00:00:06.12 sidekqpodcast Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Sidekicks and Sidequests, the best unofficial Dungeons and in my humbly biased opinion. I've got an awesome guest for you this week, but before we get to my mystery contestant, I have to leave you in suspense with the ad read, which is what I cleverly do an insert here. All right. And without further ado, I turn the microphone over to my guest and I ask, hello mystery contestant. Would you care to introduce yourself? Tell us who it is that you are and what is it that you do. 00:00:40.80 Dylan _he_they_ My name is Dylan. ah My pronouns are he, they, and I am the co-producer, co-host, co-founder of Kill Every Monster and ah Dead Ghost Productions. ah We are a D and&D kind of criticism show walking through the Monster Manual one creature at a time and just sort of sorting out what stories the monsters are meant to tell and how well they do it. 00:01:07.34 sidekqpodcast Mmm. Yeah, I was gonna say I was trying to recall in my memory ah like where was the first mention it would have been back when Twitter was more of a thing and I think I was getting ready to do some yard work and I was like Oh, I think I saw this thing on Twitter. What's this? Oh kill every monster. Oh they oh, oh the Banshee episode. Okay. Well, let me put that on and so I remember doing the yard work and like hearing the you know hearing the the flow of the episode and how and then it you know carried on to the Goblin the next one I was like Oh, this is really cool. 00:01:39.09 sidekqpodcast Like, you know, getting to do like these deep dive discussions on like what's presented in the text. 00:01:40.15 Dylan _he_they_ Appreciate it. Yeah. 00:01:44.84 sidekqpodcast And then like, you know, what is inspired from actual like, uh, fairy tales and myth and, uh, you know, cultural, uh, significance and stuff like that. Uh, to then like offering suggestions of like how you could make them feel more like. their inspiration points and then you do like this really cool um deep dive immersive role playing one shot basically where then ah you you know the guest gets to be the monster and then Aram is usually ah some sort of arrogant foolhardy adventurer ah that has to contend with the monster and more times than not has ended up perishing ah from his own hubris. 00:02:09.41 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:02:15.87 Dylan _he_they_ Yes. 00:02:25.86 Dylan _he_they_ i I think we've gotten a pretty good split on Anuram dying. I don't know that he's won that often, but he he doesn't always die. 00:02:34.65 sidekqpodcast Right. 00:02:34.92 Dylan _he_they_ He does an okay job. ah No, he's very good at coming in and playing just an utter prick to where like you can feel good about the player character losing. 00:02:49.18 sidekqpodcast Yeah and so i'm just kind of curious you know with the you know you are well you know the stick from the beginning of the show is you know a ram does god's fall. And you know stuff like that and then your bed is like oh i'm the physicist from canada so like. How how how what was the formation of kill every monster like how did that all come to be. 00:03:12.06 Dylan _he_they_ so So that intro, uh, apparently has gotten misread a couple of times. it It seems to read a little bit as like arrogance on my part. You know, Aram always comes in with sort of the announcer voice, you know, I produced God's fall and I've done these things and I have all these you know, credentials in the RPG space. And I'm from Canada, got a degree in physics. 00:03:35.61 sidekqpodcast That's your claim to fame. 00:03:37.11 Dylan _he_they_ I know some stuff, I guess, like, for me, it was meant to be like self deprecating, just like I don't actually have an RPG credential. 00:03:43.11 sidekqpodcast o 00:03:45.50 Dylan _he_they_ I played the games for a while and I'm a big goddamn dork. I know numbers. That's about it. 00:03:51.92 sidekqpodcast It's how I feel like me it's like ah you know it's it's amazing getting to see all these other guests of the show that have like you know gone on to do stuff at like San Diego Comic Con or Gen Con and stuff like that and I root for him and I cheer him on but I think to myself like that's probably not going to be me there no one's waiting for me with a red envelope saying like oh Mr Kurt your chance is awaiting you would you please join us up on the stage. 00:04:03.42 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:04:18.81 sidekqpodcast I would be honored if they would, but I'm not expecting it. 00:04:18.89 Dylan _he_they_ No. 00:04:22.68 Dylan _he_they_ No, but that's also, to come back to your actual question, sort of the thing, like, I know Aram because I went to Gen Con one year and I would just came to talk to him and I was just like, hey, God's Fall is a great show. I had like just recently moved to cities. So like, I think the thing I actually told him was like, it's the little piece of home. Like I always listened to it on the drive to school and everything when I was living with my parents and I moved to this new city. Didn't know anybody, didn't know where the fuck I was, didn't know what was going on. But I could listen to the podcast and like, okay, this is a thing that I still have. ah And that was really my credential. And then like, we talked for a while, we got to be friends, and we knew each other for like a couple of years. And then eventually around was just like, you know, we should we should look at working on something together, we should work on a thing. And I kept coming back to him going like, yeah, but like, 00:05:15.07 Dylan _he_they_ there's 20,000 actual plays, I don't necessarily have an idea that's like, set apart from the pack, like, it'd just be another, another D and&D show, which nothing wrong with that. 00:05:22.92 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:05:26.22 Dylan _he_they_ But like, i I have a impulse in the back of my head of just if you're not doing something that doesn't already exist, you know, why are you doing it? 00:05:26.24 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:05:38.40 sidekqpodcast Right. 00:05:39.44 Dylan _he_they_ And then one day I came back and I was like, aama I know the thing we could do. I want to complain about the monster manual. I'm mad about it. There are too many monsters that are just like functionally a bear, like in 3.5 and Pathfinder. there was this tendency like monsters had attack patterns. And the most common one was this animal, this creature has a multi attack, it does a claw claw bite, two claw attacks, then a bite attack. And that's what its turn looks like. And you start going through the monster manual that lens and you go like, Oh, that's a bear. That's a bear. That bear has a fly speed. That's also a bear. And you start picking apart the mechanics and you start seeing like all of the times where it's like, 00:06:25.03 Dylan _he_they_ or even just, I will call things like the Kuatoa or the Swagan, or however you'd pronounce it, I don't know, I've never figured it out. ah I refer to them as wet goblins, because when you look at the stat block, like there's all these bits of lore that never really get touched on, because those monsters don't get used frequently. 00:06:35.14 sidekqpodcast Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:06:43.81 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:06:44.60 Dylan _he_they_ But mechanically, it's a goblin, it's just an orc again, you know, these these monsters are all the same thing, 00:06:49.01 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:06:53.34 Dylan _he_they_ But then we just attached new lore to it, which is a thing of beauty when you're running games to be able to just like grab something like to just pick up the cobalt stat block and be like, good enough. This is this is my gnome trap maker today. But when you're looking through the book and looking for new ideas and you're just seeing the same thing presented over and over again, that annoyed me. So that was sort of the genesis was talking that over and I think we batted the around the idea around for God knows how long couple months. 00:07:25.07 sidekqpodcast Mhmm. 00:07:25.52 Dylan _he_they_ And I think it all came together with RK Wilde, who was on the Deva episode was the one who like Aram had started trying to add in this idea of like an overarching plot to it and we do these APs and they'd all be connected and all of the guests would get to kill the monster that they came on to talk about and it was RK who was like, no, no, no. What you're gonna do is you're gonna have the guests play the monster because if they're coming in invested in the monster, why would you make them murder it? Like if that's the part they care about, give it to them. 00:08:01.26 Dylan _he_they_ And that was sort of one of the moments of crystallization and we ran from there. you know 00:08:04.65 sidekqpodcast Hmm Yeah, yeah, no, I I always look forward ah to the episodes and I'm always learning ah You know something new and a number of those things have directly Influenced some of my games from now on like, ah you know this, you know without getting to ah You know Self aggrandizing or patting myself too well on the back. It's like the modron episode, you know, combining that with ah what we learned with ah the Loki MCU show and the TVA, like that's how the modrons now. 00:08:36.33 sidekqpodcast ah Well, they're part of a big bad evil guy ah army, ah but it's like functionally, it's like, yeah, they're like time ah minions of this ah big bad evil, you know, calculating in the background. 00:08:36.58 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:08:40.22 Dylan _he_they_ yeah 00:08:48.00 Dylan _he_they_ No, that's ah that's a perfect place to put them. That that lines up perfectly with what the lore wants them to do. 00:08:51.01 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:08:55.04 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. And then ah the Raksha says we we had a KP on recently this season. So I know I've been using Raksha says, you know, a lot recently. And so getting to like, you know, think back on that episode of like, oh, Heather Vane and, you know, building these grand palaces and like, you know, being full of hubris, ah but not just not fully, so you know, a traditional devil, but also kind of leaning into demons. 00:09:14.04 Dylan _he_they_ Absolutely, yeah. 00:09:21.59 sidekqpodcast So that's even affected how I thought. 00:09:22.55 Dylan _he_they_ Closer to a devil than anything else in the monster manual though. 00:09:26.32 sidekqpodcast Mmm. and And so, yeah, now i' they've got this whole ecology in my version of ah the nine circles of hell and then the black pit, which is the abyss and how they're kind of like, oh, they originally existed in the black pit, but then when the hells were formed, it's like that's what gave them their inspiration for having corporeal forms and seeking material goods and stuff like that. 00:09:34.61 Dylan _he_they_ here 00:09:47.55 sidekqpodcast And they're kind of like, you know, annoying neighbors to all the devils and demons that are trapped there and stuff like that. And they kind of don't really answer to anyone. 00:09:54.03 Dylan _he_they_ but well yeah i can kind see that 00:09:56.04 sidekqpodcast They just do their own thing. 00:09:57.80 Dylan _he_they_ That ain't bad. That ain't bad. I like that. 00:10:00.46 sidekqpodcast Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I could sit here and gab. I mean, I know we've, uh, you know, Gliza, uh, champion was on recently and so she got to, you know, talk about dragon turtles on, on her episode with y'all. So a lot of good stuff. 00:10:12.49 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah, he's fantastic. 00:10:13.75 sidekqpodcast If you're not listening to kill every monster, you know, I have no problems plugging other podcasts in the middle of my podcast. So you should go check Dylan out. You know, Dylan's usually more like, 00:10:23.09 Dylan _he_they_ Always appreciate it. 00:10:24.89 sidekqpodcast You're more like the straight man and then a ram is kind of like the goof on the show where he entertains all these like. um Silly or sorts of ideas and you're like no a ram it's this way you know you're like what goblin or bear or whatever and he's like well no don't you see it's really like this and this is how it should be and you're just like a ram you are ridiculous kind of. 00:10:39.10 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:10:45.14 Dylan _he_they_ Aram is fantastic for this because I think Aram really does fit the just the average player, right? Like Aram is reading what is intended. 00:10:55.94 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:10:56.79 Dylan _he_they_ And that's usually what he's talking about. When we disagree, it's usually Aram is reading what the book says it should be and attaching to that. And he's right, that is a great way to run things. I'm just a little bit fixated on. Okay, you can tell me that's what it is in the lore. But when I look at that stat block, you're lying. Like, oh, these are crafty, ingenuity, like, cobolds, you know, they're they're supposed to be these trap makers. And meanwhile, they have like a negative intelligence and zero wisdom. 00:11:28.87 Dylan _he_they_ like How? 00:11:29.17 sidekqpodcast Hmm. Yeah. 00:11:30.88 Dylan _he_they_ How are they crafting? What are they? You're lying. You're wrong. Like, 00:11:34.29 sidekqpodcast Right. Yeah. And so, um I mean, so certainly I think you're doing a, you know, a service to the community and, you know, injecting critical thinking into it. 00:11:42.06 Dylan _he_they_ Ah, I tried. 00:12:32.48 Dylan _he_they_ There's just, I mean, you see it over and over again, right? The game is loaded down with sacred calves, like, 00:12:35.94 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:12:40.34 Dylan _he_they_ There's no reason that ability scores should run from three to 18, aside from we used to roll for stats way back in the day, right? There's a bunch of things that just should be ended or should at least be criticized. 00:12:49.01 sidekqpodcast Right. 00:12:53.48 Dylan _he_they_ And, you know, that's what we wanted to do. Hopefully it's what we're doing. 00:12:59.25 sidekqpodcast Okay alright I dig that and I I think that's a good I think that's a good way to look at it like you know you're just both super passionate about it and so that's that's why you know that's what has fueled you to do the show which I think you know segways brilliantly into the next question ah do you currently or have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons before. 00:13:18.20 Dylan _he_they_ Once or twice, once or twice. ah No, honestly, ah life always gets in the way. 00:13:19.58 sidekqpodcast yeah 00:13:24.88 Dylan _he_they_ And I've been moving around a fair bit, so we haven't had a regular game in quite some time. But like, Kill Every Monster hasn't stopped recording. So every couple of weeks, I get to at least have a quick little game with a ROM and some other fantastic person. I've met so many cool people through this show. So I'm i'm certainly getting my fix. 00:13:43.55 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:13:46.76 sidekqpodcast Yeah, yeah. And yeah, because you because mostly you serve the role as the DM and, you know, you conspire with the the guest of the episode. 00:13:53.23 Dylan _he_they_ Yep. 00:13:57.12 sidekqpodcast ah Sometimes they also get to be like a DM, but, you know, the guest is usually controlling the the monsters. But I want to say, hasn't there been an episode or two or maybe you've done a bit in the shoes of the player character or am my misremembering? 00:14:12.57 Dylan _he_they_ uh i've done some odd npc's i know like the dinosaur episode i kind of played a a tag along party member for a rom but at the same time like it i think the closest i get is a dnbc i i think dead ghost presents we did an episode on a game called hunter hunted which uh would 00:14:28.36 sidekqpodcast o 00:14:32.25 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:14:35.82 Dylan _he_they_ When you're listening to this, we'll have kick started successfully sometime in the past. ah I think that's the only show we've recorded where I've actually gotten to properly play everything else. 00:14:46.74 sidekqpodcast Oh, that's cool. 00:14:47.11 Dylan _he_they_ I'm some sort of DM. 00:14:49.13 sidekqpodcast All right. Pretty cool. All right. And then, uh, yeah, no, I'm just, uh, you know, we're just going through the questions, you know, regular interview show style. 00:14:55.63 Dylan _he_they_ Mm hmm. Yeah. 00:14:57.70 sidekqpodcast So, uh, you know, this podcast, the focus ah sidekicks in the side quest. So, you know, we've the the focus on the other, the little guy, the background actors. So this question, do you happen to have a favorite NPC or, or, uh, you know, non player character or, you know, background actor, whether they be from a video game or. 00:15:07.46 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:15:17.65 sidekqpodcast or an RPG, movie, film, television, etc. And why is this character your favorite sidekick or your favorite NPC? 00:15:25.78 Dylan _he_they_ I'm gonna, unlike some people on this podcast, I'm gonna be self-aggrandizing. In one of the first few games I ran, I had an NPC called Orson O'Hara. Orson wasn't meant to be his first name, but ah one of the characters walked in and I greeted him by his first name and he just turned around and went, Orson, it's so good to see you. And I wasn't gonna say no at that point. ah So he got renamed and now I don't know what it was supposed to be, but he was a halfling tailor who was also the local mob boss. Uh, and he was just one of those characters that the party kept coming back to because frankly, when you're dealing with something, like obviously organized crime has horrible fucking elements to it. There are ways in which it's terrible, but the way in which it generally crops up is a certain degree of like, 00:16:21.58 Dylan _he_they_ there will be an area or a group of people who are fully disregarded and unprotected, and you try to build some sort of order. And that's sort of what O'Hara was meant to be in that setting, was just in this area where no one gives a shit about anybody here, he's keeping a lid on stuff. 00:16:31.86 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. Hmm. 00:16:43.85 Dylan _he_they_ he wants the place to be better he doesn't particularly care about his position he doesn't need to be doing it but if no one else is doing it he's gonna 00:16:44.42 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:16:54.99 sidekqpodcast Yeah. So kind of like the, you know, the story in America being like, Oh, these major, uh, metropolises, these immigration centers on the East coast. And naturally, uh, you know, with the the whole quote unquote natives, uh, you know, being so against immigrants. And then of course, naturally that spurns, uh, immigrants to form gangs and then even beyond gangs into like, you know, organized crime families and stuff like that to try and have that semblance of community and protection, even if it does. 00:17:20.04 Dylan _he_they_ Yes, sir. 00:17:23.97 sidekqpodcast Fly in the face of you know what the law of the land is supposed to be 00:17:28.59 Dylan _he_they_ Exactly, exactly. And that's sort of the thing. The city I was playing with was a magocracy where they were fully like cracking down on like, no divine magic. The only magic you can work with is arcane because that can be controlled. We can control who find who is ah who is learning to be a wizard. We can find the sorceress bloodlines and monitor them. But the moment you are a random person who is being gifted power from on high, that's out of our control that needs to be kept in line. 00:18:01.18 sidekqpodcast Mm. So that means they also didn't like warlocks either, then I guess. 00:18:07.08 Dylan _he_they_ No, I, so this was something I was running in, like very basic, I think Pathfinder. 00:18:13.98 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:18:14.13 Dylan _he_they_ So we didn't warlocks didn't exist at the time, or at least didn't exist in the way they do now. 00:18:16.99 sidekqpodcast Ah. Sure. 00:18:19.27 Dylan _he_they_ ah So I had that sort of dichotomy set up. And in the middle, you just had folks 00:18:25.56 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:18:27.45 Dylan _he_they_ And they're not powerful enough to matter. Like if, if the guy in charge can cast fireball, the guy with a knife, not so big a threat. 00:18:40.74 sidekqpodcast Hmm Okay, yeah, I could see how he would be a favorite and ah you know, hopefully he's still a reoccurring character in in your campaigns Maybe he features somewhere hidden in the details of a kill every monster somewhere 00:18:42.23 Dylan _he_they_ So that's where Ohara sat was just making sure that people who couldn't summon food got to eat. 00:19:04.50 Dylan _he_they_ Ah, we'll see. We'll see. 00:19:07.48 sidekqpodcast All right, and then same thing with the side quest question. What happens to be your favorite side quest or B plot element? Again, whether it's from an RPG, video game, movie, film, television, et cetera. And why is this your favorite side quest or B plot element? 00:19:25.58 Dylan _he_they_ So the trick is, the best side plots are the ones you don't realize are relevant, you know? ah Over and over again, like, take Avatar the Last Airbender, right? They get ahold of the meteor, ah meteoric, or it eventually becomes Saku's sword, right? 00:19:44.36 sidekqpodcast Mmhmm. 00:19:44.63 Dylan _he_they_ That becomes something incredibly important, but is more or less framed as just sort of this thing that happened, you know? 00:19:48.92 sidekqpodcast Mmhmm. 00:19:52.88 Dylan _he_they_ ah I so I have a hard time answering that simply because a lot of side quests that I can think of are just beats that you don't realize matter until later. 00:20:01.76 sidekqpodcast Mmhmm. 00:20:09.77 Dylan _he_they_ You know, um God, the worst part of this is I was given this list ahead of time and I did not think to figure out the answer to this. 00:20:24.22 sidekqpodcast Well it's I mean it's it's it's it's you know it's fine and it's an acceptable answer certainly i mean we've had a you know all sorts of ah answers to the question of like you know most so scenes vignettes from. You know beloved pixar movies to just like anything that the players do that becomes a side mission then becomes like the regular mission of the game so. 00:20:38.77 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:20:45.07 Dylan _he_they_ One 00:20:46.27 sidekqpodcast you know yeah or even to just like collecting and mining ah you know basic minerals and stuff like that in video games like doing the crafting. 00:20:54.75 Dylan _he_they_ thing. 00:20:55.55 sidekqpodcast Stuff you know people people have to turn off the brain so it's like any number of ah things interestingly yeah ah you mentioned. 00:21:02.67 Dylan _he_they_ I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to the, uh, I'm gonna come back to a different game that I ran where one of the first things that happened was a player was bit by a werewolf. 00:21:04.13 sidekqpodcast atla 00:21:12.75 Dylan _he_they_ So the entire first arc of the campaign became get to the temple of the moon while it's still curable. 00:21:12.72 sidekqpodcast oh okay 00:21:20.16 sidekqpodcast Oh. 00:21:20.43 Dylan _he_they_ And it was realistically just a side quest. It did not matter to the plot. 00:21:24.34 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:21:24.79 Dylan _he_they_ I hadn't intended to infect anybody was like, anthropy. I was just not paying enough attention when I was calling a tax and I bit someone and then went, oh yeah, con saves. um But that gave me a framing device to just sort of wander them through a bunch of locations, start seeding elements for the rest of the game and start introducing elements of the plot where 00:21:49.79 sidekqpodcast oh 00:21:51.05 Dylan _he_they_ The game itself, the plot looked like it was get rid of lycanthropy. And then it turns out this was just a side quest that lets me sort of set the board, get you familiar with things. And now when I launch what was supposed to be session two, i you have a better idea what's going on. 00:22:11.86 sidekqpodcast oh Yeah so it invited the players to like be more immersed in the world. 00:22:17.15 Dylan _he_they_ who Especially because, I mean, I think we're all guilty of this running games. you wind up ah You wind up with a lot of plot elements that are sort of things you could plan before you met the party. 00:22:31.06 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:22:32.13 Dylan _he_they_ Which, if you're doing your job well enough, they'll get invested in. But the thing they care the most about is themselves. If you want a party to start off invested, you threaten them. 00:22:45.30 sidekqpodcast Hmm. Right. It's like Colville says like, um, you know, heroes, uh, and like action movies are reactive. They're not like proactive. So like stuff has to happen to them in order for them to like, be like, all right, I'm here to kick butt and chew bubble gum. And I'm out of bubble gum. 00:23:04.36 Dylan _he_they_ Well, even in an RPG to be proactive, you have to have a context to operate in. You have to know why something is happening to say, oh, well, then that's fucked up. You know, just telling the party, hey, there's an invading army. 00:23:16.68 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:23:21.16 Dylan _he_they_ Well, there's a thousand questions I have to ask before we know what the party is going to do about that. 00:23:27.51 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:23:27.63 Dylan _he_they_ You know, they could pick either side depending on what the actual story is. So stuff like this, where you're just forcing them to be be reactive for a minute. 00:23:36.95 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:23:38.11 Dylan _he_they_ Like I said, it's seeds context, which then when you want them to be proactive, they're making informed choices. And you don't have that sort of choice paralysis of, well, we could do anything. 00:23:51.83 sidekqpodcast And yeah, I know you just mentioned Atla and we just got all of Atla on DVD. So ah the idea is like ah my son will watch these disc by disc in the car when we're on long drives and he will be, ah ah you know, the next big avatar, the airbender fan. 00:23:57.93 Dylan _he_they_ Mm 00:24:09.05 sidekqpodcast So quite excited for that. a Proud dad and mom moment. ah in our parenting journey. so ah And then the final question that we have to round out the personal interview section, Dylan, what are you passionate about and why? 00:24:24.27 Dylan _he_they_ -hmm. 00:24:24.65 Dylan _he_they_ Oh, big questions. One of the things that matters to me in storytelling that I feel like I won't say it gets overlooked, but sometimes doesn't get served properly is ah like coherence, right? ah You'll have people talk about like, I've seen a thousand like I i was playing RPGs in like 2008 or so I think is when I started. 00:24:59.83 sidekqpodcast Mm 00:24:59.96 Dylan _he_they_ and that was prime like 4chan was the big thing and like so you would see posts about things like oh you know there's a cave full of ah orcs and then the DM told us that there wasn't any other exit except you know you go in you kill all the orcs you come back out the same door so we started a fire in the mouth of the cave which is going to eat up all the oxygen and we kill them no it doesn't 00:25:24.49 sidekqpodcast -hmm 00:25:24.53 Dylan _he_they_ like it doesn't work that way because conservation of energy doesn't exist if magic exists and if conservation of energy doesn't exist, chemistry doesn't exist oxygen isn't real like there is no basis for science this is a completely different world you have to play by its rules and that's one of the things that i get a little bit fired up about in dnd it's the it's the old pratchett rule of like the world 00:25:38.62 sidekqpodcast Mmm. 00:25:52.68 Dylan _he_they_ doesn't have to make sense in our world, it has to make sense in its world, it has to be narratively consistent, it has to be coherent in that respect. So you can do more or less whatever you want, as long as, you know, the world is self consistent. 00:26:11.55 sidekqpodcast I was going to say I immediately thought of ah the very first Thor movie where he's like, its you know, Thor's explaining to Jane Foster of like, ah, these are the realms. And then, you know, what you call mad, you know, what you call science is magic in in my world and drawing Yggdrasil with all the, all the worlds like like linked together. 00:26:27.76 Dylan _he_they_ Mm hmm. 00:26:30.18 sidekqpodcast So, uh, you wouldn't say that's the same, uh, for how you approach D and D that, oh, magic is just science or science is magic depending on your perspective. 00:26:40.33 Dylan _he_they_ That's the thing is magic would be science to a certain extent, ah but that means that science a lot of the time doesn't work the same. 00:26:50.18 sidekqpodcast o 00:26:50.76 Dylan _he_they_ Like like I said, the the simple matters of fact of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum can't be true in a world where I can cast fireball. Or at least there there are variables that are beyond the scope of physics. And the moment that's true, 00:27:07.26 sidekqpodcast Mmm. 00:27:09.18 Dylan _he_they_ like in something that is so foundational, the rest of physics crumbles, and you can't just like blindly apply Newton's law, right? 00:27:17.78 sidekqpodcast Mmm. 00:27:18.41 Dylan _he_they_ You're working in a new world, stop trying to apply science to it, and play by its rules. 00:27:23.66 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:27:24.19 Dylan _he_they_ And things will get a little bit more fun for you. 00:27:27.98 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:27:28.19 Dylan _he_they_ Like, in the same vein as like, 00:27:34.95 Dylan _he_they_ the world needs to make narrative sense, not scientific sense, it just has to be coherent in terms of like, when I say it to the players, do they just go, oh, when you tell them there is a full on society of giants that lives in the mountains. 00:27:39.52 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:27:52.16 Dylan _he_they_ The players are going to ask questions. 00:27:55.82 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:27:56.86 Dylan _he_they_ Like, what do they Are they farming up there? What are they, what are they farming? How do they like, if they're, if they're eating chickens, how do they not kill all of the chickens accidentally? Like, okay, this is a place where we need to do world building. This is a place where we need to make the world make sense in places where they're like, hold on, but you can't do that. Cause that's not how physics works. Or I shot it with lightning. Why doesn't that spread through the water and electrocute everything? Well, the answer is well, lightning is magic now. Just don't worry about it. 00:28:29.05 Dylan _he_they_ Don't ask the questions that don't matter and don't affect the story. Don't apply the rules of our reality. You just want to tell a story that feels good as it's happening and makes enough sense to get by. 00:28:42.62 sidekqpodcast So with your smarts you know with your physics smarts that you're you're working on and your love of like you know ensuring that you know the good storytelling is happening and it serves a purpose. It almost seems like then your role you know ah certainly would kill every monster in you know and just in general in the in the space. ah it Seems kind of like a safeguard like you're kind of like a safeguarding of fun that you can be like the build by the science guy Maybe you're not as ah showy and stuff like that but you can be like well actually like these are the real principles that would exist in the physical world but we have to remember we're in a world of magic and mystery and stuff like that so it wouldn't work for these specific reasons but 00:29:10.72 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:29:20.03 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:29:23.46 sidekqpodcast So it's educational in the sense that you can like tell someone like hey remember these are the three laws of newton and then you know people can walk away be like oh yeah well those are good those a good reminder and you know we can still have a fun story and you know totally you know use the giant boulder to smash ah you know the intruders that were gonna sneak up on us in the night or whatever. 00:29:45.05 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah, exactly. It's just like I said, the fact we wind up with a lot of people who asked the question like, Oh, you're a physicist, so you must run a lot of sci fi or you're you must make worlds where like magic is like science and everything is. No, it means that it means that I know what the rules would be if reality like if physics applied to the game. But 99% of the time, if you start applying real world physics to the game, the game is going to crack open and nothing works. 00:30:15.61 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:30:18.14 Dylan _he_they_ So you need to know that, like I said, you need to focus on the world working, the world being narratively consistent. 00:30:18.33 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:30:24.69 Dylan _he_they_ Cause if you went through and just tried to make it work and have physics still apply, you wind up with things like the peasant rail gun, right? 00:30:27.75 sidekqpodcast Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. 00:30:35.53 Dylan _he_they_ things that just fundamentally destroy your ability to tell a story or take any coherent action in the world. 00:30:42.22 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. It's all as the as the dispel magic podcast would say it's all the it's all the wish and odd ease fault That's why the world ah can't work in a world of physics because the wish and odd ease out there changing the rules Yep 00:30:56.96 Dylan _he_they_ Just magic, magic means it's different. Stop asking questions. 00:30:59.86 sidekqpodcast Yep All right. Well, we've made it through the interview section and now it's time to head into some NPC creation 00:31:15.92 sidekqpodcast And npc creation is brought to you by you ah the podcast audience and our patrons from patreon So now is the time of the show where we give a loud hoorah to our comfortable patrons and above So to you our queen of the patreon ah goblin katie aka katie downie as well as anson jablinski and good old mom and dad we say cheers and we crack open In this case, it just happens to be a can of Dr. Pepper, but whatever beverage, hopefully you are consuming responsibly as you are listening to this podcast. You are joining us in this Huzzah as well. so um yeah All of these people I mentioned are actually at a level where they get to introduce an element of chance to our random table. If Dylan's going to roll some dice here and make up an NPC, we could have some very interesting 00:32:02.40 sidekqpodcast kind of a character today. So if you want to learn more about what the Patreon has to offer, you should go to the show notes below, go to my podcast website, or just go directly to patreon dot.com forward slash sidekicks and sidequest to learn about our accommodations that are waiting for you. And you know we welcome you ah near and far travelers to the levitating platter. Help us to expand our operations in this demiplane and worlds beyond. beyond OK, so after that song and dance, that spiel, yes, we are here in the NPC section of the show. 00:32:36.47 sidekqpodcast And so typically, this is the point where we get to find out how we're diverging today in the wood. Are we going to be ah bringing a character to life that you have and you like want to walk through the questions and like reveal those answers? Or do you want to just roll some dice and then see what we make and see what we get? 00:32:54.26 Dylan _he_they_ Well, if you're gonna give the whole spiel about the patrons altering chants and everything, like, I have to make it worth their money, we gotta roll the dice. 00:33:03.60 sidekqpodcast There you go. Okay, perfect. Then we will roll some dice and we will generate a truly random NPC today. So the first question we have to ask ourselves is what is going to be the character's name? We will get a d20 and we'll go ahead and give that a roll. 00:33:21.83 Dylan _he_they_ All right. We're looking at a 15, Kurt. 00:33:26.25 sidekqpodcast 15 all right your answer was suggested by youtuber super geek Mike aka Mike Christiansen Daniel So we're working with Daniel Well, we shall see ah Let's see the next question. 00:33:38.45 Dylan _he_they_ Stick into high fantasy for the day. 00:33:46.86 sidekqpodcast What is the ancestry of dear Daniel? ah this we get to roll a d100 and we could swing wildly here and see what we get and 00:33:55.95 Dylan _he_they_ So we got a 34. 00:33:58.03 sidekqpodcast 34. Ooh, okay. So what this choice says is Kurt Harmony, homebrew of choice. So I have a number of like different sub races and ah different ancestries that I've invented myself. And if you would like a very quick tour of some of them, I can kind of like list them out real quick. Or if you want to reroll again, we can do that. But um basically, ah You know how there's hair and guns and i was like well there's obviously other anthropomorphic rodent like creatures that don't exist so i have my own version of mouse folk and rat folk. 00:34:29.19 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:34:32.59 Dylan _he_they_ Sure. 00:34:37.10 sidekqpodcast um As well as ah yeah let's see and we've got who lays which are supposed to be like. there's supposed to be like capybara people ah that we've got bob years which are like beaver people polka which are i believe they're supposed to be like the uh the moles and uh yeah they're supposed to be like uh moles uh sivanari are supposed to be like porcupine people and then orav are like the squirrel And the chipmunk people that so they come in a couple different flavors I've invented I haven't gone out further on it but there's a couple of other like landed land bird human anthropomorphs penguins some penguin folk I have my own versions of dwarves and I have my own version of elves as well. 00:35:09.11 Dylan _he_they_ wait 00:35:15.76 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:35:25.37 sidekqpodcast um 00:35:26.88 Dylan _he_they_ Let's, let's take a look at some Beaver folk. I mean, we've talked about the physicist thing, but as the physicist from Canada, I feel like I got to do the job, you know? 00:35:34.89 sidekqpodcast Okay, all right, so you want to go with a bobbier. 00:35:37.79 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:35:38.67 sidekqpodcast Okay, so very ah quickly here, as I ah work to ah just you know very ah quickly here, pull up my DM notes ah that I wrote down on them, just so I could ah you know educate ah not only my guests, but the the podcast audience at large. um And you can read all about Bob years yourself. ah They are available on the Patreon. So if you just are at the aristocratic label, you can get all the notes and all the skinny that I have on them. do to do to do Here we go. All right, we're starting to get there. This is obviously stuff I'll get to cut out in the edit, but let's see here. um Let's see, ability score increase, ah decks by two or one, or if you use Tasha's Rules, typically around 60 years of of life, any alignment, typically medium-sized, base walking speed 30 feet, 00:36:33.19 sidekqpodcast I gave them darkvision, sociable and friendly if a proficiency in the persuasion skill. Languages, common, elvish, and maw wear, trait, rodensia semi-aquatic, bobbiers have a swimming speed of 30 feet. In addition, a bobbier can hold their breath underwater for 15 minutes if they are doing non strenuous activity. 00:36:49.46 Dylan _he_they_ Check's out. 00:36:55.49 sidekqpodcast If a bobbier is fighting or interacting with objects underwater, the time is reduced to half of the total time left minimum of 30 seconds before suffocation rules apply. um Tail attack. Not only is a bobbier's tail good for swimming, it's also useful for attack and defense. For purposes of unarmed strikes, a bobbier's tail is considered an unarmed weapon, and bobbiers have proficiency with using their tails. When you successfully hit with a tail attack, roll 1d4 plus strength bludgeoning damage. And then we have the wood carving. Much like how dwarves who pursue the trade are considered experts on stonework, Bobbears are natural arborists if they invest the time. Whenever you make an intelligence history check related to the origin of woodwork, you are considered proficient in the history scale and add double your proficiency bonus to the check and instead of your normal proficiency bonus. In addition, you have the capability to chew through solid objects and structures that are made of wood. You can chew through one foot of these materials in 20 minutes if you are doing nothing else. 00:37:51.98 sidekqpodcast Bob Ears. 00:37:54.23 Dylan _he_they_ There we go. 00:37:55.42 sidekqpodcast All right, very cool. All right. And now, as I very quickly you switch back to all my notes for how I run an episode and couldn't possibly forget the questions, ah you'd be surprised at how often I skip over a question if I'm not looking at my list. um Okay, next question. What is the job or role in society for Daniel the Bob Eare? This you just get to roll a regular D10. 00:38:18.86 Dylan _he_they_ All right. That is a two. 00:38:26.97 sidekqpodcast A 2! Okay, well your answer was provided by a Patreon supporter, my dad, Wayne, Crenwellgi, Master Baker. So Daniel is a Master Baker Bobbier. 00:38:37.88 Dylan _he_they_ Mm hmm. 00:38:39.89 sidekqpodcast Maybe the Great British Bake Off or something like that, who knows? um And then let's see, now we get to roll for an age range of the characters. This is just a D8 roll to give us like a rough idea on the age range of our character. 00:38:57.10 Dylan _he_they_ We got a seven. 00:38:59.08 sidekqpodcast Seven would put ah Daniel at ancient, so he is an ancient master baker. 00:39:03.75 Dylan _he_they_ I mean he's a master baker. He's been at it for a minute or two. 00:39:10.60 sidekqpodcast And then with all of these at least starting key details in mind, what do you think Daniel, a beaver folk, who is ancient or who could is considered ancient, ah whether that literally means ancient or just ancient in his his people's terms, and then ah you know is a ah um you know he's the master baker. ah What sorts of physical appearance details are coming to your mind when you're envisioning Daniel in your your mind's eye? 00:39:43.31 Dylan _he_they_ I think at this point, if you're good if you've been at it for a while, I think all up his forearms, Daniel has basically burnt off patches of fur. The dangers of reaching into an oven, you know? 00:39:54.88 sidekqpodcast Okay. Hmm. 00:39:58.69 Dylan _he_they_ i he's We're gonna say ah we're looking at Skinny Chef, one of those people who like wakes up early, gets to work, like is at it basically all day, might eat by the end of the day. 00:40:15.19 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:40:16.08 Dylan _he_they_ Uh, so fairly small for what you would expect, uh, a little bit beaten up and it's basically just constantly wearing like coveralls at this point. You only burn yourself so many times before you start learning not to have exposed fur. 00:40:35.24 sidekqpodcast Mmm, right and then I was gonna say because he is a a beaver folk, you know in his his teeth He's able to like, you know, you know chew through wood fairly quickly Is he like I'm just wondering if he's like a sommelier for like different kinds of woods that he uses when he's baking He's like, oh, I want this to have like a very oaky smell. 00:40:46.08 Dylan _he_they_ Thank you. 00:40:56.76 sidekqpodcast So he's like Choose like a bunch of oak logs down so we can set them down in the oven in the fire so like all the smoke kind of like rolls over the whatever he's making that day. 00:41:12.24 Dylan _he_they_ We're going to say yes, despite the fact that my immediate inclination is to say, if you've got a bunch of smoke going on in your oven, then you're probably burning too hot and you're going to fuck up your bake. 00:41:24.27 sidekqpodcast We'll see maybe that's a little bit of my Texas bias showing with barbecuing and I'm thinking like when he's not baking sweets he's making barbecue or something. 00:41:26.44 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. Well, yeah, barbecue is a whole different beast. 00:41:33.90 Dylan _he_they_ No, if you want to do like smoke infused into a custard, you can do some very, very interesting things with that. But I'm imagining like if you're baking bread or baking a cake, those things can be finicky and delicate. and The moment you have smoke going, you're gonna fuck the whole game. 00:41:48.62 sidekqpodcast Mmm, okay. All right, so maybe not doing that that's maybe like on the weekends when he's like, I don't have any bread to bake I'm just gonna do like a brisket and then he's like loading that thing down with like the best ah woods 00:41:53.54 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:42:01.29 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:42:05.34 sidekqpodcast All right okay so he's got the coveralls he's got ah you know the patches of missing fur and he's kind of like on the more slender side. um Is he just like a single guy or I mean I know he's ancient but is he like a single guy does he have a family or like what kind of what's his situation like in that regard. I wonder if that informs like is how he appears and stuff. 00:42:28.36 Dylan _he_they_ I think that's why I think he's one of those people who has a good handful of close friends, right? Like, loves entertaining. but has spent so much time on the craft that it's like that is the whole deal. is I'm going to make beautiful food. I'm going to know enough people to share it with and that's it. I don't need anything past that as long as at the end of the day I can feed some friends, have a nice day and then I'll go home and go to my own bed. 00:42:57.04 sidekqpodcast In. Yes go to his nice burrow ah right by the river and ah you know that slap his tail down and make sure everything is structurally sound. 00:43:08.84 Dylan _he_they_ Exactly. Exactly. 00:43:12.46 sidekqpodcast All right, and then let's see here the way a way we help to kind of like narrow in ah with our NPCs. If you had to describe our Daniel with three adjectives, what three adjectives would you use? 00:43:25.47 Dylan _he_they_ It's gonna be 00:43:31.06 Dylan _he_they_ Slow, thoughtful, and certain. 00:43:35.24 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:43:35.73 Dylan _he_they_ Like, he's making very discreet choices, taking the time to go through them, and when he's doing things, there's a certain degree of just, this is what it's gonna be. 00:43:46.83 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:43:46.96 Dylan _he_they_ Like, there is no questioning, Daniel. These are just statements of fact by the time they come out of his mouth. 00:43:56.83 sidekqpodcast And it sounds like, you know, he's running his own, like, is he running like his own pastry shop? Is he like in a, like a fancy aristocratic sort of like a restaurant situation they see in the kitchens of the king and queen or like, you know, if, I mean, maybe you leave it open to a DM to figure out where they would put them, but like, where's your first instinct of like, if you're going to stick Daniel in a game of yours, where would you put him? 00:44:22.65 Dylan _he_they_ my favorite thing is always things like things like the movie chef right you know you can learn all of these very very high class skills but there's a certain point where at the end of the day If you want to enjoy cooking, you have to be making food that you like. 00:44:39.49 sidekqpodcast Mhm. 00:44:39.74 Dylan _he_they_ I imagine that a lot of the skill, the way you became the master baker was taking those sort of high class, high effort, high paying jobs. And at this point, it's one of those like niche, small town, like small bakery that is just fucking immaculate. Everything that comes out of here is perfect. It doesn't make any sense that in this little sort of podunk village, there is this bakery churning out, you know, perfect, like mille foy, like high end patisserie stuff. 00:45:03.47 sidekqpodcast Mhm. Mhm. 00:45:13.46 Dylan _he_they_ But it's fucking there. And if you notice it, you stop. 00:45:17.78 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm Yeah, so like all the all the adventurers know like oh no No, you got a stop in this town like you may you may sleep on it or whatever like that But I I will you know I was hungover and I went and had one of those eclairs and it was the best eclair I ever had in my life 00:45:23.89 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:45:35.39 Dylan _he_they_ Exactly, yeah. 00:45:37.87 sidekqpodcast All right, very cool. And as now we get to go back ah to do some more dice rolling, which is everyone's favorite thing to do. We like our NPCs to have something valuable on their person. So whether that's going to be a physical item, a piece of lore, a secret, or an ideal or concept that they might ascribe to. So this is where we get to do a combination role where we do a D four first for the category, and then a D six for the particular thing. 00:46:06.66 Dylan _he_they_ We got the far ends of things. We got a one and a six. 00:46:09.81 sidekqpodcast One and a six. Interestingly enough, ah yeah this is a valuable item submitted by our previous guest, Max Chikino. Daniel has an astrolabe. And that's valuable to him. Why is that valuable to him? 00:46:28.20 Dylan _he_they_ I think one of the people who like the king and queen, like there was a point where he was in the royal house baking. Everybody appreciates the work, but there's a certain point where the only people you can talk to are craftsmen. 00:46:44.95 sidekqpodcast Mmhmm. 00:46:46.74 Dylan _he_they_ And it was the court mage, the astronomer who was the one who was like coming down and recognizing like when you hit a certain point, you're just like, oh God, there's so much technique invested in this. There is precision, there is some beauty to it. And they would talk endlessly about, you know, how do you make these choices? How do you sort of experiment and play with the ingredients you have to hand to make new spells, new foods, just new ideas? How do you conceptualize something that doesn't exist and have it come out to be the perfect version of a thing that has never been before? 00:47:26.98 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:47:28.10 Dylan _he_they_ And this was one of those sort of parting gifts of, you know, you're going to move somewhere, you're going to be out in the middle of nowhere, you won't be able to stop by, you know, the tower, you won't be able to use the telescope and see the stars, take the stars with you. 00:47:39.76 sidekqpodcast Ooh! 00:47:44.71 Dylan _he_they_ And so this was just a simple gift from a friend as far as David's concerned, but anything you get from a court magician. should probably be scrutinized further than a baker is capable of pulling off. 00:48:00.77 sidekqpodcast interesting okay so potentially seeding it for like some kind of like you know higher level magic item uh that's in his possession without him necessarily knowing or it's some sort of macguffin uh that could become important to the plot of the adventure or something like that if you have daniel in your in your world and he just he's a master baker but he just happens to have an astrolabe in his ah possession 00:48:27.88 Dylan _he_they_ Do something simple. Like, you know, he got home one day, he looked at it and just laughs to himself. He thinks of it as a gag gift because the stars are wrong. 00:48:36.32 sidekqpodcast Oh. Mm-hmm. 00:48:39.19 Dylan _he_they_ Like that's not what this guy looked like. 00:48:42.66 Dylan _he_they_ It's for some other playing the players need to get to or whatever. 00:48:45.56 sidekqpodcast Ooh. 00:48:45.84 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:48:47.55 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:48:48.55 Dylan _he_they_ Or it's how the stars were at an important date. 00:48:48.62 sidekqpodcast That's pretty cool. 00:48:51.23 Dylan _he_they_ Who knows? You're a DM. Come up with it yourself. I can't 00:48:55.02 sidekqpodcast Right ah well what was it ah ah speaking of atlanta you know now that it's in the it's in my mind you know what was it the library they had to go to tongue. 00:48:59.07 Dylan _he_they_ Mm hmm. 00:49:03.60 sidekqpodcast Tom cheese library so they can figure out like what was the skylight so we can figure out what's the thing that's coming oh so students comment like we have to know like when it's coming ah based on the last time that it was. 00:49:05.31 Dylan _he_they_ Mm hmm. 00:49:12.54 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. Mm hmm. Exactly. You can pull all kinds of stuff with that kind of thing. 00:49:21.32 sidekqpodcast There we go. OK. And then, of course, we like all of our NPCs to be able to offer side quests. So at this point, ah there's one last dice to roll, which is the D12. Or if you feel inspired and you can think of a, you know, you care about ah logical consistency with the story, um maybe you can use the dice roll as the launching off point. um But yeah, let's figure out what's a side quest that Daniel would be willing to offer a bunch of heroes or player characters to go and do. 00:49:52.58 Dylan _he_they_ For a d12 we got a 7. 00:49:55.84 sidekqpodcast Seven. Okay, your answer was provided by previous guest, scarlet64 of the Instagrams and TikToks. It says here, retrieve a secret lost self-portrait painting from a famous artist to complete an otherwise formalized collection. And it's the painter's soul repository. Is that something logical that ah Daniel would be able to offer up? Do you want to reroll or is that like a springing off point? 00:50:26.02 Dylan _he_they_ We're gonna take a second. We're gonna see if we can make this work. 00:50:33.79 Dylan _he_they_ I feel like this is something that on request, you would have to know what it is. That is because you can always do stuff like I demand payment, I expect to get this, you know, you could you could do that sort of thing. 00:50:45.52 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm 00:50:46.89 Dylan _he_they_ But I don't think that quite lines up. 00:50:51.17 Dylan _he_they_ And so you wouldn't have them go get this painting just because you're owed payment for something and you happened to accidentally get effectively a phylactery. Now I think we're gonna reroll this one. 00:51:04.84 sidekqpodcast Okay, go for it. 00:51:05.41 Dylan _he_they_ there is dr There's some walking around you could do to make it work, but how how's a three turn out? 00:51:05.52 sidekqpodcast Yeah, another d12 Mm-hmm Ooh, perfect! Okay, this answer is provided by my previous guest and my cousin Seth Crenwoege. Retrieve the three orbs of Harglax. So what are the three orbs of Harglax? 00:51:30.80 Dylan _he_they_ I don't know that he knows. I think it might just be one of those situations of adventurers are always showing up and asking for things. They're always looking for quests. And there comes a certain point where he's just spouting off things that this wizard told him about. 00:51:51.33 sidekqpodcast Oh, yeah. 00:51:53.71 Dylan _he_they_ And yeah there's a certain degree of just, I don't know, go get these for me. what and he's got the astrolabe there so maybe he's even like putting on a show this is like one of the few cracks to that serious facade of just the adventurers hounding people for quests and looking for important things to do and it's just go bring me the mystical well orbs like what are you talking about you're a baker why do you know about these pull out the astrolabe and go i am much more than i seem to be they leave and there's just a moment of 00:52:30.78 Dylan _he_they_ Here's hoping they don't come back. 00:52:33.12 sidekqpodcast Mm. So it's his way of like, uh, you know, sometimes you go through these small towns and like, you know, Oh, the city folk come in and it's like the way of the, of the, the, you know, the country folk, uh, you know, like messing with the city folk of like, Oh, you know, watch out for, uh, you know, uh, Jackalopes, you know, they're going to get you at your campsite if you don't string up some beans in the trees or whatever. 00:52:35.24 Dylan _he_they_ Just get rid of them. 00:52:46.59 Dylan _he_they_ Yep. 00:52:56.85 sidekqpodcast And they're like, i we Oh, I don't know any better. You, you live here in the country. So you must know this more than me. 00:53:04.39 Dylan _he_they_ going to do that you string up something more valuable as food, and then you just have like kids in the middle and I come steal it. 00:53:10.84 sidekqpodcast Right, right, exactly. and then Then they believe it, like, ugh. 00:53:12.26 Dylan _he_they_ you are it's Like meet up in the middle, strum up around camp, kids stealing a bunch of venison. 00:53:19.60 sidekqpodcast Mmm. 00:53:20.20 Dylan _he_they_ They're like, Oh, no, the Jackalope said 00:53:22.45 sidekqpodcast Yeah. Yeah okay okay so he doesn't necessarily, Daniel doesn't necessarily know what these three orbs of Harglax are. It's just something he remembers from his thoughtful deep provoking conversations with this court wizard. um So it's up to the DM to figure out like, oh are these like an impossible ancient artifact? Are they just sort of like a knockoff goof item? Is it like how, ah you know, learned arcane people might throw around like some sort of idiom or parlance or something like that? 00:53:54.37 sidekqpodcast Like, oh, you know, it's no three whole orbs of harglacks, but you know, you take what you can get. 00:53:55.11 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:54:00.13 sidekqpodcast And he just kind of like repeats that parrots it without understanding what it really is. 00:54:07.01 Dylan _he_they_ i I think that's exactly right. It's just, he's just parroting it. And I think to to cut forward to your next question, the reward for succeeding is just the next phase of that quest line, which is, oh, are those, Okay, you're gonna need to go talk to so-and-so. You're gonna need to to hit the royal court. Their mage is gonna know what those are. 00:54:28.72 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:54:29.63 Dylan _he_they_ From what he was saying, they're important, but I couldn't. I wasn't sure they were a thing. 00:54:35.16 sidekqpodcast Oh yeah. 00:54:35.32 Dylan _he_they_ I just wanted you i just wanted you to leave. 00:54:39.34 sidekqpodcast Okay so this is the perfect way to introduce like okay i have this great sort of like magic item mcguffin like you know big. Interdimensional plot that i want to introduce into my game okay we'll have this baker you know throw them on a walk on a red herring sort of chase but then they actually succeed. And now that kicks off the timer for like okay well now that these orbs of hard glass are in your possession like you need to do something with them or else like Thanos is going to come popping in and wanting to conquer the realm or whatever. 00:55:06.61 Dylan _he_they_ yeah honestly i think that might work out better for like find the you send them to find them they find the first one you get to introduce your big bad as somebody who like was trying to get to it and you got in the way and whatever and when you're coming back to go like okay we found the first one but we need to figure out where you find that's where you get like 00:55:26.43 sidekqpodcast oh 00:55:34.89 Dylan _he_they_ I don't know. I just wanted you to leave. So they're not important, but there was this guy. There was a guy you were. Okay. Okay. What? No, no, no. If there's a, if there is a devil after you, you definitely need to leave. You can't be here. I i don't know what it is. 00:55:49.68 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:55:51.40 Dylan _he_they_ I was just trying to get, you need to go talk to him. If this is important enough for devils to be after it, you need to go figure out what it is. And that ain't my job. I do the pastries. 00:56:02.02 sidekqpodcast Mm. Okay. And if the players try and push back as far as like some kind of reward, just he, Daniel's not going to be able to give them anything. He's just going to be more insistent on like, you need to leave. I can't, there's no, I mean, like here, take some bagels for the road. 00:56:17.15 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 00:56:17.68 sidekqpodcast Like that's it. 00:56:18.42 Dylan _he_they_ the This is a person whose life goals was this exactly what he's doing. Like he doesn't have much outside of what he needs to keep the shop running. He might be able to throw some gold at him, but frankly, the more, I think it might even be sending them with the Astrolabe just as a fundamental like, no, no, no, you can't, you can't flash the the orb to people. 00:56:38.89 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:56:44.08 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:56:44.43 Dylan _he_they_ Like if it's that important, if people are after it, you can't flash that to them. So you need to get to court and you need to show them this and tell them you're there for the mage. 00:56:50.99 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:56:53.20 Dylan _he_they_ That'll let you get, they'll bring them to you. 00:56:55.51 sidekqpodcast Okay. Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. Like just give them the lab. And then even if the players examine it, they can be like, Oh, these are the constellations of what they look like from limbo, the first circle of hell or something like that. 00:57:07.64 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah, yeah you can there's plenty of ways to make that one fly. And then, of course, that becomes the thing that can come back later. 00:57:12.49 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:57:15.44 Dylan _he_they_ You can start feeding the quests through the mage to find the other two orbs. 00:57:17.70 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:57:20.46 Dylan _he_they_ Whatever you need to. 00:57:22.04 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 00:57:22.14 Dylan _he_they_ Or send them to destroy the first one because the set needs to be completed and you can just do either the villain has one and you need to either you need to stop them from getting all three or maybe has two and now you're being hunted. 00:57:33.60 sidekqpodcast Okay. So then this seems like it feeds into the other flip side of the question like what's gonna be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventures that. 00:57:39.38 Dylan _he_they_ Good. 00:57:44.21 sidekqpodcast You know you know he's he's meaning it as a joke but really there is something taking in the background so if the players fail. that's kind of like the condition of like oh this actually is a thing and we need we need to go back to Daniel and figure out what to do next he kicks him over to the wizard or you know this is like um I don't know what what could be the the consequence for failure or refusing mm 00:58:07.88 Dylan _he_they_ I think this is one of the times where it loops back onto to almost the reward, uh, in that if they fail and obviously don't die in the process, it's going to be, they're going to somehow lose a boss fight and someone else is getting away with the orb and they're going to go back to report to, uh, report to Daniel who gives them the same sort of spiel spiel of one that was real to somebody stole it. 00:58:12.85 sidekqpodcast -hmm mm-hmm 00:58:29.42 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:58:37.90 Dylan _he_they_ Okay, no, I don't know why you would steal that. But if you want that question answered, and it sort of feeds back into the same path. 00:58:42.18 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:58:44.95 Dylan _he_they_ ah Refusing the call, frankly, you get a little bit further down the line, you get the person that would have been the boss there, showing up already having the orb and announcing, you know, you think you have me beaten, but using the orb of harglacks, I will finally 00:58:49.32 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:59:03.83 Dylan _he_they_ and have, you know, the one person who was paying attention 15 sessions ago, go the orb. 00:59:06.78 sidekqpodcast Oh doing the Ronin Ronin the destroyer or 00:59:09.75 Dylan _he_they_ Isn't that what the fucking beaver said? 00:59:15.64 sidekqpodcast Right right so doing kind of like the ah you know ah no sorry ronin the accuser was his name that the kree guy who didn't believe that the civil war was over so he's like i've got the power stone and i was supposed to turn it over to Thanos but i'm gonna see to destroying all of zandar whatever and then then there are guardians of the galaxy if you will have to then be like. 00:59:20.38 Dylan _he_they_ isn't 00:59:35.78 sidekqpodcast Oh like actually this is important we do need to like intervene and stop this if we don't want everything to be destroyed. 00:59:41.57 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah, exactly. it It almost refusing the call, again, just sort of puts them back on the track where you fight the villain, you kill them and you take the orb and you're like, should we go back to that beaver? 00:59:58.22 sidekqpodcast Yeah. And then just be like, go talk to my wizard friend. Like I just bake. 01:00:02.04 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 01:00:02.77 sidekqpodcast That's what I do. That's funny. That very anticlimactic where they're expecting him to reveal like I'm some ancient mystical long hidden arch wizard. It's like, no, I'm just friends with the wizard. I i don't actually do anything other than bake. 01:00:17.05 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. And depending on, you know, the relationship, the players develop that can very easily be like, okay, look, I'll come with you. I'll make the introduction. 01:00:25.40 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 01:00:25.45 Dylan _he_they_ That can be sort of your major reward is just sort of grease in the wheels, making sure this sort of thing happens. Ranging out to like, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. I am not getting involved in that. I was just saying it cause there's a thing he kept saying, get out of my shop. 01:00:41.69 sidekqpodcast Right. 01:00:43.18 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 01:00:43.83 sidekqpodcast right Okay. And then do you feel like this pretty well rounds out Daniel as a character or are you interested in exploring some more optional questions? 01:00:54.01 Dylan _he_they_ I'm looking over the optional questions and I think frankly like these are great for characters that are more like directly tied into the plot. I think Daniel is someone who is happy living his life. Like has useful information is going to send you on the track to get to some adventure. But Daniel doesn't want to fucking an adventure. Daniel is happy now. Please stop asking him for adventures. 01:01:18.24 sidekqpodcast Hmm All right, well now that we've made it through NPC creation it's time to head into a random encounter 01:01:34.78 sidekqpodcast and then insert here for final add thing that I have to do in the thingamabob. And all right, we are now here in the random encounter section. So much like on your podcast, we do like a role play vignettes. Hopefully no one's having to roll dice or actually do combat, but it's just kind of like lighthearted a slice of life just to get an idea and a voice ah to our NPC that we've made today. So I think you're going to do a fantastic job as ah Daniel, our master baker, Bob here. But the question becomes, 01:02:05.99 sidekqpodcast Who am I going to be in this scene? 01:02:07.35 Dylan _he_they_ Thank 01:02:08.15 sidekqpodcast Am I going to be one of my adventuring podcast characters ah that comes into the shop and then ah you're annoyed so you give me the quest? 01:02:14.75 Dylan _he_they_ you. 01:02:17.18 sidekqpodcast Am I one of the other townsfolk or am I even possibly this archmage court wizard ah that's giving you the final goodbye and the astrolabe and all this stuff? I don't know. What kind of scene are you interested in? 01:02:30.96 Dylan _he_they_ I think let's just do the, uh, the adventurer. 01:02:33.65 sidekqpodcast Okay, ah the adventure. Okay, so now I get to roll out the carpet for the long list of names of possible heroes that we can meet. 01:02:35.88 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 01:02:42.35 sidekqpodcast So we've got ah Duncan, who's the recklessly brave adventurer for hire. Happy go lucky, no feet too small, no task too daring sort of a guy. ah We have Sonya, who is the warrior woman who started off as a barbarian and then multiclassed into a paladin, who serves to redeem the undead. ah Then we have Korak, who is the lawful evil arcane trickster roguish dwarf. We have Chrisley, who is the herbalist, botanist, wood elf druid, who then multiclassed into a cleric who serves living memory. 01:03:17.62 sidekqpodcast We have Orion, who is the Astral Elf Illusionist Wizard. We have ah Agape, who is the lilac-colored Tiefling Sorelock, so started off as a wild magic fae wild sorcerer, and then made a pact with one of the archfae NPCs made on the podcast. 01:03:37.09 Dylan _he_they_ Mm hmm. 01:03:38.74 sidekqpodcast And then most recently, we have Life Spell the Necromancer Forest gnome, old guy, and he has his faithful skeleton manservant Octavius. And so those are the characters that so far have been made for the podcast, so if any of those seem like they would be a good foil ah for Daniel today, we could ah introduce them in the scene, or if none of them sound interesting, I'm perfectly down to introduce a new one. 01:04:02.40 Dylan _he_they_ Let's take this. Let's take this or lock forward. 01:04:07.13 sidekqpodcast The Sorlock Agape. Okay, ah so would you like to go ahead, since you have great DM muscles, would you like to go ahead and set the scene? 01:04:11.68 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. but 01:04:16.08 Dylan _he_they_ I think on Daniel's end, ah we are getting into the finicky parts of things. Like the bakery is like, we're talking early morning, wrapping up the last couple of things. There's a bunch of stuff that's like half decorated, but got interrupted because a bake time is just about up. Pulling like ah have like blind baked pastry shells out of the oven, trying to make sure that like, The 10 different plates he's got spinning are all fine. 01:04:49.68 Dylan _he_they_ i The front of the shop is empty, but unlocked simply because it's a small town. People who are coming in and waiting are like, are the locals, right? There's nothing to worry about. 01:05:01.68 sidekqpodcast Mmm. 01:05:04.12 Dylan _he_they_ so as you're sort of entering through the front of the shop you can smell things like the butter is just wafting through the entire place it reeks of richness uh there are a handful of things like you know simple fruit tarts things where like it was just a matter of putting some custard and some berries into a shell and just leaving it on the shelf 01:05:10.94 sidekqpodcast Mmm. 01:05:29.03 Dylan _he_they_ Well, in the back, there is the constant sound of motion, but no banging, no clanging. All of the motions are smooth and measured if a hair frantic. 01:05:42.48 sidekqpodcast And so yeah, coming off her last adventure, Agape we last saw with Pyrex, the little heron gone kid, and she had finished this mission with getting him a sunstone, ah some ancient item that he had only heard about in stories and she ended up bringing it back to his chicken coop. And so now she has like this whole Easter basket that's like full of All of these interesting like wildly different colored ah eggs in various sizes as well like especially the gigantic one that came out of a regular chicken but it's easily like the size of an ostrich egg ah that's like the centerpiece of this basket. 01:06:23.48 sidekqpodcast And we'll say it's sometime after that. And so she's ah you know enjoying this basket. 01:06:27.43 Dylan _he_they_ Thank you. 01:06:29.17 sidekqpodcast And she comes into the shop because she's just hungry for a pastry. And she's you know the door ah bell chimes, ding-a-ling-a-ling. And she comes in. And she's so she's like looking around and smelling and just like, oh, wow, this all smells great. And, oh, Pyrax was so nice to give me this this basket with all these eggs. and Hello? is there Is there someone here? Hello? 01:06:52.86 Dylan _he_they_ it give it hold on a second hold on hold on and there's the bustling forward of just like holding a pan that like you can see the steam rising off of a handful of like very recently put together like muffins 01:06:53.02 sidekqpodcast Hello? 01:07:08.10 Dylan _he_they_ And it's in a bare hand, the sort of a best asbestos hands you get from being a chef where like, this has been left to cool exactly long enough to not damage tissue, but not long enough to not hurt. 01:07:20.29 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 01:07:20.49 Dylan _he_they_ ah fra Just coming forward, sliding in and just, yeah, you're gonna have to shout in order. I just got some things to wrap up in the back. ah Strictly speaking, I don't think we opened for another, God, I got at least 10 minutes to go here. ah But it's all good. You're good. Just just what do you need is just running back. 01:07:38.60 sidekqpodcast oh 01:07:40.17 Dylan _he_they_ like And honestly, I think just comes back out with like a half decorated cake on a cake stand and just starts like piping decorations to the side as they're talking, just to make the, just greasing the wheels, allowing the conversation to happen. 01:07:53.57 sidekqpodcast sure yeah i think she's just like i think she's just kind of like overwhelmed uh by seeing all the the masterpiece stuff going on so she's got a little bit of like the inherent uh fey wild magic in her blood but then she's also got like the the balance or enhancement depending on your perspective uh from the from the arch fey warlock pack 01:08:14.00 Dylan _he_they_ You can. 01:08:17.85 sidekqpodcast So she's like equally delighted but seen all the perfection in the shop she just there's like a tickling in the back of her head that's like. Wouldn't it be funny if just like something exploded randomly like she has that thought but she's trying to behave yourself and so you know he. Daniel can see this in her body language and she's like looking around trying to figure out what she wants to get but she's like, you know, she's balling up her her ah her hand and her ah her free hand in ah into a fist and she's like, like, she's really fighting temptation, but then she's holding this basket. 01:08:53.49 sidekqpodcast And so then maybe she takes her free hand and she starts at least absent mindedly sort of petting the egg for no reason other than to distract herself from, you know, giving into more base design, chaotic desires or whatever. 01:09:00.73 Dylan _he_they_ thing 01:09:06.75 Dylan _he_they_ i I understand that there's a lot of choices to make. ah I do have to advise you that it's a hard rule, no spell casting in the shop. This is a place of mundane skill and work. I don't know what you got going on there. I don't know what wizard shit you do. We don't cast spells in here. 01:09:26.27 sidekqpodcast Now she pouts. Now she feels like a little girl who's been scolded. And she's just kind of like, oh, well, ah hopefully you don't mind these. And she like holds up her basket to show off the eggs. Does ah Daniel react seeing eggs of this color and variety of sizes? 01:09:45.60 Dylan _he_they_ I think there's like an immediate like, you see the pause, you see the calculation of just, what could I do with that? The trouble being that, frankly, when you get to eggs, I think that's something where I don't know that it would really fascinate a baker. Like shy of like, you could use duck eggs, they're a little bit richer. But like, the major thing is ratios in a lot of baking. So seeing a massive egg, I think the first thought is, I don't know what's in that. That's it. 01:10:19.02 sidekqpodcast Oh, a chicken! A chicken like this! 01:10:23.34 Dylan _he_they_ Just long pause of just staring at her like waiting for the smile to crack. No, it Bigger than a ticket. 01:10:31.10 sidekqpodcast yeah Oh, it did. It did. And then she goes off in the whole tail. 01:10:34.60 Dylan _he_they_ so 01:10:34.87 sidekqpodcast She tells you exactly of getting the sunstone and bringing it over to Pyrex's farm and that, you know, they raised chickens and, and then she's like, yeah. And then, you know, I came back a couple of days later and he, that little sweet little boy presented me with this whole basket of eggs. And yeah, true story. 01:10:50.89 Dylan _he_they_ The cake is now fully decorated as this talk has gone on. There was a point maybe like four sentences deep where he realized that this was going to be a novel length narrative and just tuned out. Like fully irrelevant to me. I'm glad that happened to you. Do you know what you want though? 01:11:15.06 sidekqpodcast And she's sitting there twiddling her fingers and on her chin and then you know she's like well I mean that looks good that looks good and she and then you know just thinking of and she's like well that Pyrex is a sweet boy are you sure like are you good for eggs because I mean like they're just they're just down the road on the coast and like a sweet little a sweet little place I'm sure maybe you've even passed by their farm a time or two like 01:11:37.53 Dylan _he_they_ i got I got some folks in town. I make sure they have bread. They make sure I have eggs. It's a lovely little feedback loop. The eggs make more bread. ah We keep everything going. The town is lovely. We kind of we try to keep everybody moving along. I don't need your weird big chicken egg. 01:12:00.63 sidekqpodcast All right, and then she gets sad and she finally makes her selection she points to like six things and then she's like All right, I guess I'll have that She looks sad Yeah 01:12:09.52 Dylan _he_they_ And then he like wraps them up and goes, look, you seem like the type who needs adventures to get by. And I appreciate that. I respect that. You're the sort of person who gets things done for people who need, need things doing. I don't, it's okay to sit down for a minute. You got your big eggs, enjoy them, I guess. 01:12:37.12 Dylan _he_they_ you don't need to cause trouble. Okay, okay, you're gonna eat these you're gonna enjoy I need you to take a minute just look at the sun. It's a beautiful day. The water is going to be nice. Have a nice time. And just relax. Nobody needs magic sunstones or fucking big chickens. So good. 01:12:59.37 sidekqpodcast I'm wondering if ah you know you know while you're talking to her and saying that she's like turning her head as if she's hearing like some sort of like arch fae whispering in her ear and it's not her doing but I think because of the interaction and how it's gone and I think just because of the arch phase We know she likes to have fun like she's she's doing her whole thing with fighting the nearby town that's, you know, getting that encroaching mage accuracy and industrialization thing so this is one of the smaller sleepier towns that hasn't succumbed to that quite yet but she still likes to have fun and stuff like that so I think just for the heck of it. 01:13:28.39 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 01:13:30.81 Dylan _he_they_ Of course. 01:13:37.67 sidekqpodcast Arch face somehow you know not her doing but the arch fae causes something to clatter or scatter or or you know like explode out maybe that cake use working on the cake black cake suddenly is now like. Shot up to the ceiling and just splattered out. And then Agape starts laughing. 01:13:55.47 Dylan _he_they_ just 01:13:57.77 sidekqpodcast And then she like covers her mouth. She's like, oh, I'm so sorry. I i swear I didn't do that. 01:14:01.58 Dylan _he_they_ Okay. 01:14:03.55 sidekqpodcast I'm sorry. I think that's that that Prosperina. That was Prosperina. Oh, shoot. I'm not supposed to say her name. ah I didn't do that. 01:14:14.35 Dylan _he_they_ I would like it very much if you were to pick up your order and just please leave my shop. 01:14:19.71 sidekqpodcast Are you sure there's not something I can do for you to make it up to you? I really could. 01:14:23.85 Dylan _he_they_ I am i'm very confident that I have things under control. I worked very, very hard to make sure that I didn't need adventurers in my life. Trust me, the court, I saw enough adventurers come through. You bring more trouble than you worth. You blow up cakes despite paying for pastries that are worth less than a single cake. 01:14:46.06 sidekqpodcast She holds up an egg as like a form of like, I can barter this for money to bake up for the cake. 01:14:46.16 Dylan _he_they_ I appreciate you. 01:14:54.55 Dylan _he_they_ I'll tell you what, rather than bartering your beautiful egg, because it's a lovely egg and I'm sure you're enjoying having it very much, what if you kept your egg and instead left my shop so that you could not damage more of my things? 01:15:08.69 sidekqpodcast You're really sure there's not something I can do for you, some sort of like fabled thing that would make you an even better baker. 01:15:17.46 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah, i I need magical artifacts to make me a better baker. I have a whole rule about spell casting in the shop, but I would like you to bring me a magical, powerful artifact. Find me the three orbs of hard black so that I can become the ultimate baker. That's really the thing that I need out of you right now. 01:15:34.72 sidekqpodcast And she rolls an insight check and critically fails, so she does not capture ah or catch the sarcasm. And she like she's like, oh, this is the thing. And then she hears like her archfey kind of like whispering in her ear somehow. She's like, yeah, this is the thing I need to go do. like Obviously, my organization could really use this ah maybe to help combat all these pesky mages in the nearby town that are like trying to pollute everything and ruin things. They're coming out this way, aren't they? 01:16:04.84 Dylan _he_they_ nearly every like couple of syllables one of the eyebrows just gets slightly higher of just yeah that would be very helpful if you would go do that as quickly as it could so that we could stop the the mages or whatever 01:16:22.95 sidekqpodcast Okay, yeah, she so she gets fired up. So she's like ready to go on this mission because she sees it as like, this is furthering of her goals of our organization's goals. ah So she like, ah without even asking you she like grabs your hand to shake it, i like you struck a deal. And then she does pick one of her eggs that looks very much like a flamboyant Easter egg. 01:16:39.41 Dylan _he_they_ Yep. 01:16:44.30 sidekqpodcast And she sets it on the counter and then She like high tails it out the door and what's the last thing ah that's daniel's thinking or saying ah before the scene closes out. 01:16:55.07 Dylan _he_they_ Daniel grabs the egg, walks over and on his way back into the the kitchen, just puts it down next to this astrolabe, this like, beautiful, precisely like, engineered, machined object, just sets it over there because, again, 01:17:12.31 Dylan _he_they_ Don't know what to do with that. ah Comes back with like a box of salt and just a couple of random like metal utensils and just like draws a line of salt across the doorway and just leaves a couple of just iron like bits and bobs like right inside. If I never see another fucking pay again in my life, I swear to God, it'll be too soon. 01:17:41.57 sidekqpodcast And then the only other thing I could think it is like when they the the pant the camera pans out on the astrolabe in the egg. There's like a very faint sort of like peck peck peck coming from inside the egg. 01:17:55.21 Dylan _he_they_ I'm pretty content with that. 01:17:56.38 sidekqpodcast And. 01:18:02.05 sidekqpodcast And seen so there we go we were able to present Daniel ah in his little vignette so what did you think it was like getting to be Daniel. 01:18:11.25 Dylan _he_they_ I am very familiar with playing tired of some bullshit. ah It is always fun to do. 01:18:20.48 sidekqpodcast Mhmm. 01:18:21.48 Dylan _he_they_ i think I think that's one of the maybe major assumptions in RPGs is the importance of player characters. And I do think you should honor that for your players most of the time. But every once in a while, it's important to have somebody who just does not care how good at magic you are. I need to do my job. Please stop that. 01:18:40.22 sidekqpodcast Right and yeah i know it's always good to just have like the normal folks because like you know uh even the uh you know in these superhero movies and stuff like that uh or the boys or whatever it is it's like there are people that are just living their everyday lives not everyone is uh you know super power or super enhanced or anything like that so it is nice 01:18:45.90 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. 01:19:01.25 sidekqpodcast uh when player characters can just genuinely interact with someone of the world who as you mentioned uh you know with uh the earlier part of the show is like they are living by the rules of which this uh place exists and so they're embodying all those and especially those that are um you know when the these npc's are being like quote unquote antagonistic they're not 01:19:20.96 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah. Yeah. 01:19:25.65 sidekqpodcast Necessarily rolling over for the players are just like what is my life these are the things i do these are the rules and the code of ethics i abide by and you know you being ridiculous in front of me is not gonna get me to change everything. 01:19:38.87 Dylan _he_they_ Yeah, not even necessarily. like Again, this is it's a it's a bit of a subtlety, but like the players always will perceive it as the NPC being antagonistic. But it's really just drawing the line under the fact that the players are antagonizing the barkeep. Like this is just a guy doing his job. Stop that. 01:20:02.26 sidekqpodcast Yeah. And so we are here now in the final thoughts section of the show. So I always like to just, you know, get everyone's feedback and vibes on, on their overall experience on my silly little podcast. 01:20:15.27 Dylan _he_they_ It's always a good time to generate NPCs and figure out ways to tell more stories. i Anything you come up with, you can always put it in your back pocket. Have somewhere for it later. 01:20:28.29 sidekqpodcast And you know I try to be very good about not just arbitrarily inviting myself on other people's podcasts or trying to shoehorn the NPCs made on this podcast. But you know it sounds like Daniel would be a good fit for ah for an adventure on on kill every monster just like. Hey, I'm just a shopkeep kind of like when you did the human episode and stuff like that. It's like, Hey, we're just normal people. We're just trying to live our lives. And then, uh, you know, the adventurers, uh, coming into the scene and causing trouble. 01:20:59.68 Dylan _he_they_ It always depends on the guests. It always depends on the guests. I never really know a hundred percent what I'm going to run until we are most of the way through the discussion section. 01:21:09.91 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 01:21:11.19 Dylan _he_they_ Cause like I said, you know, the deal you have guests on all the time. If the guests aren't having fun, if they aren't enjoying themselves, why am I, why am I wasting your time? 01:21:15.51 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 01:21:22.22 Dylan _he_they_ So everything has to be engineered to make sure that the guests are having fun. 01:21:27.80 sidekqpodcast Amen to that yeah for sure we like everyone to have fun you know make cool little NPCs and and you know come out the other end smiling so ah with that. um As we're here in the final moments of the show if there's anything you want to plug where can you be found on social media all that stuff and then if you have any passions or causes that we need to be made aware of. 01:21:50.85 Dylan _he_they_ For the time being, I think you can just find me on whatever you call it. I'm not going to stop calling it Twitter at DJ Malin font. You can find Kill Every Monster at KEM podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts. And you can find the network at large at Dead Ghost Pro. 01:22:10.53 sidekqpodcast Excellent. Well, Dylan, thank you so much. I know, uh, you know, we were going to have a ROM, but you know what? That just makes me hungry, uh, to go seek out a ROM, have him, uh, be his own guest. And then, you know what? We're going to get the boys together and you're going to have your own episode together. 01:22:22.69 Dylan _he_they_ the screen like the 01:22:27.45 Dylan _he_they_ Just means we get to plug the show more. 01:22:29.68 sidekqpodcast There you go. Happy to do so. So again, thank you so much. Uh, take care and, uh, we'll have you back on to make even more interesting NPCs. 01:22:39.89 Dylan _he_they_ All right.