Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
Episode 92 New D&D 5.5 Plus Alteration Edition Rules
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Ever wondered why D&D streamers bite the hand that feeds them? Or why new players seek complexity, only to strip it away once the dice start rolling? This episode is an entertaining rollercoaster through those dilemmas and more. Richard shares his firsthand experience running Shadow Dark for newcomers, capturing the paradoxical tug-of-war between simplicity and complexity. We even have a laugh at our own expense, acknowledging our rather limited peek into the new Dozens of Dragons 2024 book, but hey, it's episode eighty-something, and you're still here with us!
We jump headfirst into the realm of Dungeons & Dragons, tackling the exciting yet sometimes daunting updates slated for 2024. Our conversation wades through backward compatibility, new rules, and the ever-growing universe of D&D, questioning if the changes are just a balance patch or a genuine game-changer. Listen in as we air our frustrations with the playtesting process, especially for the druids out there, and how player feedback has shaped (or misshaped) the new edition.
Switching gears, prepare for our lighthearted banter about everyday quirks. From pondering Pokemon-themed snacks to wrestling with neighborly dog dilemmas, we weave through personal anecdotes that add a dash of humor and relatability. Ever thought about what ice cream flavor you'd be? Or which trends you'd erase from existence? We sure did, and we share those whimsical musings alongside our dreams of hosting a TTRPG-focused podcast, where creativity and chaos reign supreme. Grab your favorite drink, sit back, and join us for a fun-filled episode of gaming insights and delightful digressions.
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Welcome everyone to Richard and Carl present Deep Space and Dragons. We're already halfway in a conversation on the new Dozens of Dragons 2024.
Speaker 2:I'm Richard and I have not read this book we're discussing I am Carl and I mean I also have not actually read the book that we're discussing, but I do have some access to certain portions of it and I have looked over some relevant things for what I am planning in the future, hopefully.
Speaker 1:And I was in all of their stages at the beta where I was thoroughly underwhelmed. So our information will probably be wrong here. But you're tuning into episode 80 something of the show, so really this is on you. I think the funniest part is I have a lot of knowledge on this book.
Speaker 2:for streamers who hate D andD talking about this book Huh, streamers hate D&D in general or streamers that hate change.
Speaker 1:So a lot of my favorite D&D streamers, like Bob Worldbuilder, professor Dungeon Master, ginny D and a bunch of other ones, love talking about how great indie games are and gave a ton of coverage of the OGL scandal and then all shamelessly reviewed this product and deep-dived into it, because it's like D&D pays their bills and I don't know. It's like we're a positive, supportive community. I'm like you guys are positive, supportive, but man, oh man, oh man. All of you did this. None of you are like you know what. No, I'm putting my foot down. No, okay, it's because you get more views on the dnd episodes.
Speaker 2:Huh well, before we get too deep into our our, uh, deep space analysis of dungeons and dragons. Uh, what's the new in the richard verse?
Speaker 1:okay. So I'm heading towards the wrap-up of the season and this weekend I ran shadow dark because I had some new players at the table and it's like they don't know how to play D&D. They're jumping in the middle of our campaign, at level eight, in the middle of Chult, and I'm like, yeah, no, I'm going to just bust up Shadow Dark with its six core stats and your weapons and that's only the rules you need to play. So that went really well. But then and part of why, when you suggested this topic, I'm like, oh heck, yeah, this will be interesting. I had the feedback I usually get afterward. So Shadow Dark is a really elegantly designed game with its four classes, 30 seconds to roll up a character. Your background just gives you advantage on background things. Your weapons are close range, mid range, long range Spells. You make a roll like. It's very elegant. You get your two spells if you're a spellcaster. But after every time I've ran shadow dark, at least one player without flip uh fail will be like uh, I like dnd better and they'll usually cite something like oh, you feel like your skills are more relevant, even though if you actually do the math, the difference between having proficiency in nature or just a high wisdom is two, which means the difference is whether you roll a 12 or a 14 to succeed, which means it's a five percent differential but it's like something about how dnd is constructed, make people feel like they have more control over the game, where, like, the less bells and whistles you put on shadow dark, the more obvious it is that you're just gambling with slight modifiers right like
Speaker 1:it's an interesting concept for a player to be like oh well, I prefer picking specific skills. So that way I feel like my wizard's more specialized than their wizard and I'm like okay, you both picked intelligence. So you're telling me neither of your wizards would have had arcana normally, and you wouldn't argue that all skill checks involving intelligence were somehow arcana. If I said that's a glowing magic mushroom, you mean to tell me that you're like oh well, my character's bad at mushrooms, so that's less fun. And you wouldn't be like well, it's a magic mushroom, so shouldn't I be able to use arcana, which functionally, mathematically, means it's the same thing, it's just using your intelligence?
Speaker 1:that is pretty funny so it's like ironic that when players ask for more complexity and then try and subvert that complexity in game in real time, so it really it only added more complexity to me it's like right when's the last time someone made a set strength check and didn't use athletics? Yeah, and if the argument is that every strength check is athletics, then there's no reason to actually have athletics, is there? Unless you're doing non-athletic things like your strong character? Who's bad at athletics which? Why would you be that?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, it's kind of funny actually that. I mean I recently read the core rules of dnd um and jumping uh is based on your strength score and optionally, the dm may choose to let you roll an athletics roll to increase your jump distance or jump height oh, is this the 2024 core rules? No, no, no, the um we'll see 2024 D&D is designed to run with the same core rules as far as I know, they updated the core rules, I think. I thought the whole point was that it was backwards compatible.
Speaker 1:It's backwards compatible, but I have to imagine, because the base rules are stripped down, five, I'll call it six, even though it's not out of spite. I'll call this 6, even though it's not out of spite. So on, Free D&D Beyond.
Speaker 1:Before I bothered acquiring the new player's handbook with a Christmas present from a friend of mine it was that the four new classes were now available, which led me to believe that if the classes and subclasses, which are the basic rules they give for everyone, had the new ones in it, that they must have updated the basic rules as a whole.
Speaker 2:No, so I mean. The reason that I have thought that the core rules were the same is because they're secondary books, namely Quests from the Infinite Staircase I believe that they said that's the last book they're printing in 2024, and it's designed to be a bridge between the new version and the old version. But they all run the same, like the D20 system, and all the same basic rules. So they're completely compatible. You just have more optional features in the newer version.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're wrong. The free rules were updated to 2024.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, okay, I wonder what changes were made then.
Speaker 1:So that's the thing is, because I played through the beta, I know some of the things they were going to change and I know that for the most part they chickened out. So, before we go too far into my hatred of that, are going to change and I know that for the most part they chickened out. So before we go too far into my hatred of that, the rest of the what New with Richard is working my last couple weeks of my co-op terms before I head into the next semester, getting worked on my book, helping my mentor with a project I can't talk about.
Speaker 1:So tomorrow for work because it's our last team, something-something, workshop, friendship Right and after searching on. Amazon, it became apparent that I could get my hands on Pokemon cookie honey biscuits, which are delicious and have little Pokemons on them but the wild part is they're only $2 a box, so like the size of a box of Oreos, and they're only two bucks.
Speaker 1:So I'm bringing in five boxes of these Pokemon cookies and a box of Pokemon fruit snacks. That cost me under $20 total Based on my monthly book sales. I converted them into Pokemon cookies and a box of Pokemon fruit snacks that cost me under $20 total based on my monthly book sales. I converted them into Pokemon cookies, which is funny because of. Prime Free Shipping. It absolutely cost them more to bring me the cookies than profit they made.
Speaker 1:That's a win, I'm not sure it's my favorite snack, but I think the novelty of handing out Pokemon cookies makes it my favorite snack Right. Like I don't know if it's the most delicious treat I can think of, but as far as doing a bit is concerned, it is an amazing bit to be like what's your favorite snacks? Pokemon biscuits. That's just great.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, I mean favorite snack, like.
Speaker 1:there's a lot of things to consider when you're talking about your favorite snack, because flavor is obviously a very important one.
Speaker 2:Go ahead.
Speaker 1:See, flavor is an important one, but also I'm very conditioned for snack. In this context, from working in restaurants and other fields, I mean individually packaged, shareable, high preservative, low allergy risk snack, because I'm used to the idea of places where you can't bring in. It was literally a club's rule that you couldn't bake something and bring it into club. Club rules had specific rules that you had to buy something prepackaged and open it there. Huh, because, like you don't want someone handing out pot brownies. Like, think about all the friends you've had in your teens. Would you trust them to bring an unpackaged good to an event?
Speaker 2:I am naive. I probably I wouldn't even think about that. I would just be like anybody having the allergies. Okay, don't do anything with nuts.
Speaker 1:So you would trust Redacted, whose name has a few A's in it, and he's similar to the first stage of the Aggron line of Pokemon to bake something and bring it in untested to a college party.
Speaker 2:Oh no, no see, I don't have faith that Redacted would actually succeed in baking. I believe that Redacted would just bring a few packaged good.
Speaker 1:But you see my logic right Like, even if you ignore the sussier ways of looking at it. I see why, as a blanket rule, not letting college students handcraft things to feed to other students, even for food safety reasons, of like. I believe you're the one who had mentioned that people who make stuffing are likely to kill themselves if you actually stuff the turkey.
Speaker 2:Yes, there is a risk of salmonella so yeah.
Speaker 1:So my brain was like okay, these are a safe snack, like they're literally like when snacks are specifically designed for kids, they're less likely to have weird allergens and dyes in them. These days, like there's no red 13 in these whole wheat, green flower, vegetable oil, corn starch, salt, sugar, honey, cookies and the copyright is from this year, so they're not like ancient ones either, although they would have been fine until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 2:Disgusting fun fact If you drink enough Allura Red, it'll turn your poop red.
Speaker 1:It's still all beets, to be fair, and you're allowed to eat those.
Speaker 2:You're allowed to drink a lot of allure red apparently not for me.
Speaker 1:You ain't, I ain't giving you that permission all right, I will keep that in mind because I'm pretty sure if you just drink that straight you turn into hollow each ago and a hole just opens in your chest where your heart once was okay, I mean that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2:I I, when I drank enough allure red uh to uh oh no, that's not personal oh no, it was in the form of red powerade. Um, so you know that's? I just like red powerade, and then eventually you just drink enough and it's like oh yeah, I probably shouldn't be drinking so much because there's too much red food dying here.
Speaker 1:It's just like when it was a conceptual thing, it wasn't gross, but when it became a personal thing, it got real gross real fast, like in the office today, someone was talking about having a cyst removed, which is one of my weaknesses, but also a thing that happened to my armpit and was the most excruciatingly painful thing in my life. So it's like they're telling the story. I'm deeply empathizing and also dying, because it's just like.
Speaker 2:I'm being tortured.
Speaker 1:But I also have 100% empathy. So I'm like, no, I need to support this story because I fully understand how truly terrible this was. But it nearly killed me listening to this retelling. Oh yeah, right, but it nearly killed me listening to this retelling. Oh yeah, right, carlverse, what new? We kind of hit the ground running with this episode yeah, we did a little bit, but okay.
Speaker 2:So within the past year we got some new neighbors and these neighbors have dogs. They have three dogs now, I guess, and I think they have. I got some new neighbors and these neighbors have dogs. They have three dogs now, I guess, and I think they have a cat, I don't know. They have lots of pets, but the dogs are. They like to bark a lot and that scares my fiance. So I mean, I'm an animal person, I like animals. Animals generally like me, uh, but apparently not these dogs. I mean, maybe I shouldn't be disparaging my, my neighbors. I can make hopefully no one does any internet sleuthing to find out who my neighbors are, I suppose, uh, but uh, one of the dogs was up against the fence, uh, and so I extended my hand out to let them sniff my hand to show them I'm not a threat, and they bit my hand instead.
Speaker 1:So I was talking a bit about you in a work meeting today, particularly the ambulance story. Check earlier episodes of Deep Space and Dragons for the ambulance story and I'm like the thing about Carl is he tells all stories with the same enthusiasm, which is like because, unlike most of us who are starving from dopamine and need those dopamine hits from Instagram and Twitter, I think he just has a healthy amount of dopamine. This is how I described you to strangers is you have a healthy amount of dopamine? Making you weird? Okay, because like dog tore into your hand isn't the topic this week but no, no, the dog didn't tear into man.
Speaker 2:they bit my hand enough to draw blood, uh, and I've just I've been spending this was last week, it's almost been a whole week and I'm trying to decide, like, how, how do I even proceed? Because you can't go to the neighbor and be like, hey, your, your dog bit me. No dog owner in their right mind is going to be like, yep, my dog's violent. I guess I better put them down. Yeah, you don't want it to escalate too quickly either and call animal control. And the animal control is like, yep, your dog's taken away. And then like who do they think it was? Probably the neighbor that has the fence that shares the yard.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing too Like you touch the dog and it bit you, I don't actually feel bad for you.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, on the one hand it's like you should be more careful around it. I should be more careful around animals that I don't know. On the other hand, it's like this dog is. I'm trying to de-escalate the situation with this dog so that my girlfriend feels comfortable going outside again in our yard. And yeah, it just backfired and I have concerns that what if this dog is tending towards more aggression and might actually like escape from the yard that doesn't have a proper gate and attack someone?
Speaker 1:If I learned anything from sitcoms, the solution here is you build a fence to keep their dog out. Yet again, at this current juncture and this is hypothetical legal Richard speaking, who isn't trained in any meaningful way and, in fact, may get rejected from law school from someone listening to this episode while my directions are going, which would be deeply satisfied to be like oh yeah, I listened to your podcast. You don't get to be a lawyer. I'm like yeah, that's fair. I put this on the internet publicly, thinking I was a writer.
Speaker 1:Anywho, the facts remains. Like your hand crossed a property line and touched a dog that was on the other side of a fence. You have nothing to stand on here. In fact, it's easy to argue you aggravated the dog and it would just end poorly for you. As much as awkward as this sounds, you don't really get to take action on something for being a threat until it does something, so like, really, you should be put down. Oh harsh, yeah, I know. You're like best friend, back me. I'm like I am backing you by telling you don't touch other people's dogs without permission yeah, I mean that's fair sorry man, I want to have your back on this one, but I'm with the and remember I'm terrified of dogs.
Speaker 1:For the record, like I would just be like, I'm not going to this yard. It's scary, but it's true like until the dog does something, there isn't actually a play to be made other than like upping your yard security and pimp factor.
Speaker 2:Right, which is a little bit difficult because it's a rental property, so I can't exactly just oh, I need to. I guess the number one thing I should do.
Speaker 1:Pause, pause. You got a beautiful solution. Make your landlord do it. That's his literal job.
Speaker 2:I do need to contact my rental company and be like hey, these people have a potentially dangerous dog. Can we get this fence repaired and the gates set up for them?
Speaker 1:Do the caring here. So I don't think landlord's a real job and I think that's part of what's killing our entire country, nay, world is the idea of people making passive income on land which has caused most of the genocide in human history. Anyway, landlords are bad. So any chance you get to make a landlord do their actual job, make the landlord do their actual job. Yeah, no, if you have a landlord and you're unsafe in your yard, they need to fix that. So make them fix that.
Speaker 1:That's true, Because they're getting paid to do that. They're not just paid to collect money because, ha, I got the land first. Idiot, Because by that logic we should probably be paying. I don't know the First Nations people, or dinosaurs, or something.
Speaker 2:Pay the dinosaurs? That'd be funny.
Speaker 1:So that's my core point. So yeah, this is an easy solution. It's not your problem. Make it your landlord's problem.
Speaker 2:All right, I like the way this is going. Yeah, I have gotten some useful advice in talking to friends and family. Friends and family One of my family members suggested maybe calling animal control to see what my options are for ensuring that something like this doesn't happen again. Obviously, onus on me to not interact with the dog as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do think this being in Landlord Problem is the correct play, because, yeah, completely not on your side with the oh, I'll have this wild animal sniff my hand and decide if I'm friend, because that's just a lifetime of being Carl, apparently. Because there's no version where I'd go anywhere near that creature and it'd be like to the landlord hey, I don't feel safe in my property, fix the fence. And then he's like well, it's their fence. It's like well, it's their fence. It's like cool, fix their fence. I don't feel safe in your property you own. It is literally your legal responsibility Fix it. Okay, thanks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, alright, I mean too bad. It's in the middle of the frozen hellscape. That is winter in Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1:Well, they better build you an ice wall then to keep the zombies out.
Speaker 2:That they better build you an ice wall then to keep the zombies out. That's enough about real world animals and monsters.
Speaker 1:We heard minutiae about the new D&D edition and why I'm so underwhelmed by it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I mean, I am intrigued to hear your thoughts about why you're underwhelmed.
Speaker 1:So this playtest cycle? I learned something about place testing by being in both the D&D open beta and the Critical Role Daggerheart open beta. Okay, I've learned that playtesting is only helpful if your players haven't already made up their minds. So they kept putting out these playtest documents where they try a new rule, send out these player surveys and then claw back the ideas. The Critical Role game because this game didn't exist yet was developing new concepts with each playtest.
Speaker 1:Like oh, instead of giving an infinite number of actions even though that works better for a narrative, we can use some tokens to track it, we can make some environmental effects. Everything in 5e was just brick walls on both sides, like. My favorite example is druids. All DMs on Earth have agreed that druid wild shapes should be somewhere printed in the class description, like being, like okay, this is your druid of the air, your druid of the sea, your druid of the land. To flavor it, however you want done Players everywhere, because they're players in the worst are like like actually, I want to be a mongoose and it says you should have a stat box for a mongoose handy so they demo this new druid and they're like players like ah, you don't have enough customization with it, so then they quad it back with the stat blocks.
Speaker 1:I'm like of course players don't like change, but we all know this is a problem mechanically. This is a problem. It limits your design space. To let them just be any beast under a challenge rating but, people yelled, so you change back, but those aren't even the people who are going to be buying all your products. Dms buy way more products than players like 30 to 1 right right right players have more votes than.
Speaker 2:DMs. In theory, whatever the DM says goes, and if you don't like the rule set the DM is using, then you can just play a different game In theory.
Speaker 1:They even put that in the new Dungeon Master's Guide, but this is the flaw of D&D's design philosophy that's in the new Dungeon Master's Guide, not in the new Player's Handbook.
Speaker 1:Ah, that's in the new dungeon masters guide, not in the new players handbook so it's like okay, you are telling players they can do this, and then you're telling dms, oh, you overrule them. But I had a player when I was running shadow dark. Try and argue that they should have kept their magic item from a game. I ran them in tTRPG Club a year prior. Players are not sensible, right? Because why would you think that? It's like oh, I'm playing the same character from another Shadow of the Dark, so I have this magic book from that. I'm like no. And they're like come on, richard, let me have that. And the thing is, by giving them any wiggle room, your players will try and push back against your absolute dictatorship, even though the game doesn't function without you. So if the druid said, write on it in the book, you wild shape into one of these three forms and then the player can go like come on, let me be a mongoose. It's so much easier to sell than come on, I have this mongoose stat block ready.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So then ultimately, the changes you feel are not significant enough because both sides stonewalled each other and got nothing done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like it's basically a balance patch. The new rules, which I picked up because of course I did, I'll need them at some point are effectively a balancing patch for this game, which is awkward, to say the least.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of where I'm at right now. So I have the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide. I have three anthologies of adventures based on 2014 rules. I mean, like I say, the quests from the Infinite Staircase is designed for both, but I was planning on using the 2014 rules because that's what most of my players are going to be familiar with. But then I don't actually have a copy of the player's handbook in my house, and so I'm like do I go and buy the old one or do I buy the new one? Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1:So my solution is I would just add you on D&D Beyond and book share my new one that you bought me for Christmas. Yeah, okay, but I digress. So, like the thing is, the new ones are balance, patched right. There isn't a single new class I would isn't better engineered than the previous one. I don't think they're better enough to give Feds people to switch. I'm not about to tell my players click this campaign link and rebuild your character with the new rules Because, effectively, they made every class a little bit stronger, because that's how they balanced it right.
Speaker 1:So the classes that were less played got more buffs, the classes that were more played basically stayed the same, which is why you have rogues. Be like, oh, you can spend your sneak attack dice to do some status conditions, I guess. And then you have monks, upgraded on almost every level up, because speaking in every language is functionally useless in this game. But, like the back and forth was, they had some ideas that seemed interesting, that they weren't quite willing to commit to.
Speaker 1:Like let's take the exhausted condition. The original exhausted condition in the new version when they beta tested, it was for each point of exhaustion you get minus one to all dice rolls and if you get to minus ten you die Because it got that pushback. Now it's each time you exceed an exhaustion level you get two minus from your dice rolls. Your speed is reduced by a number of feet, equal to five times your exhaustion level, and finishing a long rest removes an exhaustion and basically it splits the difference directly between what the two versions did, resulting in no one quite would know how it works off the top of their head now.
Speaker 1:Because the new method was too radical of let's just lower dice rolls but now we need to make sure it's still lower speed, like it used to. So now it lowers speed and dice rolls but doesn't have advantage or disadvantage like it used to.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it's like like a good example is, as you're saying, new subclasses with new classes. They tweaked every subclass to now start at level three.
Speaker 2:I kind of appreciate that. I kind of appreciate that it's kind of a slap in the face to a lot of people who want a multiclass, but I don't think they should be designing the game for meta builders anyways.
Speaker 1:But here's why I got kind of disappointed for the idea not being pushed far enough. So starting every class at level 3 is cool. You know what would have been really cool If they made subclasses work for every class?
Speaker 2:Hmm. So it's like they pushed Like, designed one subclass that would be like this is the magic subclass, and then you could be a magic rogue, or a magic fighter.
Speaker 1:What if totem was just? You could be a totem barbarian or a totem wizard. So it's like they didn't do anything too drastic. My favorite example of that is the big new thing they have is this weapon mastery mechanic, because they're like martial classes are less interesting. This weapon mastery mechanic is just a worse version of the balder's gate weapon mastery mechanic that came out beforehand.
Speaker 1:So in balder's gate every weapon had a secondary special effect it could do like if you had a lance, you could Like if you had a lance, you could dash towards someone. If you had a crossbow, you could hamstring them. And some weapons had two or three of these special powers. Weapon mastery is you choose two weapons and then you get this extra power added to them, which is like a less well-engineered version of the extra powers in Baldur's Gate version of the extra powers in Baldur's Gate. So like if you take weapon mastery with a greataxe, for example, when you hit someone with a melee attack, you can also have somebody within five feet take partial damage as well because you cleave with the greataxe, this weapon mastery mechanic sounds kind of fun because it makes each weapon slightly different, even though they were cheap and didn't actually write one power for each weapon.
Speaker 1:So, even though they were cheap and didn't actually write one power for each weapon, so, like, several of them get cleave, several get graze, several get nick, hence my earlier. They didn't push it far enough. If you're going to make it that I'm a weapon master with whip, that should do something unique, right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So they make this mastery mechanic. But then they're like okay, we'll give it to some classes, but we're not going to put the Kensei monk in this book, the weapon-using monk, to use this new weapon mastery mechanic. Instead, we're just going to re-engineer classes that already exist and buff them. So the thing is, and how they designed it using video game logic, is the new classes are all universally stronger, except for losing hyper specific exploits like some people like oh, I can only smite once a turn.
Speaker 1:What if I attacked four times with my monk paladin? It's like shut up, just shut up, just smite your one time. Shut up. You still get the same number of smites over your fight because you don't get more spell classes. You just can no longer do it all at once and wipe out a boss in one shot instead of three shots.
Speaker 2:That's not good for the game Right.
Speaker 1:Because then you just get to win the entire fight while the rest of the party sits there on the ground. So like. I would up to any person who starts new. I would probably start on the new book Because, as I mentioned, melee characters get a specialty weapon that gets to do a little something extra. Most of the classes got a little buff here or there. Druids are still broken, but they got rid of that weird exploit of infinite wild shaping at max level.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And they did the most pointless update of all time.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:So they made that level 19,. You get an epic boon, which is a rule in the old game, which is like a super feat.
Speaker 2:Right, right, that was an optional rule and plus, I mean like players never actually got far enough to get them anyways, but that's not really the point.
Speaker 1:And then they fixed everyone's level 20 ability to actually be good, because those are terribly unbalanced. So like, for example, barbarian before was your strength and con. Both went up by four. That was sick. And then Monk was like you get some key points back when you roll an initiative. It's like, did you guys speak to each other? So now Monk's final ability is almost a little too on the nose. Where I'm just double checking the exact numbers is you get four to your dex and your wisdom.
Speaker 2:To a max of 25. For some reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which, sure, to a max of 25 is because if you take an epic boon to get plus one you then get a plus four.
Speaker 1:It's like to stop you from mashing yourself so you don't lose any of those points ever, even though 25 doesn't do anything, anyways, but the joke being that it's the most pointless upgrade ever because no one, unless you're on, like even critical role campaigns. They only are level 20 when they come back for, like their, let's see how the old party's doing now at level 20, because you don't get to level 20 in D&D Even if people are paying. If you're the most well-paid streamer on Twitch, paid to play D&D for four hours a week weekly with Bartholomew Mercer running the game, you're still not getting to 20, naturally, over three years. Critical Role still not getting to 20, naturally, over three years. Critical roles like Oz, 10 year anniversary so like no sane group is ever actually getting I don't think there's enough books printed to naturally make that curve yeah, I'm pretty sure there's no content printed.
Speaker 1:Official content printed over level 14 so it's funny because you get a huge power boost now at 19 and 20, which is almost like a waste of writing Over level 14. So it's funny because you get a huge power boost now at 19 and 20. Which is almost like a waste of writing.
Speaker 2:Like you could literally cap 5e at level 10, as Baldur's Gate did, to no negative repercussions whatsoever. Okay, so tell me back to my core conundrum. Currently, I don't have a full set of 2014 books and I'm not sure if it's actually worth it to invest in them anymore because of the 2024 books.
Speaker 1:So if you didn't have either, I would say, grab the new ones. They basically, like I said, said it's like a patch. It's like grabbing, downloading the new balder's gate updates, ironically, where they fixed little things. It's as close to a patch rather than a new book as I've ever seen a physical game do. Right, it's because, like the little things, like, oh, let's have all the subclasses at the same time, let's buff the weaker classes, let's make weapons matter a little more. It has way better feats. It's basically, if you never bought a 5e book, this has most of the good stuff from all the 5e books. That was actually usable, although it's like, like I said, they didn't go far enough in a lot of things.
Speaker 1:Like they added origin feats, where when you pick a background it comes with a feat, but they only made like four origin feats so it's like you choose a background and you basically get alert, magic initiate, savage attacker or skilled and, like all of the backgrounds, will pick some edit of each of those so it's like the idea was good and, like all of the backgrounds, will pick some edit of each of those, so it's like the idea was good. But in the playtest you had Tavern Brawler and I guess Tavern Brawler turned out to be too strong.
Speaker 1:Oh wait, I was looking at the free rules. Never mind, let me look at the actual core book. There might actually be more than the giving gets credited for. But the idea that, okay, we put in this origin feat mechanic, so we made the regular feats better and then made these separate shittier feats so your background could have a feat, is good. But would it be worth upgrading if you already had all the pieces up to that point? Right? It's like if I up because it's just stronger, you're just playing with better pokemon. It's like when you jump into like gen 7 pokemon and you're like, oh well, I guess I'm not going to use a butterfree. Why would I do that?
Speaker 2:okay, but so then, walking this back just a little bit, I did buy the 2024 monster manual. It hasn't come out yet. It doesn't come out to 2025, which is kind of hilarious to me, uh, but so their naming was stupid.
Speaker 1:By the way, they're gonna call it 1dnd and yet they like chickened out at the last minute, because nowhere on these books do they say 1D&D. They just call it Player's Handbook, dungeon Master Guide and Monster Manual and didn't actually commit to calling it 1D&D. See, it's the little things like that about this that makes it such a mediocre product.
Speaker 2:Okay, but so the 2024 Monster Manual, according to their descriptions, the original one had about 300 monsters, the new one will have about 500 monsters. I wonder how many of those are colors, and then there's minor tweaks and differences there. But if I'm playing with 20-20-2014 players and I'm playing with 2020, 2014 players and I'm using 2024 monsters, do you think that actually is going to cause a noticeable like difference?
Speaker 1:So D&D is weird. It's kind of like Monopoly with free parking. So I've been working on balancing D&D fights.
Speaker 2:Fuck for like seven years now, there goes our one F-bomb worth it.
Speaker 1:That was like a natural one. I didn't force that, I wasn't doing a bit, it just came out the number of times I've had to upscale a monster because they would simply kill whatever was actually supposed to be mathematically a threat, or it swings too far in the other way it's like once players hit level 5, you can throw an ancient dragon at them and they might just win. Like almost every time it says to fight a young dragon against level 3. I just up the size of the dragon by one and they still win.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So it's like the new monsters, if they've been rebalanced for stronger things, as long as you're a DM that's pro shenanigans and let them have some shenanigans, they'll probably win. Because a lot of these dungeons are under the assumption that after they fight the first monster, every other monster will start running towards them and kill them. And it's like no, that's not how this works For a DM. You're like no, I'm not going to control one dragon and 30 kobolds to make it annoying, right like. It's like they usually just crush you via action economy. Because I don't usually use minions and enemies, because I don't want the players to sit there for six hours waiting for their turn. Right, here's what my thoughts are. I wouldn't worry about the power difference, but if your one player is using the new book, I would make everyone use the new book because it nerfs them without looking like it nerfs them, so the new book makes them stronger, but it gets rid of any bullshit they had in mind. So it's like yeah, your dwarf is better than the 5e dwarf.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But you're not a half Simic, half Warforged Death Domain, cleric, who took the one ability that lets you start with the tough feat by yourself. Because what it does is it stops the educated players from cheating themselves an advantage, because tough is just one of the origin feats.
Speaker 1:now, right, so everyone would get that, so that one player who's being quote-unquote clever got slapped Like. If someone's like, oh, I'm a gloom stalker, multi-class paladin, vengeance to triple smite, he gets a power-up but loses his bullshit. So I would just have everyone over and be like we're upgrading to the new edition guys and just make them do it. But you treat it like you gave them a prize, because I'm probably going to do that next week, especially since I had to buy it once digitally and I just link everybody to it.
Speaker 2:Well, okay. So I mean I definitely see what you mean by classes just became stronger because, like the rogue, for example, uh, reliable talent used to be a level 11 ability, uh, and now you get it just like I think that's level seven instead. So you just get it like four levels earlier, uh, and instead you get like the improved cunning strike at level 11 which isn't actually more powerful.
Speaker 1:Amusingly, it's just better because it's like it lets you be more fun with it. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 2:I definitely like the cunning strike, but so it's like the rogue definitely got a straight upgrade and I looked at the monk because the monk definitely also got a straight upgrade. Like you say, that level 20 ability where you can regain however many key points at the start of battle when you roll initiative, that's just like I think that's level.
Speaker 1:I think they move that down all the way to a level 11 ability yeah, but what you probably didn't notice with the rogue is they sneakily took away its extra ability score improvement no, it still gets at a level 10 oh, it does my bad. So, yeah, like. And then it's like. Yeah, it's kind of funny though, because, like wizards being, look at where your balance is. They give you arcaneane, trister, assassin and Thief again, but they'll throw in a Soul Knight for good measure.
Speaker 2:They did take away the rogue's Blind Sense. Which Blind Sense is, I don't know. It's kind of a medium. I don't know if it's better or not, but the Cunning Strike is definitely more interesting and utilitarian.
Speaker 1:So I think why they took away the blind sense is because they gave dwarves tremor sense. So your dwarven road now gets blind sense oh yeah okay, like it's like they probably like.
Speaker 1:Oh, we don't want to give him any of the new race abilities outright right and like, for example, cunning strike being like you have to have a poisoner's kit on your person. It just tells you what it does. I give this speech before, where it's like each new ability give players takes away their ability to improv a bit. So it's like, yeah, no one's going to be like. Now they're like, oh, poison kit just does this. But also for new players, that's great, because poison kit just does this. I'm all about trip by the. I'd be doing that with literally every attack.
Speaker 2:Well, so I mean, the question I have now is like, say, like one player wants to be a monk and the 2014 monk isn't as bad as the ranger but is, at least according to the internet, one of the weakest classes that's never been true.
Speaker 1:Ugh, I'll die on this hill rangers, because they get multiple attacks and hunter's mark can actually just match everyone with dps with a bow with 200 foot range. So you just sharpshooter, shoot someone with Hunter's Mark for like 3d6 or like the Hunter one. See, ranger had a lot of his power in his subclass. He's like oh, if they're not at full health, they take a d8. They take a d6 for Hunter's Mark. You get an attack with your main weapon and your offhand weapon for another d8 and another d8. Oh, what's this? You get to apply Hunter's Mark on each hit People are just bad at.
Speaker 1:D&D.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, that's not about the Ranger. As far as I know, no one in my group wants to be the Ranger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because no one's good I tell you right now if I was playing your campaign. As a Ranger, I'd outperform everyone.
Speaker 2:One player does want to be a monk, and I'm looking at the 2024 monk. It's like, hmm, the monk is usually not particularly strong, just because it's limited in what its options are, what it can do, because it has to be high wisdom, high dexterity, and it's just like you don't have much room for feats if you want to match it.
Speaker 1:I've tried to play a round of a Strength Monk and it just never quite does what I want it to.
Speaker 2:Exactly so like would it be unfair, do you think for me to be like, hey, you know, try this version of the monk. Or like I guess I should just give that option to all my players?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's what I'm thinking, hey guys, come half an hour early if you want to upgrade to a 2024 version and if they don't, sucks to be them fair enough, we haven't actually started the campaign yet, so oh, I would just make everyone do it because part of it do is reducing their options for the bloat.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I'm getting players showing up being like I want to be a mushroom folk splore druid with fairy wings and I'd be like I like my main group's not as bad for that. But like when I was running drop-ins, I always remember the person's like I'm a warforge with a kunai machine gun and it was like a machine gun. It's like yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm a Warforged with a Kunai machine gun and it was like, yeah, because I'm a Warforged fighter with an Artificer subclass that says I get gun proficiencies from the Eberron book. So I'm going to use Matt Mercer's Gunslinger class and then subclass as an Artificer. I'm like I'm going to just drown you my character right? No, my character right now. So it's like, yeah, letting them use the new monk is completely fair if everyone gets that option. And the thing about me not really supporting wizards of the coast too much, even though we give them free advertising all the time is you can legally book share it. Or if it's a physical book, what are they cops like? They're not gonna. Well, they might send. They might send troops to make sure that you're not all sharing the same book. They have sent down goons to break down doors before and they don't want me talking about it.
Speaker 2:They shouldn't have sent goons to break down doors that's true, they did straight up send goons, okay, but so your overall vibe that I'm getting is that the 2024 rulebook, provided you aren't overinvested into the 2014 rule set, is a slight upgrade that would be worth investing in.
Speaker 1:Yes, see, that's where I'm at, and I kind of came around on this after a while is that it condenses things. It cleans up some weird fringe cases, like let's take the Warrior of the Elements subclass, for example. Instead of learning spells and using spellcasting, which didn't quite work, and taking those terrible elemental ba-da-da-da-ba's.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Instead, you can spend a focus point, which is key points. It just felt like being.
Speaker 2:They felt like being different.
Speaker 1:It's a weird argument. We don't want to use key because it makes people feel like their monks should be Asian inspired and that's cultural appropriation. I'm like, is it more cultural?
Speaker 1:appropriation to make your anime character not use key, Whatever OK anyway, it's like they woke themselves into a circle and I don't know where they ended. But if it, eh, if someone refers to it as key points, I'll be fine. But what it does is at level 3, you can spend a point to make your attacks have 10 foot range and be an element of your choice, and then you get to spend points to do like sphere blasts. You can give yourself a flying speed with it.
Speaker 1:You can give yourself damage resistant lift Like at different levels.
Speaker 1:do these different things with it, so it absolutely does what the original was supposed to do of let you be Aang from Avatar, right, but it doesn't have you mess around with spellcasting. So, since you don't have to mess around with spellcasting, it's still kind of mad because it scales off your monk abilities, but it's substantially less so because if you go just dex with it, you'd have less saving throws for a couple abilities, but it would still work the majority because you get stretchy punches that do different damage types. You get a speed boost, you can fly with it, you can give yourself resistance with it, so it's like your AoE explodey thing would become less good.
Speaker 1:Much like some of your other monk-like. Anything that used the monk saving throw before would be less good, but you're less dedicated to it and you don't have to like it's not bad anymore.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:Which is my like main takeaway. It's like, yeah, like they made that one subclass that was just bad before a valid option. Okay.
Speaker 2:So I guess my final question, which is actually kind of a doozy, Ooh Well. So, particularly with the branding, Dungeon Master's Guide 2024, Dungeon Master's Guide 2014, or Scarce Handbook 5, right, they made so much money to come up with those titles. Do you think that having this patch update is actually good for the players or do you think that it adds unnecessary confusion about what sources you're using for what classes and abilities?
Speaker 1:So I think it gives an excuse to bring down the banhammer. Hammer. I think if you use it with all your other dnd stuff unmediated, it's just adding pot to a pot because they decide for a while they're trying to like make the dnd mtg crossovers work while simultaneously have mgg pull away from its own lore. Yeah, so it's like none of the mtg products are quite fleshed out enough, like here's a's a Ravnica guide without a Ravnica campaign. Here's this, here's that, here's these. They gave us a bunch of settings, but not enough content to actually play a campaign there, right? So what this does for me is, if you use this, you tell everyone we're just using this and then it's like okay, you all get like most of the races, most of the subclasses and new toys to stink around with, but then you as the GM now have in one place all of the sources your players are pulling from and you go hard on that.
Speaker 1:You're like, hey, you're doing this Because then everything's been rebalanced again. Because, like Bladesinger, for example, being like, oh, I just have an AC of 25 as a wizard, the one player who actually knew that existed had just a huge advantage. Why would you? The difference in power between my cantrips occasionally do half damage and I get plus 7 to my AC, isn't a fair calculation.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So I would use it as a reset point. I'd be like, alright, we're playing this new book, pick from the new book. I'd be like, alright, we're playing this new book, pick from the new book. So I think, as a soft reboot, it is good for the players and the DMs because it gets everyone back to the same page, because they've been putting out 5e content for a decade and it's gotten unyieldy and they're all like, oh, it's Black Compatible. It is. I wouldn't let them. I would just say no, because once you start being like, oh, I'm going to be a Wildfire Druid subclass and they have little guides on how to integrate that. Because it's quote-unquote, backwards compatible, I just wouldn't.
Speaker 2:I can definitely see how it's backwards compatible. For example, the Wizard, instead of getting their Arcane Tradition at level 2, they get it at level 3. But at level 3 in the 2014 rules, the Wizard didn't get anything. So that was just an easy slot to put it into where it's like okay, you get an extra spell, spell slot and you get to choose your subclass. So it's like and, and. Then from there on the, the levels where you get new abilities line up uh, and the same thing with uh, with the cleric, uh, level three. You didn't get anything. So the fact that you got it at level one, now you get at level three, but everything just lines up perfectly again, because they just moved it to a spot where it could be, where it could slot in perfectly, and I'm pretty sure that you can just use them as is.
Speaker 1:You just get your class at the appropriate level for the new version another thing I find really funny is it just kind of like took the bonds and flaws and all that stuff and just threw it? Just kind of like took the bonds and flaws and all that stuff and just threw it out, so just like yeah no, we're just not even gonna bother like there's no backstory and personality is a single square on the character sheet. Now and it is like about the same size as appearance and both those boxes are smaller than feets.
Speaker 2:They seem to expect you are going to get but the same size as appearance in both those boxes are smaller than feets. They seem to expect you are going to get more feets in this version.
Speaker 1:I just find it amusing. They're like, yeah, whatever. Like I think they just threw alignment in the garbage too.
Speaker 2:They're like, yeah, no we don't care about that anymore. Well, yeah, I mean, like I said, I have the new monster manual. It hasn't actually been printed yet, so I have it on pre-order. I'm kind of excited because it's just like an expanded monster manual with more high-end monsters to choose to look through and whatnot.
Speaker 1:um, but they've kind of been doing away with alignment slowly anyways, because, like they don't want to say that any one race or monster is inherently evil, even though it's like yeah, but also I always think of my favorite Nemesis player being like I'm lawful good, because in my society burning taverns to the ground is a thing my people would do, and I'm like, but you burn those people alive. They're like, yeah, like a lawful good person, Like, and I had this epiphany where, like they're like, I can wield the lawful good sword. And I look at the description of the sword. I'm like how is it that you're the same alignment as the sword and the sword hates you it of its being because you don't get along at all, and the evil sword agrees with you completely. It's like well, you see, good and evil is a spectrum. I'm like Alignment's dead. You can wield Excalibur after burning children alive. Alignment is now dead.
Speaker 2:I did enjoy the awful good characters where you know they're doing lawful but they're saying terrible things, like I had that character, philip, who refused to negotiate with terrorists and uh, so when the rest of the party was trying to recruit goblins, uh, he was just like no I'm, I'm going through this portal instead because I don't. I don't agree with you guys negotiating with these terrorists.
Speaker 1:Right and like they still have like a carrying capacity table and all this stuff that no one will ever pay attention to. But like, even looking at the character sheet, it's like, okay, they almost optimized it a bit more for video gaming. I think one of my quips about 2024 Player's Handbook is it's less good than balder's gate. Like balder's gate started with the same 5e rules and changed things as it needed, and like the players handbook changes aren't as good as the balder's gate changes in the same direction.
Speaker 1:It's like they had similar ideas but didn't do it quite as well as larry and studios, which is really funny to me. Like if the new players handbook was just like, matched the rules one-to-one to what they did in balder's gate for like everything I'd be so many kinds of on board. But like there's little things they did where it's like okay, the feats in the player's handbook have all the interesting ones like chef, crusher, piercer, dual wielder has been adjusted to actually give you a stat up. You know. Just little things that very much help the design I, I can't.
Speaker 2:I do have a quick question. Um, do you know if they've made changes to dual wielding? Because that has always with the two weapon fighting style with the feet and just with the fact that anyone can technically dual wield. It's's always been kind of an ambiguous rule because there's so many ways to offshoot it.
Speaker 1:Let's take a look what they settled on, because the way I've been home ruling it, even in my most recent campaign, is just when you do anything because this is how Baldur's Gate did it you can bonus action with an offhand weapon, did it. You could bonus action with an offhand weapon. So D&D would never just be like, hey, can I dual wield with this by casting a firebolt in one hand and punching them with the other? No, I'm trying to find it here. Also, the fact that they call it off-weapon fighting instead of calling it dual wielding, I'm just like guy, guy, come on, come on. Alright. So as I look this up, off hand fighting see, the problem is like even like the physical book, trying to find like every specific thing there's no Pathfinder.
Speaker 1:Pathfinder's just a nightmare, where every single thing has a specific mechanic for it.
Speaker 2:Right, right right.
Speaker 1:Alright. For some reason, attack goes here in the glossary it's not really that important.
Speaker 2:We can move on to a random question or whatever.
Speaker 1:I want an answer to this, dang it. But do you have give me any closing thoughts you have on this book while I look this up?
Speaker 2:well, I don't know. I've kind of kind of gone over them all. Where it's like I, I have this concern that someone is going to go and buy a player's handbook and not realize that they fought the 2014 version oh, that 100 is going to happen.
Speaker 1:That's why I look. But digitally you're not going to have that problem. If you do it on dnd beyond, you're not going to have that problem. If you do it on D&D Beyond, you're pretty dumb. I don't have a more polite way of wording that that's my first concern.
Speaker 2:And then my second concern is that some of the rules are so similar and yet just a couple words different. And it's like, hmm, like, how many people are gonna like? Because it's not a new edition, or even a 0.5 edition, uh like, and they've been releasing the 5e content for like 10 years and people have that core rule set in their mind. It's like, uh, I don't know, it's just, it seems like it's a nightmare for for dms and players.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, unless you you know where I kind of have that hard stance, I guess different thought on it, where, because the rules are so close, if you get one wrong it shouldn't change anything. So it's like by switching everyone onto this version. It'll actually make it less confusing, because it's right here's a monopoly example again at this point, a decade later, everyone's forgot how to play dnd right like anything that's been house ruled, has become the rule at this point so like having a new book like, for example they got rid of offhanded fighting, no longer exists.
Speaker 1:What happens is weapons with the light property are, when you take this action on your turn and attack with a light weapon, you can make one extra attack as a bonus action later on the same turn. The extra attack must be made with a different light weapon and you don't add your ability modifier unless that modifier is negative. So offhand fighting is literally what the light weapon feature does.
Speaker 1:And if you have the two-way weapon fighting style you can add the ability modifier is if the extra attack is the result of using a light weapon, you can add it and then the dual wielding lets you make the offhand attack with a light weapon if you're holding a non-light weapon kind of thing, and then it ups the stat and then lets you make the offhand attack with a light weapon, if you're holding a non-light weapon kind of thing, and then it ups the stat and then lets you sheath and unsheath, two weapons at a time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the phrase offhand weapon, why I couldn't find it is, it's just gone. It's just what light weapons do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:But also how they reworded. The two-weapon fighting is when you make an extra attack as a result of using a weapon's light property, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of that bonus action attack. It's like oh okay, so if you take two-weapon fighting, it has that reminder in front of you how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Is it an elegant solution?
Speaker 2:No, but it'll do, it'll do.
Speaker 1:But yeah, my thing thing looping back around is, with Christmas and things, there's a good chance someone in my group buys me and each other the new players handbook and I'm planning to use it to force everyone to upgrade to get rid of some of the chaos, because then I'm just patching everybody. I'm mad it doesn't go far enough, but my players are stubborn. I won't be able to switch them onto a new game. I've tried a few times. It just doesn't stick Right. Like I'm not going to get them to be like oh, want to roll two D12s and play Shadowheart, play Daggerheart, because it'd be like eh, I like the complexity and strategy of D&D and I'll be like cool, tell me how offhanding combat works right now. But that's kind of where I'm at with that one.
Speaker 1:It's like they don't know If they're not going to let me and they're still. I'm still so mad about the wild shape thing. They did do one nice thing where they put the wild shape stat blocks in the back of the player's handbook.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So I'm willing to be like yeah, if you want to use any animals, use the ones in the back of the player's handbook and they're like but I want to be a dinosaur and a crocodile. I'm like too bad Punk.
Speaker 2:Too bad, it's in there.
Speaker 1:And if it's not, sucks to be you. So, all in all, like it's because it's been a decade that I'm like fine, it's a completely unnecessary upgrade, but it's like as soon as one person upgrades, you're better off upgrading everybody which is their entire scam right, I guess that makes sense and with that being hyped up, time for our random question.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love random questions, so we've definitely used several of these already.
Speaker 1:I'm just working my way down the list. What ice cream flavor would you be?
Speaker 2:What ice cream flavor would I be? Salted caramel.
Speaker 1:Mochaccino.
Speaker 2:Mochaccino, mochaccino, you think you drink that much coffee?
Speaker 1:if a vampire bites me, they have heart problems and I have less coffee in my system than normal. All right, this next question will probably take a little more thought. If you could delete one trend from existence, what would it be, and who's getting the first warning?
Speaker 1:delete a trend from existence oh, I know, I know mine pre-order early access games and I'm warning you right now nintendo don't do it. They get a warning because I don't think they've straight up been pre-ordered Legend of Zelda and played three days early yet. But that's just a dick move, right? The literal idea that people will spoil your game unless you give them extra money is just psychotic, because it's not like you buy the pre-order of the game. You buy the deluxe edition to get to spoil the game for your friends three days early because you're paying extra money to go first. It's bad. It's the same as your parents donating to get you into law school. I don't approve of this behavior.
Speaker 2:Okay, what trend would I want to get rid of?
Speaker 1:Considering you live in Saskatchewan, probably drug use.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I don't know man, I should have looked at something bigger. It should have been like food cost inflation. I'm such a selfish jerk, I don't know really. I guess those do count as trends, but I'm trying to think of do count as trends, but I'm trying to think of a trend, something that annoys me, that I would like to stop happening.
Speaker 1:People you like in a sentence.
Speaker 2:No, no, deep in thought. Yeah, no see, I'm trying to think of the way to like word it.
Speaker 1:You're trying not to get monkey pod on your wish.
Speaker 2:Well see, there'll definitely be something about like posting online comments and whatnot, but I'm just trying to think like Social media Damn. Power play, yeah, maybe social media in general.
Speaker 1:I think Meta would be getting the first warning then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because everybody knows that social media is bad for your social skills and abilities and general overall happiness. Everyone knows, and yet everyone does it anyways. Or everyone knows that Amazon is a giant evil corporation, but they're so damn convenient that people just do it anyways.
Speaker 1:And the cats did it, so they could have more boxes.
Speaker 2:So it's like I wish I could eliminate the trend of people using something that they know is bad because it's convenient.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'd also kind of want to go with disruption method marketing, where you build a business intentionally undercut everybody and then, after you killed your competition, jack up the prices, like Netflix, adding commercials back in now that they've killed TV.
Speaker 2:Now that they've killed TV, they want to be like TV.
Speaker 1:And this question's a fun one, but I'll bring you another quick one. If Petty Revenge were a sport, what medal would you give your co-host?
Speaker 2:If Petty Revenge were a sport, what medal would you give your co-host? If petty revenge were a sport?
Speaker 1:so hot take. I think you're actually better at pity that revenge than me, because you do it so casually and so out of nowhere. It's like petty revenge for carl. I can't even fathom what it'd be. It'd be like I don't even know. Like we'd go hang out with Cassie in a decade and you just point to your stone boat you'd made floating there, and Cassie wouldn't even remember what you were getting revenge for. But like because the problem, though, is, if it's scored like figure skating, I think people might not get it, so I'm going to have to give you a bronze Cause. Like your petty revenge might not come off as vengeance. Like you're the kind of person where your revenge is you got someone a bagel every day and then stopped getting them a bagel, and they'll never know what they did wrong, and that was your goal from the start, but they might just think that like oh, no bagel, weird.
Speaker 2:My petty revenge isn't grand enough. It's not obvious enough uh, well, see, um keeping in the theme with with dnd um you I? I honestly, as pertains to dnd specifically, I think that you're a gold medalist in petty revenge oh, not just a dnd, I'm just a gold medalist in Petty Revenge.
Speaker 1:Oh, not just in D&D, I'm just a gold medalist in Petty Revenge.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean most likely Just D&D is the form in which I have the most experience, where something that like a question that someone asked ten sessions ago and you ruled it a specific way, and then the next time that comes up and they're like, oh, this is what the rule's saying, and you're like, well, I actually ruled it differently ten sessions ago because you specifically asked me to, and now you're going to die.
Speaker 1:I believe that was Cedric falling off a blimp and them catching it with a rope, and I dislocated both their shoulders. Oh no, I don't think you ever did that to Cedric. No, I did it to them trying to catch Cedric because Cedric's too heavy to go here, and then later I'm like well, catch Cedric then.
Speaker 2:But yes, that does sound more like it. Everyone's always asking how tall he is and how tall the rooms are, and it's like, okay, fine, if you guys want to care about that, it'll come up.
Speaker 1:Yep Also for non-D&D petty revenge the lettuce sandwich. I have a gold medal in petty revenge.
Speaker 2:Was that petty revenge? Yeah, I don't know what, for I thought that was just that you didn't believe me. I could taste lettuce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that is petty revenge, right. The vengeance would have been ha ha, I made you eat lettuce shows that you're full of crap. But I did it in such a profound gold medalist way that the only outcomes were either I punked you or I proved you wrong.
Speaker 2:Okay, you definitely punked me. I'm sure I've given the lettuce spiel before on the podcast, so if anyone's brave enough to go through our entire catalog to find just the, word.
Speaker 2:I enjoy them downloading the transcript off of every episode and control effing lettuce till they find it like I would love them having to re-watch it all, but I find it even funnier to hunt for it the lettuce spiel, but it I don't know if it's famous or not, but I've given it quite a few times. It's pretty good. I'm not going to repeat it right now.
Speaker 1:But let's be honest, I am definitely a gold medalist in petty revenge. I think I told you about my indirect letter writing campaign of encouraging people to write letters on behalf of a third party to get my vengeance on the first party.
Speaker 2:You did tell me about that.
Speaker 1:I mean I made a self-regenerating Snorlax to win a Pokemon match against my ex. We weren't even exes at the time, I'm just petty.
Speaker 2:Just petty.
Speaker 1:And with that, thank you all for tuning in to Richard and Carl present. Deep Space and Dragons. Click the button in the description to suggest your random question to get entered into a draw for maybe upcoming new Deep Space and Dragons swag. Maybe I'm thinking about it. I am actually so what I'm thinking about doing for the holidays is I'm considering having my novel artists do up a Richard and Carl portrait so it matches my portfolio picture and putting those on mugs.
Speaker 2:Okay, your artists. They're just going to use whatever description you give them of me.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have Facebook photos of you. Do they actually have a picture of me? I have pictures of you I can send to an artist. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:I mean especially the one where I'm in the purple leopard print tank top being carried around by my brother-in-law. That's a good base one.
Speaker 1:It's pretty top tier right Like. I think you're just in a few of my family photos.
Speaker 2:Oh, that might be true.
Speaker 1:I recall this happening, where my mom's, like Carl, get in the photo and you're like I guess I'm in the family photo now.
Speaker 2:I don't remember when specifically it happened either, but I know it's happened.
Speaker 1:I vaguely recall it happening. But yes, thank you everybody for tuning in and yeah, maybe I'll get around to it. I don't know, I'm writing a book and doing stuff, but maybe I'll get around to it.
Speaker 2:The power of ADHD works in strange ways. And in the meantime, self-care, hydrate, exercise, stuff like that, you know take care of yourself, because, also, if you're waiting for someone to life in one body.
Speaker 1:Also, I feel like throwing this one out there if you're waiting for someone to step up and be the dm, it's a sign that you should step up and be the dm agreed uh bye, bye.
Speaker 1:Really. I easily could do a full podcast on just ttrpgs, like if we had the hours for me just to run you through a different ttrpg every week, it'd be a top tier podcast. I have like such a backlog of those from the club. It's actually insane. Uh yeah, like I have a cyberpunk ttrpg rulebook just sitting on my shelf being like now how to find people who are willing to learn to play cyberpunk ttrpg rule book?
Speaker 2:just sitting on my shelf being like now, how to find people who are willing to learn to play cyberpunk? Yeah, I think, I think, uh, my roommate has a like a starfinder uh book and he also had this like superheroes book. Although the superheroes book, um, character creation was super complex and I I just never got past character creation because I wasn't even sure what kind of hero I wanted to be, let alone capable of choosing the skills and abilities. Let's be honest you want to be the guy from a doka box that removes colors.
Speaker 1:Therefore their powers with giant screws.
Speaker 2:Yeah.