EPISODE ONE: Where to Start - Around the Tavern a DND Starter Guide

Around the Tavern is a Fantasy Podcast about all things Dungeons and Dragons. Covering Topics from the Technical, the Historical, and the various opinions within the DnD Multiverse. Chris and Stephen dive into the internet and wealth of personal experience to bring you a Big Topic of the week, in each episode! So, grab one of our famous Ales and pull up a chair! 

In this Episode, we cover our introductions, our dnd starter guide, Stephens boss battle, and our Character that should have been! 

Around the Tavern w/ Chris and Stephen also features a Post Show interview Contest where 6 different people have been Interviewed about Their Character That Should Have Been.. a Dungeons and Dragons-themed contest where contestants bring and introduce a Character they made but never got to play! The winner is picked in the final episode and will win the first ever Around the Tavern Award!

“Welcome to Around the Tavern with Chris and Stephen! I am your Host Chris with my Co-host, Stephen!”
Thanks for Listening!

Transcript

Welcome to around the Tavern with Chris and Stephen. I'm your host, Chris, with my co host Steven. Welcome to around the tavern. This is a fantasy podcast about all things Dungeons and Dragons, covering topics from the technical, the historical, and the various opinions within the DND multiverse, Chris and Steven dive into the Internet and a wealth of personal experience to bring you a big topic of the week in each episode. So grab one of our famous ales and pull up a chair. Chris, how are you doing? Oh, I'm doing great, Steven. I'm kind of really excited. This is our first episode, and we've been planning this for about a month and a half, getting everything ready, and my nerves are going right now, that's for sure. 2s So let's go ahead and introduce ourselves a little bit. Like I already said, my name is Chris, and I've been playing D and D for about eight to nine years, give or take. I started playing D and D. I was 14, working at a summer camp, and I was taught Dungeons and Dragons by a bunch of older guys who had worked at the camp for, like, eight years. So they're about my age now, when I was 14, and they taught me 3.5, and I learned on 3.5 and played that well until after high school. And just recently, in maybe the last two and a half years, I switched to fifth edition, which I'm really enjoying. Fifth edition. 1s There's definitely a good difference between 3.5 to five, but I enjoyed both of them. But those are kind of my only experience 1s with Dungeons and Dragons, those two different editions, so that chris, you've never run, like, a long campaign or what sort of games do you run? 2s Now I've only DMed a couple of one shots I usually play. I am a player with a couple of oneshot experiences in the last year or so I'm definitely getting more into dungeon mastering and expanding down that route. But for now I've mostly just been a player with, I think total of 31 shots under my belt and that's all within the last year. 13s Not often if I'm being honest. Why haven't you run a game? 1s Why haven't I run a game? Well, if I'm being brutally honest, I really love telling a short connected story and that's what I can get away with doing a one shot I can combine all of these interesting little details, fun facts into a short story that I can get across within three to 4 hours. And I'm a little intimidated by the idea of running a longer campaign because there's a lot more to balance and as being a player, things don't go the way the dungeon master always plans and to me that is a little intimidating. 3s It is intimidating. 1s Sorry. So I'm Stephen. 2s Stephen. And I'm coming from a place where I have played Dungeons and Dragons for easily off and on for the past 20 years of my life. Life. 3s Way back in the day, little old Steven in high school, I was not allowed to play judges and dragons. It was Satan's game, still riding off of all that fear and hype. And 2s my very first role playing experience was a one shot that my friend Mike ran. We were playing in D 20 Modern, which was sort of like very different from Dungeons Dragons. It's all about, you know, like, I'm a tech guy, I'm a gun guy, I'm a talking guy. 1s So 1s from there I was like, what the hell is this? Why haven't I been playing this? I like video games. I like video games, but I never get to create the video game actively as I'm playing it. 2s But I couldn't play Dungeon Dragons. So what I would do is I would borrow my friend Mike, he had a bunch of $3.5 and would. I would comb through that Player's Handbook and that Monster manual. I would just look at all the awesome illustrations. 1s That was one of my favorite things to do as a child, was just to, like, find a book with cool art and just, like, flip from page to page looking at stuff and you see I did the same thing. But that's because I can't read. Okay, 1s well, I would look at the pictures and then read some of the words 1s from there. 2s It really didn't blossom into anything until, I would say, my post college years. I started running in, like, the height of fourth edition, which 1s nobody likes, the one I never heard. People don't even know it existed. But in the height of fourth edition, I started a campaign. It was one of my longest running campaigns, one of three campaigns that I've ever completed. 4s I liked Fourth Edition. The combat is really grindy, and some of the systems were really lame. But overall, it helped me to develop a lot of skills where I was really comfortable, you know, kind of like running games and seeing what kinds of things characters like to do. But then beyond that, sort of kind of kept, you know, running games. I didn't get to play very much. That's kind of a running theme for me, as I'm always running games, I'm never playing games. And so I really wanted to play. So I entered into sort of a second phase of my role playing life, I guess you could say, where I went to DragonCon and I want to say 2016. 4s Which if you would like to go, it is good, but be ready for just about a million people all within like a five block radius. A million people to fight. 1s And one thing that they had at DragonCon was there's a separate system called Pathfinder, which was created by another company called Piezo. And they had an organized play, basically a hall, just like a giant room with people playing. They had this sort of like, league of, like, you know, scenarios that they published that people could run. And it was just like random people show up, play a random game, and it was fun. I spent easily half of my time at Dragon Khan in that hall playing in games. Each game, I think it costs like $7 or something to sign up. I was going game. I got up at like, seven in the morning. I was awake until nine. Our hotel was like, I want to say 5 miles away. So I was walking both ways every day. And I think that was where my love for role playing was really, like, ignited. And that's where your birth of your role play personality, 3s you spent $138, but you learned to love role play. 2s Yeah, so I was deep in paths by the society for a long time. That was really kind of the easiest way to find and create games. And you didn't have to have people who are willing to come every week, every other week, every month. So you could just start an event and people would sign up. Sometimes nobody would sign up at all. And that was disappointing. 2s But I would drive at the time, I was living in North Alabama, but I would drive into Tennessee. There were a bunch of groups up there. I would drive down to central Alabama. There was no limit to how far I would go to find these games. So you drive to the other ends of the earth to play these games. Boy, 1s as things go, get married, 1s that kind of changes 2s that business. Get married to another state, kind of changes your schedule a bit. And everybody I know knew personally was back in Alabama. So I would run online games, which right now we're using a program that my friend developed called Gate, and it's been oh, yeah, I know that one. Yeah, that's very well known. $5 program. 1s And, yeah, things have been going well. Right now I am on hiatus on one of my games I'd really like to get back to, but then I actually started a game with Chris, you and some of our co workers and some of our family and friends. Yeah. 2s That's kind of caught up to where our current history is. Me and Stephen worked together. We started working together the middle of last year or so. We've known each other for just under two years. Steven wouldn't talk to me at first at work, and then I heard from him to somebody else that, oh, that Steven guy, he plays Dungeons and Dragons. And I was like, no way, me too, bro. And I remember for weeks, I just tried to get you to talk about Dungeons and Dragons, and you wouldn't talk back to me except for, like, one word. 1s But over a slow progressional, couple of months, I'd like to say we've become friends. Steven, 1s you would like to say that, wouldn't you? 1s I would like to say it. I don't know how accurate no, it would be, our friends. But 1s that's what kind of brought us to this idea. A couple of months ago, me and Stephen were talking. Clearly, Steven has a lot more experience than me with Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games, and I like to find things out. I like to look for things. And every single day I was asking questions like, Stephen, what is this? Could I do that? Have you heard about this? And led to the idea of, what if we recorded these talking sessions and put it out there for other people to consume. And Phyllis, she's our longtime listener, sitting there in the kitchen having to hear us talk about this every single day. 1s So that's what led to around the tavern with Chris and Stephen. This is kind of our opportunity to put our ideas, thoughts, steven's experience into a recorded format for everybody to enjoy. 1s Yeah, 5s steven, the excellent response giver. He responds the same way at work. I can talk to him for 30 minutes straight, and then he would be like, yes. Chris will put oh, my goodness, please say it all again just so that I can reaffirm. That's the enthusiasm I want. So our first topic today before we get into our big episode, topic of where to start with D and D. Steven, the other day you brought up.com. Celebrities that play D and D. And I think this is kind of a cool point to point out for people who are either just now getting into Dungeons and Dragons or people who have played for a long time. Celebrities, whether we like it or not, play a big role in our society. So it's kind of cool to look at what they might might do that would make them more of like a regular person. 1s And you brought this idea up the other day, so I'm going to let you kind of take the rope here. Do you know what celebrities do you know if that played Dungeons and Dragons? You can Google it if you want, but I think I am not so interested in, say, the actors or media personalities that put on a face that, oh, we love so much. I think right now it's a little bit in fashion to say that you love playing role playing games. I think there's a little bit of a misconception. I mean, a lot of these actors are just crazy busy and they definitely don't have time to put in any kind of real effort into playing, like, four hour sessions with people. I mean, in La. I'm sure there's no way any two people's schedules line up. So I would say my number one celebrity, and this is a celebrity to me is a man named Brennan Lee Mulligan. Okay, 2s that one went right over my head. He runs games for a show called Dimension 20, which is hosted on the Dropout TV streaming service. 2s Dropout TV is basically the leftovers of what was college humor. 1s So college humor, it was just like basically like an internet comedy troupe, all these skits and stuff. It was not profitable. Profitable went bankrupt and now Drop out. Dot TV is basically what is left of that. And I would say Brandon and Lee Mulligan is. 2s I'll say I say he is the most proficient dungeon master I have ever witnessed recorded. 2s Obviously, he has a lot of production budget and practice behind him, but that that, I would say, is the level of dungeon mastering that I always try to aspire to. So if you don't know who Brandon Lee Mulligan is, which apparently I would assume most people don't, you can catch him. If you're willing to drop $2 a month or whatever that cost is on Dropout TV breaking the bank, you will definitely get your money's worth of yucks and yums for your dollar. But also several of the seasons of his Dimension 20 series where they go through these different settings. In the first one, they're playing in this, like, fantasy high school. In the second one, they're playing in, like, a fantasy New York. And another one, they're playing in one of his, like so what they'll do is they'll have a main cast that does their main seasons, but then they'll branch out and they'll get a bunch of guest stars to play in their kind of, like, side quest series. And one of them, they're playing like, Sudo Lord of the Rings, where everybody is playing all the villain characters. And another one they're playing where they host the McElroy brothers, who are playing as tiny little toys and creatures in like, a Toy Story esque world where they're trying to save a child from impending danger. 2s Why would you do that? Well, fortunately for the toys in this universe, they require the child's love to maintain their sentience. 3s Okay, yeah, totally reasonable. My bad. If maintaining a child's health is vital for your very survival, then yeah, let's use that as a reason to love children, I guess. 1s I get you. Yeah, 2s top of the list. Okay. Second on my list. I would say probably someone that people are much more familiar with is Matthew Mercer. He is the showrunner for most of the seasons of critical role. If you want to look to someone who puts maximum amount of effort into world building and like story creation, the levels that he builds into his story and the amount of effort he puts into building encounters, tracking what the NPCs are doing, filling out every single nook and cranny of every single town. I would say he is definitely someone you could look up to. 2s Yeah, I bet it's a lot easier getting paid to do that. He's a full time voice actor, I assume. Full time. Oh yeah, 2s that's another good one. If you're looking for celebrity celebrities that I like, I would say probably my favorite is Stephen Colbert. 3s Oh, yeah, he's on the list. So I did some research outside of this episode to see what some of the celebrities played, and he is first on the list. Thank you, Wikipedia page. And from what I know about him, he is like a huge Lord of the the Rings nerd, which anybody who's interested in Dungeons and Dragons, if you like Lord of the Rings, I bet you're going to like Dungeons and Dragons. 3s I don't see the connection. No, the wisdoms are all angels or something. It's nothing like 1s it's not the same. So, yeah, see, Uncle Bear, you can watch. He ran a one shot with Matthew Mercer. 1s It was a little kind of like campy, playing it up for the audience and stuff, but it was really fun. Steven has some really great energy and I love his name. 2s Oh, yeah, that's not biased, Steven. 2s Like I pointed out, I did a little bit of research and Stephen Colbert was top of the list. But for me personally, I was surprised by a couple of these celebrities that either played D and D in the past or they still play. My top three were Vin Diesel that surprised me. We've got Matthew, Lillard, Shaggy. I didn't know Shaggy. One of my childhood heroes, played don't do the Dragons. 3s Okay, hear me out. And then the late, great Robin Williams, which he was known to be a huge gaming nerd. And when I learned that he played D and D, he was one of my role models growing up. I love most of the movies Robin Williams starred in and a lot of the other ones he did. So it's kind of really neat to see that somebody I looked up to most of my childhood also played one of the same games that I currently play now. 2s Like I said, that's just so cool to me. And in doing more research when he died, the DD community at the time, especially on Reddit, really took that deep to heart that he played Dungeons and Dragons. And Robin Williams was known to go to local game shops in different towns, small towns, and kind of made them even more relatable, more so than he already was. The community made him 1s a deity in 3.5, this home brewed deity, 2s god of good madness and trickery. And there was a lot of support behind that, and I thought it was so cool. 2s Just a really fun thing to find there. And I know you were a little judgy there when I said Matthew Lillard playing Shaggy and him playing DN D. But something else I found really cool, he actually started Matthew Lillard. He started a company with his life long DND group called Beetle and Grims. I didn't hear I didn't know about this until the other day. And they do a lot of official expansions. They've got cool dice sets, and 1s Robin Williams and Matthew Lillard were a huge part of my childhood. I'm 22, about to turn 23, and you're a little older than me, but I'm sure you've seen the films that they were in. But personally, it was just so cool seeing that they also played Dungeons and Dragons, and that was kind of the rabbit hole that looking at the celebrities that play this game and roleplay and other tabletop games kind of let me down. Yeah, I think most people would be surprised. And if you're looking to start a game and you don't know who to talk to, like, I don't know anybody that plays Dungeons and Dragons. You probably do because me and Chris, we didn't know that we played Dungeons and Dragons until just, like, happenstance. It came up, 1s it got mentioned at work, and then I brought it up, and then I brought it up, and then I brought it up for like, three months before Steven would go to even found other people at our workplace that play. Yeah, I think there's, what, five other people just in our workplace, and our workplace isn't even that big. That also played Dungeons and Dragons, 1s which I'm glad you brought that up because that kind of leads into our big topic today, which is going to be around the tavern, a DND starter guide, kind of our own personal tips, suggestions to how to get into the game, and different things I've used over the years. And Stephen, you've been playing a lot longer than me, so I'm sure back in your day, all you guys had were the books, but we have the Internet now, so that's a core resource. 4s Boom. Roasted. Steven. I'm joking. 1s So, Stephen, let me just go ahead and ask you for, when it comes to books and materials, what do you use? Or how would you recommend someone either who's getting into Dungeons and Dragons or somebody who's even played for a while to get these resources? Well, it would be very easy for me to just say, go by the starter box. If you've never played Dungeons and Dragons at all, and you're not looking to invest an incredible amount of capital resources, go by the DND Star Set. It'll give everything that you and four players need to play gosh. It's called the Star set, but you could easily make an introductory campaign out of it. Like, you could play for months and months if you wanted to. 1s And I picked one of those up from Target for, like, $7, I think, during the holiday season. Last year, I bought it solely for the dice and the boss, but I bought the whole thing. It is easily the most affordable way to get started. Now, if you're like. Stephen, I don't need that baby shit. 1s Sorry stuff, I don't need that baby. Edit that out. 3s I need something bigger than that. Well, then all you need is the core three books. You need the Dungeon Master's Guide, which is going to give you a presumably will be the engineer of this game. A great resource is for how you should think about the world, how you should run things. It's going to give you all sorts of tables, if you need tables that tell you what sorts of things you encounter, where or how big should this Thorp ship be, how many lumberjacks should live there. And then you're going to need the Players Handbook, which is probably the most important book, which is going to detail all of the classes, all the races, all the spells, and really tells you how to play the game for the players, which are people you're going to have to rang jangle around in the world you're playing in. And then you're going to need the Monster Manual, although the Monster Manual, I would say is not as important. 2s Yes, but it is my favorite. It is my favorite. Look to look at all those things, you can Google any monster in the Monster Manual and you'll pull up the DND beyond entry for that monster. And half the time I'm running games, I don't want to flip and leap through the Monster Manual for a cobalt. And then on this page, I have to keep track of a bandit captain. On this page, I got a basket list. So usually it's going to be easier for you if you have access to some sort of tablet or laptop device to just have a bunch of browser tabs open with whatever creatures you're running. And that should be a lot easier. So those three, I'd say, would be your go to as far as materials to buy. What do you think, Chris? Yes, I definitely agree with you. One statement on the Monster Manual, having the multiple tabs. I made the mistake. When I first got my Monster Manual, I was running a Halloween themed one shot last year, and I went through and I used one of those little sticky tabs and I marked every page that I wanted, and then I shut the book and I didn't touch it for about two months. And now those sticky tabs, they live there because I pulled one off and it ripped the page and I was so sad. I was like, no, so don't make that mistake. Do not use sticky tabs. Just kind of remember the page number if you have to. But Steven made a great point. If you need to look up a monster or anything along those lines, just Google it. Google and the Internet. Will be your best friend. And there's other things that I use, especially when it comes to like, character creation and things that would necessarily, like, replace the Players Handbook. I use D and D five E Wiki, and it has basically everything on there and some of the other content that's out there for Dungeons and Dragons and the official resource. You can also use DND beyond which is another internet browser that kind of gives you a lot of information that you would find in the books. And outside of just buying the books, you can also just say, hey Steven, can I borrow that Player Handbook that you have? And Steven will give you that Player Handbook, and then you'll hold on to it for about nine and a half months and leave it in your trunk. And I'm not speaking from personal experience. 1s I think what you meant to say was you would ask very kindly for that book, and then you would 2s use it like a precious resource. Every second you had in your possession, you would be combing over its pages, learning everything you possibly could. Absolutely 2s do not ask to borrow books and leave them in the trunk of your car for a couple of months and then still not give them back. 5s I would say along the same things you did. You can also check thrift stores. I've seen Player Handbooks for like $20 at a thrift store, and I think new, they run about $50. So that's not a bad price difference there if you're looking to buy it and have a physical copy, because there are benefits of both. I like having the physical copy, too, so I can look at the pictures and kind of flip through the pages like a little picture book. One trick you can try if any of your friends who you're playing with or whatever have one of the original printings of the fifth edition Players Handbook. A lot of the times, the binding on those were pretty terrible, and they'd start to fall apart after a couple of years of use. You'd you can email wizards and say, hey, my book is falling apart. And they'll send you a brand new copy. Pass off that old copy. 3s So what Stephen is saying is you pull together with your friends, buy a copy of the book, beat the snot out of it and keep doing that till you have enough. I'm not suggesting that you defraud wizards of any revenue. 3s OK, so part of the starter guide here, we also want to talk about finding a party. Finding friends to play DND with or even finding a DM can be hard sometimes if you're not ready to take into that role of being Dungeon Master. So if you just want to play Steven, what would maybe a few of your tips would be to find friends. How am I finding friends? Meeting and influencing people. Indeed. I think, and this is going to be a hot take, if you want to play D and D, you need to be the Dungeon Master. 1s Yeah. If you want to play Dungeons and Dragons, 3s you got to run the game. 1s There's a huge deficit in the number of people willing to run games to put in the effort. And if you want to play so bad that you're willing to talk to strangers, 1s that's something I would never do. If you want to talk to stranger if you want to talk to strangers got it. Then you need to learn the rules. I would say go and find some live play shows. Dimension 20, it's not going to teach you much rules wise, but it's going to show you how a game kind of functions. Now, those games run on a high level of production with people who know each other very well. You might just be playing with some people at a card shop in town that you've never met before. 2s Well, that brings up a good point right there, Steven. Go to your local card shops and just ask the person working behind the desk. Say, hey, do you guys run Dungeons and Dragons games here? Or something along those lines. And I think many people's first instinct in this Internet digital age, their first instinct might need to go to a meet up site or find something like, I know there are games you can find on Role 20 or on other websites. Websites. 3s If this is your first Dungeons Dragon experience, don't do that. 2s There are all sorts of turbo nerds out there that are just going to ruin the taste of Dungeons and Dragons for you with or. They're a half health fighter wizard that has a 27 AC, and they're just so cool because they fireball all the creatures and you don't get to play. Now, 2s I would go to a game store and I would meet people because you're going to know whether or not you want to sit down for 4 hours at a time with somebody after you've met, whereas you won't necessarily be afforded that luxury if you're playing on some sort of digital platform. Okay, so that's Steven's recommendation. Here is mine. So what's worked best for me over the years? Like I said, I got into DND because I worked in a summer camp, and we were all trapped there together. And it was like, hey, we've been working here this summer camp for seven years. We play Dungeons and Dragons. You want to join us? And I was like, yeah, okay. So that kind of piqued my interest there because I was held captive at a summer camp. 2s So it was kind of my association that I got into Dungeons and Dragons. But how? Currently I found groups and the people that I play with now. One, you guys at work, we started talking about it, and now we play together. Two, on campus where I go to college, there's an entire discord dedicated to just people at the college who play Dungeons and Dragons, which is an awesome resource to find people starting new games, finding people who play the same games as you, and that's thing we used. And then I'm. 2s Well, actually, that's kind of the main resource with the college campus. Hannah put up flyers all over the place, and it was like, hey, come meet in this room if you want to play Dungeons and Dragons. And then I showed up in a room with about 14 other random people, and they become some of the best friends that I have. And if you guys are watching this one, thank you guys for listening to this podcast. Thank you for listening. Where are the cameras? 3s Yeah, how are you watching this, though? Seriously, thank you guys for listening to this, and I love you guys in the D and D group. It's just really Dungeons and Dragons is a great way to build friendships, and let's get real wholesome for a minute. Steven we're building friendships. 3s We started as a group of random strangers going, what is this game? And we played for about ten months consistently, and they're some of the best friends that I have. So that's my personal tips for looking for people who also play and maybe finding a party or starting a campaign is, look what's currently in your life. Like, if you go to college, reach out to things on campus. Or if you go to work full time, ask around at work, maybe, or do steven suggest go to the game shop, because if they're going to the game shop, they're already going to be playing one of the games. There likely to be dungeons and dragons. 4s So that kind of covers the real broad topics about getting into the game. Steven, do you have any kind of 2s tips or things you've learned playing for all the years that you have? Or maybe like, hey, don't be afraid to ask questions. Like, if you don't know how to make your character, just ask or anything kind of like something along those lines. Tips about making a character, first of all, is I would not go crawling through the Internet seeing like, oh, what's the best way to build a melee focused fighter? Like, do whatever you want, put your ability scores wherever you want, pick whatever skills you want, pick whatever spells you want, do whatever you need to to build a character that will be fun for you to play and for other people to interact with. That is something that I think some people forget, is that, yes, it might be fun to play the character that sets literature to release everything on fire, but I bet you it's not fun to be a player seeing another person destroy the entire game for everybody else. 3s Yeah, I mean, playing like that can be fun sometimes, but that's definitely not going to be the way to play all the time. So, tips for how to dungeon Master. This is going to 1s sound just like, I don't know, just very contrived. But you got to practice, and the best way to practice is to do so. That's why I say if you want to play a game, first of all, if you start dungeon mastering, you're never going to get to play. You're always going to dungeon master. But 1s no, that's not true. Do not listen to Stephen. It's like 90% true, but it's not 100% true. But yeah, you got to play. 2s I threw myself into the defend after I started playing, I played for this entire weekend at DragonCon. I started running games for pathfinder society as often as possibly could. And I would say that was the crucible that forced me into the person that is more than just as a DM, the person that I am today. 3s Okay, let's talk about who you are today. Steven, nobody you want to know. 2s Yeah, stevens right. In that sense, kind of the only way to get into the game to learn things is to just start playing. Like google things, look up things. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. Read the rule books, please. Okay. If nothing else, really gameplay sections of the players handbook and understand that you have an action and a bonus action and a movement and a reaction. 2s Okay, steven? I still play with people who have played for years, and they don't know that stuff. And you're playing there, and you're sitting there. The DM is like, all right, little bobby, it's your turn. What are you doing? And then little bobby goes, I don't know. What can I do? And then the DM has to look at little bobby and be like, I don't know, bobby, what does your sheet say? So, yeah, steven makes a very good point there. Even if you don't want to read the rule books, go on YouTube and type in what are combat turns and dungeons and dragons? What are the basics to dungeons and dragons and watch something that kind of really explains, like, bonus actions, your main actions. How can you move? What can your weapons do? How do spell slots work? And that kind of vibe. You have a good point there, especially if you follow my advice, the master's advice to start a game and run the game, please learn some of the rules. I mean, I'm probably coming at talking down from my high tower. I'm a bit of a rules nerd. But if you can learn the rules well enough that you know the rules better than most of your players, I think that would be a good place to start from. 2s Oh yeah. 1s So kind of talking about we mentioned it a little bit a couple of minutes ago, but character creation, that's one of my favorite things to do, Stephen. You know, I'll just be talking to you at work and be like, hey Steven, what about this idea? What about this character? ID? It's? One of my favorite things to do is just build characters. And I've got a whole folder here on my computer with probably twelve different characters that I've made but never got to play. 2s And so from my personal process for creating characters and kind of what I do, I don't know if I'd recommend it, but I do it. When it comes to making a character for a new session, one, whoever is DMing, I go, what's the world, are there any restrictions? What have you made? And I'll build off of that and then if they go, okay, you're going to be in a pirate heavy themed sea adventure. I will theme my character on a sea adventure and then I'll go, okay, what kind of cool pirate could I make? Oh, bunny pirate. Like a bunny man pirate. That would be kind of cool. So then I would go with the rabbit folk. Okay, what do I want this bunny pirate to do? And then that's how I build my characters. I start with the ideas and the concept of what would I think would be cool to be in this kind of environment. And then I go through the technical process of actually building that character. So you always start from the setting and then you decide, alright, what kind of do I want to play some like, spellcaster? Do I want to play some sort of ex swinging lord man? 2s Yeah. And one thing for me that I also tried to balance the party, but that's just because I've played a lot, so I don't really mind playing other roles. I already know we're going to have like four heavy hitters and no spellcasters. Yes, I'll jump in as the spellcaster. And we talked about this. So you don't necessarily try to balance the party or care too much about the party being balanced in the way that there are multiple classes. That's just something I like to do. I disagree. And here's why 4s nobody should force himself. One thing that I dislike is the person who plays the cleric is forced to always cast healing spells because all their players know they have a cleric and the cleric can cast healing spells, so they don't have to worry about their own safety. The cleric will out heal the DPS enemy creatures. So one thing I would say is don't play something you don't want to play. 3s Oh, yeah. No, I do that willingly. I willingly take on nobody else wants to do. In all of my experience playing in pathfinder society, I mean, you show up to a table, there's no telling what sort of characters you will be playing with. I played in probably one of my most memorable games ever. It was a table with all bars, 100% barred table. 2s Oh, no. Sorry. You could do a very annoying thing to all the NPCs where one person would try to start an entrancing performance. Oh, shit. Sorry. Oh, shoot. I didn't get all of them. All right, bar number two. You try to start an entrancing performance, 2s you might think like, oh, no, we don't have a healer. That's okay. You don't have to have one fighter or one wizard, one robe, one clerk. It's like you can make a party. Like, right now in the game that me and Chris are playing that I'm running, we have discovered very quickly that, oh, wait. Every single character wants to run up to the monster and either punch it or hit it with something. 2s Oh yeah, I learned my lesson very quick with that one. Very quick. I ran in and got the snot beat out of me. It was either our first or second encounter and I ran in like, hey, come here you big ol ugly monster. And then I got this not beat out of me and I cried in the corner of a cave. 2s So that is my two cent on how your philosophy as far as my philosophy for character creation goes. Like I said, I kind of start from a concept and I have a lot of history playing games like Dark Souls and Legend of Zelda. So it's a lot of strong profiles 3s I have in my mind like these characters who are like, you know, like in the middle of epic like cut scenes. 1s So just start from there. You know, if it's some guy who's whole family was murdered by orcs and now he's out for revenge, you know, he took up his father sword, that's a really great place to start for me. 2s And trauma. Trauma, trauma, trauma. If you're making a Dungeons and Dragons character, give them the most horrible trauma you could think of. Your parents are murdered by an asteroid that came flying into the Earth in the middle of the night, and you're the only, only survivor, only to be shunned by the village. Yeah. That's the kind of backstory you need. Absolutely. And if you're the Dungeon Master, give your players those backstories by killing their whole family with an asteroid. 2s Yeah, just go ahead and steal that asteroid idea. I wish that would have happened to me personally. No, I'm joking. So, yeah, this was our starter guide. This is the official around the Tavern DND Starter Guide. It's our good suggestions, our opinions. I'm going to use the word good loosely there. 1s Good enough. 2s So let's go ahead and jump to what's going to be in every episode topic. It's going to be a question from Reddit. I've scoured Reddit for the last month and a half looking for content questions, cool things, controversial things, just a bunch of random Reddit DNA related topics. And so every episode, I'm going to ask Stephen a question I found on Reddit, and I want him to answer it as he would if he was the Dungeon Master for the game. Answer it from his own personal opinions. Just give us Steven certified answer. I'm ready, stephen? Absolutely. 3s Okay, well, this is actually for our first episode. I've got a very light hearted question today. It's if a dice flies off the table, do you have the player reroll or do you take it as it lands? And why 2s no reroll it? If you can't roll a dice on a flat surface in front of you without it flying several feet away from your hand, then you don't deserve whatever, because let me describe a scenario. So you roll a dice, it goes off the table, it's on the floor, it's a 20. It rolled a 20. Like, if that had been a one. No, you wouldn't have been like, oh, yeah, it's a one. No, you're on the table, flat surface. Some people can't even manage it in a dice box. 2s Yeah, I use a dice tray, and about 40% of the time, my dice will end up if you give it a little bit of effort, it's quite easy to roll within a little five by five inch square in front of you. No boxes required. You can just little quick roll and should be really easy to see the number when it's on the table in front of you. 3s Now you have it here, folks. That's Steven's official verdict. If a dice flies off the table, it does not count. 3s And like I said, this was definitely one of the more lighthearted questions I found on reddit it. And they will probably get progressionally more intense or complex as the series goes on. And that's definitely a little segment. I'm looking forward to every single episode. Were there any other strings on that thread? 3s Oh, no, it was about 50 and it was probably around 50 50. About 50 people? 50 people, Stephen. Individual people? No, it was 50 50. Some people were like, yeah, if it flies on the floor, we're going to count it. Some people were like, no, if it goes off the table, that's bad. That is like you, Stephen. 3s And this heretic questions will be in every episode topic, which kind of leads us to. 3s Something I want to bring up right now. Around the Tavern with Kristen, steven will feature a post show interview contest where six different people have been interviewed about their character. That should have been a Dungeon and Dragon Steam contest, where contestants bring and introduce a character they made but never got the play. The winner is going to be picked in the final episode by me and Stephen, and they'll win the first ever around the Tavern award, which will be a physical award. And if you win, I'll give it to you, or I'll send it to you and the contestants. I've already done all the interviews, and there'll be kind of like an end segment after we wrap the main show at the end of every episode. So a total of six different contestants, and I'm really excited about this, and I've reached out to some cool people, some people on the Internet, people we know, and it's going to be a really fun interview experience, and I'm looking forward to it. You all should look forward to it. Stephen, you're going to look forward to it? Because I say 3s okay. And kind of to kick off the topic of characters that should have been, me and Steven are going to give a quick rundown of characters we made, but we never got the play to kind of give the vibe of where we're going for the contest. Steven, I want you to go first. I want you to tell me about a character you've made but never got to play. Well, as I said before, once you start dungeon mastering, you will always be dungeon mastering. So I have a long laundry list of characters that I've wanted to play. I've had their face in my mind for how many years? But I've never gotten to play. 3s So sad. So we're talking about getting started. We're talking about kind of like where our Dungeons Dragons origins. So going back to me being a wheel ad, looking at my Borrowed 3.5 Players handbook, I think the image that resonates most in my mind is that of the iconic Druid. I don't know that character's name, but it is this stunning Moon elf woman. She has this intricately layered leather armor. She has this half skull. It must be like a dragon's skull. It's huge as a shield with all sorts of antlers tied to it. She has antlers in her hair. She has this wolf companion. Just a very striking image, especially considering how kind of generic a lot of the other iconic characters were. So I have a certain fondness for Druids and Elves, even though I'm a very boring person. I play a lot of humans, although recently I've been playing Warios, I guess. So going back to this character that I've never gotten to play, his name is Silverill Moonsara. Just the most edgy name you can think of. Oh yeah, but I dig it. No, his name is Jasper Dagger Shadow, 2s and he is from a village up in the woods, as Elves are to do build little Elven villages. 1s And this village is special in that it is dedicated to the worship of this great silvern creature, a god of ravens and darkness named Tetra, 2s and sort of borrowing from other Dungeons and Dragonstall stories that I've consumed into my mind. This village, while they are 2s devoted to this sort of patron creature, at the same time they're somewhat resentful because this god Tether demands sacrifices from them, as any good god should. 2s Oh yeah, any reasonable god demands. I mean, I don't know what you expect. If you want those spell slots, you got to give something up. If it's either a goat or hand, you got to do something for those spells. 2s It's a goat hand. 2s So his dark origin story is eventually this town. They get fed up and they try to hatch a plot to they're going to portray their goddess, and they are going to murder her, and they're going to finally get out of her gross Raveny clutches. 1s The plan is tapped. Her spies are everywhere. She murders their offering, who is meant to be the town's assassin, and then she turns her wrath on the town and kills everybody. And silver oil is left bleeding to death lying in the bloodstained grass. And Tether approaches them, a beautiful but horrifying woman and a dark bloodstained gown. 2s That's how she goes down. And she wakes her town claw across his chest, and then he awakens months later, covered in snow, now forever bound to this dark entity service. And he's a druid that wow, sure does love turn into raven. 2s In the game that 2s was going to potentially play this character and me and the dungeon master had worked out that in his wall shape form, he would actually wall shape into a swarm of ravens. 3s That is something that I would encourage you. If you can work out something cool to do with your character, with your dungeon master, as long as you're not trying to keep the game somehow and give yourself infinite goal, I'm sure your game master would be more than happy to accommodate. So that is my character. Silver or moonsarrow druid, bound to the service of Tetra, the Raven queen. 2s Okay. I definitely dig it. Yeah, I see the inspiration you had there. I love the trauma and the back story there. Steven 1s it's really cool. And, you know, that's kind of one thing that comes with the territory of are playing dungeons and dragons. The longer you play, the more characters you're going to make that you'll probably never get to play. 2s And so for me today, I've got one of my favorites, and I've actually done a video about this character on my TikTok because he's just one of my favorite characters I've made, but I've never had the right opportunity to play him. His name is Cecil Jenkins. He's an 80 year old paladin, and he's not been a paladin his entire 80 year life. Steven he originally spent 79 years as a fisherman. He had a lovely, beautiful wife. Her name was Magnolia Jenkins. She would go by Maggie, actually. They lived together on their lighthouse. 4s Genuine kind of guy, heartfelt fisherman. They never had kids, but they loved everything about their life. Until one day 3s it's a dark, stormy night near the lighthouse, and 2s angry sea spirit is going to come out of the water and murder Cecil's lovely wife. And this distraught old man is going to lose everything he's ever cared about in one moment. And absolutely devastated by the loss of his wife. This is going to awaken something in Cecil. It's going to convince him to go to the local town, he's going to ask for help, but no one's going to want to fight this angry sea spirit. So Cecil starts his training. He becomes a paladin. He's going to avenge his wife's death. And since I've never actually played Cecil, I've not had a chance to live out the rest of his story. But I'd imagine it goes something along the lines of cecil becomes this awesome paladin. He goes on these heartfelt adventures with a group, he tells stories about his life. He kind of inspires people that even in 1s late in life, you can still find love and care for things. And Cecil is going to acquire the power he needs to fight this angry sea spirit and avenge the murder of his wife. And after killing the sea spirit, he's going to return to what loves of his lighthouse and he's just going to lay down next to his wife's grave and pass on to he's not going to go back to fishing it's. 1s No, he's done. 2s He's got one more level to go to get the capstone. 10s OK, scratch that. He doesn't have a nice moment and God be with his wife is going to cash is real in the water and focus on what really matters, really care about his life. All he wanted to do was fish and then this spirit came and up, ended his life, turned his life flipflop upside down and then he had to go on a pesky quest to avenge his dead wife. 2s Yeah, you know what? Let's just scratch everything I said. Stephen, you figured it out. That's the actual story of Cecil Jenkins, the fisherman. Nothing else matters. 1s And it's kind of these cool stories that you think of when making characters that gave me the idea to interview other people and I'm excited to really hear the stories that people think of when they're making these characters and a lot of time and effort and energy and thought goes into making stories and this is really a cool opportunity for people to show owe their awesome ideas to the rest of the world. World being everyone listening to this podcast, but you get what I'm. 6s All twelve of our listeners. Thank you very much. 2s But like I said, it will be 1s so fun to listen and to pick favorite Steven. And we're going to announce the winner in the very last episode, episode eight. There'll be eight episodes in season one of around the Tavern with Chris and Stephen. And I'm excited, if I haven't clearly already said the word excited about 48 times in the last ten minutes. I'm also excited my name is Stephen. 2s That's the most we're going to get out of Stephen. That's all he knows how to say. 1s And that's kind of starting to wrap up our episode today. But we've got one more category. It's going to be in every episode topic and this is your time to shine, Steven. This is your category. It's Stevens. I'm sorry, 1s let me add, 4s I don't care how many times. 3s Stevens boss battle will be in every episode topic where Stephen introduces a monster or boss from anywhere in the D in the universe and tells how he will use it as a boss battle. Stephen, are you ready for your very first Stephens boss battle? Let me center myself. 2s Okay, everyone. 5s All right. So Stevens very first boss battle. So, Chris, in the spirit of the dragons, I don't want to railroad you. I don't want to put you on like this is the monster you have to face. So I'm going to give you a score, okay? 2s It is very easy as an Onion Master to fall into one of these two camps when you're throwing your first threat at your players. And that there's two monstrous races that will pester every first level group, and those are Goblins and Cobalt. 3s And Cobalt. Who do you want to be? The boss battle or cobalt. 3s Give me those goblins. Okay, I'm ready. Give me those gobbles. So, Christopher. Yeah. What do you know about goblins? What do I know about goblins? They sound like 2s and they're short and they're green most of the time, and they like to pillage and attack and steal shiny things. That is my current goblin knowledge. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. So you'd say mischievous and murderous are definitely two aspects that you mostly associate with yeah, those little they're like the chihuahuas of monsters. Well, if I haven't said the word pathfinder enough, I'm going to say it again. Pathfinder. Pathfinder. Pathfinder 5s in the inner sea world guide, which is the campaign setting for all of the pathfinder stuff. The goblins in that setting are probably, I would say, in my mind, the quintessential goblins that is, if you've ever seen the movie Gremlins, they are exactly like the Gremlins from the movie Gremlins. And that there are these mischievous little critters that they're insatiable. They will do whatever they want for pleasure or satisfaction, and they will get into all sorts of mischief in mayhem at the expense of anybody who's not them. So a chihuahua? Yes, 2s a chihuahua that likes to pick up knives and stab non chihuahuas. Okay, I get it. I'm following. 1s So as far as the boss battle goes, I would say one of the biggest pitfalls a new dungeon master can fall into is to just run goblins as the most generic way possible. And usually in all the published adventures and stuff, goblins, you got a bunch of goblins, whatever. They're having a laugh. They're doing whatever. And then 1s there's a hobgoblin or there's a bugbear that's bullying him around, and he's the real boss. But if you want to run a goblin as a boss, 2s come with me on an imagination journey. Okay. I'm imagining my brain is working on overdrive. So goblins, they are not architects. They are not engineers. They have no great cities. Okay? So you'll often find them in the ruins of old fortifications or villages. 1s So imagine, if you will, a tribe of goblins that have taken up residence this dilapidated castle. But to their great fortune, they have managed to capture a troll. Okay, Chris, what do you know about trolls? 3s Bigger Chihuahua. 2s Yeah, they're bigger Chihuahua. So one the most iconic thing about trolls is they have this ability to rapidly regenerate their flesh. Unless, of course, they are subject to to acid or fire damage. So imagine, if you will, a tribe of goblins who have captured this creature that can essentially infinitely regenerate itself. Okay, what do you think they would do to that creature? 2s Poke it. 2s So in my mind, what they would do is infinitely feast on its flesh. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Imagine a tribe of cannibal isn't the right word because they're not eating goblins. 2s So they have created this infinite food source of troll flesh. Now imagine the kinds of things that eating troll flesh. Twenty four, seven. So now you have goblins that have rapidly regenerating flesh. This feasting on troll flesh has maybe even driven them to greater heights of gorging themselves. 2s Another thing about trolls is because of their strange regenerative properties, they're also prone to mutations. So now you've got goldens that are growing extra arms. They got huge giant mouths with many fang, rows of teeth. They're all going crazy. They're all going wild. And now you have a threat that's not just a bunch of five health little munchkins that your party is going to roll up on and be like, oh, well, we killed those goblins, now we killed the next goblin. Now all the goblins are dead. This is actually scary. Yeah. So now you have a threat, and it takes the best of both worlds, because if a player knows anything about trolls, they know that they need to bring fire and acid damage. If they see a bunch of goblins regenerating, they're not going to know what's going on. Oh, yeah. So it's a new situation for your players to discover, like, oh, this is how we deal with these goblins. These aren't your mama's goblins. And that's a clue for your players. Like, oh, wait. 2s Why are these goblins behaving in a way that I would associate with trolls? And then they discover, you know, that they have this troll capture that their feces on them. The largest and most mutated goblin would be in charge of everything. So you could you can crank that thing up to, like, over level threat. And now you have a real scary goblin that's in charge of all these other goblins. And, Chris, that is my boss battle for the episode. Stephen, I think that is an amazing first boss battle for our very first episode of around the Tavern. Can I say that one more time? Our first episode of around the Tavern. Our first episode of around the Tavern. I was a little nervous when we started recording today, but I'm happy. I love this, and I'm excited to keep doing more episodes. 1s Is there anything you want to say here to wrap up the very first episode of around the Tavern? 3s I want to say that yeah, that was exciting. I know Christopher would probably be the first to say that I don't show any emotion at any point during the day. Emotion? Steven doesn't know that word. 1s Beep. Boop. Engaging emotion drives. 1s Yeah, this was exciting. I think this episode 1s was our first, and they'll only get better from here. Oh, yeah. I definitely agree. And you the viewers, 1s thank you for listening, and thank you for joining us here in our tavern for our very first episode. And we'll catch you next time we open the doors. Thank you all. 1s Bye.