Latest / Dissonant Whispers: A DnD Actual Play Podcast / Delving Deeper: When Your Dungeon Crawl Becomes a Dungeon Slog

Transcript

Delving Deeper: When Your Dungeon Crawl Becomes a Dungeon Slog · Dissonant Whispers: A DnD Actual Play Podcast

• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Delving Deeper with Oleander Hawthorne and Delphine Alendra.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Delving Deeper is our metagame series where we talk about our sessions, our campaign, our characters, any thoughts and feelings out of game, or generally ask each other what the hell were you thinking?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Coming live from her vehicle, clearly.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're hiding in the back of my car because it's cold outside.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty cold outside.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we were just at a um Crystal Inpsychic Fair, which because that shit's fun, okay?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's fun.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's pretty rocks.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I like pretty rocks.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And incense.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I got a pretty ring.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's look at my pretty ring.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't see my pretty ring.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can't see my pretty ring.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can see it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fake pretty ring, apparently.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, we are here to talk to you today about when your dungeon crawl turns into a dungeon slog.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um all of us have had the experience, I'm sure, of when your dungeon is.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your DM has made it very involved, or you just think it's supposed to be way more involved than it is.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of the times it's mostly players' fault, not DM's fault.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But when they overhype it, then you get really scared.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you overthink it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Which we do.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Chronically.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um we ended up accidentally.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're talking specifically about in the Dwarven mines.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So like episodes nine and ten.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: When we first enter the mine.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're there for like seven sessions.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're in those mines.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was a long time.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's it became a slog.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our DM was so excited for us to get pushing forever.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, he kept like, oh, you old Bertie told me you really should go to this dwarven place.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was pushing and pushing and pushing it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: He really wanted us to get there.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, we were there for so long.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think he was like, I'm I'm fucking done.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: He had regrets.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I ever let them in here?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: This should not have been this difficult, people, but apparently you're making it take for fucking ever.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So some of the things that make it take forever when you overthink is video gaming it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was a very involved uh dungeon, and we didn't know where we were going, we didn't know where was important, where was just a randomized dead end.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that everywhere had a thing that could have been important.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we did leave one room, we fucked it up, the water wheel room.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we did some fuck-ups.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Have you guys fucked up random areas of the dungeon where you just you can't go back?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: We locked ourselves out, we flooded ourselves out.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think, but I think that a lot of the problem is like we were trying to find places, but there was a lot of um general consensus of like, no, we need to map this out like a video game.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: We need to clear every room rather than just like going, I want to go to the green light.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can we just go let's just now we're gonna go clear this room first?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, oh now Drax went and touched something he shouldn't have touched.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have to fucking deal with that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh can we just like there was a few incidences of touching or drinking or licking or whatever things that we shouldn't have.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Which is what we do.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then like there's a lot of times that people come across in games where you have this really useful ability with your character, but it kind of makes it like an hour of everyone essentially sitting around while your character does something.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Which, like, yeah, it's really useful that our Echo Knight can send his echo a thousand feet and he could map the whole thing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then that's boring for the DM.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's boring for the players who are just sitting there waiting for him to map shit out.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But if this were a video game, that would be the most efficient way to do it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what you do.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in reality, if if we were, hey, let's say it's real life, okay?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Real life, you would do a safe option of everyone sits in this safe room while I go, not in even in person, and use my echo as basically a super jacked-up familiar, because he's got this pendant.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good way of putting it.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a jacked up familiar, yeah.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think normally he's not supposed to go that far.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's his pendant that makes it so you can go a thousand feet ahead.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: But like it is it is the smart thing to do, it is the safe thing to do, it's also the boring thing to do, and it also takes long fucking time.
• 4:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that um one of the main factors that ended up happening for my character, um, not necessarily everybody else's, but for sure for my character, I got I got bored, but I got impatient.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And impatient characters and a lot of impatient in our interactions with each other.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: We were very snippy.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we were all being impatient.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but interestingly enough.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Terrified.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were all we were all terrified, and it and it's interesting because in that situation, when um, like you think about your party, they would be feeling impatient, they would be feeling scared, and they would be snippy with each other.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We were in there, like we played seven sessions in there, but actually we only had one long rest in the mine.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we were really just there for basically a day and a night.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a long day where we had a fight every session.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was really grueling.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think we would be exhausted and we would be at our wits' ends with each other and like just could you stop fucking like essentially licking the wall of the cave in your desire to touch all the goddamn things, please.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Stop drinking mystery water.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Stop drinking.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let me at least identify it first.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have that ability, people.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're gonna just eat, drink it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even feel bad that you've aged.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you're right.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was, I mean, not only were we touching things we shouldn't, we were we became infected with things that we did not intend.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that was we all got stuff on us, it seems, uh, except for you.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, except for me.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think you were the only one that was not affected in any way.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I guess Roll wasn't.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your patience was your patience is always affected.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I got infected with Ventor, which was another sentient ink uh creature.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh more so than I had already been.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I became because I had a little bit of Ventor on me, and then I became heavily session 10 is Yeti's and the Curse of Three because she kept wrong three.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Three's the new one.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's when that started.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But that was when you got Ventor and that's when I that's when I pulled Ventor off of Einar.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wait, did I no I didn't have no very Canadian.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, no.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Einar had Ventor and Noctis.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I got infected with Ventor.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I pulled the rest of Ventor off of him.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because he had it from the giants, and then you pulled it fully off of him to free Noctis.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that's also when Cerevax.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, which I keep calling Cerabi.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Cerevax got on Drukin.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna say the the the Ventor and the Cerevax getting on you two, that wasn't a result of you guys touching things you shouldn't have touched.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: That was a result of a fight.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It could have happened to literally any one of us.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, that was things touching us that we hadn't intended.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: A non-consensual touching.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's just part of like everything in this cave system was out literally out to get us, and we didn't know what we were do where to go, and it was our we green doored it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: The whole time.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: We spent so much time like inspecting things way too long, and it just it ate up game time, and it's part of the reason we were there for seven sessions, is because we became terrified of everything here.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we kept going and investigating something and then going back as soon as we'd see what it was.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's a lot of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth before we even wanted to address what was in the room.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Confused about our reference to It's a Green Door.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I got that from a DD comic, I think real like 20 years ago.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Super long fucking time ago, I think it's called.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wanna say, I can't fuck, I can't remember the name.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not looking for group.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not looking for group, it might be looking for group, I don't know.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was a comic.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, the joke being that everyone knows about the DM describes one thing, and the team latches onto that, and they spend the next hour just on this one, he's like, I shouldn't have called it a green door, I just should have said it was a door because it's completely unimportant, it's not a threat, just open the fucking door.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But because I said it was a green door, they think there's something special about it, and now they're spending an hour doing every goddamn check in the book instead of just everybody's trying to do all of the checks.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had that experience.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a cavern inside the dungeon, and uh a few of us with the whole um yeah, so it was umpus is driving Einar to go through here, and none of us want to go through there because we're like, no, that's gotta be terri.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge empty cavern.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is not good, not safe.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But Einar and I both misinterpreted what the DM said.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: We thought that the DM said that the draw was down.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Under the hollow.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Under the floor that kept crumbling away.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think about half of us thought it was under and the other half.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's where the dragon is, which I think is where it actually ended up being in the mapping up.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it did end up being on the other side of the room.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: We also, the reason we took forever is we were too scared to go find the dragon because there was an ancient dragon.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were very scared to find the dragon.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we were we were killing time and we were green dooring it, and we were um yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, our battery's flashing.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: We might get caught off.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: If we get caught off, that'll be fun.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what my okay, so my favorite thing about those episodes, not related to green dooring it specifically or video gaming it.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that I really liked about that session that group of sessions was me taking Ventor off of It was a good moment.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Off of the stuff.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stephanie was really not happy about it, but it was a good moment.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because story-wise, it was really good.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Story-wise, it was a really big moment for my character because Stephanie just hates the ink.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: She's particularly Oleander wanted to save Einar from Ventor and wanted to free Noctis, who is his other sentient ink.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Who we like.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We who we very much like.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually took that upon myself in a way to save Einar.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I wanted Ventor, but that I was just trying to save Noctus.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to free him, trying to free um Einar.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the only way that I could see in that moment to do so was that I tricked Ventor into not being on both of us.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I tricked him into being more powerful by being solely on one body.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I succeeded in that uh persuasion, and I now are not knowing any better, allowed me to pull Ventor from him.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is how I became fully infected with an asshole.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, unfortunately.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But now he's my asshole.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think they make a cream for that for your raging asshole.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: For my raging asshole.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what we need to call him now the raging asshole.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is not, we potty language, sorry, but he we don't like Ventor at all.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I really don't like Ventor.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't trust him.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't trust him, but he is Sara Vax.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think Sara Vax I think Sara Vax is manipulative.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think she's selfish.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't really interacted with her a lot, a whole lot, though.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: But Ventor hasn't worked against me yet.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's manipulated.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: 100% he's willing to do.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: He wants whatever he wants.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: He wants his goals to be achieved.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Which is not on everybody.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So far, our goals are aligned.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think as long as you keep just basically putting him in fights, he's like, Yeah, I can be happy with just being in a combat.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is yeah.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he seems to be content so far.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he's yeah, yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean, Oli and I feel like there's a lot we didn't talk about.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're probably gonna have a few more sessions where we talk about the mines because we're down there for a while.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but definitely the first two episodes were there.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's it was all video gamed.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Video gaming and green dooring it was yeah, awful.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of back and forth.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably really frustrating for me and us included.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let me know.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Have you guys video gamed your sessions, your dungeons, have you guys had a green door problem that you guys couldn't get past the everyone's the DM just couldn't figure out why you guys were obsessing with this little thing for the longest time until he realizes what's going on and says, guys, this is not a green door.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I guess we're talking touching a little bit on tiptoe through the ropers too, but yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let us know in the comments uh what what did you guys do when it came to a dungeon crawl that was just taking tools?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the slog.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you guys very much for joining us for delving deeper with Oleander Hawthorne and Delphine Alanja.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we will talk to you guys soon.