Latest / Bards and Barrels / S2 Ep. 15 - Light of Xaryxis Campaign Review

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S2 Ep. 15 - Light of Xaryxis Campaign Review · Bards and Barrels

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Bards and Barrels, the podcast for Dungeons and Dragons players new and old.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Ross Drewz and I'm joined by my friends and co-hosts Brett Miller and Phil Boone.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be exploring the world of Dungeons and Dragons in each episode, sharing our experiences, offering tips and advice for those who play and run this classic game.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: So whether you're a new player just starting out or a seasoned veteran looking to get a new perspective on things, Bards and Barrels has something for everyone.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: So sit back, grab a drink, and join us as we roll for an issue and embark on an epic adventure.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another episode of Bards and Barrels.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Ross, along with me, Brad and Phil, as always.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: And tonight, back for another episode, is Isaac and Matt.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Guys, welcome back to the show.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Good to be back.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Good to be back.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Woo! So uh tonight uh is a special night because we have once again wrapped up a campaign.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: We did uh a short one this time, kind of in between uh the end of our descent into a Vernus campaign before we kind of go back into the homebrew world of that uh whole storyline.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and we played Light of Xaraxis, and so uh Matt thankfully DM'd this one uh and he did a magnificent job.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna toss it over to him to give us a little bit of an overview, uh, and then we'll go from there and see what happens, right?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So Matt, take it away.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I knew I did an amazing job, but you know, hear you say it is amazing too.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: So humble.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you know, Light of Xaraxis uh starts off basically your adventures, you're on a planet, and the planet um immediately starts to become uh under attack.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know what's going on, everyone around you is dying, and you have to make some quick decisions to escape the planet, uh, and that will eventually send you into more wild space systems, the astral sea, as you sort of investigate what is going on to that planet, and you come across the astral elves who were the ones that were doing um the bombardment of that planet, and it's up to you guys to figure out how to either stop it or completely ignore it and let everybody die on the planet and commit genocide.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: That was an option.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was definitely an option.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: You could have just decided to turn the ship away.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so with that said, before we go any further, from this moment on, if you are are a player and you are about to put play this spoiler warning because we're gonna start talking about uh our experience in this, so just fair warning.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Also, content warning, uh, we're not gonna hold back in this episode.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: So uh there's gonna be some language, humor, all the things.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: So uh if that's not your thing, uh it's up to you if you want to continue from here.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: But uh let's get into this.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: You've been more.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You might know some of our you might know some of our characters about how we really play.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find out about that here in a minute.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think maybe we should start out by introducing your characters then.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so uh I played uh Rothan Night Spider.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Rothan was a Haddazy rogue.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um interesting thing about Rothan, I found out through this whole thing that I am not a rogue player.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think everyone here will attest that this rogue was not very well played as a rogue.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, you stole stuff at you stole some stuff at the end of the campaign.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: I did, that is true, and I I think I saved it for the most opportune time because I think I came ended up coming out with like 1,500 gold right at the end.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, you know, there was ever a time to roll some good numbers, that was it.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think my favorite thing, and I'll I'll kick it over to Isaac here in a second, was uh some of Roadie's backstory.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, we nicknamed him Roadie, Rothan to Roadie.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and with Murgie, who is Isaac's character, we kind of developed this whole like rocket and groot type bond thing going on, where it's like I even wrote on his back, because uh, well, we'll get into Isaac's character in a minute.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: But uh uh it was a lot of fun.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think I had more fun playing like role-playing this character than any character I've had before, mostly because like Isaac and I have this nice back and forth where like one of us would make a joke and the other one would chime in totally like he was right there, or whatever the case may be.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: But uh uh I'll let Isaac take off on uh on his character.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Alright.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this season or this campaign, I played Merg, uh, who is a GIF artificer.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Artificer class, just like Roadie, I would say I was not a very great artificer, uh, being the first time I've ever played one because of this campaign.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: You were allowed to play one.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh definitely different, but fun.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: If especially if you were to have like a long campaign and you could really get into all the very intricate details of what you could do.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, it was a fun campaign.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I would say our group's like chemistry all together was really good.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh with my cellmate Roadie.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um we were able to get ourselves into all sorts of sticky situations and out of those situations.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, it was uh it was a good campaign.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of fun with you guys having like a shared backstory for a lot of the campaign because you guys could feed off of each other and bounce things back and forth that only you guys would know as inside jokes that really elevated the role-playing, I thought, from what we've done in the past.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: That is true, Brett.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um one thing I would say is when Roddy said that he was riding on my back, it's important to understand that a GIF is like a hippo build, basically, for lack of better terms.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: And um, yeah, so just the chemistry was right there.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: Anywhere I went, he was there as my companion, basically.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's how you gain extra movement, too.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of fun.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_04: I know Brett and I haven't uh introduced our characters yet, but there may have been like a little um like jealousy going on at certain points, and Brett's character has, as you'll learn, had the opportunity to like grow in size.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: My character was very small, so occasionally I would also crawl up on Brett's character's back, just so we could sort of be like those two.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: Nice, and uh yeah, with that being said, I guess I'll pass it off to you, Brett.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so for this one, my character is Tikcha, who is a thrycreen fighter.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know a thykrine, they're like a giant four-armed bug creature.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: But with a thykrine, you get to pick their size.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can go anywhere from like a small to a medium-sized character.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so mine was a medium-sized thrycreen.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was ended up being a rune knight fighter.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh kind of a backwoods type of bug creature that got roped into the spacefaring world, not by his own volition, and had to kind of go along for the ride.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like I didn't know a lot about the rune knight like fighter type uh until you started playing it, Brett.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_04: And some of the things that you were able to do saved our Alice a bunch of times.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_04: Imposing just image, letting us re-roll rolls.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you saved us.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: The the rune knight like subclass for a fighter is so powerful because almost everything you do as a rune knight is based on reactions, and you can pick those whenever you want per round.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: You only get one of them per round, but that can be really powerful if somebody gives a big hit on one of your teammates.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I could alleviate that or redirect some of that damage, but it came in really powerful.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially during the Zodar fight when you redirected his punch to I think you hit the princess.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, punch.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I also have to admit, how did you come up with the name?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was looking for something that was just kind of weird.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted a single name, like uh Rihanna or something like that, like where it was just like a single name.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I wanted something kind of um unusual sounding.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just went into like the fantasy name generator and just started piecing together bits of names that I could find on there.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was funny because like I felt like I never got your character's name right.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: I never spelled it right, and I always had to go back to how it was spelled in DD Beyond to figure out even naming your tokens.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you were just messing with me at some point.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh for those listeners, it's T-I-K-C-H-K-A.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Tikcha.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_04: Like a silent K in the second half.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very thrycreen thing.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Your silent K is in there.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: But Philly, you had uh another Thrycreen, didn't you?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_04: I did.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I feel like we didn't even play on that, but uh I created a Thrycreen Ranger.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: So after we did our class review on the Ranger, I actually decided that I really wanted to try to play one.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_04: So that's what I created for this campaign.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: So I built Ubla uh UBLA, a Thrikrine Ranger, um, who ended up being kind of the uh swarm keeper was the route that I ended up taking for my uh ranger subclass because I wanted to be able to have the swarm of insects, uh, which sounded really cool, but didn't do a whole lot of extra like damage or anything.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_04: And like my maximum extra damage for my swarm was six piercing damage.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: So uh it wasn't heavy, like a heavy hitter, but flavor-wise, kind of neat.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um I feel like maybe less effective in his space style theme of play, where like pushing someone like five feet or ten feet doesn't make a huge difference.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um maybe if you got him pushed outside of the gravity bubble, it could, but most of the time I feel like it it wasn't really kind of in play with what we were doing.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: But uh it was fun to play.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the kind of carapace features of this Rikreen as well.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um they can camouflage their bodies and such, just played well into that ranger archetype.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: So it was a fun character to play.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: I I think one of the the coolest things about this was, and you guys can back me up if you want, was that you know, we had the whole array of of races at our disposal for this.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like we weren't told we couldn't play anything, and we all chose things that were unique to Spelljammer.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think that was pretty cool because it it added some unique flavor that we hadn't been experiencing before.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, maybe Matt should kind of explain like for the spell jammer campaign, like kind of like how like maybe the space features work, since it is a little bit different than like a regular campaign.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: If you could just give us a brief description of that for the listeners.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Jeez.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like what there's a lot.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh which which parts, I guess, because like just a basic rundown of like um, I would say, like, like what Phil mentioned, the bubble, basically.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So like everything in space has its own air bubble and its gravitation bubble, and so like every ship that you come across has its own gravity field, air bubble.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you can move around in the gravity field, um, but once you get outside of that, then you're in space and there's no gravity.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if two ships come in contact, then there's like all these mechanics and rules of where the air bubbles join and whose gravity plane that you're in.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you can do but with gravity planes in space, you can do really fun things.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can like get to the mast of your ship and jump off into space and land on another ship, which you guys did a few times.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you did do that.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um then there are things like the astral sea, where when you go in there, you don't age, you travel faster, and you meet a whole lot of different kinds of monsters that you don't normally see.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um like with the different races, there's a bunch of different spacefaring races, and you guys chose all the different types, and that actually made it a little more complicated to do because um you also chose backstories where you lived on different planets, and part of the light of Xaraxis is you're supposed to start on your homeworld already knowing each other.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that way you're super invested on this planet getting blown up.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, oh shit, okay, well, whoopsies.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it worked out.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was way more fun to have you guys come up with the with backstories and pick whatever you want, whatever fun spacefaring rates you wanted, though.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was honestly kind of uh to that point, though.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when we all ended up in was it water deep was where where we were in Fey Rune, or was it one of those cities?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, and and then when the the vines start popping out, it was kind of fun to like to be like, I don't give a shit.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like, this is not our planet, let's get out of here, or something like that.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I didn't feel invested in that world at that point, so it was it was kind of nice actually.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we were able to say, like, yeah, we're just out of here.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: We're just dipping, we don't give a damn.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_04: You guys were just heartbroken over the loss of the revenge of the Don John or the Don John or whatever the name of this ship was that we lost this time.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_04: So you were in shock.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: That's what it was.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was just 100%.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, excuse us, me and Roddy, for being a little bit torn up about the only piece of property that we owned being destroyed.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: You stole it, didn't you?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, yours was in the shop.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: We had to take ours.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: You should have to pay for our ship.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm pretty sure mine's still in the shop.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We did go through quite a few ships during the campaign.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they met various, various feats.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: I would like to go on record saying that Uba never captained a ship that went down.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: I would like to go on record saying that Murgey swore he would never captain another ship after this campaign.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Even though I'm pretty sure we said we were gonna go buy a ship with the money I stole, but it's fine.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna be the captain.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: You just don't know it already.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: He'll just be standing on my back and I'll be the one turning the wheel.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_04: Fell jamming ratatouille moment.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: Just pulling his hairs, his little his little hip, his little ears.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, did you guys wanna we always usually do fun facts, so did you guys wanna like I don't know, pick one that you enjoyed the most and tell everybody about it?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: So for for Ronnie, I had I had two.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um one of which I had completely forgot about, and Phil brought it up, was that uh Ronnie had a favorite drink called the Stellar Zest Elixir that was made with Karillian whiskey, uh called the Stardust Nectar, uh, which is made with steeped herbs and illegal hallucinogens, which is right up his alley.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: But the other fact that I like that gave him a lot of flavor that I feel like I brought up quite a bit were were two things.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: He wore a bowler hat and he always smoked a cigar, and he would always like pull a random cigar, and you never knew where they came from, but he like randomly he would pull out an unlit cigar and pop it in his mouth and be like chewing on it or something.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I like that one just because it had so much flavor elsewhere, like it was just part of his personality, and so I think that one is probably my favorite.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I would say for Tik Cha.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: The one of the first random facts I had kind of spurred most of the rest, which was that he grew up on a turnip farm.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, almost everything else was based around turnips and how he could identify over 500 different turnip varieties by smell alone.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um he learned a lot from his turnip grandfather, her turnip growing grandfather while they lived on a um a far-off moon, and just all sorts of other things based on that one random fact at the beginning.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_04: I'm pretty sure that's how you tried to win the princess's favor was with your like vast knowledge of turnips.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was pawing off turnips onto her, and she was uh digging them.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it almost worked.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Almost being the operative word.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Almost.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I've heard more about turnips in the last six months than I had in the previous six to ten years of my life.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Turnips are just not an everyday thing for me, you know.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I really should have been spouting off random turnip facts like every five minutes through this whole thing.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: That would be a good one.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: Real life question for Brett the human and not for TikTok the player.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: Do you grow turnips in your garden?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like them.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how turnips got picked out of everything, but I was like, what's the most random thing?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was picturing like uh the Martian when he's trying to grow potatoes on the moon or on Mars.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um what can you grow on a random far-off alien moon?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Turnips.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Of the whole world of vegetables, he went with turnips.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Turnips.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um for Uba, I was kind of between two.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so I think I'm going with my two favorites.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_04: So one of them is Uba's uh peculiar, peculiar fondness for a sweet and crunchy snack called Cosmic Candied Crickets, which did kind of come into play a little bit throughout the campaign, too.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but these aren't your average crunchy cricket snacks you might find on Fairon.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_04: These are specially bred spacefaring crickets raised on asteroids.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_04: Since those asteroids are rich in minerals and exotic space flowers, the crickets are actually colored and flavored based upon those minerals and space flowers.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_04: So his favorite batch are the spicy sun shroom snap, was his particular favorite.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_04: So that's one of my favorites.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and then the other one was that um Uba actually has an ex-wife.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_04: So while he was in his early 20s, he made off with a bard named Anya Nese.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_04: He should have heeded the warning signs, but their marriage only lasted for two years.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: And as for Merg, since everybody else is picking two fun facts on the spot, uh my first one was probably, gosh, it had to have been one of the first sessions where I informed everybody that it is my character's direct opinion that it is pronounced GIF, not GIF.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it is spelled G-I-F-F.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then as for my on the spot, second fun fact is as was kind of previously mentioned, me and Roddy were in jail together, and we were cellmates, and in the Astral C prison, I was basically the prison cook, and my specialty in the kitchen was Face Mat Stew, and everybody loved it and kept coming back for more.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_04: One of yours that I totally forgot about, Merc, was that you had like a little bit of a lazy left eye, and I definitely like never pictured this throughout the campaign.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_04: I completely forgot about it.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right, right, and uh you know, one thing that is true of like the GIF race in particular is that we are what would you say, specialized or gifted in like shooting type of weapons.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: So like this campaign was different from others, where we were able to have guns, and so like I was obviously right eye dominant and did not understand how to use my left eye.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: That explains so much.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: There could have been so many like flavor things we threw in there.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if you were standing on his left side, you come in like Merc, over here.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wait, he can't see you.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: My bad.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I really liked was uh where you get was your guys' backstories.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I did I did feel like I asked you all for backstories and um pretty early on, which significantly helped sort of mitigate the the issue I was having with putting you guys on the planet and trying to create some kind of like investment in the planet or in space in general.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just curious, like, did you guys spend a lot of time on those backgrounds or did you just like flick them out after I asked you for them?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like uh when we had our session zero, that the Isaac and I had like similar-ish backgrounds, and then we did like a sidebar in that session zero, and we kind of came up with a joint backstory at that point.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's where we came up that we were in the prison and stuff together, and kind of had that's where we developed the Rocket and Groot thing.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought that was it uh not entirely on the spot, but at least for us, like we did do it like pretty much before we started playing.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right, Ross.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, we had our own separate group chat, just me knew.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's right.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: Where we Basically laid it all out and said, um, you know, we our prison inmates were prison prison inmates, and we had our own ship together and we had our own business together.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, we were what?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: We were like the Robin Hoods of space originally.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: Before we got caught up in the light of Zaraxis campaign.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Good times.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: I forgot that we have that separate chat together.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: We could have been like totally used that as like we were passing notes back and forth uh to keep it from tic-chaw and ubler or something because they could talk to each other without us knowing it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we should have been like passing notes or something.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: That would have been hilarious.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: It worked, you know.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: You spend some time in a cell with somebody, you really get to know them inside, you know, and uh we had a lot of inside jokes and backstory that just like did not have to be explained.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I don't remember.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there was one part of the campaign where we walked into a bar and I looked over at Rhody and I said, now easy.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Remember last time that we walked into a bar together?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you don't need to be getting in trouble again or something.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think good backs, good banter.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was really good banter.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is the only campaign I've ever been in where like the backstory grew as we went through the campaign because of those.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like you would say something, and then I just ran with it and like made some kind of comment about it, like, oh yeah, I remember her, or something like that.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, constantly developing like lore and canon.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_04: I'd like to address this passing back and forth notes thing because I'm pretty sure on one of our journeys that one of you had to learn how to write.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, that was tick cha.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was tick cha.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because we were teaching him dirty words, like we were writing dirty words.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was Ronnie's whole deal with Tik Cha is I was gonna teach you, but I was teaching you like ass shit.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, tick cha was illiterate at the beginning, at least the beginning of the campaign.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Tik Cha.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I started with a simple concept, and then I'm like, I need a little bit more.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the first part of the backstory was just that he was born and raised on a small, like, rural moon of some far-off island, um, and they were just a bunch of farmers on this island.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, how did he get off of the island?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to expand it from there.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I added to it by saying that the the island or that the his tribe on the island was attacked by a lunar dragon, and then he got captured by pirates and was forced to be work on their ships for many years and finally was able to escape from it from his cell at that point.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's where he got into where we picked up the campaign.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: He had just gotten broken, just broken free from the pirates and was getting off on his own.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: But looking for revenge upon that lunar dragon.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, your your backstory, more than anybody's, like, set the scene for like a revenge tale.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because part of the thing when you sent me that backstory was it was a lunar dragon, but it wore a pearl necklace.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there was something like to identify it.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I changed the dragon that the princess could manifest from a solar dragon to this lunar dragon to try to create that revenge story for Tikcha.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I remember the first time we came across that lunar dragon, it was like oh my gosh, I know this thing.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was like dancing in my seat, like ready to like fight this thing.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we were nowhere near ready to.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: We were like level two or three at that point.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: I don't even know if you had your axe yet, did you?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up with like a dragon slayer axe.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was nowhere near.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just going in with like a great axe or something at that point.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing capable of taking down a dragon.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if I remember correctly, you walked out of you walked out of a shop, saw it, and threw an axe at it, and it just bounced off.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think for Ubas, I had just a general like concept.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_04: When I went with the ranger for this campaign, I wanted my ranger to kind of be uh someone that thought of himself as like a fisherman of the Astral Sea, which really just meant like he hunted monsters in the Astral Sea more or less.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then just sort of came up with you know how he got his ship, like what his family life was like that led him into this sort of a line of work.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and you know, uh there was one of his, I guess, flaws um is that he doesn't actually know what anything is called.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_04: So, like if he would come up against certain um enemies or monsters instead of calling them by what they're actually named, he would just give like a description.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: So I think they were like the um Norogi or Nagori or something pirates um that we would come up against.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: He called them the spider eel pirates because it's kind of what they look like.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_04: But some of his kind of backstory came from like the spider eel pirates, as he called them, killed his mother.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, his dad to support their family was a smuggler, but tried to pass himself on as like a legitimate traitor.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, eventually he got into trouble with some pirates and they fed him to a one-eyed shark, which we end up coming up against several scavers later on in you know this campaign.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_04: But all of those enemies that were kind of baked into that backstory ended up showing up in our campaign.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_04: Like we came up against some spider eel pirates, and we came up against scavers, and like all of these things actually ended up being things that we faced again.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_04: So it ended up tying in well.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if Matt just did that or if they actually happened to be part of the campaign, but it ended up playing in well as as well.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the the void scavers, Big Mama?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: They were part of yeah, they're they're some somewhat part of the campaign.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: You do meet Big Mama as part of the campaign, so it was a perfect like merge of of those two things.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm curious, what uh what was your favorite moment from the campaign?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh boy.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think mine would have been um probably that the big plot twist at the end.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like I did not see that coming at all.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and like our whole ending felt more sh should I explain it a little bit?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: You think?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, go ahead.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: So major spoilers here for for both the story and for like how we finish this out, but um so at the end of the campaign, like this, we we came across the princess at one point, and then we we found out that she, you know, wanted to end the whole I I call it the reaping.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think I put reaping in my notes a couple times, uh, where they're like destroying planets to to keep their son alive and stuff like that, right?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so we find the princess, she tells us that she wants to end all of that, and we immediately all become enthralled with her cause because hey, what you want is what we want.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh looking back, we probably didn't think that through 100% what all her motives might be, but uh through the whole thing, we ended up getting to uh Xaraxes, and we made it into the throne room, we do some fighting, we fight Prince Zealoth, and at the end the princess turns against us.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the the big plot twist that none of us saw coming.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and even in our our last session uh at the end of it, Phil, you even pulled up like the video from it, and like our faces when all that happened was like, What the hell just happened?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, which is fan freaking tastic.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then I think too, more so than the end of Descent into Avernus, I thought our ending like wrapped this whole thing up in a bow, like Tik Cha going into the light, and then us paying him homage, and then putting his name on the ship, and then Matt playing uh Thunderstruck for ACDC and music in the background, like as we fly off to go get into some more shit.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that was the best ending to a campaign that I've been a part of.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was awesome.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that would that was great.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I will say it was super satisfying to do that twist and turn her against you guys and then watch watch the reactions.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was that was probably the best part for me, was just seeing that because it meant that I I felt like I told the story in a way where you guys actually trusted her, even though you should have never trusted her.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that was fun.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Damn, Astral Elves.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that one is probably the biggest one, but uh, if I'm thinking of other ones, probably the first time I saw the dragon uh that we already talked about a little bit was kind of like a holy shit, Matt's actually incorporating our backstory.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was like ah satisfying.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Of you put together a backstory and then have it actually go somewhere was ah Jeff's kiss.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_04: There were so many fun moments in this campaign, even though it was a short campaign.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like we did a lot of things.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like I was just kind of like skimming through notes, and like, what was really my favorite thing?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: And there are a bunch of things that I loved.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_04: But the first one that I came across that I tend to forget about until I see it again was we were just traveling through space, right?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_04: I think we were traveling through the astral sea.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_04: We spent like four days traveling somewhere.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, we were trying to find Topola, uh, a friend of Krusty Crux.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: And like the second day, this huge dragon comes flying through space and like pops up to the side of the boat and goes, Hey, I got a riddle for you.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: We saw the riddle, and he gave us all of these like Michael Jackson-themed uh items that were fantastic, like the sequin glove of the smooth criminal, uh, the wand of smiles, the boots of the moonwalker, and a circlet of trust.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: So, like those were awesome, and those eventually came into play later in the story when uh Roadie had to put on a performance to persuade some people to join our cause.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, like I thought that was a really fun moment.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I really enjoyed our uh encounter with the murder comet comet, which was really just funny.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like, there was nothing special about it, it was just hilarious.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_04: So that was a fun moment too.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there's just a bunch of stuff we did in this campaign that uh a I feel like we packed a lot in a short amount of time that I really enjoyed.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: I uh one of my favorite moments had to have been the circus with the sea guppy or space guppies.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: You guys remember that part?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of early on.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was really early on.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: But uh super creepy.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was uh almost like yeah, like a horror film kind of vibe at the very beginning of this campaign, which didn't really end up being at the end, it ended up being almost like a mystery thriller, but uh definitely an interesting start to the campaign.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't really see where it was going from there, but it it ended up being well rounded.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I think we we can't leave out probably one of the the most hilarious NPC moments that we had during the whole thing was when we what what was what kind of creature well I may give it away a little bit, but what what kind of creature was Balsack?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well it was uh I can't I'm gonna mispronounce this, but he's a no golfu.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's like this giant spider thing that basically they collect brains, and once they get to a certain uh brain level, I think it's 12, they retreat back to the astral sea to live by themselves.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think when we found him, like we had been fighting off some other people, and we were like, we really didn't want to fight him.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: So like we tried to talk to him.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then we were able to talk to him, and then like we convinced him to join our party, which was the best part.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then we're like, Do you have a name?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, What's a name?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, Oh, this is perfect.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: So we gave him the name, we named him Balsack, but it's B-A-L apostrophe S-A-K.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Ballsack.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: He was with us till the end.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: He was, yes.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um Balsack, great guy.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Balsack was great.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was very powerful.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, for sure.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_04: His like disc thing he could do to like hop over spaces, like he saved us a couple times too.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: High five to everybody for that one.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Good job.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he was definitely a character you were supposed to kill or run from, and somehow you convinced him to join you guys.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: But he was super powerful.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's a really powerful spellcaster.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: His relationship with Flapjack still weirds me out a little bit, though.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Not a little bit, actually, a lot of it.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: It just Yeah, yeah.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, with that many brains, who knows, like who's making the decisions, right?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_04: It's fine.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he ended up shape shifting into looking like Matthew McConaughey.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh you say, alright, alright, alright.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: But Matthew McConaughey from Magic Mike, so he always had his abs just like hanging out with a cowboy hat.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was on Cancer's floating disc.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Cuffs, a cowboy hat, and abs.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: You had to see the token in roll 20 to understand.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's fine.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_04: Oh god.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And not one person ever asked about that.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why is this guy running around with no shirt on?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: What the hell?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: We just understood.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: It was common knowledge.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_04: I think one of the another uh thing that I thought was a ton of fun that uh you play this in video games and stuff all the time, right?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_04: But it was that um like arena battle where we had like multiple rounds that we had to pass in order to like prove to Vokov that we were worth it.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_04: So I think of like even in like the Super Mario Brothers movie in the Great Ring of Kong, right?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's like that type of a gladiator battle type of scenario.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_04: That was a fun moment too.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: It reminded me more of uh Star Wars when they're in.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, that's true.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, that's a good point.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: But uh best thing to come out of that was when I used my artificing to make those uh help me out here, Phil.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: The bombs with the uh the flame fire, the like super alchemist grenades or whatever.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_04: That was nice.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Those came in handy.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_04: I was just reading my notes from that battle, too, and one of them just says, Roadie finished Brutus with a laser bolt up the bunghole.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: That was right.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: I parked underneath him.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, okay.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I remember that because that character has the ability as a reaction to gain five uh plus five to his AC as a reaction.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you snuck up behind him and you rolled a 25, and it was just enough to hit him, and you rolled just enough to kill him.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the best part about where you shot him.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, that's great.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I guess one thing I'm I I am curious about because I've never I've never I've always played campaigns where I start at level one.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: In this one, all you guys like started off at level five.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any thoughts about that on whether or not you liked it or just didn't like it, or any any any thoughts about starting a character with that far ahead?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think it's just it's always hard because like the whole point of starting a character at level one is like you you grow with them, you learn how to use all their features.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: So when you start at level five, especially in a short campaign, not I mean, we drew this out over quite a while, so it's like I did feel like I learned how to use most of his things.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um but like when you start at level five, it's just a lot to learn right from the get-go.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it it can be a little tough.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: I felt so overwhelmed for most of this campaign as a fighter, just because there's so much shit to keep track of.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I've got this and then this and then this, and I'm gonna attack this way and this way, and then I've gotta stack these things.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's just so much going on that it's like I had to write down uh okay, this d6 is this type of damage, this d6 is this type of damage, and just like layer all those together and not try and forget anything.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot to jump into a little bit further on.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like too picking out my spells when you had to come in like at fifth level was challenging, and I don't think I picked good ones.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like I think I maybe only cast two or three spells the whole campaign, which Ranger's not a huge spell casting class, right?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_04: But I had some.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: You had you had spells?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly, yeah.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_04: I think I uh I think I cast Good Berry a couple times and got us some uh berries just in case we went down, but I tried.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_04: I remember I tried towards the end, and someone was resistant to radiant damage, and then it was like, what's the point?
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I picked bad spells, but that's kind of on me.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess Matt, were were we supposed to start at level five, or did you just choose for us to start a level five for this campaign?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the campaign starts at level five, it's a level five to eight campaign, um which even at level eight, the campaign sort of is really hard because the characters hit hard and like the battles are not easy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm surprised it didn't go a little bit further than that.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you all started at level five, and I've read a lot of reviews on it.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and a lot of people find it more enjoyable when they start at level one and have like a side thing up to level five and then jump into this.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: I can see that.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean I mean that's that's like uh the the house at the beginning of Curse of Straw.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: The whole point of that is to get you up in levels before you actually start facing the people who can kill you.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think that would be fun.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's it would be another way for you to grow your backstory.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think we needed that by any means.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: We did a really good job with that, but uh it could be fun to do it that way.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's how Storm King's Thunder starts too.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_04: You start as like level one, but it's like, hey, you're gonna do this little introduction for the first several levels to actually get you to start the meat of the campaign.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: This problem comes up in so many campaigns where it's it's delayed gratification.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your best, most like impactful content is typically between five and ten.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: But you need those levels one to five to really get going into your character, which a lot of people want to bypass, so I understand that, but it it's it tends to be a lot more satisfying if you go through the rigor with those first five levels.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_04: Matt's point about this campaign.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_04: I think out of any of them I've ever played, this these were some of the most challenging like combats.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like we had to be strategic and we had to make sure that we watched out for one another, and there wasn't a lot of like resting time.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like this campaign did a good job of that, of keeping you out of some of your best features because you didn't really get a break.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I think to your point about strategy, Phil, I I have never been in like you you always end up in a situation where you flank people, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then you're like, oh yeah, I get advantage because we're flanking this guy and we're all around it.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: But we intentionally did that in several fights because who we were facing was way more powerful than us or had a super high AC, and that was how we got around that was roll with advantage, and then luckily, you know, most of the time we rolled well enough to actually do some damage.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_04: One thing I will say is that you never want to be stuck in a space battle.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_04: We lost so many ships.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was so bad.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that was our first time, at least since all five of us have been playing, that we have been in a large-scale battle.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think we've come across that yet.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: That and that was a lot of fun just to experience that.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: I would say that like you said, Ross, since all of us have been playing, that's the closest we've ever come to a total party kill as well.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh several different times during this campaign.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was pretty tight.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like like Phil said, we really didn't watch each other's backs.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably what 60 to 80 ships involved in the fight big battle near the end between both sides.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was a lot going on there.
• 43:18
  unknown: Yeah.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I think the fun part about that was how how we had to, and and this is part of us being in the arena, but we had to win favor with other people because we didn't have a navy, we didn't have an armada, but we had to convince other people to become part of that armada, which essentially ended up being a distraction that we all almost died from.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it was really cool to like have to go through the logistical pieces too, because there was a lot of fun role playing that had to be done.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: That was where that performance happened, the Michael Jackson performance, and then we had to win the arena battle, and then all those things had to come together just to get us to Xaraxis in the first place to get into that end game.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it was it was really cool.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoyed that too quite a bit.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the the combat.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: In here was tough, and I'll be honest, uh, you guys were basically eating my action economy in the beginning of this campaign pretty hard.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of up ratcheted it up a little bit by adding some more more enemies to fight on some of these.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just because you know I want combat to be fun.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: It needed to be hard.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but for like the space battle that you guys were part of, that was just straight from the book.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that was always gonna be an uphill battle for you.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_04: That one wouldn't have been that bad if we wouldn't have rolled so poorly.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like it should have been pretty even, but our rolls were just garbage anytime we rolled for our ships.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_04: So I blame that one on the dice.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: You live by the dice, you die by the dice.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: I did give you an opportunity to do that.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, I think one of the things we gotta talk about is uh weapons you guys got.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it'll be fun for each of you to describe your great weapons.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't we start with uh we start with Phil?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uba had the best weapon.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we had what we renamed, or he so lovingly called, the Boner Blaster, which was a laser rifle that was massively overpowered.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, plus 12 to hit, 3d8 plus 7 damage, rarely missed, two attacks per action, crazy damage, uh, and definitely pretty much uh the only thing that Ubla ever used in almost every combat situation, but it was so powerful that I had no other choice.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel you there, Phil.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um Mergie, he was gifted, well, he exchanged for it, truly.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um in a weird turn of events, somehow uh Merg Mergie gained access to um how would you describe it, Matt?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, it was a nudie trading card.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Some sort of space spaceworm.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a collector's edition, one of one, probably the most rare in the entire galaxy.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I exchanged it with the shop shopkeeper who was able to provide me with a double barrel laser rifle, no sexual innuendos attached, unlike Phil.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh my double barrel laser rifle.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: I had a love hate relationship with it.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: It was great and it was not great at the same time.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: So long story short, um for action once with the first barrel, which dealt um radiant damage, and then the second barrel, which would be the second shot of the gun, would deal necrotic damage.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we found out several times throughout this campaign that um certain enemies would only react to necrotic damage, would not react at all to radiant damage.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that did kind of make it tough, but uh it was still still a great weapon.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say Tik Chaz was fairly well balanced.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I picked up a a Dragon Slayer Great Axe, which was a plus one great axe, but it dealt 2d6 slashing and one d6 lightning damage uh by default, and then it had some extra charges for extra things that it could do, but the biggest thing that it could do was if you were attacking something of dragon kind, or a dragon type of character, it would also deal an additional two d6 of lightning damage on a hit.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that came in really key at the end when we went up against the uh the big bad lunar dragon that Tikcha was life goal was to take down.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but outside of that, like it was really power or it was really powerful in that regard, but outside of it, it wasn't that more powerful than a normal green axe, I would say.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like mine was somewhat similar when we were in the the marketplace.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: I ended up uh getting its stats are the laser rifle, very similar to the boner blaster, but uh it in my mind it was a laser bow for road for for roadie.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um don't ask me how exactly that works with a laser bow, but uh it it it was fun to play, and it obviously it it came in clutch uh with the uh through the butthole shot.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so but beyond that, I mean it was just something to give me a little bit more than just my daggers, to be honest.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I was just checking out uh my notes from the session where we got the worm cards, and that was the same night that we named Balsack, but I found this little bonus nice little gem I left in here that I didn't remember is that we named him Balsack uh with a nickname that none of us obviously ever remembered.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_04: He had a nickname of Scroat.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_04: And that'll happen before that happened before we got the worm cards.
• 49:46
  unknown: Oh man.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_04: What a night.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_04: We were on fire that night, I guess.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's peak storytelling there, boys.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Peak storytelling.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_04: Was that the same night Sartell died too, or was that a different night?
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that was a different night.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_04: That was a different night.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: That was a different night.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: It must have been a different night.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so so we have to tell that story really quick.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: So when Captain Sartell died, this goes back to to Roadie and I having like the little backstory and then playing off each other.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: Randomly after she died, I made a quip about how Murgi uh in in prison got his his license as a chaplain and that he should perform the funeral.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: So Murgy performed the funeral on the boat.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then you had to roll to make sure you convinced all the shipmaids that you were actually being sincere about it.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: It was a proper Viking's funeral in space.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, this is after, after though, Murgi prepped, I say in air quotes, the body, aka.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_04: He fully looted and caught the feel.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_04: Specifically, I have this listed uh before he performed the ritual.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I definitely have uh Murgi searches the body and feels her up.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: I have that in my notes as well.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, you had to sell the bitch.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: Murgey never claimed to be an honest man.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: But out of all the random stuff we found, Murgi also found a container of glitter that when used would give a plus two charisma to the wearer.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um that is one item that we should have should have used it someplace.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_04: Surely we dumped that shit.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that must have got lost in notes because that never came.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: We should we should have had that when we were giving those epic speeches at the end, uh tickcha, because he could have just like threw in the glitter up like whoosh.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: You also had uh the pet rock that you could like throw at people and it would heal you.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh nobody ever used that when you guys were almost dead.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Shit.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not Rocky.
• 51:57
  unknown: Right.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: Pull yourself together, Rock.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh every time that we needed some healing, they were dead on the ground, making death saves.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: This is true.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: They couldn't throw anything.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't say that we were a uh a hardy boy, the hardy boys over here.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because like Captain Sartell wasn't even supposed to be with you guys the entire campaign.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: She was actually supposed to leave your side at the Rock of Brawl.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I thought that was kind of lame if she's like, alright, see you later.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let's introduce two new NPCs that you can know for five minutes.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: So why?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: But then you killed her off.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: It worked.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's a casualty of war.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_04: That's true.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_04: Kinda.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: We were fighting for the fate of the galaxy, it's fine.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: We were just too busy to heal her.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: We had other things going on.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: If we would have tried to heal her, we all would have died.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_04: I do think we healed like Flapjack, though, at some point.
• 53:03
  unknown: Shh.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_04: Basically everybody but her, but hey, whatever.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: Details.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: We were prioritizing.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: She couldn't fly a ship, Flapjack could, so that's exactly what I'm saying.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_04: You're right.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_04: That was our logic.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_04: Matt, I gotta know.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_04: Our closest, I feel like, that we ever came to all going down TPK was in our battle with Zodar, kind of towards the end.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like I feel like you had to pull a punch to let us live.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was really close.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was the only one up, Tikchaw was the only one up, and I was one hit from being down, and so we would have all been all been down.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I took him out on the final swing, maybe.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: You you did legitimately took him down.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he he's this character is basically a demigod.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in the source material, he is not gonna kill any of you.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: He will pull his punches um to just knock you guys out.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: But he only normally has like 200 hit points, which seemed really low for a demigod, so I ratcheted that up really high.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Couldn't tell at all.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was perfect.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think it killed him in one round.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think at one point I started keeping track because I was like, what the hell?
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I've never come up against a kid an NPC like this.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's uh he's because he's supposed to be the hardest thing that you fight in a game.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even the prince and princess are supposed to just be, in the end, pretty pretty much a pushover, except for their dragons.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: But like this is supposed to be the main bad guy that you're supposed to fight, and he's not even really that bad.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I felt like his stats were a little low for what you guys could do.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: It made for a fun fight.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you that.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: I did think he was gonna knock you all down, so I'm glad that you were able to kill him right when you did.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: So what would have happened had he knocked us all?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he you would have lost, so the princess would have lost her claim to the throne, and the prince would have taken over, and Zodar would have talked to you the same way that he did.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: He would have then cast the wish spell, which he did in this as well.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't call it out, but he would bring you guys basically back to life at 100%, all your skills and spells reset, and then you would have to fight the prince and the princess as well.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or the princess would run away, the prince would be the one you'd have to fight, because you'd have to try to get the ring from him, or he would try to prevent you from going into the light.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because that that definitely changes how the ending would have been, because we never would have known that the princess was gonna double cross us if that happens, or anything like that.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: That would have been that would have been interesting.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you would have never known.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like the ending we had is way more satisfying now that I know that, though.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so much more fun.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_03: The ending was only satisfying because uh three-fourths of the party did not die.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, tick-cha.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: I thought you meant leading up to that part.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, he's the only one that didn't go down.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: What what did you guys think about the ending, especially for Brett, right?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, your character ended up sacrificing himself.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, what but what in all in general?
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: What did you guys think about it?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, holy moly, there was a lot going on right there at the end.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we had the choice to send someone into the light to like destroy the the sun and destroy the astral elves, uh, but they had to go willingly, and so we volunteered Mergie to go in, and then he gets like halfway and then gets us feeling like I probably shouldn't be here, and so he comes back out.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, shoot, well now what?
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because we need to send somebody, and we had the like the blessing from Zodar that we're gonna be fine, just go ahead.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's gonna be risky, but Tickjaw's like, I don't have anything left to live for.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: My whole purpose in life was to kill this lunar dragon that had destroyed my homeworld, and so I'm like, why not go for it?
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, his mission's kind of complete, and so he walked into the light and is no more.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the first character on my DD Beyond sheet that now lists dead in front of their name.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_04: I think without Brett's backstory, that the ending of this would have been completely different.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_04: Because the way that the story, the lunar dragon, everything tied into his backstory, it was like this fulfillment of his life's purpose.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like he accomplished the one thing that would set out to literally say to his character, you know, I have completed my mission, and that happened.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_04: So at that point, it was like a natural step of you know, I've done everything I came here to do.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_04: I can do this next thing to literally like save future planets, save the universe.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: So if it wouldn't have been that way, I think it would have been a different conversation, right?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_04: Like we could have been talking about, hey, we don't really want to do this.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_04: Like ballsack, flapjack, what do you guys think?
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_04: You know, so it just worked out perfectly.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think too that that having Murgey go first made it feel very human because it's like there is that we didn't know what was on the other side, we interpreted it as we were gonna go dismantle something up there almost like it was a machine.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we thought Murgi should go do it because he was the artificer.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then he gets in and gets these feelings that it's not really natural, like what I'm doing here is not right, so I maybe shouldn't keep going, and then he backs off, and then because Brett's character did feel fulfilled, went in and and completed his his story arc in this nice little wrapped up in a nice little bow and everything.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think had Tik Chaud done it from the get-go, it still would have been fulfilling, but it wouldn't have felt the same way, it wouldn't have been as grounded as how it ended up being.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think it ended up being more emotional because somebody tried it and said no, and then Tik Chaw did it.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's totally true, Ross.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, when my character, Merg, first started going into the light to basically wrap up the campaign.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um he was just getting all sorts of bad feelings.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_03: He was starting to take some damage.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I came out at least one time and said, Hey, you know, I don't know if this is what it's supposed to feel like.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if this is what I should be doing.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I went back in once more and then ended up coming back out again.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then that's when Brett's character, Tik Chaw, just said, you know what?
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: I've fulfilled my prophecy, my life's work is done, and I'm ready to take one for the team, and we were able to finish the campaign.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think, I think, Matt, you there was a moment in there where you changed the tone of it between when Murgie went and tickcha went, because I think it was Ball Sack that went in, and you were like, he puts his hand on Murgy's shoulder and it was like, Hey, bud, this this is the end of the game.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is not just going and destroying it and you're gonna come back.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is it right here.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and that, like, how you phrased that and how you said that was like a very solemn moment.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like you don't get a lot of those because we're very lighthearted when we play this game, but it was like one where like all of us were just like so like zoned in, it's not zoned in, but we were we were very locked in on that moment and what was going on.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like that whole the whole tone of the end of it just went so well together with Murgie and then you playing that as that transition and then Tik Cha into the ending was it was excellent, and the music only helped, which I didn't realize it was bluey until you said that.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: But that now that you say that is like freaking amazing.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I was I was getting the sense that nobody that you guys weren't understanding that if you go into this light, you're all gonna die.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why we kind of it was nice to see that the Murgy backed out first, and I had to introduce something to let Tikcha know that this this was this was the end.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_04: It was it was perfectly executed though.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like if it wasn't written that way, you did such a good job.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_04: Because I even thinking back to that, like I very specifically remember that feeling where you're like he takes another step and he's one step away, and he feels a hand grip his shoulder and it's ball sacked, telling him it's a one-way trip, you know, it'll destroy the star, but it's a self-sacrifice.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like that that moment I can very distinctly remember, and like the feeling of that moment of like, okay, like this is what it is.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_04: And then in our true fashion, Brett's character is like, just name the ship after me, you know, because that's just who we are, but I'll do it, you know.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then to pay tribute to Brett's character tickcha, it's been a whole campaign, even more.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: I went and sliced the head off of the dragon that he slayed in his prophecy and proudly hung it from the front of the boat.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I think going back to your point, Phil, like remembering so much of that moment, like very specific details, like it wasn't just it was like how you said, hey buddy, that like I remember that very vividly.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like that's how you knew it was serious.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then then you actually told us what would happen.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, I I agree 100% with you, Phil.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like that that that 30 seconds right there like sticks out in my brain very vividly.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those times where saying nothing until the right moment paid off perfectly.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes silence is the loudest thing you can say, and that was one of those occasions.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's great because I I completely ad-lived that.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean that that was great.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, really that that whole that whole part of that scene was I was trying to come up with like if if my son was doing something serious, how would I talk to him?
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly how I would talk to him.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, bud.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then go into it.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm glad it had such an impact.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: Excellent way to makes me happy.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think it'll be interesting just just as a general thought of this this campaign and just us playing as a as a as a party, it it's been very interesting to see our growth.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because like if you go clear back into the descent campaign and we would you flip-flop dungeon masters, so put Phil back in that position, and like just how we play, like our characters are are very uh intertwined in that one too, and we played well together and we played off each other, but the role-playing grew through that, and I think the role-playing continued to excel into this one.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and if anything, I think it rocketed and it took a big leap because even though there was a lot of combat and a lot of mechanic stuff, there was also a lot of role-playing that had to be done in this one, and I think we all handled it extremely well and we played off each other.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't like there was never really any one person who took a lead on anything.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: We kind of passed that mantle around quite a bit and took turns doing that, which I think was was really cool for just as as a party.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna make it really interesting going back into our other campaign now to see how we take that growth that we've had and then reapply it into that campaign.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite parts of the of the very end was, you know, it's this emotional moment.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I have the music playing, and uh I talk about how Tikcha's looking up at the stars one last time, and I'm like, what is what what is the last thing that you say to your friends?
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, do you remember what it was?
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have this written down.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: So he doesn't look at his friends, he just well before that he had said, name the ship after me.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but he looks at the the the dragon and he throws a one of Murgie's alchemist hand grenades onto it and says, Ha ha, gotcha bitch, and steps into the light.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was perfect.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_02: It feels very like uh into Guardians of the Galaxy, where where Ronan asks the group, he's like, Who are you guys?
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, We're the Guardians of the Galaxy, bitch.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: Same kind of vibe.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was an epic clinical moment.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I guess uh would you guys recommend this campaign to anybody else?
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I think you Yes, I think D D in space is it was such a unique experience that it it's worth trying out.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like going to Eberon or or going to Ravenloft.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's very different from being in Fairun.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want something that's not that typical high fantasy type D D, uh you know, get out of your bubble a little bit.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: Try this out.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's it's an excellent one that provides lots of opportunity for for role-playing and and just growth as a player and experiencing new things.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm right there with Ross.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, with the expansion of different character races that you can play, and like with the mechanics of being able to shoot guns and space, uh this is definitely a camp campaign that like opens the borders for like what can possibly be done in gameplay.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's it's a fun one, and I think that for people as like a first time in playing any sort of DD campaign, that this could be good because like out of any of the campaigns that I have played so far, as more of an inexperienced DD player, it's more related to like any sort of video game a person could sit down and play as far as like a shooting space adventure instead of just like a uh like what would you say, like an RPG like in Feyrune where you're limited to your character, your race, what you can do.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the borders are a lot more open on this campaign.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I would recommend this to an experienced player, but I don't know that I would recommend it to a first-time player.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, just because of the extra mechanics involved with ships, really unusual classes, those um guns and laser weapons, those type of things.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're just more.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would get started in kind of your classic fantasy before you jump into something like this.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_00: Highly recommend playing this after you've kind of gone through some of those and are looking for something different, like the guys have said, but get your feet wet in some of the the traditional DD realms before you go here, at least in my book.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, to echo Brett's point a little bit too, you know, one of the things Matt mentioned earlier is that this campaign does start out at level five.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_04: So if you are kind of a first-time player, jumping in right at level five would be pretty challenging.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, if your DM has something maybe set up to get you to level five, maybe you're starting out on the rock or something like that as a level one character, doing some things around there to build yourself up.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_04: You could maybe be a little more introductory.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um I loved this campaign setting.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I had never I have never allowed firearms in campaigns that I have DM'd.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_04: However, I thoroughly enjoyed using my laser rifle during this campaign.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_04: So uh I think I'll probably make some changes to um what I typically allow in games that I DM'd.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_04: But you guys are not getting firearms in the future of our other campaign, so just sit on that for a minute.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um but I think that there's some stuff we probably didn't follow, I'm sure, uh, as far as like space combat and that kind of stuff.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_04: And I think Matt did a really good job of balancing that for us and kind of understanding like our playstyle and not necessarily getting super hung up on like, hey, you guys don't have enough people to actually, you know, run this ship.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_04: Certain things like that that we would have been super limited, right?
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_04: We would have had to go like recruit a crew and do all these other pieces.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_04: So um I would say if this is something you're interested in playing, know that it leans heavily in kind of the combat pillar.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you get some exploration and it has good social too.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think overall it's probably a little more combat heavy than some others that we've played, um, but it was a really good mix for us.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_04: I thought that it played out super well for us, and I would definitely recommend it.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess finally, is there anything you would change about the campaign?
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think so.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like how how you ran the game, like obviously we only know a few of the things that you changed, but like how you ran it felt good.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like the combat being harder, but it was still a lot of fun.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: It it it forced us to like Phil had mentioned earlier, it forced us to be strategic and and take some different paths versus just run and gun, like like parties tend to do.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I like I like the role-playing aspect of it.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think it forced us into a lot of those situations, like I mentioned earlier, too.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I I don't think I would change a thing about it.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think if there was anything that I would change personally, it would be kind of like Phil mentioned, where uh instead of starting at like level five, you could have like a bit of a backstory before that, starting out at like player one and building your way up.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_03: That way you just especially in like our campaign experience, like where we all picked like different characters, classes, races, where like they were this campaign specific, that they weren't quite as easily recognizable or like easy to understand at like level five, where like you didn't experience the lowest level that you could possibly be with your character and build from the ground floor up.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, like if I had anything to uh add to this campaign, it would be like starting completely clean slate, fresh with your character.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_03: But uh aside from that, I think that it was a great campaign, and there's really not much I would change at all because uh, like I said before, I think that it's a well-rounded campaign, it's definitely different than any other campaign I've ever played, but it's good difference, not bad different for sure.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would wouldn't change anything, but I would just give a warning to DMs of this campaign that if you're gonna give your character or your PCs the option to pick between some of the races that are opened up with this campaign, the light of Xerxes.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if a one of your PCs wants to pick to be an Astral Elf, I think you need to have some conversations about that is a main feature of this campaign, and you're kind of gonna have to adapt your backstory based on a lot of the story that this campaign goes down.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're gonna have to kind of be an anti-astral elf, astral elf to fit with your party.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I honestly don't think that there was probably anything that I would change here.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_04: It it was super well balanced.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_04: I loved the plot twist.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I felt like we were able to.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_04: I felt like we had growth though in those levels.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_04: So you still got that piece of it.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_04: Like I felt the character growth.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um we leaned into our backgrounds heavily.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_04: I felt like that played into the storylines.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_04: So I I really don't think there's anything that I would change about this.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_04: It was a ton of fun to play.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Matt, final thoughts from you before we uh before we get out of here?
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, uh well, I guess I one I guess I do have one final thought.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I had a great time DMing with you guys.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: This was I've only DMed I DM'd this campaign once with my um nephew and his dad, and it was much different with them than it was with you guys.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was a blast.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I the role-playing aspect was so much fun to like bounce back and forth off you guys.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was just a blast.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had such a fun time playing with you guys.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Matt.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, thank you.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, that's gonna put a wrap on Light of Zoraxis.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think this was a fun one.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Again, Matt, thank you for being an excellent DM.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you made that that campaign what it was.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: So uh but for all of you out there, uh, you can check out our regular regular episodes of Bards and Barrels anywhere podcasts can be found.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_02: You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at Bards and Barrels.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, we'll see you later.