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How Dungeons and Dragons Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:11
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Truck Bryant. I'm just a I'm just
0:15
Speaker 1: a simple cleric mind in my way. Are you down
0:18
Speaker 1: the Primrose Path? I was gonna ask you what what
0:20
Speaker 1: you were? Got my staff, got my sword? Yep, that
0:23
Speaker 1: you would be well outfitted man, ready to battles some nerds?
0:30
Speaker 1: So have you have you played before? Okay, this is
0:34
Speaker 1: about dungeons and dragons, and I think that is a
0:38
Speaker 1: good move. Is two things one caveat if you're a
0:42
Speaker 1: big D and D person. We're not gonna get everything right.
0:47
Speaker 1: We'll get what we what we can write, obviously, but
0:50
Speaker 1: when it's not gonna be as comprehensive as you want,
0:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to go over the basic indition and too,
0:55
Speaker 1: I think we should both relate our own experience. So
0:57
Speaker 1: people just knew I played a little little bit because
1:00
Speaker 1: this is right in my wheelhouse. Dude, I was. I'm
1:02
Speaker 1: really surprised that you're community. Let you play the Baptist community.
1:08
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I didn't hear it talked about much in church,
1:11
Speaker 1: but um, in school, there were some of my friends
1:16
Speaker 1: started to play, and I played. I started to a
1:19
Speaker 1: little bit, but it was always way too complicated and
1:24
Speaker 1: involved for me. Um I played a little Top Secret.
1:27
Speaker 1: That's another role playing game that was like the espionage
1:30
Speaker 1: James Bond, D and D. So I played a little
1:32
Speaker 1: bit of that, but I never got into it man
1:34
Speaker 1: like other people did. And I think it's because I
1:38
Speaker 1: was so active, and I was I would always rather
1:41
Speaker 1: be out riding my bikes, my bike and playing at
1:45
Speaker 1: the creek near my house and building forts and zip
1:49
Speaker 1: lines and setting things on fire and putting fireworks and
1:54
Speaker 1: bottle rockets and model planes and flying them off my roof.
1:58
Speaker 1: So I was doing stuff like that. I wasn't so
1:59
Speaker 1: much inside playing D and D or I was early.
2:02
Speaker 1: I was an early gamer, so I'd be like, screw
2:05
Speaker 1: dn D. Let's play adventure on Mataria and be a
2:08
Speaker 1: block with an arrow right exactly. That's the real cutting stuff. Yeah,
2:12
Speaker 1: So that that was that was my deal. Mine was. UM.
2:14
Speaker 1: I did all that stuff, like I had a four
2:16
Speaker 1: in the woods and I had I could make a
2:17
Speaker 1: pretty good machine gun sound, and um, I did all
2:20
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But I also played D n
2:23
Speaker 1: D fairly extensively. Several summers like that were just basically spent,
2:28
Speaker 1: you know, in a friends basement playing Dungeon D. I
2:32
Speaker 1: think it depends on who your friends, said is, unless
2:34
Speaker 1: you're the initiator, like you'll just fall in and do
2:37
Speaker 1: whatever your friends are doing. Um, and here's the deal.
2:40
Speaker 1: I think this affected it too. I grew up on
2:42
Speaker 1: a street in the woods with like six houses. I
2:46
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in one of those big, sprawling neighborhoods
2:48
Speaker 1: like all my other friends. So they would walk down
2:51
Speaker 1: the street and play D and D. In the basement,
2:52
Speaker 1: it was just me and my bro out. Like in
2:55
Speaker 1: the woods. I would walk across the street for one
2:57
Speaker 1: group and there was another one where I had arrived
3:00
Speaker 1: I by distance I was. I was secluded. I was
3:03
Speaker 1: sequestered out in the in the forest, and I got
3:06
Speaker 1: made fun of because of that until later on when
3:09
Speaker 1: all my friends were like, dude, you live on two
3:10
Speaker 1: acres in the woods. That's rad. Let's have a bonfire exactly,
3:14
Speaker 1: and we did so. So we both played D and D. Uh,
3:18
Speaker 1: And we both are not experts in any way, shape
3:21
Speaker 1: or form. Like from the time I last played D
3:23
Speaker 1: and D until we started researching for this episode. I
3:27
Speaker 1: forgot everything basically over those three months. So it was
3:33
Speaker 1: like a pretty cool trip down memory lane, like going
3:35
Speaker 1: back and researching that. Yeah, me too, some because I
3:38
Speaker 1: didn't I don't think I remembered how much I had
3:40
Speaker 1: played it, And it was a little bit more than
3:41
Speaker 1: I had remembered because a lot of stuff was like
3:43
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I remember that, Yeah, I remember that cover,
3:44
Speaker 1: I remember that box. But there was, like I tell
3:46
Speaker 1: you exactly, there was a ton of new stuff that
3:49
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I learned in researching this, Like, um,
3:53
Speaker 1: like Gary guyas gas oh Man, have a bunch of
3:59
Speaker 1: people just put the ropes on, put the hoods on
4:02
Speaker 1: their heads, like, um, Gary Guy GaX. Let's call him
4:07
Speaker 1: Gary g from now on. He He is the co creator,
4:10
Speaker 1: along with Dave Arnison, of Dungeons and Dragons UM. And
4:16
Speaker 1: he started out as a war gaming fanatic, so much
4:19
Speaker 1: so that he started gen Con at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin,
4:23
Speaker 1: his hometown, UM, which is this huge gaming convention still um.
4:30
Speaker 1: But he started out as a war gaming convention. And
4:33
Speaker 1: that's basically where you rolled dice move little men. It's
4:37
Speaker 1: like risk. Risk is a war game. It's like that
4:39
Speaker 1: and Access and Allies are like quintessential war games. It's
4:43
Speaker 1: a great game. But Guy GaX and and his buddies
4:47
Speaker 1: were doing this before there was ever any risk, Like
4:50
Speaker 1: they were making their own boards, they were reenacting battles
4:53
Speaker 1: or doing alternate universe battles of them. Um. And then
4:57
Speaker 1: along came Dave Arnison, who I kind of had this
5:00
Speaker 1: idea for something a little less stilted, a little more
5:04
Speaker 1: free form UM, and he didn't quite have a conception
5:10
Speaker 1: of it yet, but Guy GaX did. He was working
5:13
Speaker 1: on something called chain Mail, and they got together and
5:15
Speaker 1: that ultimately became kind of the first dry run of
5:19
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. Uh, And they liked what they were
5:23
Speaker 1: doing and they kind of took it from there and
5:25
Speaker 1: then ultimately made Dungeons and Dragons in nineteen seventy four. Yeah,
5:29
Speaker 1: I didn't find out a whole lot about UM. About Arnisson,
5:34
Speaker 1: it seems like Guy gas is always the I guess
5:36
Speaker 1: because he was the original, like the originator of the idea.
5:40
Speaker 1: He's always the one that's revered and like, you know, yes,
5:44
Speaker 1: he was also I get the impression UM a lot
5:47
Speaker 1: more of the self promoter than Arniston is UM. But yeah,
5:52
Speaker 1: I mean they were both very much intimately involved in
5:55
Speaker 1: the creation of this game, right um. Guy gags. Also,
5:59
Speaker 1: by the way, slidebar says that he is a descendant
6:02
Speaker 1: of Goliath. Is there a yeah? He well he he
6:06
Speaker 1: didn't let me rephrase that the interview I saw. He
6:08
Speaker 1: wasn't like, I'm a descendant of Goliath. Yeah, he wasn't
6:11
Speaker 1: like that. He was a cool guy, Yeah, he said.
6:14
Speaker 1: The guy GaX means giant and supposedly, like the family
6:18
Speaker 1: law is that we are descendants of Goliath. So I
6:21
Speaker 1: thought that was sort of interesting, more appropriate than descendant
6:24
Speaker 1: of a biblical giant than to make this fantastical fantasy
6:28
Speaker 1: game right exactly, you know. Um he And there's actually
6:31
Speaker 1: like a really neat Wired article on him that includes
6:34
Speaker 1: a pretty decent amount on artists and too, um called
6:37
Speaker 1: The Dungeon Master. It's about Gary Guy GaX, who died
6:40
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. Say um. But the two
6:43
Speaker 1: of them get together, and this is when when things
6:45
Speaker 1: are really good, and they set up something called TSR,
6:48
Speaker 1: which is a company called Technical Studies Rules, which sounds
6:53
Speaker 1: like the most boring company you could ever think of,
6:58
Speaker 1: But this company is what produced the this what became
7:04
Speaker 1: the role playing game. Like you said, um, top secret
7:07
Speaker 1: was the James Bond D and D. Yeah, you didn't say,
7:10
Speaker 1: top secret was the James Bond role playing game and
7:13
Speaker 1: D was literally literally become synonymous with role playing games,
7:17
Speaker 1: and for good reason. Like in nineteen seventy four when
7:19
Speaker 1: Dungeons Dragons came out, there was nothing in the entire
7:23
Speaker 1: world that even remotely resembled it. Yeah, it was super unique,
7:28
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons why, you know, people
7:30
Speaker 1: always say it's like a nerd game, and you know,
7:33
Speaker 1: you sit in your basement by yourself, and they did
7:35
Speaker 1: have adventures. You're going by yourself. But they pointed out
7:39
Speaker 1: in this article it's a very social game because you
7:41
Speaker 1: would get together with your friends and sit around the
7:42
Speaker 1: table and you could play it straight and just sort
7:47
Speaker 1: of play, or you could start acting things out and
7:49
Speaker 1: doing funny voices and make it more like a dramatic
7:53
Speaker 1: like portrayal of this game. It was really kind of
7:55
Speaker 1: up to you. But it may have a nerdy h connotations,
8:01
Speaker 1: but they're just punch nerds together playing right well. And
8:06
Speaker 1: if you look at some of the recent ads for
8:08
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, um in some of the gamers magazines.
8:13
Speaker 1: They are still appealing to that, the fact that it's
8:15
Speaker 1: a social game. They're trying to get people who play
8:18
Speaker 1: World Warcraft like start playing D and D again. Um
8:21
Speaker 1: and and they're they're using taglines like, if you're gonna
8:24
Speaker 1: sit in your basement and pretend you're an elf for
8:27
Speaker 1: hours on and you might as well do it with
8:29
Speaker 1: a group of friends, that's a great so. Um. It
8:34
Speaker 1: has been social from the beginning. And what what guy
8:36
Speaker 1: GaX and Arniston came up with was essentially a book
8:39
Speaker 1: of rules that used dice to advance imaginary characters along. So.
8:45
Speaker 1: And then in seven they released the basic set. That's
8:49
Speaker 1: the red box. That's that's the one that makes us nostalgic, right.
8:53
Speaker 1: And then they also simultaneously released Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,
8:57
Speaker 1: which kind of had stricter rules, it was more eeping
9:00
Speaker 1: in scope. But they both came out in seventy seven,
9:03
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And then in seventy nine, the the
9:07
Speaker 1: d M Guide was introduced. And if you play Dungeons
9:10
Speaker 1: and Dragons in a group, you got to have a
9:13
Speaker 1: someone running the game, and that is the Dungeon Master.
9:15
Speaker 1: That is a person that sits behind a little cardboard
9:19
Speaker 1: screen and hides all of their stories, and they're the
9:22
Speaker 1: ones who create these basically kind of right the game.
9:26
Speaker 1: And like some people will spend hours in days and
9:30
Speaker 1: weeks creating these campaigns in these games for their friends
9:34
Speaker 1: to bring to life as characters. And it's it was
9:37
Speaker 1: definitely unique at the time. So you've got all these additions, right,
9:43
Speaker 1: there's I think ten now they're working on the tenth,
9:46
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, right, And with every edition
9:49
Speaker 1: of Dungeons and Dragons, there was a m like there's
9:54
Speaker 1: a change. Sometimes they are really big changes. Like they
9:58
Speaker 1: released the second edition of Advance Dungeons and Dragons and
10:01
Speaker 1: like it did away with a lot of like the
10:03
Speaker 1: evil monsters because like d n D had gotten a
10:05
Speaker 1: bad rap wh we'll talk about later um. And there's
10:09
Speaker 1: like a kind of role that you had to figure
10:13
Speaker 1: out how many hit points you lost or how many
10:17
Speaker 1: hit points were UM inflicted. It was just different. And
10:20
Speaker 1: so with every addition, it's been different and different and
10:23
Speaker 1: different um and so you get adherence to different sets,
10:27
Speaker 1: different versions, uh, which has kind of led to this
10:31
Speaker 1: weird fracturing in the Dungeon's Dragons community. Apparently. And you
10:35
Speaker 1: know the grabster at Grabowski, one of the writers of
10:40
Speaker 1: many of the articles that we've talked about. He's a
10:43
Speaker 1: bit of a D and D expert, it turns out, Yeah,
10:45
Speaker 1: and you can go check his stuff out. Agreed. Uh.
10:50
Speaker 1: He writes extensively on I O nine dot com about
10:54
Speaker 1: D and D c check out his stuff. He's basically saying, like, Okay,
10:58
Speaker 1: because a big fractured community of dn D players, everybody
11:02
Speaker 1: has their own edition that's their favorite, but everybody still
11:04
Speaker 1: wants to be able to play together. But it's just incompatible.
11:07
Speaker 1: So what he's saying is Wizards of the Coast, to
11:10
Speaker 1: people who made um Magic the Gathering and ultimately bought
11:14
Speaker 1: dn D, they have said, Okay, this fifth edition is
11:18
Speaker 1: going to bring everything together. We'll see about that. Well,
11:21
Speaker 1: that's what Grabanowski says. He says, Um, there's no possible
11:25
Speaker 1: way to literally unify the various editions under a single
11:27
Speaker 1: rule set. It would be like trying to build a
11:29
Speaker 1: car that uses parts from a two thousand ten Mustang,
11:32
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty packard, and a tractor. So he's incredulous.
11:37
Speaker 1: But they have it in like open gaming testing right now.
11:39
Speaker 1: The fifth edition. I don't see what the big deal is.
11:41
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the cool things about D
11:43
Speaker 1: and D is that depending on who you play with, uh, like,
11:47
Speaker 1: find your people, you know, like they might want to
11:50
Speaker 1: play a certain edition. I know that some players like
11:53
Speaker 1: to play with the little figurines and some people think
11:55
Speaker 1: that's an abomination. You should only use your imagination. Some
11:59
Speaker 1: people go and make up their own campaigns. Some people
12:03
Speaker 1: stick to campaigns that are in the books. So, like,
12:06
Speaker 1: I think that's a cool thing about it is there's
12:07
Speaker 1: something out there for everybody. Unless you're just not into it. Well, yeah,
12:12
Speaker 1: then there's nothing for you, nothing for me. Um, So
12:15
Speaker 1: let's talk about how to play. Like, we'll just give
12:18
Speaker 1: a brief primer and we since we're nostalgic for the
12:21
Speaker 1: Red Box, which is the basic set, basic rule book
12:24
Speaker 1: that came out first and seventy um that we're just
12:30
Speaker 1: gonna go with that. Don't yell at us, but it's
12:33
Speaker 1: a very basic, good intro to D n D for
12:35
Speaker 1: all the other people who are listening to this one
12:37
Speaker 1: who don't know what is going on. This is a
12:39
Speaker 1: single episode on D n D, and you could have
12:41
Speaker 1: an entire podcast that's about d n D that you
12:44
Speaker 1: did for five years. You know, I'll bet there are
12:47
Speaker 1: and right in let us know, we'll tweet, we'll tweet
12:50
Speaker 1: about it. Okay. So, like we said, it is a
12:54
Speaker 1: role playing game. So the basic concept is by the way,
12:58
Speaker 1: you can't win. There is know, like endpoint. It's all
13:01
Speaker 1: just about the fun of continuing with these characters you create, right,
13:05
Speaker 1: The only beginning and and really is the creation of
13:09
Speaker 1: a new character and the death of that character. And
13:13
Speaker 1: even still if like that character dies, it sucks depending
13:15
Speaker 1: on how far along your character was, but you can
13:18
Speaker 1: always create another one. So you bother me about it,
13:21
Speaker 1: I think is I was too late, like I would
13:23
Speaker 1: cheat it and just make up characters. Well that's why
13:28
Speaker 1: I was never invited back, you know. And so you
13:30
Speaker 1: were that guy? Huh No, I mean I don't remember
13:32
Speaker 1: if I was. I just remember not getting it and
13:34
Speaker 1: being like, well, my guy's good at all this stuff.
13:36
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go sit someone on fire, all right. So
13:40
Speaker 1: you create your character, and in the red box and
13:42
Speaker 1: the basic set, you have these different attributes and abilities
13:46
Speaker 1: that will come into play as you play the game,
13:49
Speaker 1: and they are strength of course, it's pretty easy. How
13:52
Speaker 1: much you can, how much damage you can inflict with
13:54
Speaker 1: a weapon, Wisdom, how intuitive you are, dexterity, which is
13:59
Speaker 1: good if you're nimb um. It could help you with
14:01
Speaker 1: a weapon or getting in that high window on the
14:04
Speaker 1: second floor, especially like a missile weapon like a bow
14:06
Speaker 1: and arrow or something. If you have a high tex
14:09
Speaker 1: you want to pair that with a bow and arrow.
14:11
Speaker 1: For intelligence, um, how smart they are, how how much
14:16
Speaker 1: they can learn things as a character, constitution which is
14:20
Speaker 1: your stamina, and how much stuff you can carry, how
14:23
Speaker 1: long you can fight. But if you have that bag
14:25
Speaker 1: of holding, you're all set. Uh. And then charisma, which
14:28
Speaker 1: is your likability. So uh, if you want to hook
14:32
Speaker 1: up and make friends or get out of a fight
14:35
Speaker 1: with some bad character, that's when that's going to come
14:37
Speaker 1: into play. And all these are determined by rolls of
14:40
Speaker 1: the diet. Yeah, Like everything we just talked about is
14:42
Speaker 1: represented by a number UM. And then in addition to
14:45
Speaker 1: the armored class of the character, which is a number
14:49
Speaker 1: that represents ay, how easy it is to inflict damage
14:52
Speaker 1: on that character. Uh. And then the number of hit points,
14:55
Speaker 1: which is I guess the representation of um basically how
14:59
Speaker 1: much life you have left to get your health right exactly.
15:02
Speaker 1: In a video game, that would be your health par exactly. Um.
15:05
Speaker 1: And you put all these together and you have a
15:07
Speaker 1: character that, so long as it can stay alive, can
15:10
Speaker 1: go out and go forth into the D and D
15:12
Speaker 1: universe and in adventure indefinitely basically. Uh all right. So
15:19
Speaker 1: there were seven playable characters in the Inn the basic set,
15:22
Speaker 1: and I think I remember being a cleric, but the
15:25
Speaker 1: first one is a fighter, and that's what you think
15:28
Speaker 1: they're They're stronger, and they're better at fighting, and they're
15:31
Speaker 1: probably not as smart or as uh charismatic as like
15:36
Speaker 1: another character might be. It depends. You can have high
15:38
Speaker 1: curuismen like in the D and D um the Basic
15:41
Speaker 1: sets players Manual, the first character they hook you up
15:45
Speaker 1: with has high curuisma and high strength. But strength is
15:48
Speaker 1: the prime requisite for being a fighter. Yeah, okay, so cleric.
15:52
Speaker 1: I think I was a cleric. Uh. That's sort of
15:55
Speaker 1: a fighter in a in a wizard, so that they
15:58
Speaker 1: have good fighting abilities. But they're all so very dexterous
16:01
Speaker 1: and wise, and you can cast spells, which is very important.
16:05
Speaker 1: Right with the difference between a cleric and a magic user,
16:09
Speaker 1: which is the next one, is that a cleric received
16:11
Speaker 1: spells through meditation, so they have to sit around and
16:14
Speaker 1: rest sometimes before they can get a new spell. Um.
16:18
Speaker 1: And they also can turn undead, which means literally turn
16:21
Speaker 1: the undead the other way. So if you have a
16:24
Speaker 1: zombie on your trail, you're it's good to have cleric
16:27
Speaker 1: to say, hey, zombies, turn around zombies. Where they called
16:31
Speaker 1: zombie zombies is one? Where is another? Undead skeletons. I
16:35
Speaker 1: didn't play enough. I don't know any of this stuff.
16:37
Speaker 1: I didn't either until I went back and read the
16:39
Speaker 1: entire players manual again the other day. So magic user
16:42
Speaker 1: can do cool things like their balls of lightning and um,
16:46
Speaker 1: learn other spells, learn new spells without meditation. No, it's
16:50
Speaker 1: learning from book learning, which means you have to have
16:53
Speaker 1: the prime requis is a high intelligent score. It's not
16:56
Speaker 1: a meditative thing, right, it's just from learning books. Uh.
16:59
Speaker 1: You have the door worf. Of course, what fantasy game
17:01
Speaker 1: would be complete without it? Four feet tall? Got that beard?
17:05
Speaker 1: Males and females have a beard. Yeah, and uh, and
17:08
Speaker 1: just like in like the Lord of the Rings, they're
17:10
Speaker 1: they're kind of ornery and super strong and have great constitution.
17:14
Speaker 1: And of course they're good fighters because they're a little short,
17:17
Speaker 1: mean boogers. Um, you've got the thief, which you would think. Um,
17:22
Speaker 1: and it took me a long time to figure this
17:24
Speaker 1: one out. To the thief, why would you want to
17:26
Speaker 1: have a thief around the person is going to steal
17:28
Speaker 1: the thief, Well, a thief typically doesn't steal from people
17:32
Speaker 1: they're adventuring with. Um, but they do know how to
17:37
Speaker 1: find secret doors, traps, picklocks, picklocks. Uh. Yeah, and so
17:42
Speaker 1: they have a very high dexterity score. Yeah, but they're
17:45
Speaker 1: they're also going to turn their back on you in
17:47
Speaker 1: a battle because it depends they're not great fighters. Okay, right,
17:50
Speaker 1: you don't want them near the battle. You want them
17:52
Speaker 1: like kind of off to the side, get out of
17:54
Speaker 1: the way, and let's get the fighter in there. Maybe
17:55
Speaker 1: a dwarf or two as well. But yeah, the thief
17:58
Speaker 1: is just kind of meant to stand back and maybe
18:01
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, get them over there a second to
18:04
Speaker 1: them and just cheer along. Uh, you've got halflings. They
18:07
Speaker 1: are even smaller than the dwarfs. They're only three feet tall,
18:10
Speaker 1: about sixty pounds, and they're demi humans and um, they're
18:14
Speaker 1: dexterous and they have a great constitution. They're tough to
18:17
Speaker 1: hit because they're tiny, and so they're good fighters, the
18:20
Speaker 1: very spry. Yeah. Um. They're also like dwarves and elves,
18:24
Speaker 1: capable of sustaining magic attacks. Um, which leads us to elves.
18:29
Speaker 1: It's another demi human character. And they're a cross between
18:32
Speaker 1: fighters and magic users. So they have high strength and
18:34
Speaker 1: high intelligence. And it's not you don't just say with
18:39
Speaker 1: any of these like, oh I want an elf. So
18:41
Speaker 1: you roll until you have something with high intelligence in
18:44
Speaker 1: high strength. You can you're not supposed to when you're
18:47
Speaker 1: supposed to roll, and come up with your ability scores
18:50
Speaker 1: first and then figure out what you have based on
18:52
Speaker 1: those scores. Yeah, And it is interesting. And one thing
18:56
Speaker 1: I do remember is that it is about the imagination.
18:58
Speaker 1: And even though these these characters exist as a series
19:02
Speaker 1: of numbers on a chart, is all it is. Um,
19:06
Speaker 1: you create them in your mind and that's the fun
19:08
Speaker 1: part about it. And like, I never started acting things
19:11
Speaker 1: out like I've seen other people do, which can go
19:14
Speaker 1: overboard pretty easy. Um. And I guess that was sort
19:17
Speaker 1: of the precursor to what ended up being LARP. Was
19:20
Speaker 1: just sitting around the kitchen table doing accents and things,
19:22
Speaker 1: and some people thought, hey, let's let's go outside and
19:25
Speaker 1: take these broomsticks and actually do this fight. You got
19:28
Speaker 1: you got some cardboard. I'm in the move from making
19:30
Speaker 1: some sorts. Yeah, I'm really an active guy. I think
19:33
Speaker 1: you know, sitting around this table is no good, right. Um.
19:36
Speaker 1: So you said that everything is represented numerically, and that's
19:38
Speaker 1: absolutely true. Um, except there's one thing that that kind
19:42
Speaker 1: of lends itself to acting, uh or at the very least,
19:45
Speaker 1: decision making of a character in this alignment. And there's
19:49
Speaker 1: three kinds of alignment and basic D and D there's lawful,
19:53
Speaker 1: which is what we would equate with good goods, where
19:56
Speaker 1: if you have a lawful character, they're they're probably the
19:59
Speaker 1: hero type. You're gonna put their own skin on the
20:02
Speaker 1: line in order to save the group. They're certainly not
20:04
Speaker 1: going to turn and run without the rest of the
20:06
Speaker 1: group doing the same. Um. Chaotic is the opposite of that.
20:10
Speaker 1: It's what we would equate with evil. Yeah, they just
20:13
Speaker 1: sort of look out for themselves forget the group. And
20:16
Speaker 1: you'd think that would be the worst one, but apparently
20:19
Speaker 1: the worst is neutral because you can't tell they're just
20:22
Speaker 1: gonna do whatever is best for them no matter what. Well,
20:24
Speaker 1: that's neutral is very it's animalistic um where it's basically
20:29
Speaker 1: just about the survival of of the the individual. And
20:33
Speaker 1: if you have a neutral person, they might fight with
20:35
Speaker 1: the group if they feel like the group's gonna win
20:37
Speaker 1: and just will protect them, or they may just turn
20:40
Speaker 1: and run with Hey, no hard feelings, they got nothing
20:42
Speaker 1: against you, But I'm just very instinctual. That's what neutral is.
20:47
Speaker 1: The alignments there are all manner of like shelter and
20:51
Speaker 1: weapons and foods and all these different things you can
20:54
Speaker 1: pick up along the way, uh, and even languages that
20:57
Speaker 1: if you approach a character and they don't speak your language,
21:00
Speaker 1: then you can't communicate and you have to take a
21:03
Speaker 1: different path on your adventure. But everyone can speak at
21:06
Speaker 1: least two uh universal And then alignment tongue. Alignment tongue
21:10
Speaker 1: allows you to speak to other characters in that same
21:13
Speaker 1: alignment without the other people knowing what's being said, and
21:16
Speaker 1: it's your private little conversation exactly. So, if if both
21:19
Speaker 1: of us were chaotic magic users, right Chuck, yes, and
21:23
Speaker 1: there was a somebody playing and there was a fighter
21:25
Speaker 1: who was lawful, we could say, hey, let's put a
21:28
Speaker 1: charm spell um on this guy and make them do
21:31
Speaker 1: our bidding. Um. And so the player is going to
21:34
Speaker 1: know what we're doing, but the character wouldn't. Yeah, And
21:37
Speaker 1: the person responsible for keeping all this separate you mentioned earlier,
21:42
Speaker 1: the dungeon master, the head nerd Right, the dungeon master
21:45
Speaker 1: is in charge of saying things like you wouldn't know
21:48
Speaker 1: that when the fighter says, I want to kill um
21:52
Speaker 1: the two magic users who are about to use a
21:54
Speaker 1: charm on me, the dungeon master would say, your character
21:57
Speaker 1: doesn't know that because they just spoke in their alignment
21:59
Speaker 1: tongue and boy. Dungeon master is a specific kind of person.
22:03
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of work, and you can get
22:06
Speaker 1: as involved as you want to. But no matter which
22:08
Speaker 1: way you slice it, if you're the d M, you're
22:10
Speaker 1: gonna be putting in some time coming up with these things,
22:13
Speaker 1: even stories, even before the beginning, even before you sit down,
22:16
Speaker 1: and it's Uh. I'd be curious to find some correlation
22:21
Speaker 1: between people that were dungeon masters when they were like
22:25
Speaker 1: twelve in the late seventies and early eighties and what
22:28
Speaker 1: they ended up doing with their life. Yeah, it would
22:30
Speaker 1: be an interesting study because they I would say that
22:35
Speaker 1: a lot of them are probably running companies and running
22:37
Speaker 1: the show wherever they are, because it takes a great
22:39
Speaker 1: deal of initiative and patience and like stamina and creativity
22:44
Speaker 1: and all these things to be a great dungeon master,
22:46
Speaker 1: plus the sense of justice as well. You have to
22:48
Speaker 1: be fair. Oh yeah, I'm sure it doesn't always sit
22:51
Speaker 1: well with the group. Um and yeah, like you were saying,
22:54
Speaker 1: like they it does take creativity. It takes also a
22:57
Speaker 1: total and utter awareness of the game. Like while everybody
23:00
Speaker 1: just creating their players, the d M has to show
23:02
Speaker 1: up to that very first game having read the player's manual,
23:06
Speaker 1: having read the Dungeon Master's Guide, understanding all the rules,
23:09
Speaker 1: and then if you're using a game module, which you
23:11
Speaker 1: know TSR published tons of games um, which essentially are
23:16
Speaker 1: maps of an area that the dungeon master has access to, uh,
23:21
Speaker 1: and then running the whole game as a whole, like
23:24
Speaker 1: understanding what players can do, what players can't do. Um,
23:27
Speaker 1: you have to understand how much damage a monster can inflict.
23:31
Speaker 1: Let's give an example, like the dungeons Masters's Guide is intimidating. Yeah,
23:37
Speaker 1: so I don't know how these kids at twelve, we're
23:39
Speaker 1: sitting down and figuring this stuff out well, so they
23:41
Speaker 1: a lot of the appearance of omniscience, and any dungeon
23:44
Speaker 1: master kind of cultivates this this idea that they are
23:47
Speaker 1: all knowing. But like you said, they're hiding behind a
23:50
Speaker 1: cardboard screen, and behind that screen is like the dungeon
23:53
Speaker 1: Master's guy, the game module, which has everything clearly marked
23:56
Speaker 1: and all that. They have everything at their disposal, but
24:00
Speaker 1: there's still a revered person, typically the dungeon Master. They're omniscient.
24:05
Speaker 1: Because I don't know how many twelve year olds have
24:07
Speaker 1: the initiative to take this on. There was I think
24:10
Speaker 1: it's about right. It's probably about one out of every
24:13
Speaker 1: ten kids as the initiative to beat the dungeon Master,
24:16
Speaker 1: and the rest just wanted to be characters. So that
24:18
Speaker 1: was that was a big problem with the game, was
24:19
Speaker 1: like sometimes you couldn't find somebody to the DM because
24:22
Speaker 1: there was a lot of work. So let's give an
24:25
Speaker 1: example of of play, if you'll indulge me. Okay, So, okay,
24:29
Speaker 1: we got a group of characters around a campaign in
24:31
Speaker 1: a dungeon and by the way, you know the um
24:35
Speaker 1: the reason why it became Dungeons and Dragons, um why
24:38
Speaker 1: they chose dungeons was because they didn't want players being
24:41
Speaker 1: able to just kind of wander all over the place.
24:44
Speaker 1: They wanted to kind of keep them together in small,
24:46
Speaker 1: confined spaces and a dungeon or a cave system or
24:48
Speaker 1: something like that. It was a pretty good way to
24:50
Speaker 1: keep everybody. To get catacombs. Man, it's all about the catacombs.
24:53
Speaker 1: So you're your your group of characters are on a campaign,
24:56
Speaker 1: the dungeon, and the d M might say something like
24:59
Speaker 1: this is in the middle of the game. The d
25:00
Speaker 1: M is in charge of telling you what's going on
25:02
Speaker 1: where you are, describing your environment. So they he or
25:05
Speaker 1: she may say, you're in a long dark cord, or
25:08
Speaker 1: you see a faint light at one end. To your
25:11
Speaker 1: right is a ten ft by ten ft door. It
25:13
Speaker 1: is locked. Do you want to try to pick the
25:15
Speaker 1: lock or continue down the cord or towards the toward
25:18
Speaker 1: the light. And so the players decide to have the
25:21
Speaker 1: thief pick the lock, right, because that's what you do.
25:24
Speaker 1: Now here's what I don't get and I don't know
25:26
Speaker 1: if you know this is it? Do you get together
25:29
Speaker 1: as a group and decide and like take a vote
25:31
Speaker 1: or is it someone's turn? To like say no, it's
25:34
Speaker 1: my turn, and I make the thief go. It depends.
25:37
Speaker 1: So first of all, before on a campaign, you have
25:40
Speaker 1: a caller, and that's the person who speaks to the
25:42
Speaker 1: d M for the group. But the caller is also
25:44
Speaker 1: in charge of saying, hey, what do you guys want
25:47
Speaker 1: to do and then saying that to the d M. Okay,
25:50
Speaker 1: so they're the just the voice of the group, right.
25:53
Speaker 1: They don't make any decisions. The groups supposed to decide
25:55
Speaker 1: as a whole um, and the d ms are sitting
25:58
Speaker 1: there going little do they know exactly? Uh? And then
26:01
Speaker 1: there are turns as well, especially in combat. Now, if
26:04
Speaker 1: like you have three fighters and a thief and there's
26:08
Speaker 1: suddenly battling um um uh minotaur um, the thief is
26:14
Speaker 1: gonna be like I'm standing over here, and the d
26:17
Speaker 1: M will leave them out of the turns and then
26:20
Speaker 1: will be the thief in the minotaur, and or the
26:23
Speaker 1: one fighter in the minotaur and the next fighter in
26:25
Speaker 1: the minutear. But blah blah blah, I always just keep
26:26
Speaker 1: going on like that. Okay, that makes sense alright, So
26:29
Speaker 1: back to our little story. The door is locked. Do
26:31
Speaker 1: you want to pick the lock? We decide let's send
26:34
Speaker 1: our thief in to pick the lock. Okay, So so
26:35
Speaker 1: what happens in the d M, Well, they gotta roll
26:39
Speaker 1: the dice and that's how you figure out if things work.
26:41
Speaker 1: So if you're a thief, that means you're really good
26:44
Speaker 1: at picking locks. So let's say it's a twenty sided
26:47
Speaker 1: die and all you gotta do is roll like a
26:48
Speaker 1: four or higher to successfully pick it. So that just
26:51
Speaker 1: means your chances are really good that you'll be able
26:54
Speaker 1: to pick the lock. If you don't have a thief,
26:56
Speaker 1: you can send your fighter in to pick the lock,
26:58
Speaker 1: but you may have to roll like a sixty or higher.
27:01
Speaker 1: You would think so, but fighters can't pick locks at all,
27:04
Speaker 1: not at all, Okay, they just like bang on the door.
27:08
Speaker 1: So only certain characters can, like you can't even try
27:11
Speaker 1: if they if they don't have that I believe someone
27:13
Speaker 1: basic D and D like only thieves are definitely not fighters.
27:17
Speaker 1: So if you don't have a thief in your campaign,
27:20
Speaker 1: the d M wouldn't even say do you want to
27:22
Speaker 1: pick the lock? They may say do you want to
27:23
Speaker 1: try to bust the door down? But the d M
27:26
Speaker 1: might also know in the game module it's unbust downable.
27:29
Speaker 1: It can only be picked. So so um it is
27:36
Speaker 1: because you're rolling for everything and you were saying they
27:38
Speaker 1: rolled to find out the thief was successful, and that
27:41
Speaker 1: that would be based on that low number, like if
27:43
Speaker 1: you just need to roll a four. That's in relation
27:46
Speaker 1: to the dexterity score, because it takes high dexterity to
27:49
Speaker 1: pick a lock. To the higher dexterity score, the lower
27:51
Speaker 1: you have to roll, which gives you, on a twenty
27:54
Speaker 1: side of die, a lot more of a chance that
27:56
Speaker 1: you're going to be successful at picking the lock. It's
27:58
Speaker 1: all rolling of the dice and the rumbers. So in
28:01
Speaker 1: this case, the d M knows that on the other
28:03
Speaker 1: side of that door is the gelatinous cube, and that
28:08
Speaker 1: is bad news if you're playing D and D, which
28:11
Speaker 1: if you're an experienced dn D player, that ten ft
28:14
Speaker 1: by ten ft door probably would have given it away
28:17
Speaker 1: because that's the exact dimensions of a gelatinous cube, which
28:19
Speaker 1: is evolved to move through the doors of a dungeon.
28:24
Speaker 1: I would be dead so soon. So what happens the
28:26
Speaker 1: door opens, there's the gelatinous cube boom, and then you
28:29
Speaker 1: got to do battle. And when you're doing battle. You
28:31
Speaker 1: do it again by rolling dice and you get these hits.
28:35
Speaker 1: You have the hit points that we referenced earlier. And
28:37
Speaker 1: let's say you gotta roll all right, these two four
28:39
Speaker 1: sided dice. Um, you gotta roll each one once and
28:43
Speaker 1: that those will be the the licks that the gins
28:46
Speaker 1: gelatinous cube puts on you. And if it totals seven
28:49
Speaker 1: or higher than you're dead. Yeah, exactly. And if you
28:52
Speaker 1: had depending on your hit points, if you have seven
28:54
Speaker 1: hit points, yeah, you'd be dead. So that I mean,
28:59
Speaker 1: that's generally the game. And you can get experience points,
29:01
Speaker 1: which are huge, which is this it's interesting to know
29:04
Speaker 1: experience points. That's what you do to like grow as
29:07
Speaker 1: a character, to get more hit points, to become more invincible,
29:10
Speaker 1: more to kill a monster and you'll get experience points,
29:12
Speaker 1: but you get way more experience points for getting treasure.
29:16
Speaker 1: And the authors of the Basic D and D rule
29:19
Speaker 1: books point out like this is we want you to
29:23
Speaker 1: use your head, right, how do you get around confrontation
29:28
Speaker 1: to go find the loot? Right, which, if you battle
29:31
Speaker 1: a monster you deserve something, sure, but the point isn't killing.
29:34
Speaker 1: The point is is using your head to get around
29:37
Speaker 1: problems as well. And that's why you get more for treasure. Yeah,
29:42
Speaker 1: we'll look at there. I had a thing I think
29:45
Speaker 1: we made it up because I looked it up and
29:47
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it called a bag of plenty, not
29:49
Speaker 1: a bag of holding. The bag of holding was you
29:52
Speaker 1: could put like anything large in it and still be
29:54
Speaker 1: able to carry it. Like I found like all this food,
29:57
Speaker 1: and I normally wouldn't be able to carry it. But
29:59
Speaker 1: your bag of holding little all that and there? Right?
30:01
Speaker 1: Did you have to keey stir it? I don't know
30:03
Speaker 1: what that means? Like up the butt? Yeah, you're the
30:06
Speaker 1: first person who's ever said up the butt when somebody said,
30:10
Speaker 1: keyst what he's supposed to say. Did you just know
30:12
Speaker 1: a Keyston would say up the button? Yeah? All right,
30:18
Speaker 1: Um no, I wouldn't that key stir it. But I
30:20
Speaker 1: had something called a bag of plenty, and you guys
30:23
Speaker 1: made that up or I don't remember, man, because I
30:25
Speaker 1: didn't find it anywhere. The only thing I found was
30:27
Speaker 1: something called a bag of plenty plus one in Balder's Gate,
30:31
Speaker 1: which was a video game I had played once. But
30:33
Speaker 1: I think those Balder's Gate related to D and D somehow,
30:36
Speaker 1: like one of the variations so I didn't know that,
30:38
Speaker 1: but well, maybe what we played was with a bag
30:43
Speaker 1: of Plenty, which is it would double whatever you put
30:45
Speaker 1: in it. So if you have like twenty gold coins,
30:48
Speaker 1: you put in your bag of Plenty and you have,
30:50
Speaker 1: you know, double that amount. But I think we might
30:52
Speaker 1: have made that up because I can't verify that anywhere.
30:54
Speaker 1: I wonder how many, um how you just inadvertently admitted
30:58
Speaker 1: to playing Baller's Gate, and wonder how many people are
31:00
Speaker 1: just like, well, his credibilities out the window. I think
31:04
Speaker 1: people enjoyed that. No, I don't know, maybe if I
31:07
Speaker 1: vaguely remember it too. It was one of those games
31:10
Speaker 1: that I played on like PS two for three months
31:13
Speaker 1: until I completed it and then I was done with it.
31:15
Speaker 1: You know. So if if any of that even slightly
31:18
Speaker 1: piqued your interest, I would strongly recommend going and researching
31:23
Speaker 1: and maybe trying out. There's usually, uh, if you go
31:28
Speaker 1: on meetup dot com, you can find him probably just
31:31
Speaker 1: about any even semi major city of D and D group,
31:37
Speaker 1: And apparently Wednesdays are typically days at like comic book
31:41
Speaker 1: shops and gaming shops and stuff like that that have
31:43
Speaker 1: D and D groups where it's just kind of like, uh,
31:46
Speaker 1: anybody who wants to come can can come by and
31:49
Speaker 1: try their hand in it. I think they're very open community. Yeah,
31:52
Speaker 1: well it depends. Oh sure, Like if you tried to
31:56
Speaker 1: come in and like just PLoP down and like, hey,
31:58
Speaker 1: I want to join this game that you guys have
31:59
Speaker 1: been playing for seven years, and they wouldn't like me,
32:02
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, I got a bag of plenty,
32:04
Speaker 1: That's why they'd be like Balther's gate Um. I did
32:09
Speaker 1: try last night to play the online version because I thought,
32:13
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna give it a whirl. I
32:16
Speaker 1: downloaded this Mac beta version that was like eight gigs.
32:21
Speaker 1: It took a couple of hours to download, and then
32:23
Speaker 1: there was some errandloading and it wouldn't work. I was like,
32:26
Speaker 1: all right, well that sucks. Let me go get my
32:28
Speaker 1: PC laptop, because you know me, I'm rich. I have
32:31
Speaker 1: like eight different kinds of laptops. I know they're like
32:33
Speaker 1: falling out of your pocket. So I went to my
32:35
Speaker 1: PC laptop and tried to sign up and download the
32:38
Speaker 1: PC version, and it wouldn't recognize me. It wouldn't let
32:43
Speaker 1: me because I'd already signed up with that name, and
32:46
Speaker 1: so it was like midnight, and I said, screw this,
32:50
Speaker 1: but I think I might try and play the online
32:52
Speaker 1: version just to see what it's like. It's called D
32:54
Speaker 1: d O. Yeah, we're not getting into that. It's in
32:56
Speaker 1: a whole other thing. But um, there's a good article
32:59
Speaker 1: by John that's Strickland on Dungeons and Dragons online that
33:03
Speaker 1: you can find on how stuff works. So um, so
33:06
Speaker 1: I said, go check it out. And if not, if
33:09
Speaker 1: it didn't really pique your interest at the very least,
33:12
Speaker 1: I imagine you would be interested to know that for many,
33:15
Speaker 1: many years there were a lot of people with a
33:18
Speaker 1: lot of voices who considered Dungeons and Dragons to be
33:22
Speaker 1: thoroughly satanic. Yeah, and uh, it didn't help that what
33:28
Speaker 1: was the year that the guy seventy nine, James Egbert,
33:32
Speaker 1: James Dallas Egbert the third he went by Dallas. Yeah,
33:35
Speaker 1: this was a kid at Michigan State University and he
33:39
Speaker 1: went missing, and they the story out and the one
33:43
Speaker 1: that was later disproven, but the one that really got
33:45
Speaker 1: around in the news was that he disappeared into the
33:50
Speaker 1: tunnel system underneath the school playing D and D and
33:53
Speaker 1: died doing so. Yeah, he was a sixteen year old
33:56
Speaker 1: by the way computer prodigy in seventy nine, so there's
33:59
Speaker 1: like not such a thing as computer prodigies. Then he's
34:02
Speaker 1: like one of the first. He's at Michigan State and
34:04
Speaker 1: he actually did go in the steam tunnels and he
34:06
Speaker 1: went to go kill himself to take an overdose on barbituous. Yeah,
34:09
Speaker 1: but it didn't work, and he came to in the
34:11
Speaker 1: steam tunnels. Yeah. And it had nothing to do with
34:13
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons, but it was announced so in the news,
34:16
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what people remembered at the time,
34:17
Speaker 1: and they used that as fuel, of course, to fuel
34:20
Speaker 1: the fire of this is an evil game, satanic. They
34:23
Speaker 1: made a movie with Tom Hanks, man, do you remember
34:28
Speaker 1: seeing that when it first came out as a TV movie? Yeah,
34:31
Speaker 1: And and I guess you know, it's just sort of
34:33
Speaker 1: loosely told of slightly fictionalized version of James Egbert's uh
34:39
Speaker 1: you know, the sensationalized version of the real version. Tom
34:41
Speaker 1: Hanks plays the guy who gets so wrapped up in
34:43
Speaker 1: his character that he um, he just has a break
34:46
Speaker 1: with reality. He disappears because they find him again, but
34:50
Speaker 1: he still thinks that he's uh Pardue the Cleric, and
34:53
Speaker 1: I call him Pardue the cleric who lives with his
34:56
Speaker 1: parents now because they take him back home and he's
34:59
Speaker 1: just some crazy dude. Yeah. Um, I don't think any
35:02
Speaker 1: there was any better reaction to Dungeons and Dragons than
35:06
Speaker 1: Dark Dungeons by Chick Publications. So Chick Publications make religious
35:12
Speaker 1: tracks on everything about um. They're extremely fundamentalist christian um.
35:17
Speaker 1: And they have tracks on everything from how the new
35:22
Speaker 1: Jesuit Pope is in league with the devil to how
35:25
Speaker 1: if you are a Mason you are become possessed by
35:27
Speaker 1: a heathen god. Um. And they're basically like these easy
35:31
Speaker 1: to read comic books you're not familiar I might have
35:35
Speaker 1: if I saw one, I might recognize it. So and
35:37
Speaker 1: then they publish them and they sell them so you
35:39
Speaker 1: can go hand them out and proselytize the people on
35:41
Speaker 1: the streets like an ice breaker basically. But Chick Publications
35:44
Speaker 1: came up with the not the creme de la creme
35:47
Speaker 1: of anti D and D material propaganda. Yes, it's called
35:52
Speaker 1: Dark Dungeons and it's a comic strip about a girl
35:55
Speaker 1: who becomes who starts playing D and D and then
35:59
Speaker 1: as were routed into a real life witchcraft COVID by
36:03
Speaker 1: the Dungeon Master, because Dungeons and Dragons is just this
36:06
Speaker 1: front for Satanists to like find the best of the
36:08
Speaker 1: best to come do the real thing. And one girl
36:11
Speaker 1: who becomes so wrapped up in her character. Once her
36:13
Speaker 1: character dized, she goes and hangs herself in her room.
36:15
Speaker 1: That sounds familiar. I might have been forced to read
36:17
Speaker 1: that at some point. Check it out. And as a
36:19
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I wrote a blog post on these
36:22
Speaker 1: and some other ones about how it's called back when
36:25
Speaker 1: people thought Dungeons and Dragons was satanic k's on our
36:28
Speaker 1: site stuff you should Know dot com and this it was.
36:31
Speaker 1: It's really interesting, like there was this period that coincided
36:35
Speaker 1: with that whole satanic ritual abuse scare. Yeah, with the
36:38
Speaker 1: heavy metal music. Yeah, that got Judics, priests on Landed
36:43
Speaker 1: the West, Memphis three in prison. Um, it was a
36:47
Speaker 1: real thing. And yes, and Dungeons and Dragons was, if
36:51
Speaker 1: not the originator of this huge part of it. It
36:54
Speaker 1: was in the center of it for a long time.
36:57
Speaker 1: But it came out because thanks in part to the
37:00
Speaker 1: um Doge's and Dragons cartoon. Yeah, I had a cartoon.
37:03
Speaker 1: They had a movie which wasn't very good. Um, I'm
37:06
Speaker 1: surprised I haven't redone that movie. Yeah, so I bet
37:12
Speaker 1: they will at some point. I wrote a Time magazine
37:14
Speaker 1: article that was saying, like, why is Dungeons and Dragons
37:17
Speaker 1: not like a huge franchise. I didn't really get to
37:20
Speaker 1: the bottom of They kind of settled on, well, it's
37:23
Speaker 1: made a billion dollars for its owners. Um, it's in
37:26
Speaker 1: I think a dozen languages. Um. I think twenty million
37:31
Speaker 1: people have played it, so it does have a huge following.
37:34
Speaker 1: But they were saying like, it's not the Lord of
37:36
Speaker 1: the Rings and why not? And I think possibly because
37:39
Speaker 1: it's just totally open ended, and it's that's what I think.
37:42
Speaker 1: It's the individual Lord of the Rings. You go read
37:44
Speaker 1: and there's a story and it happens, and yeah, you're
37:47
Speaker 1: kind of imagining it, but you're just imagining what Tolkien
37:50
Speaker 1: has explained to you. And guy gangs by the way,
37:52
Speaker 1: I thought Tolkien sucked. Yeah he was in a conan sure,
37:57
Speaker 1: So um, not O'Brien the barbarian. So Um. With Tolkien,
38:04
Speaker 1: you're told with D and D like you man, you're
38:07
Speaker 1: totally using your imagination. And even more than that, something
38:11
Speaker 1: as strange as a group imagination, a group of people
38:14
Speaker 1: using their imaginations together and kind of the interlocks like
38:18
Speaker 1: that's high level stuff. Well, it is high level. And
38:21
Speaker 1: that's exactly why a movie failed and probably wouldn't not succeed,
38:24
Speaker 1: is because for a D and D movie to work,
38:27
Speaker 1: you have to satisfy the D and D fans and
38:29
Speaker 1: no matter who for a movie, you have to create
38:32
Speaker 1: some hero character and that's not going to satisfy all
38:37
Speaker 1: D indeed people, no matter who you create and what
38:40
Speaker 1: story you create, they're gonna be D and D fans
38:42
Speaker 1: that I think. Now, my what, my guy was way
38:45
Speaker 1: better than this jump right exactly, And you call that
38:47
Speaker 1: a white dragon. White Dragon would never do that because
38:50
Speaker 1: it lived in my imagination as this, So I agree.
38:53
Speaker 1: I don't think it will ever happen. It's a great success.
38:56
Speaker 1: Although the cartoon was pretty well received. I think it is.
39:00
Speaker 1: So it's a classic. Yeah, but that's that's different. It's
39:03
Speaker 1: it was nominated for Greatest Cartoon Shows of All Time
39:07
Speaker 1: nineteen know by listeners. I I put a list up
39:12
Speaker 1: and said if anybody have any other nominees, and on
39:14
Speaker 1: our website people nominated More and Dungeons and Dragons was one,
39:17
Speaker 1: so it's up there. I think Scooby Doo one. Oh,
39:20
Speaker 1: of course duck Tails was a hard contender. Yeah, I've
39:24
Speaker 1: never watched that. I was surprised. Uh, let's see, you
39:28
Speaker 1: got anything else. No, I mean there are dozens of
39:31
Speaker 1: offshoots in different games and different modules, and like we
39:34
Speaker 1: only covered a very small part of it. Uh, the
39:36
Speaker 1: universe is vast. The D and D universe is vast.
39:39
Speaker 1: It is Go forth and check it out, you say, we, Uh,
39:44
Speaker 1: take up those glasses and check it out. And if
39:46
Speaker 1: you if you want to learn more about Dungeons and Dragons,
39:50
Speaker 1: type those words into the search part how stuff works
39:52
Speaker 1: dot Com and it will bring up some cool stuff. Oh.
39:55
Speaker 1: By the way, it has sort of been known as
39:58
Speaker 1: like a guy's thing, but there's a rabid female community
40:02
Speaker 1: with D and D and I saw I watched the
40:04
Speaker 1: documentary last night on Dungeons and Dragons. It was pretty good. Um,
40:09
Speaker 1: the Dungeons and Dragons experience. I think you know, there's
40:11
Speaker 1: a there's like a pretty serious other documentary that's being
40:15
Speaker 1: got kickstarted. Really that's in it's in production right now. Yeah,
40:19
Speaker 1: this one was okay, it wasn't great, but it did
40:21
Speaker 1: interview a female, a woman, and she was like, yeah,
40:24
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of girls they see
40:25
Speaker 1: it as a guy thing and the guy nerds, so
40:28
Speaker 1: they're reluctant to get into it. But the girls that
40:31
Speaker 1: I know that I have gotten into it have have
40:34
Speaker 1: found that it. You know, it's really not like a
40:36
Speaker 1: guy sing after all. They have just as much fun
40:39
Speaker 1: and um, it looks I don't know, it's a fun community.
40:42
Speaker 1: It is funny. They showed them playing the at one point,
40:45
Speaker 1: and they definitely get like the dungeon Master is just
40:49
Speaker 1: sort of going on and on and the players will
40:51
Speaker 1: say things in character like I'm not sure what to
40:53
Speaker 1: do after such a long story and stuff like that,
40:56
Speaker 1: and uh, they're taking like barbed shots in characters. Pretty funny.
41:00
Speaker 1: That's cool. Yeah, that's the way to do it, I guess.
41:03
Speaker 1: So actually, however, you and your group of friends want
41:06
Speaker 1: to do it and have fun doing it, that's the
41:08
Speaker 1: way to do it. Yeah, unless it veeers towards satanism
41:11
Speaker 1: and like real, but it doesn't. That was all made up.
41:15
Speaker 1: I know. Uh, if you want to learn more, didn't
41:18
Speaker 1: I already say this thing? Yeah I don't know, Okay,
41:20
Speaker 1: so I said search part, which means it's time for
41:23
Speaker 1: message break. And now it's a listener mail, right, Josh,
41:29
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this D and D listener mail for
41:33
Speaker 1: D and D podcast. That's a really clumsy title. How
41:36
Speaker 1: amazing it is. This is pretty cool. Actually, hey guys,
41:39
Speaker 1: a big fan of the podcast. In the TV show,
41:42
Speaker 1: I worked for the Ford Motor Company at the Kentucky
41:44
Speaker 1: Truck plant in Louisville, and I'm an assembly line worker
41:47
Speaker 1: and you can imagine my job gets pretty monotonous. I
41:50
Speaker 1: put on passenger side doors on trucks night, on specific trucks.
41:55
Speaker 1: He does. He can't just throw any door under a
41:58
Speaker 1: new truck. No, it's all very specific. But if you
42:00
Speaker 1: own afford super duty and you open your passenger raw
42:03
Speaker 1: or you can thank this dude for it. That's true.
42:05
Speaker 1: You can thank Jeremy Elmore. Um So, anyway, he's been
42:07
Speaker 1: listening for a little while and he's listened to all
42:09
Speaker 1: but five of the shows, and uh, he's getting on
42:13
Speaker 1: his wife's nerves. We hear this a lot when one
42:15
Speaker 1: spouse is sort of annoyed that doesn't listen about the
42:18
Speaker 1: other one getting smart. And I think everyone just needs
42:21
Speaker 1: to start, you know, taking care of business in the household.
42:25
Speaker 1: What what is that mean? Get the other spouse on board,
42:28
Speaker 1: get them listening. That way you can circumvent this defense
42:32
Speaker 1: mechanism of feeling threatened. So that's what his wife does.
42:34
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, yeah, I know what you learned from
42:36
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh. Look just listen. So he goes on
42:41
Speaker 1: to say, the great thing about the show is you
42:42
Speaker 1: two are very relatable to me, a couple of years
42:44
Speaker 1: younger than Josh. So I love hearing about your childhood
42:46
Speaker 1: stories from g I Joe, adolescent chocolating and Dungeon and Dragons,
42:51
Speaker 1: going to panic shows, watching Seinfeld, and now marriage. I
42:54
Speaker 1: feel like I've grown up with you guys. So I
42:57
Speaker 1: want to send you something. My father is where it
42:59
Speaker 1: gets good is Larry Elmore. He's a freelance artist who
43:02
Speaker 1: used to paint for TSR and D and D. Yeah.
43:05
Speaker 1: So like the blog post that you used, that was
43:09
Speaker 1: his father's artwork. Yeah, the blog post. I wrote a
43:11
Speaker 1: blog post on it right on DNDB and S can Yeah,
43:15
Speaker 1: and that was like, just by chance, this dude's father.
43:18
Speaker 1: His name is Larry Elmore. Like I said, he um,
43:21
Speaker 1: Dragon con and D and D have been mentioned on
43:23
Speaker 1: your podcast before and it made me want to send
43:25
Speaker 1: you something. So he has a twenty years art of
43:27
Speaker 1: Art book I can't wait to get. I can't either.
43:29
Speaker 1: It came out a decade ago, but it's still really
43:31
Speaker 1: cool and I want you both to have one. He's
43:33
Speaker 1: a new one coming out in August as well, so
43:36
Speaker 1: consider this a plug. I guess um. He has already
43:38
Speaker 1: personalized them for me for you guys, and I need
43:41
Speaker 1: to know how to get them to you. Is very cool,
43:44
Speaker 1: he asked me. This is even cooler because he asked
43:46
Speaker 1: who they were for. He explained it to Pops and
43:49
Speaker 1: now he is listening to the show in his studio
43:52
Speaker 1: while he's that illustrating. So by the time this comes out,
43:55
Speaker 1: hopefully Larry Elmore is listening to the podcast about D
43:59
Speaker 1: and D. What's Up Larry Elmore? So all that he
44:02
Speaker 1: was like one of the first or maybe the first
44:05
Speaker 1: artist early on when they did this. He's definitely an
44:07
Speaker 1: early one because the illustration that I used from the
44:11
Speaker 1: Night three edition of the Basic set Um, so he
44:15
Speaker 1: would have Yeah, that's pretty early. Well. I went to
44:17
Speaker 1: his website and looked at his art and like all
44:19
Speaker 1: those iconic images that I remember we're him. That's really
44:21
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get It's very cool. So thank
44:24
Speaker 1: you Jeremy Elmore in Louisville and Thanky Larry and uh
44:28
Speaker 1: that was it. Yeah, thanks to you both. Um, if
44:31
Speaker 1: you want to send us something, especially if your dad
44:34
Speaker 1: is um an indvertent idol of Chucks in mind agreed, Um,
44:38
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you, So you can tweet
44:41
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
44:44
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
44:46
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
44:50
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. And then why not just go see
44:53
Speaker 1: if we're sitting in our home on the web, on
44:56
Speaker 1: the couch, maybe watch a little TV. That home is
44:58
Speaker 1: called Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
45:06
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
45:09
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45:18
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