in this moment and I tried to pick a bunch of people that I thought would say Let me do the most interesting thing in this moment, and we're three episodes in and I feel like we have already had more than a handful of incredibly interesting moments. Think think how you met Aerithan. Like, what was what was the first thing you saw him do when we started Daggerheart? He was shaking his tail feathers. Tail scales. Tail scales. We're just like, what's Air Thank you doing? Oh, I'm I'm busting a move on the in front of the bart on the dance floor. What what else would I do? Makes sense. It makes sense. I oh god. I've always been um Sometimes to a detriment. I I mean you have your ups and downs with all the things that you do. Um I always tend to and I I will warn GMs of this. I don't know if I officially warned you, but this is your official warning if you haven't heard me say this, but I am very good at taking an inch uh being given an inch and taking a mile. Um and and going very far with it With the rules the way they are, it could definitely take a lot of miles. But I used to used to a lot you you can ask uh a couple of my previous GMs, they would they would I would always go, what can I do? With these two sticks in this rock. And then figure out some weird way to take down a boss with it because I've set up some kind of boulder trap or something random with it. Um, that they just weren't expecting me to do. Hey, is there a boulder in this room that's potentially, you know, or a stalag type that might might might drop if I wanted to? Um And and and just taking that mile with it and bringing something crazy to the scenario. Um some sometimes sometimes I've had that moment of, alright, John, step back. That's a little too far. I I under it's all within the rules. I get what you're saying, but no. Which is totally fine. Jim can tell me no. I'm okay with no because I know I take that mile. Yeah. And I think that with all of us, I think that that's a really interesting dynamic that we all have, because I know that you and maybe you and Tiddly or you and Mav didn't really Or I guess even you and Kitty, like, not everybody knew each other before we started playing, but I purposefully selected people that I feel like I had a good back and forth with. Um because it I I wanted people that would take those big swings, but also people who aren't going to be Bothered, I guess, if the answer to the big swing is that doesn't really work the way you expect. And sometimes what that works out to is I I I allow Tiddley to answer the door as this person who's supposed to be in jail. And I'm like, sure, you can try it. And I set a ridiculous high ridiculously high DC and then all of a sudden she rolls a crit. That sort of thing. You'll learn. I I have learned that there is some kind of Some kind of blessing that is going on with all of your dice because every time you say essentially you can certainly try. The world's like Alright GM. Yeah. We're gonna let these dice roll the right way and you're gonna have to figure it out now. Yeah, and I mean that's happened a number of times. If we go back to the episode before the last one. The stealth episode was supposed to be a lot harder for you guys. And the stuff that I put in front of you Every time I made you guys roll something, you rolled way above the not even like marginally above the DC, way above the DC. And so I don't know. It's been a really interesting challenge for me of like, first of all Do I have to set my DC more like higher specifically for this party because they haven't rolled anything below a 15 in three sessions? Which it I'm not gonna do, obviously, but it's just an interesting I posted about this on Blue Sky. I was like, a GM needs to have an idea for what happens if everything goes right for the party, because that's what happened in episode two. I didn't I didn't plan for that to go as well as it did. I mean at the end it fell apart a little bit, but that was that was great. The the biggest issue as a player Um and maybe some DMs see this too, but I I think there's a bit more blinders when you're the DM because you're there to try to cause some type of friction. Um, and a lot of times with stealth, uh, it's meant to be frictionless. And then you have all these people. You have all these people who invest all these points and all this stuff into being like the perfect stealth person and a lot of DMs are like, I'm just gonna make them roll five or six times 'cause one of those are gonna fail. So I can finally give them a friction. Instead of finding some way to uh add friction in there even when they succeed and or or when friction happens Allowing them because they're stealth and this is their purview, give them a chance to also recover when it when it fails. Um oh you bumped up against the glass uh make a instead of just having the the glass f uh the voss fall over, make make a thing to see if you can catch it. Yeah and give them a potential chance to recover it. I I I think cause cause you have people, oh I build combat. Well that's the punishment for anytime you fail a stealth or anything you do. You can't other than just give you bigger monsters. Right. Um So it's very rare that you see a lot of stealth missions succeed right fully. From from beginning to end. You don't you can't ever have a lot I think I feel like I've never in the many years that I've played ever had a successful Ocean 11s type vibe where we've had those little friction things, but at the end of the day, we successfully stealth because normally once stealth is broken, it's over. Right. Um and I felt really good coming off the end of that, whether or not you f didn't feel good, because I felt like the the f there was enough friction there. You had the you had them use their use us to w where we spider climbed up walls to get away from the guards and that felt really good. I I felt as a stealth mission that was probably one of the better ones that I've ever been a part of. No. Because you didn't just keep making us roll because you're like, they have to fail. at some point. So I can have this thing happen that's gonna alert the guards and make everybody go crazy and now we're no longer in stealth. Now we're in combat kind of vibes. Well that's really good to hear. I ended that one and I kind of walked out of my my office and I was like I don't know if I like I don't know if I challenge them at all. So that's really good to hear because the for the record I consider what you guys did a success through the whole stealth portion. Like that very end where you encountered the guards, that was always gonna kind of be some kind of Dust up or I I I didn't know what I expected you guys to do to deal with the two guards that were watching the house particularly, but I. That was like a particular This is the last moment of the stealth section foil And I was curious to see how you would deal with that. But it wasn't based on like that wasn't based on like I didn't plan that organically based on you guys succeeding or like I wouldn't have thrown that in based on you guys like failing a bunch of roles. That was just like the final step of that area. So I I consider like I mean, if you guys hadn't had all the improv of you know, let's do the spider climb on the wall. Um I I absolutely never considered the idea of Aerythane going along the rooftop to to watch out, and then I was like, oh man, he's just gonna be able to see everything coming. Um but that but that that's that's like the perfect setup. But that's how a stealth mission should 'cause and again, a lot of other times you have a group who has um like people who are like, Oh, we're pretty decent. It's not than one guy in full plate mail. So you never you again, you never See you'll always see full combat, but you'll never uh there there is, I would say, 95% of the time you're never gonna see a f unless it's two people going off solo and they end up doing super well in their roles, which isn't always something that's gonna happen. You never see a full successful stealth mission. Right. It's and but you see a lot of full successful combat. So it's it's nice It was it was nice breath of fresh air to come out of there going, I think that was a my first real successful Beginning of like cause sometimes you'll have like a oh I'll successfully scout this one thing, come back to the group and tell them what's going on. But this was like a full mission of stuff that we managed to go through with the quirks of how do you deal with stuff. Here's some friction for you to deal with um and deal with it stealthily and us succeeding through the whole thing. Um and and still feeling that intense uh dra cause if we had to start combat then I mean right that's how all stealth missions tend to tend to go. I Right. And feel free if there's I don't know if we have is there a comments thing on this this thing? I don't know. Tell me I'm wrong. But I feel like there's a lot of times that stealth missions Just don't do s like stealth myths endeavors succeed. A lot of I I I've seen so many times going why do I invest in stealth when I know it's just gonna break because one person breaks it You know, which is why fifth edition did their thing where it was group stealth versus individual stealth, 'cause back in like third edition and second edition You'd T people are getting twenties, twenty-fives, and this one guy's like five and look up I guess we're not stealth it anymore. You know Yeah. I I think uh I think the group action role in Daggerheart is actually a really interesting answer to that as well, which might be how Fifth Edition Fifth Edition does stealth, but basically like the idea that I don't I assume I made you do a couple group action roles, but the idea that you can elect someone, like this is our stealthier person, you can elect that person to lead, and then the rest of you just like add a little bit or take a little bit away depending on how you do. I think that's a really really good answer and it feels more Exciting, I guess, might be the right word for the player, because you don't risk that person who rolls a five breaking breaking things for everybody. Oh no. Everything okay? One second. Yeah. My recording just stopped because my computer went to sleep. Took me a second. Okay. And this is where we're picking up. Hey! I'm not bringing up the clapper for this. It happened the last time too. I've gotta put I I've gotta put take this off of sleep mode. Um Oh crap, I had a thought too when it went to sleep. Nooooooo. Huh. Oh well Oh, D's, uh um the way fifth edition handles it normally you set a DC and then you take the average of the whole group. Oh, it's an average. But with with Daggerheart When you have that failure and that and and you end up succeeding, you can go, oh, this person tripped the vase, but I caught it. And I placed it back up and I looked at them and and and it gave it gives that a little bit more of that interaction or Or what not? Or I or if it got really close, you'd be like, you barely caught it. Like there was a small little tink as it sort of hit the floor and there's a bunch of silence, but you don't think you got caught, right? Um you can you can add that and you can't de I I think sometimes with D D you miss a little bit because you get very much in the mechanics unless you're the improv. Again, I I like Daggerheart 4 For that reason. Um. Yeah, it actually leads me to like one of the more interesting things about running Daggerheart is Those moments that you're talking about where what if someone succeeds with fear? Or what if someone fails with hope? And like finding the things that matter to a character in those moments where it's like, so in the stealth episode, like succeed with fear, um maybe you you you dodge the guards, but then you have to like they had to stay on they had to stay on their spider climb for a little while longer because those guards were talking. Like trying to add those moments that it's not Here's a punishment for succeeding, but here is a here is a complication. And I think finding those complications is a really, really interesting part of trying to To run especially a group like yours where I don't know what you guys are gonna come up with at any given moment. I I never have. I I am constantly surprised in in a complimentary way. Com Complimentary for sure. If I could let you guys see all the different scenarios that play in my head every time someone goes. my character's actions does I I I I try to when I when I play I try to have plan what my character's going to do so that there's really not a whole lot of dead space into Air Thing what are you gonna do? Um And and I always try to picture what my character's about to do. And every time someone else speaks or something new comes into it, I I shift what I'm gonna do. And there there's some crazy stuff. Um And then every once a while crazy stuff like, I don't know, two bodies flying through a door. Are things that happen. Uh you know, um And and w one of my problems is is with the way I think is I don't vocalize to at least the DM what my thought process is sometimes when I do this. Um I don't I don't know if I said it in the in the scenario, but like when that when that went down, my thought process, okay, there's about to be a fight. This guy's caught all these people in this building. thinks they've had something to do with the guards, right? Mm-hmm. Um and I was like, well if I throw the guards through the door Yeah If they're in there, then obviously it's something outside there, so they're not the people responsible for the guards, was the kind of sort of way I was going with it, which probably pretty Probably needed some kind of like bluff roll or something along those lines too to kind of sort of guide that way. For the all right, these guys might get caught, but maybe they're not in that much trouble because obviously they couldn't be the ones who took care of the guards because they're here and the guard just flipped the door kind of thing. Um I did not voice that was what was in my head. Well you did you did say that. You did say that. And I guess like in my response, and I don't know that I said this in the episode was I don't know if the guards necessarily would assume that the only people involved would be in the room. So that so true. Yeah, that was that was kinda I mean regardless of what was going down like that was Two bodies flying through the door was was gonna was gonna set off some action. And oh yeah, well 100% that that was the goal, but the goal was to take the threat off of the people in the building, right? Right, yeah. And potentially pull it away, pull it outside the building Um was was sort of the goal there of if there's a threat here and you think your guards have been dealt with because of the people inside, maybe they're not because It's something outside. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I I think that those moments are I don't know Uh it when it comes to thinking of really interesting moments that we've had so far, I definitely that one's gonna be hard to forget That one's definitely gonna be woo We'll see. We'll see what all the crazy things I can come with. Because I I don't know the the carrying the guard off and accidentally dropping him was was uh pretty I've I I've also worried on both of those moves that maybe I have been a little heavy handed on like your intentions versus what happens. And uh so I guess I should say this on on this episode, you know, if there's like a if there's a moment where it feels like I'm being too heavy handed with your intentions, like Interestingly, both of them that I'm talking about are you dropping people. The first one, he he took some some serious damage, which you were very easily able to repair. And on the second one, you were intending to hit the door, not send them flying through the door. Um That's true If it yeah, so if it feels like I'm being too heavy-handed on those, you are welcome to say like uh No I I think the the door hitting thing was enough that I was like, oh that's you know I can I can deal with this. And um I think my character probably would have been a little bit more sad if I couldn't have healed the guy that I had dropped because again his intentions were to take care of the guard in a non-lethal way, essentially. If especially if he's already been like There there's a little there's a little morality in Hill that he's that he's not gonna just blatantly pick someone up and just drop 'em. Unless they're like super crazy middle combat and the guys fight. But the guy the guy really wasn't even trying to like fight to like to to to just get dropped. Like it that was me dropping the guy due to roles was my fault. And I thought I had it more under control than I did and it I didn't. So I thought it was definitely m I should repair the thing, which is why I healed him uh uh that I caused, because that was not my intent. Because my I was I was trying to be a little bit more Let's throw him in with the pigs. He's gonna wake up and who's gonna believe he he's he's he's miss guard duty, right? He's he's misguard duty. People are gonna be like, Where have you been? Oh a dragon picked me up and I woke up in the with the pigs and they're like, okay slacker. You know, that's that's sort of the way I was going with it. I was trying to put him in such a a a fantastical position right in which it's hard to believe that oh some some thing just picked me up in the sky and and dropped me off here. And that's why I'm all covered up in mud and they're like, You've got no the goal was no scratches or anything on you. Of course, something picked you up kind of that's yeah. That's sort of the vibe I was going with. I like the intention. Or trying to. I like the intention for sure. I like the intention. attention. The the role on that one definitely changed the result. Yeah, that's that's that's the that's the way roles go. That was that that was I think one of the worst roles you guys have had as as a party. It l like it just was in terms of Well I guess other than starting with a real solid three. You've had a couple of threes, I suppose, so. Um While we're talking about the morality of Arithan, I would love to know Wh where did like you've been making characters for games for for 30 years. Where where where is Arithane from? What what What led you to creating your own ancestry, essentially? Like what led you to creating your own character instead of Going with with a pre-built, what led you to a dragonling. Love to know the history of that a bit. Obviously if you want to keep things secret for the show, feel free on that one. Yeah, I'm I'm not gonna like try to really I I want people to listen if they're if they're enjoying Arathan and they want to know like where his mental thoughts are and stuff and that's gonna be something I maybe disclose at a later talking sheets. Um but I think overall where it pulled from is is I've I've done the cookie cutter Clerics and and I I tend to like to play some off the wall things. Um uh I I I always try to give my characters a slight fault of fa like a I try to make them Especially since I tend to min-max a lot of things in other games. In deck art, I I'm I'm trying to find more of a balance with it. But in other in DD and stuff, I always try to min-max things, but because I know that's the way I try to think, I always try to give something a hindrance. So like I'll do a Dex Barbarian, which is very not like a thing you should do with Barbarian, because Barbarian should be strengthened. Sometimes I'll give I'll make him a halfling and give him a whip. Cause I think that's just why he's a barbarian. What do you mean he's a halfling with a whip? And and I'll see what I can do with it. And and then I'll try to min-max from there. I'll I'll try to give them those Those um detriments to it. Okay, but why a dragon? Oh so I've never I tend to play Very human based races. I'll play a half elf, I'll play a halfling, I'll play a human I've never really played an elf, I've never played an orc, I've never I've never up until this other game I'm in, I've never really played anything unless I'm sort of for and then uh and then if I'm forced into a certain thing I tend to play towards the most human thing because it's it's the easiest for me to kind of sort of visualize myself as and put myself into their eyes and their shoes and go, this is the way I want th this is the way they probably are going to think 'cause that's that tends to be okay, what's he gonna what's he thinking in this scenario? What's he going what are they gonna do? Mm-hmm. Um, so I wanted to break that a little bit and give myself a four-legged creature and I've never been a dragon. Mm-hmm. But as much as I love dragons, um, but I I also didn't want to play the tradition super duper prideful. Um I'm an ultimate being stipulation of what a what a lot of people envision dragons in a fantasy world. Um I definitely took a little bit of inspiration from how to train your dragon in toothless and that dichotomy of dragons and and kind of kinda sort of their their their attitude and being a little bit of uh whimsically fun. Um so that's sorta where and I and I wanted to since I was since I knew this was gonna be more improv And I was like, well, if I'm gonna feel uncomfortable being improved, I might as well go ahead and like throw more of that uncomfortableness in this and I will play something that now I'm I'm the the way I'm thinking is you know not just how does my character think in here because I I feel very there there's some relation with the character that I've gotta go he's a dragon he still has some dragon traits how does that affect my thought in my next process of how does th not just his personality, but just his and and how he was raised and his history, but like his nature. Like I've I've I've never played a character and going Does his nature dictate anything in this moment? Um Yeah. And and playing to a character's nature has been at the moment pretty fun to learn Um and trying to figure out their nature in the middle of role-playing. Yeah. Is there anything that about Aratheian that's surprised you in the middle of our games? I realize it's a strange question because it's used. No no no no no it yeah it's um I've surprised myself a little bit in that I was like, oh, I don't want him to be like this super prideful dragon, but there are some things that deep down when um and and I've sort of built this character, I was talking I was talking about Panda about this actually today. Um when it seems like people view me as a domesticated animal. There is a little bit of pride there that I mean mechanically it makes sense for me to carry luggage around, maybe carry a person here and there. that it mechanically makes sense, right? And then I think of myself, well, if I'm not a beast of burden Which then if any other character is not a beast of burden, how would they feel to go, Hey, can I just put a saddle on you and ride you on your shoulders? Right? Can I just do you mind? Do you mind just like how about you pick up all our stuff? Which if you're a very strong character, I could see a a very strong character. Oh yeah, I could totally. I mean, of course I can carry. Which which is why Aerathean's also kinda like, Yeah, I'll totally carry your stuff. But I also wanted to give him that that naturistic pool of of exploration and sort of being his especially when you are flying, that freedom of of of flight. And I I feel like when you fly you just have this freedom of like I I I choose my own destiny, which is why he's got a very whimsical Oh, there's a lake over there. Maybe I just dive through the lake. You know you have like a whole bunch of people's really expensive silks with us. That's not what's going through his mind. His mind is I want to know what the feeling of going from wind to water back into wind. is and he's playing off of his his feel so yeah I'll carry your stuff I'm not gonna guarantee it's gonna be in the same position that you give it to me um because I'm gonna be very free flying when I fly around and I'm gonna fly through trees. and and just enjoy I I feel like there's there's this just enjoyment of of this freedom of flight kind of vibe from him. Um but I I found I found internally deep down when I was asked hey do you can we get a saddle on you and riding you I was like oh I kind of I kind of take a little m me myself I was like oh I kinda take offense to it but I was like okay Erithane's still is happy good luck guy, but I think maybe there's something n naturally under him that's got that prideful. Which is why he also, if you put a coin under him while he's sleeping, kind of vibe that we talked about. Um, where there is nature that he doesn't quite Maybe he fights against or he's not there to um I'm I'm I'm debating whether or not he's fighting against his nature to be different than ever any other dragon, or if it's just that he has not learned how to understand fully his instincts. Um and I guess that's sort of his coming of age potentially is is uh balancing instinctually himself with uh e adventuring in the world and and whatever has happened to is race in the past and and the decline and where they're going in the future and what it means for him and and his progress with it as they Try to find a place in this in this world and not be secluded like they are Absolutely. But there's that inst there's a natural instinct to it. Right. that will happen that he might not just con he consciously understand. Right. Yeah. He I've given him those quirks. Someone someone who's like, hey, can I ride you? You m you know, Aerothane might snap back, I don't know, can I ride you? Like that's so so there's the scenario and um for any of the unnaturals that are currently listening if you could earmuff for like the next five minutes I've I've I've put a scenario out. Um and if for anyone who's listening, this scenario might happen that if somehow They convinced me to get a saddle on. Um, I may Pro very very very jadedly if they are in the middle of getting it on may have may walk in there and go, well, make sure you use protection, throw the saddle at them and go, it may help to prevent kit chafing, and then walk out while they're doing their deed. Um with someone. I feel like I feel like that scenario could definitely play out depending on how that all goes down. Um Yeah. That was definitely I I've got so many different s like I I pre-planned for so much on what scenarios could happen. That might never happen. That him being put in that position. position in such a way may never come back that he could be have that jaded moment at all. Yeah. Um but I've got all these different scenarios in my head of how would he react here? I and I play it throughout throughout the week or every time I think about the game I was like okay what if I put him this position. What what would he do? And always trying to prepare myself for what crazy unknown thing's gonna happen down the road. I gotta I I mean, first of all, I can I can like take notes of this conversation because uh, you know, now I have Now I have new things that I can do to uh to unlock things in in Aerytheon. But no, um Yeah, I'm hoping we come come across some of those things. Because I think it's really interesting to see like I think we all know from the the few episodes Arithan as this this upbeat character but it it's interesting to see What's what he's gonna do when the chips are down a little bit, because I mean, episode three was probably the most danger you guys have been in so far. That the one of those adversaries, especially if uh Um if Alacranz had not so deftly succeeded on the role, that could have gone a different way. Um But yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. I I find the balance between Erithean and maybe Morelia especially really interesting because You have this this the the moment where she's um is it commune? Is that the name of the ability? Commune? Where she's yeah, like communing with her with her entity And you just kind of like, ah, what do you see in that wood? Like that, like it's it's such a such a perfect example of how different these two characters are. because she's having this really serious moment and you're like I I just think it's a I I think it's a really good moment and I I wanted I wanted there to be a like My care he's young. He's my character is young. Um and so he's still exploring the world. He does he doesn't know what what people do and he's he Marile is something something n new that he's never experienced and what she does is something that he really you know doesn't fully understand so he's trying to piece together what he's seeing and a lot of stuff it's just off of what he's seeing and like he doesn't he's not feeling this commune thing that's going on. She's just reading the lines on some wood. Um And and I wanted to make sure they especially when that re like what are the other players doing when this person's doing this commune thing that they don't have a power of and how are they reacting? Um they're like, yeah, he's they're just doing their thing and they're just twiddling their thumbs. No, I'm I'm gonna sit there and try to figure out how how does work. Right. Right. Yeah. I think that uh Scrubs did a really good joke about that where uh a a whole thing on Scrubs is that JD has these moments where his fantasy runs wild. And like he sees something. And eventually, like after, I don't know, five seasons of this, we see the moment Where like JD has this fantasy and we come back and the characters are like what are you doing? What are you looking at? Like they they just they eventually acknowledge that over the course of five seasons, this character has just been staring off into the distance wist wistfully. So uh yeah, I think it's really, really fun that we had one of those moments so soon. So Um should we cover? What what do you hope for going forward for Aerathane? What are you Like what is Arithaan hoping for? What does he need? What does he want? What what kind of things can we expect to see from our favorite Dragon Ling. So with most characters that I make, I tend to give them some kind of overarching end goal. Mm-hmm. Um And again, if if you want to keep this a secret, we can we can No, I at the moment At this moment, there is no end goal for him. Um he is literally there Um to To experience, to live through this life and watch these people do their thing and and live it and shape it how he is. He's I almost want to say at this in it sort he's sort of taking everything one day at a time. Um but in more of a positive light where everyone's like, I don't want to think about the future, especially like in our current you know in In the world and or anytime something bad is people are like, I don't wanna I don't wanna think about the future. I just wanna take it one day at a time because that's what I can control. I wanna be in this box. He's like, I'm in this box and I'm I'm taking it one day at a time because I want to enjoy every moment that I have in the moments that I'm using and whatever in the future comes is what in the future comes, but I'm gonna make the most of what I can in this moment for At the moment, learning and understanding and figuring things out and uh just just just enjoying the part where where he lives. I I I think there's a very I I've I've put in his mind that there's a Um you guys might see at some point, but there's you know, he he because it's all nature driven, he understands there's a life cycle. Death happens. Survival of the fittest is kind of sort of in his is sort of in that wheelhouse thing. Um not to the point where he's like, everyone, everyone who's weak should die, but like he understands nature happens, right? And so he's gonna be he's gonna he's Probably gonna take a lot of moments from that perspective, or at least that's currently how I have him taking it. We'll see how adventures shape him into any other thought process. But at the moment he's A dragon living in a world that there are not a lot of dragonlings in the world, and how does he handle what's going in and uh make sure that at least for him um that they're still seen in a positive light for him. They're 'cause fear he cause 'cause he knows he's he's heard, he's potentially even seen with um his friend which you haven't seen yet. But he's he's probably seen what fear can do. And one of the ways to fight fear is with knowledge and and understanding. So That's sort of how he's fighting potentially people who are scared of him. Yeah. Well I am really excited to see what happens with Aratheon, um, and I'm really grateful to you for joining me. on the campaign and doing this episode with me so we actually have something to release this week. I'm I'm grateful for the other members who are putting time to let me play a weird dragon with them. Um and dealing with what I know is going to be a lot of shenanigans that I'm gonna do. And hopefully still being okay that I'm at the table in a year or two. Yeah. Oh God, Fate Walker near Athenians back again. I uh I I really we'll we'll probably wrap up here in just a moment, but I I really like that the how much the party is like someone comes up with a That was hare-brained offensive. Like it someone comes up with a a ridiculous plan, um, a scheme, a a hijink, if you will. And I love that this party constantly gets Goes, that's what we're doing? Alright, that's what we're doing. Like, there's very clearly a moment that people have where it's like, are we sure about that one? And then that moment goes very quickly to Alright, this is what we have to deal with. Let's figure out how to how to thread this new needle that we uh that we've created. So Yeah, it's it's been a pretty good dichotomy so far. I've definitely enjoyed it. Um And I I cannot wait to see how stronger our characters all grow together and vibe with each other. Yeah, and at some point we can uh maybe get a whole whole group of us down to talk about like I think it'd be interesting once we're further along to talk about what we discussed in session zero, because we did a session zero that I mean, I don't I don't know would it ever necessarily be super interesting to release because it's just kind of us riffing and joking and getting to know each other, but there was a lot of things that came up in Session Zero that I've tried to incorporate in I in I hope ways that You guys have not expected. And one of the reasons we're doing we're jumping around in time so much is because of something directly that was brought up in uh in session zero. So Trying to trying to incorporate things but put my own little spin on them. Time's always a hard thing to do. Yeah. Especially when you have stuff set in the present. That you're not trying to rewrite stuff that you do in the past. Yeah. This episode three was interesting. We were we were talking about that this morning where I think it was you that said something like, Well, we better get out of this because we've gotta we've gotta get to a bar fight in the morning and we can't I was like I don't know how we're wrapping I don't know how this comes full circle in the next six in-game hours that we're dancing in a bar, but Okay Yeah. Well, hopefully hopefully whoever your GM is gonna, you know, explain that maybe in the beginning of the next episode. So I guess we'll see. Well we'll see. We'll see. I heard he's pre-quote. So I expect nothing less. It's so funny that I like came up with this idea that I thought was really clever, and then as we started implementing it, I'm like, oh, I made a lot of work for myself. Yeah, well, you know? Yeah. So far. Yeah. Uh but uh I I I definitely gave myself and maybe you guys, because it's like Alright, well we're in the present, you have to take all your armor and weapons off. Or we're in the past again, you have to you have to put all your armor and weapons back on. So Yeah Yeah, one of the struggles I'm having is keeping track of multiple character sheets current status. Yeah. I was I was gonna suggest maybe we should uh have a duplicate character sheet for past and present, but we'll have to see. We'll have to see how how things go, so we'll see. We'll see. Aerathan and Aaron Wesen. Alright, Fate. Or John, as as it were. Thank you for sitting down with me. Do you have anything else that you want to say? Before we wrap this up and send people on their merry way. I will definitely say that um the next Hopefully the next uh thing we're in is going to be it will will will be Held down well. Oh and very gripping. I don't even I don't even know what that means. I don't even know what that means. I'll tell you offline. Okay, okay. Yeah, I guess if you want to find out what that means, uh tune in to the next episode. The release after this one should be the next part of the Confident 3 story. So thank you all for listening to this bonus episode, and we'll see you next time.