00:00:04.79 Kurt Crenwelge Hello and welcome to another month's exciting episode of Sidekicks and Sidequests, the best unofficial Dungeons & Dragons podcast, in my humbly biased opinion. It's December, it's Christmas time, we're having a grand old time this part of the year. 00:00:20.27 Kurt Crenwelge Never mind that this is being recorded in the past to be projected in the future. By golly, this is a holly jolly season and we're going to keep it that way on this podcast. And I've got a wonderful guest for you this month. But before we get to my mystery contestant, you know I have to do it. 00:00:35.29 Kurt Crenwelge I have to leave you in suspense with the ad read. Insert here, all you transcription readers about RPG Zine Club brought to you by plusonexp.com. one of my OG sponsors of the podcast. 00:00:48.69 Kurt Crenwelge So if you like playing TTRPGs and you are craving more indie games, you know, wanting to improve your steady gaming diets, then you should consider this subscription service where you get... 00:00:52.14 Tyler Thank you. 00:01:02.00 Kurt Crenwelge story and adventure zines each month you can pick and choose there's lots of great options for you they were just at gen con so hopefully if you were there and gen con in person then you got to meet tony and redeem your passports and get um maybe earn your slice of pizza from tony himself so If you want to learn more details about the RPG Zine Club, you should go to RPGZine.club. 00:01:24.51 Kurt Crenwelge And when you're on the regular website, plusonexp.com, and you're looking to get a beard balm or a lip balm or a beard-themed RPG game, you should use my code at checkout, Randolph, R-A-N-D-O-L-P-H. 00:01:39.09 Kurt Crenwelge If you do that, it gets a kickback to the podcast and helps support the show, and it supports the sponsor of the podcast. So, plusonexp.com, rpgzine.club. 00:01:51.06 Kurt Crenwelge All right. And now that that ad break is done, I turn the microphone over to my mystery guest and I ask, hello, fair traveler. Would you care to introduce yourself? Tell us who it is that you are and what is it that you do? 00:02:03.04 Tyler Hey there. Sorry about that. Yeah, my name is Tyler. I'm a graphic designer by trade, but I've been doing D&D for better part of 10, 15 years now. 00:02:14.22 Tyler think I started in 3.5 and then I've been running games in 5e since probably the very beginning, like 11 years at this point since started. 00:02:23.61 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. Okay. I got my start in college. Likewise, i always say Halloween night, 2010, and we were doing fourth edition. So that's where we came in. And then when the switch happened, I was like one of the first, you know, I was among, you know, that first generation. 00:02:39.41 Kurt Crenwelge It's like, 00:02:39.74 Tyler Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:02:40.26 Kurt Crenwelge oh, okay, the fourth to fifth, like, okay, like, I understand how this works, and this feels very old school, but it also feels like, you know, not too dissimilar with what I was doing ah before, but now that we're this far in, you know, even the 2024 rules are out now, and I'm still rocking the 2014 5e rules, because, hey, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, or at least just feel free to liberally borrow from the newer edition of basically what were house rules that we were doing anyway. 00:03:08.82 Kurt Crenwelge ah into the game you know so it you know being this far in how do you feel like your time um you know playing dnd over the years and through the different editions and even different ttrpg systems has been 00:03:21.58 Tyler yeah Well, you know, my first experience with, like, TTRPGs in general was 3.5, and I remember having a lot of fun with that, just because of the way the lore worked back then. I think the first character i ever made was a gnome. 00:03:33.24 Tyler and See, no, the funny thing, though, back then about 3.5 characters, for gnomes at least, is that they canonically do not die of old age. They die of boredom. 00:03:43.59 Kurt Crenwelge oh 00:03:44.49 Tyler ah So, yeah. So, it was the most funny thing for me, because I was like, okay, so, like, Are there necromancers? And like at that point, 3.5 didn't have like a true like necromancy school for wizardry, right? You just had a specialization, because everything back then had like prestige classes or specializations. 00:04:02.17 Tyler And so you couldn't like legitimately raise like a skeleton, but like you could get a familiar that was skeletal. 00:04:09.89 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:04:10.87 Tyler So the running running gag was that the gnome was deathly bored and he raised his neighbor's cat just on a whim and got thrown out of town. 00:04:11.06 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 00:04:20.76 Tyler So like ah he would end up banned from places constantly and he'd have to send his familiar in to go take care of errands for him. 00:04:30.97 Tyler he'd like do like a disguise spell on him and send him in with like a bucket on his head pretending was like my dumb manservant. 00:04:38.19 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. Well, then I'm not totally far off then ah with the with the random encounter section of this podcast having invented a forest gnome necromancer, who's an old man necromancer who has a who has a little skeletal army posse crew that he's building at this point. 00:04:39.29 Tyler Yeah. 00:04:49.36 Tyler Oh, absolutely not. 00:04:56.97 Tyler Oh, those are always fun. I mean, necromancers are great. One of my one of my ah players that I had for a long time before I left California was a good friend of mine named Ryan. And he had a character that he made for Strahd game that I was running named Mortimer, who was he was a necromancer who 100% believed that he was a cleric. 00:05:18.94 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 00:05:20.47 Tyler And he was like, oh, he had like a list. Hey guys, how's it going? It's Morty. It's Morty. It's super nice to meet you. Like, I, like, he was so like earnest and like people hated his guts. I don't know why. I thought he was hilarious. 00:05:36.89 Kurt Crenwelge awesome. Well, yeah I mean, it seems like we've ah we've already kind of gently dipped our toes into this question. um But yeah, it sounds like you currently or you you have played D&D before. 00:05:44.42 Tyler Sure. 00:05:49.65 Tyler Oh, yes, quite a long time. Like I said, I started in 3.5. When 5th came out, i ended up really, really just liking DMing as a whole because I got to be every character rather than just my own. 00:06:02.04 Tyler And one of the things I found that I was good at was just like lib work, honestly. 00:06:02.17 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:06:07.32 Tyler Like every time I tried to run a pre-written adventure mod or something that I wrote myself, inevitably every time every DM knows it, stuff goes off the rails and you got to try to figure out what's going to happen on the fly. 00:06:17.78 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:06:20.09 Tyler you know And I always found myself caught in the moment of like, oh crap, what are they going to do now? So I ended up just getting really good, excuse me, i like ad-libbing stuff. And so after that, I just kind of had a general idea of things, and then I would start big and go small. That's usually my thing. I make a big sandbox for my players, have a general idea what's going on in any given area, and then when they go to said areas, get down into the nitty gritty micro of like what's actually going on specifics. 00:06:51.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, okay. and ah yeah And so the way we got introduced and that ah you're a guest of this ah podcast ah here today for our December episode is we have a we have a mutual friend, a guest and friend of the show, Catherine, and her Sambresa Art account. 00:07:05.13 Tyler Yes, we do. 00:07:11.29 Kurt Crenwelge we We love her and she's she's good company and she's a good friend. 00:07:15.65 Tyler Oh, yeah. Very fabulous role player at the table and over text. Honestly, i it's been ah it's always a pleasure to see someone so engaged in material. 00:07:26.73 Kurt Crenwelge And so what you've been doing lately is you just have been running like a local game at like a like a comic book store or game store or some such every week for your for your friends to play at. 00:07:38.84 Tyler Yeah, I actually run two different games. Thursday Nights is in person at a local store. Yes, Catherine's part of that. It's like a Monster the Week type thing with inspiration from dark, gritty stuff. You know, The Witcher, some supernatural bits, honestly, um with a mix of like Forgotten Realms and Sword Coast and tying into some of the pre-written adventure modules that have come out where the premise is just that people... 00:08:01.42 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Mm-hmm. 00:08:05.39 Tyler most of Some of the NPCs were a part of a faction called the Lord's Alliance, which got, these two just got sick and tired of all of the collateral damage that was caused by heroes in their adventures across Sword Coast. 00:08:18.02 Tyler Having seen, in you know, witnessing things like the Dragon Crisis, the Giant Crisis, El Torrell just up and disappearing into the hells for a while. And they kind of just said, you know what? this This isn't for us. No, this is crazy. You all just let these people get away with this stuff, and then we have to pick up the pieces. And so they picked up shop, left, and started a bar. 00:08:39.89 Tyler And then it became a monster hunting guild where they look out for the people who get forgotten by the heroes that aren't part of the mainline adventurers that you know still need help. 00:08:51.04 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:08:51.29 Tyler So they go out and 00:08:52.16 Kurt Crenwelge So kind of like a damage control sort of a influence. 00:08:55.54 Tyler A little bit, yeah. Something like that. Where like, okay, well, the dragon crisis happened, but what about the dragon that got away? Like, are we just gonna forget about that blue dragon that like torched the city in the very beginning of the pre-mod? 00:09:03.56 Kurt Crenwelge ah 00:09:08.62 Tyler Like, just, you know, kind of hopes to go over some of those things or like what kind of an effect does, you know, ah whole city have on the surrounding area while it's missing, right? 00:09:21.53 Tyler El Torel is in a very central part of Sword Coast and with a bunch of stuff gone, like how does that affect the political landscape, right? 00:09:21.47 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Right. 00:09:29.40 Tyler Who tries to like come into that power vacuum, do bandits just kind of roam free and like terrorize people on the roads, you know, like 00:09:30.16 Kurt Crenwelge right 00:09:38.38 Tyler I mean, you name it. There's all kinds of room for exploration in this. 00:09:42.35 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, I mean, it seems like it it fits in real nicely with kind of like how the beginning of Baldur's Gate 3 starts as well, which is like, it which picks up right after my understanding. 00:09:43.07 Tyler But... 00:09:50.14 Tyler Yeah, actually... 00:09:53.15 Kurt Crenwelge I haven't run the module, but it takes place right after Descent into Avernus. 00:09:58.44 Tyler Yeah, that's correct. One of the first NPCs you meet in Baldur's Gate 3. Sorry, spoilers. There's a guy from the Hellriders who is a ah cavalry of knights that are from El Terrell that they you know recently got back, and they're essentially refugees at the Druid Grove in Baldur's Gate 3. 00:10:09.76 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. 00:10:16.33 Tyler But yeah, it touches upon that stuff for sure. 00:10:17.12 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:10:18.69 Tyler like Yeah, Baldur's Gate, the events of that, and as far as the timeline in this Thursday game happened like... six, seven years ago, which for a lot of people in that kind of an environment, that's still pretty recent history. 00:10:31.69 Tyler So what kind of effect did that have? 00:10:32.62 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:10:34.31 Tyler like what What things have been done and you know in the meantime? 00:10:38.70 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:10:38.86 Tyler So it touches it touches upon upon a lot of stuff that's like, well, who's looking out for everybody else? And like what about their stories? right 00:10:46.60 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:10:46.89 Tyler What about the people who don't get ballads sung about them? right 00:10:50.91 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:10:51.16 Tyler um 00:10:51.10 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:10:51.83 Tyler My Saturday game's different. That's actually wildly different. My Saturday game is actually supposed to be like four or 500 years in the future from current canon year. 00:11:02.04 Kurt Crenwelge ah 00:11:02.43 Tyler But the premise is largely inspired by works like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, um a few other ones as well. 00:11:15.48 Tyler Gosh, you know, Skies of Arcadia, if you ever played that old one, it's about like sky pirates. 00:11:21.10 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay. 00:11:22.19 Tyler loose premise is all toriel was covered in sort of like a death miasma is attracted to the weave and for those of you dms out there who know what that is you know what this means for those who don't the weave is essentially what drives all of magic in the forgotten realms it's where all spells come from this particular mist though is like it's attracted to that. And if you breathe it in, it essentially sucks all of the weave out of you, effectively killing you and then crystallizing your body. 00:11:53.25 Tyler And then that body goes out because it's now hardened crystallized miasma inside your body. 00:11:53.51 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:11:59.08 Tyler it goes out and seeks more weave. And so it's a little bit like Last of Us in that you have basically a ton of just like crystallized zombie amalgamations running around that seek out magic. 00:12:09.13 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:12:11.10 Tyler And most of society, yeah, most of society's wiped out. 00:12:12.04 Kurt Crenwelge Creepy. 00:12:14.86 Tyler There's maybe like seven cities left over. They all have barriers to try and protect themselves, but everything is largely gone to like airships and air travel as they can't really travel by ground. um And that, just to be brief, cause I know we're getting a little off topic, but like it's exploring themes of like what happens 00:12:34.00 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:12:35.10 Tyler to souls when they have nowhere to go? When millions die, um gods, in my opinion, when their power derived of those who believe in them, what happens when millions die and there's no longer any power for those gods to be had? 00:12:48.88 Kurt Crenwelge ah 00:12:49.06 Tyler They can no longer drive those souls to their afterlife in the outer planes or wherever they're supposed to go. And so these souls just end up lost to the ethereal. What happens to those souls? What happens to the gods? What happens in a world where everyone feels like they've given up and they're just trying to make do with what's left? 00:13:05.10 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:13:06.05 Tyler a bit steampunky, things like that. 00:13:06.40 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:13:09.26 Kurt Crenwelge Very cool. Yeah, no, that sounds, uh, it sounds intriguing. And, uh, I feel like there's some influences there from, um, well, what was it? I guess campaign three of, uh, critical roles sort of toggled with that idea of like of the gods and, and how that one sort of ended. 00:13:23.81 Tyler Oh, really? 00:13:26.74 Kurt Crenwelge um 00:13:26.95 Tyler i I'm ashamed to admit I'm actually unfamiliar with Campaign 3. it's It's so much but which was material to cover. 00:13:31.28 Kurt Crenwelge Well, my son was born and we moved into our house and then it was like, you know, obviously trying to deal with a newborn and we just kind of fell off. But apparently, you know, they have the critical role abridged. 00:13:40.46 Tyler I understand. yeah. 00:13:43.45 Kurt Crenwelge So if you have nothing to do, you can just watch the abridged version, I guess, on YouTube, which is where they cut out a lot of the cross table chatter. um And so really is just the the purest story in the gameplay. 00:13:56.77 Kurt Crenwelge So you can get a more condensed version. So it's like, I keep meaning to to start that one. But of course, we live in a plethora, an age, an abundance of of great TTRBG D&D content um for all of us to take in. 00:14:07.18 Tyler yeah 00:14:10.51 Tyler Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, i actually, I've only gotten like part of campaign one, but I actually had the the pleasure of meeting Matt Mercer and Liam O'Brien very briefly while we were in still in California. 00:14:22.78 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. Aww. 00:14:24.88 Tyler we were at ah the Renaissance Fair at just north of LA. I think it was Irwindale or something like that. I forget the name of it. But ironically of all people, my wife spies Liam O'Brien from like across the walkway and you know she's the real shy type you know she mentions to me she's like oh hey i i think that's liam o'brien and i'm like well why don't you go say hello she's like i can't do that i'm like all right i'll do it like stunned faces everyone's like no no no and i walk over there and you know i just like very casually just walk up to liam like hey so um 00:14:51.10 Kurt Crenwelge ah 00:15:00.83 Tyler My wife says you look like Liam O'Brien. You get that a lot? And he's like, I hope so, because I am Liam O'Brien. And I'm like, oh, really? Okay, great. He's like, oh, and this is my buddy Matt, Matt Mercer. 00:15:11.14 Tyler And I'm like, oh hi. you He takes off the mask, and we have a good chat. 00:15:13.31 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. 00:15:15.71 Tyler you know And at that time, I was like still very early in the campaign one, way after, well, well after they'd finished it. 00:15:19.58 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, sure. 00:15:22.66 Tyler I he was talking to him about like, you know, doing my own DMing, getting inspired by the characters. I think one of my favorites for his was early games like Clorota, which was the, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:15:32.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, Chlorota. Classic. Yeah. 00:15:34.92 Tyler The mind, mind flayer, good stuff. um But yeah, I mean like good guys, you know, massive inspiration. um so grateful for everything that they've done for the D and d community over the past 10 years at this point. Right. I mean, 00:15:49.54 Kurt Crenwelge Well, we'll be going to see them ah next year, Christmas time. So a year from now, podcast listeners, the Mrs. and I will be and Fort Worth and we'll be going to the Dickies Arena and we'll be seeing Travis Willingham running a one shot for for everybody. 00:16:06.56 Kurt Crenwelge So I had to buy my tickets well in advance. 00:16:06.92 Tyler all 00:16:09.16 Kurt Crenwelge um So Christmas gift for us for next year. um But yeah, that should be very exciting for us to go and attend. 00:16:12.12 Tyler I'm so jealous. 00:16:15.50 Tyler I'm so jealous. Grog is honestly one of my favorite characters from campaign one. there There's, there's a, since we're talking about, I know we're going to talking about NPCs today. I was actually, I should mention that. 00:16:24.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:16:25.19 Tyler I, one of the NPCs, my favorite, totally. 00:16:26.57 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, go for it. Who's your favorite NPC? Yeah, let's go for it. 00:16:30.77 Tyler i mean, 00:16:33.96 Tyler There's so much. I mean, like I've spent so much of my life buried in comics and video games and books. Like I was that nerd kid in my fourth grade who was reading at like a senior high school level, like winning book awards and stuff. And like once I got my hands on video games, man, it was over. 00:16:53.38 Tyler I think one of my favorite NPCs probably in a video game is hands down got to be HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic. 00:17:02.81 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah. My college roommate would. I think that was his answer, too, when he was on the podcast early on season one. Yeah. Calling everyone meatbags. Yeah. 00:17:13.21 Tyler Yeah, yeah, pretty much. ah Sir, there is a meatbag attempting to murder you. Like, you know, really... Like, unhinged characters like that for me are just so entertaining. I think there was another one in... 00:17:27.38 Tyler Baldur's Gate 3 that was kind of sort of like that. I forget the character's name, but he like it's when you first get to Baldur's Gate, the little town outside of it where you find the circus. 00:17:38.92 Kurt Crenwelge The 00:17:39.66 Tyler Yeah, Rivington. And like the little imp that's outside that just has a foul mouth is just like calling you out left and right when you start talking to them. know talking about? 00:17:48.80 Kurt Crenwelge Imp. I'm trying to remember the Imp. I mean, i did ah I did my very first playthrough as a version of Duncan from the podcast, so like he made it his mission to find all the side quests and to talk to all the people and try to play as chaotically good as he could with his best bae, Karlak, at his side. 00:17:56.84 Tyler That was fun. 00:18:06.59 Tyler Oh, yeah. Yeah. i that's probably like 00:18:07.32 Kurt Crenwelge um But ah yeah, no, Imp. Imp. I'm trying to remember the Imp. 00:18:11.72 Tyler yeah i'm i'm for I'm forgetting his name, but like... 00:18:14.93 Kurt Crenwelge I know on this second playthrough I'm doing with our good friend Catherine, I'm playing an arcane archer fighter this time around, and I found the scroll. 00:18:24.41 Tyler that's fun. 00:18:25.73 Kurt Crenwelge I found the scroll for the Quasit. So ah Elevar Sagebirth read the scroll, and now he has the little Imp at his, ah or the Quasit, I should say, at his beck and call. 00:18:29.17 Tyler Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:18:32.74 Tyler Yeah, 00:18:38.14 Tyler yeah yeah. Oh, Benji. I think Benji's the name of the little imp. 00:18:41.53 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay. And where is Benji again? 00:18:43.92 Tyler He's like right outside the gates of the carnival. you have to go through him for him to even let you in. like He knows you're like illicit, basically. 00:18:49.73 Kurt Crenwelge oh no. Benji's a ghoul. 00:18:52.60 Tyler That's it! I knew he was something. Yeah, he's hilarious. 00:18:54.39 Kurt Crenwelge He's a ghoul. 00:18:55.53 Tyler Yeah, he's hilarious, though. 00:18:55.83 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yes. He's like, you smell bad. Smell not good. 00:19:00.05 Tyler Yeah. 00:19:00.79 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:19:01.48 Tyler Oh, yeah. The murder butler is pretty funny, too, but I haven't gotten all the way through a dirge run. My wife and I were playing through. We got to get back to that. I decided to play like a frenzy barbarian orc named Chuck, and all he does is throw things. 00:19:15.79 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, that's his name. So he's just like Chuck and he just throws things. 00:19:17.99 Tyler Yeah. yeah that's 00:19:19.29 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:19:19.73 Tyler Chuck likes to chuck, and he chucks everything, including people. 00:19:24.06 Kurt Crenwelge But surprisingly not any nunchucks. 00:19:27.40 Tyler Well, it's funny you say that because my wife decided to play a gith monk named Norris. 00:19:32.32 Kurt Crenwelge Chuck Norris. There we go. 00:19:33.50 Tyler Yep. So... Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. 00:19:34.87 Kurt Crenwelge its shame It is a shame they don't have nunchucks in the game. but But apparently with the big announcement that they're going to allow for unlimited modding or at least Larian giving the mod tools or whatever to the community, probably someone will have introduced martial arts 00:19:38.92 Tyler ah 00:19:47.65 Tyler yeah 00:19:52.49 Kurt Crenwelge weapons so you could run around and have the ninja turtles someone will make it so that you could be a turtle and then if you download the ninja weapons one then you could have the ninja turtles running around uh fae rune 00:19:55.70 Tyler arms Oh, absolutely. 00:20:02.57 Tyler Oh, I mean, absolutely. Like, the modding community around Larian Games is always fantastic. I mean, the same thing happened with Divinity Original Sin 2, so... Good stuff, though. 00:20:13.59 Tyler But yeah... 00:20:13.63 Kurt Crenwelge good stuff So you would say Benji and then ah and then that other character from HK-47 would be like your top NPCs? 00:20:24.19 Tyler HK40, yeah. like I like really funny, just kind of like unhinged, like like, what the hell is their deal kind of like NPCs for 100%. But, I mean, there's ah so many different NPCs I like, you know? 00:20:34.16 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:20:37.20 Tyler I mean... one of my favorite games in the world to this day is still metroid and uh there's not so much an npc in that so much as there's like the nuance behind uh a character like adam for those who are metroid fans adam is actually her shipboard computer for a while and then there's a lot of intrigue as to where he came from which you pick up in other games but 00:20:58.76 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:21:04.41 Tyler I always like complicated ones, too, with a lot of mystery behind them. Like, I grew up watching stuff like Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, a lot of Shira Masamuni works. 00:21:15.09 Tyler And so having some complex characters like that's always been in my neck of the woods as well. 00:21:22.54 Kurt Crenwelge Very cool. And ah yeah, since we kind of ah blended into it, the the same other flip side of the equation, what's been one of your favorite b plot elements or side quests again with, ah you know, video games, RPGs, movie, film, television, literature, et cetera. 00:21:40.24 Kurt Crenwelge And why is this your favorite B plot or side quest? 00:21:43.88 Tyler Oh, damn. 00:21:47.58 Tyler Oh, man. I feel on spot a little bit. That's a hard one. Because like i said, I've been across so much material. But... 00:21:56.84 Tyler Oh, gosh. I mean... Where do I start? I mean... I wouldn't say favorite or anything, but like I can remember a number of things that i always had tons of fun with. I mean, one of the first games I ever had the joy of playing was Ocarina of Time, which is, you know, a ah popular one amongst folks in my age group. 00:22:12.75 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 00:22:16.15 Tyler And I remember totally getting lost with like the bomb to alley fishing mini game. And just kind of like as an adult thinking back on it later, like, hmm, isn't the kingdom in trouble? 00:22:30.17 Tyler And yet I'm fishing. i don't know about this. like um Or, you know, I guess while we're on Baldur's Gate 3, I think one of the most hilarious side things you can get is that iron flask. 00:22:44.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:22:46.08 Tyler Because like my wife, I remember her first experience with that. She had no idea what was in it. was like, why don't you open it? 00:22:51.39 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:22:52.29 Tyler Find out. but What do you mean? I'm like, just open it. It's a little surprise. It'll be fine. be fine. Trust me. No. And so she decided she was going to throw it at something instead. I think what'd she throw it at? 00:23:06.07 Tyler I think she threw it at Raphael or somebody. 00:23:09.83 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh! Clutch. 00:23:11.95 Tyler Yeah. 00:23:11.95 Kurt Crenwelge I mean, at least it would have distracted him long enough. 00:23:12.19 Tyler Yeah. 00:23:14.23 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:23:14.92 Tyler Yeah. So, I mean, stuff like that's always fun. um Oh gosh. I mean, some of my favorite, I think some of my favorite questing I've ever done in a video game actually was from Borderlands 2, ironically, because the humor in that game, i don't know, man, that had me in stitches forever. Like, there's a point particularly early in the game, i think, in like a snowy area and like, 00:23:43.86 Tyler Handsome Jack's going off about like how much better he is than you. And like, oh yeah, I'm so frickin' rich, I could afford a pony made of diamonds. And it's not like a statue or or anything. it's a real It's a real pony made of diamonds. And he's like, Butt Stallion, say hello! he's just hear like like, neighing in the background. 00:24:04.56 Tyler like I could not keep a straight face that entire game. like Whoever was in charge of writing for the second game honestly deserves a medal in my opinion, but Yeah, very, very fun stuff. I like humor in games more than anything. like I love nuance too, but like humor is what keeps you playing. 00:24:22.37 Kurt Crenwelge I see. Yeah, there we go. good and that's a That's a good quote. I like Cuban games. It keeps me going. That's a good one. 00:24:29.80 Tyler Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 00:24:32.60 Kurt Crenwelge Well, since we made it through, you know, the side quest and well, we made it through the sidekick and the side quest questions. We now come to the the ultimate question here in the personal interview section. 00:24:44.82 Kurt Crenwelge Tyler, what are you passionate about and why? 00:24:45.06 Tyler Sure. 00:24:48.46 Tyler You know, I'm just passionate about storytelling in general. Always have been as a kid. Like I said, I grew up reading any book I could get my dang hands on because that's all I had. I grew up in the sticks and like the northern end of California and not a whole lot to do up there when you're a nerd and you like video games and comics, you know, not a whole lot of room for that. So. 00:25:08.28 Tyler I grew up reading stuff like Treasure Island, Count of Monte Cristo, Frankenstein, Dracula, like classic tales. And it was, I mean, that was it. You know, I got really into it. And then with video games, it was even worse. Like I said, I got my hands on things like Starcraft, for example, was probably one of the first major PC titles I ever played in my life. And man, that story had me so hard, like. 00:25:37.14 Tyler i was no good at the game at all. I was like maybe eight or nine, but like, dang dude, that story like that. I was really hooked on that one. 00:25:45.35 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:25:46.34 Tyler And then, you know, a lot of stuff started coming out around that time. And I think, I think the, the early late nineties, early two thousands had a lot of really, really solid titles. Um, I mean, my friends and I, we played smash bros for ages. 00:25:56.58 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:26:01.36 Tyler Um, 00:26:01.70 Kurt Crenwelge Original on Nintendo 64, mind you. Hmm. 00:26:04.62 Tyler Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I always played Kirby. Samus has always been a longtime favorite of mine as well. I'm sorry. I know she's not S tier, but I'm just a sucker. 00:26:14.86 Kurt Crenwelge I don't know if you could play any of those characters on the Nintendo 64. Well, like, you know, even like Ness and Jigglypuff, you know, if you knew how to use them, you could be a menace or even Mario or Luigi, Captain Falcon. 00:26:29.00 Tyler Oh, yeah, no, Kirby kiibby was an absolute fucking troll, dude. Like, you'd run in, swallow somebody, and then just suicide with them and fly back right up to the stage. Like, there was there was no there was no recovery from that. 00:26:44.33 Tyler So, but yeah, I mean, like, you know I also grew up around, like, a lot of very science fiction-heavy stuff. There's an old N64 title called Perfect Dark that is probably one of my longtime favorite first-person shooters. 00:26:53.08 Kurt Crenwelge yes 00:26:56.85 Tyler And it was very, very sad when I heard they were doing a remake and they canceled it. Like, I know they did. I know they did. They tried to do a prequel on, like, x Xbox 360 that just never took off and did not get great reviews. 00:27:10.19 Tyler And then I heard they an announced a reboot that was supposed to come out for, like, modern consoles. And then they just scrapped it, like, I think a few months ago, which is, like, so sad for me because loved to see that. 00:27:20.33 Tyler But, like, that... 00:27:20.85 Kurt Crenwelge bummer I remember my dad bought that. My sister's three years younger than me, and I remember one Christmas he you know he bought it for my sister because it's like, oh, it's like it's like a girl in the in the title. 00:27:32.74 Tyler Yeah, yeah. 00:27:33.06 Kurt Crenwelge But we both ended up liking the game and playing it a bunch. and i I just distinctly remember um making one of the multiplayer maps but changing it so it would do... 00:27:43.44 Tyler Yeah. 00:27:44.66 Kurt Crenwelge It would do the bullet time. Like it would slow down for a little bit. And I picked the one level that had, it had it looked like it had the law, the elevator lobby scene from the first matrix movie. 00:27:48.39 Tyler Yeah. 00:27:55.91 Kurt Crenwelge So with the time thing, I think we ended up calling that particular map mode mix, like matrix lobby or something like that. 00:27:56.23 Tyler Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:28:03.77 Kurt Crenwelge And so you're running around the map and it's like slow motion and you're like, 00:28:04.10 Tyler Oh, yeah. 00:28:08.80 Tyler The age of level editors, man. 00:28:09.24 Kurt Crenwelge but 00:28:10.48 Tyler They don't they don't do that stuff much anymore. 00:28:13.30 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, but... 00:28:14.34 Tyler i mean, like, they had stuff like that in TimeSplitters as well, which is another old first-person title I really enjoyed because I love time travel stories, and TimeSplitters was one of those first-person ones. 00:28:23.85 Kurt Crenwelge The arcade one? 00:28:25.93 Tyler um 00:28:26.95 Kurt Crenwelge Is it the... 00:28:27.24 Tyler I don't... 00:28:27.39 Kurt Crenwelge No, that's Time Crisis. Never mind. Sorry. 00:28:29.56 Tyler Right, yeah. You're thinking, that's a rail shooter. TimeSplitters was like a 00:28:32.20 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:28:33.73 Tyler first person shooter that was like about going back in time to stop aliens who want to damage the timeline and like destroy humanity. and and so the character, the protagonist, instead of they themselves going back, it's more like, oh gosh, I think, what is it? 00:28:42.84 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:28:51.10 Kurt Crenwelge Quantum Leap? 00:28:51.47 Tyler Slider? Yeah, it's more like Quantum Leap where like, I think they take over the body of somebody who was there and fight as that person. 00:28:57.70 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. So you could be like Abraham Lincoln, like, gunning down aliens or whatever? 00:29:09.90 Tyler you You cut out a bit there. You could be like, what? 00:29:12.56 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, so you could be like Abraham Lincoln and gunning down aliens or something like that. 00:29:18.11 Tyler I don't think there's anybody as high tier as that, but like one of the first levels, you're going back to like a Russian complex, and so you take over the body like the body of like one of the guards at the very edge of the kind of the complex, and like you have to go in and find the aliens and kill them. it's like It was an interesting story. It was an interesting story, and there's been like two or three sequels that I know of, at least, but another one of those like golden age shooter games with like level editors and stuff and running around. 00:29:45.86 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:29:46.88 Tyler But yeah, I mean like that's kind of been my passion this whole time. You know, like i said, is storytelling, that's what all comes back to. so running D&D, that's kind of what drives it for me is, you know, what kind of a story am I telling? Like what is the object goal of what I'm trying to do with the setup? Like i said, for the, 00:30:04.59 Tyler Saturday game that I run, the premise is like, what what do people do in a world where people were largely, you know, very aware of pantheons and gods having power, and then suddenly, over the span of four five hundred years, they've just been largely either forgotten or hated, because they're seen as like, oh, well, where were you when everyone was dying? 00:30:25.45 Tyler Why didn't you do anything? Like, are the gods supposed to be all-powerful? 00:30:27.73 Kurt Crenwelge Mm. 00:30:29.51 Tyler Like, what happened? You know, and so a lot of people have fallen out of faith or don't think they're real anymore and all that kind of jazz, you know? So like, I like bringing questions ah to my games. One I did actually, there was a three year long campaign I did that was actually using a homebrew written by a guy named Amalwin, great guy, by the way. 00:30:54.57 Tyler He did a homebrew whole compendium for Monster Hunter. if you've ever played the Capcom series and we had a blast and, uh, I kind of, you know, I dove really hard and into monster hunter lore about like the great circle and like reincarnation and like the dragon wars and stuff like that. And, uh, 00:31:14.29 Tyler I think the concept I had for that one was that like evil basically is cyclical and it'll always come back because life in and of itself is not perfect. It's chaotic, right? 00:31:26.77 Tyler And the more chaos that is bred, eventually it will reform itself and cause problems on the material plane. 00:31:26.88 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:31:34.43 Tyler And so that's exactly what happened. um and one of the npcs since we're talking about interesting npcs this was a complex person that i had made who was the group's handler which is like their scholar you can think of them like a biologist of sorts right who's like an expert on the creatures and can send them out and do stuff um very young very um naive very uh strong sense of justice and Once they got wind of like, oh, well, we might be able to stop this. Like there's there's a thing that they tried to use to seal this creature like way back when we need to go put it together and make sure that no one gets it. And like my brother, i love him to death. He's a thespian at heart. He does a lot of theater. He's one of my best role players. 00:32:22.50 Tyler He's playing like an 800 year old like druid man who has no patience for this little girl. And it's like, oh, we are leaving those pieces right where they're at. They're safer where they're supposed to be. 00:32:34.91 Tyler And you know, like any headstrong, you know, strong sense of justice character, she's like, no, I'm not sitting on my thumbs while you guys just decide that life is going to go by. I'm going to go fix a problem. And if you want to come with me, then come with me. If not, I'm going by myself. 00:32:54.17 Tyler but So naturally everyone's like, oh, God damn it. So naturally they have to go after her. 00:33:00.17 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:33:00.39 Tyler And of course it causes all kinds of problems, which drive the campaign story much later, but 00:33:00.31 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:33:05.31 Tyler Um, yeah, you know, I mean, like she was a complicated NPC because there's at one point where the antagonist knows they're going for these stone pieces to like form the seal. And it's like, oh, well, I'm just gonna let them pick them all up and then take them when it's ready for me. 00:33:24.96 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:33:25.64 Tyler So naturally that's what happens is they end up in a spot where they're reliving old history. They're reliving the old wars through like ancient technology that they come across. And while they're indisposed, the antagonist shows up, pulls the other NPC aside as a hostage who has the stones and makes off with her and leaves essentially the party to die run out of oxygen in a cave. 00:33:41.49 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:33:51.33 Tyler And they beg for their gods for help and Well, they certainly help. But as you know, gods can be fickle and gods have a bunch of different ways to define help. The gods in this case were like, well, you guys are nowhere near ready to handle that guy. 00:34:08.24 Tyler um We're going to run you through a trial and make sure that you're capable. Just so happens that after the trial's done, they realize that three years have passed. 00:34:19.42 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:34:20.27 Tyler And they didn't know that. And so they come out and time's gone. 00:34:22.36 Kurt Crenwelge Oof. 00:34:24.29 Tyler they're like, what? What do you mean three years have passed? And I'm like, three years have passed. Well, where's the NPC? You have no idea. 00:34:33.90 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:34:34.47 Tyler But, but, but, but, I'm like, yeah, you better get on that. So they they discover that what had happened was this, she was getting, you know, I mean, she was young. She was getting tortured, essentially, and she was a a very prominent scholar who was just discovering magic and 00:34:54.67 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 00:34:54.88 Tyler um with nothing but time on her hands, had, you know, earned the trust of the antagonist, was studying more magic in her downtime, and then split herself, essentially, um with a simulacrum. 00:35:08.77 Tyler But I kind of homebrewed it, so it was more like, instead of being a direct copy of her, it was more like specifically her emotional side. I forget what they call it. not your ego. It's... Or is it your ego? 00:35:22.58 Tyler I forget. It's like the id, ego, and something else, but 00:35:25.24 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:35:25.91 Tyler The emotional part of her. 00:35:26.34 Kurt Crenwelge The id ego superego? 00:35:29.11 Tyler Yeah, something like that. But like the emotional part of her, she essentially like separated herself from. That emotional... 00:35:35.11 Kurt Crenwelge She did a severance. 00:35:37.13 Tyler Essentially, yeah. and So that emotional half became like... the antagonist's right-hand general who was cruel and would use spells on people. And then she just kind of dipped off by herself secretly to go actually continue what she meant to do, which is studying the chaos and figure out how to stop it. 00:35:55.78 Tyler She ends up making like a time bubble and finds like an old ancient tech facility and starts manufacturing things. just like in the game, like equal dragon weapons. If you guys are Monster Hunter fans and know what those are, they're like robots essentially made out of the parts of Elder Dragons. It's like one part zombie, like one part robot, all powerful still. 00:36:17.63 Tyler And she was just trying to crank them out. 00:36:18.88 Kurt Crenwelge There you go 00:36:21.08 Tyler And so like in her little time bubble, like decades had passed. And so the characters, once they ah got toward like the end of the campaign, they had to reconcile the two because they're like, well, 00:36:33.94 Tyler how are we going to get how we goingnna get our boo back? like They're separated and one's in her 60s or 70s. What the heck, man? I'm like, have to figure that out. 00:36:46.27 Tyler they They eventually found a way to do it. And then it was one of those things where like the character was fully aware of what she you had done. like Even though they were split, she still considered herself... 00:36:58.91 Tyler completely responsible for everything that happened while her like essentially evil half is out doing stuff that, you know, not great stuff. And so she kind of like miraculously is not sentenced to death by the factions that, you know, succeeded in the game, but they exile her it instead. And basically she, she takes a vow to keep a watch on everything so that nothing this dumb or crazy can happen ever again. 00:37:26.32 Tyler She ends up kind of like one of the watchers from, oh, there's a character from Monster Hunter World. He's like a Wyverian. He kind of travels around and does essentially the same thing. But there's a lot of tiebacks to like the the lore of the game, which is one of the things I love doing. I'm kind of a lore hound. I dive in. I try to look into stuff and see what I can see what i can connect you know and make interesting. like That's kind of one of the whole points behind my Thursday game, like I said, is like, OK, 00:37:54.28 Tyler There's all these adventure modules from Sword Coast, from the Forgotten Realms, of all these crazy things that have happened in the course of effectively what amounts to only like 20 years. Like, I don't know if people understand that. Like, in the span of two decades of the Forgotten Realms time, there's like... 00:38:09.91 Tyler five or six potentially world-ending crises that happen. Like, dragons nearly wipe out Sword Coast. Giants nearly wipe out Sword Coast. The hells nearly come onto the material plane. 00:38:21.90 Tyler Demons nearly come onto the material plane, if you did Into the Abyss. The whole nonsense with the death plague and Chult. Vecna, and that whole story for the rise of Vecna, like, that's like... 00:38:35.69 Tyler That's like high tier play. Like there's a bunch of crazy stuff that happens. Right. So that was my inspiration behind the Thursday game, which was like, okay, well, yeah, like all these things are happening, but you're not those people. 00:38:39.59 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm. 00:38:47.49 Tyler You're everybody else that doesn't get written about. What stories are you telling about the people who are unknown? Right. It's sort of like, um, 00:39:00.96 Tyler oh I guess like unsung tales kind of thing, or like, um, You know soldiers who like you don't know their name but they get a grave right because they died like there's a whole there's a whole wall in this in this particular Thursday game that's run by a grave cleric and a fallen Asimar grave cleric named Alarne Voss. 00:39:23.77 Tyler And he's like very, his inspiration is a lot of drawn a lot from, ah burrianer from final fantasy 14. And the way he speaks, it's very archaic, very like thou and these, but he holds like a constant vigil over this like onyx wall of obsidian where like anytime a hunter goes down in combat on a hunt or on a contract, their name gets etched into the wall. 00:39:49.14 Tyler And it was like a permanent remembrance kind of a thing. 00:39:51.52 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:39:54.57 Tyler So, I mean, yeah, I mean, just storytelling, man. 00:39:57.89 Kurt Crenwelge Storytelling. 00:39:59.20 Tyler Storytelling. That's that's the core of it for me. 00:40:00.08 Kurt Crenwelge Storytelling. 00:40:00.88 Tyler I love good story. 00:40:03.30 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. Well, it sounds like we've learned quite a bit about our guests, and I think it's time that we head into some NPC creation. 00:40:11.81 Tyler Sure. 00:40:17.90 Kurt Crenwelge And NPC creation is brought to you by you, the podcast audience and our patrons from Patreon. So now is the time of the show where we give a shout out to our comfortable patrons and above with a loud hurrah. 00:40:30.08 Kurt Crenwelge So do you, Anson Jablinski and good old mom and dad. We say cheers. I've got myself some Dr. Pepper tonight. Yes. So these folks that I named, ah you know, they just donate $2 or more a month and they get shouted out on our monthly episodes. 00:40:46.83 Kurt Crenwelge ah But in fact, all the people I named are actually wealthy tier patrons, which means they get to introduce an element of chance to our random tables, which we might get to use here in our NPC creation section of the show. 00:40:56.81 Tyler Oh, yes. 00:41:01.79 Kurt Crenwelge so If you want to learn more about what the Patreon has to offer you, you should go check out the show notes below, go to the podcast website, or just go directly to patreon.com forward slash sidekicksandsidequests to find out more about our four tiers of patronage that we have awaiting for you. 00:41:19.59 Kurt Crenwelge Help us to grow and expand our operations in the Levitating Platter and this Demiplane and Worlds Beyond. Okay, so you know we are it seems like we are ah you know fast friends. where where We are two likened ah individuals who could go at length on on characters. 00:41:39.56 Kurt Crenwelge And so to really kind of test ourselves, ah we've decided, I think, to roll some random dice and see what sort of character we make and you know where we could stick them in our world. 00:41:39.82 Tyler ah Pretty much. 00:41:50.35 Kurt Crenwelge Is that is that correct, Mr. Tyler? Alright, so if you have your standard array of dice at the ready, I've got all the questions, I've got all the tables, so whenever you're ready, what is going to be the name of our character? The first dice that we roll is going to be a d20. 19. 00:42:08.53 Tyler Alrighty, let me bust out my dice here. 00:42:16.88 Tyler Alright, d20. We got a 19. 00:42:19.54 Kurt Crenwelge nineteen All right. Your answer was provided by our previous guest, Mark Wilson. Abaddon Cain. 00:42:28.90 Tyler Oh, Abaddon Cain. This already sounds like a very pious man. 00:42:30.50 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so... Yeah, so A-B-A-D-D-O-N and then C-A-I-N for the surname. So Abaddon Cain. 00:42:40.98 Kurt Crenwelge Very, very strong ah start here at the top of the the NPC creation section. And then the... 00:42:48.06 Tyler Oh, yes. I am. 00:42:50.30 Kurt Crenwelge The next... 00:42:50.46 Tyler I'm already seeing like a Cleric or a Peloton. All right. 00:42:53.08 Kurt Crenwelge Well, we shall see. um ah Let's see. The next thing we get to roll for is the ancestry of the character. So this is going to be a 2d10 or a d100 roll. I tried to go through all the D&D books that I had to pick out everything that could possibly be a good talking to people NPC. 00:43:02.97 Tyler right. 00:43:10.27 Kurt Crenwelge So ah we shall see what Abaddon Cain is. 00:43:15.78 Tyler We got 86. 00:43:19.02 Kurt Crenwelge 86 as I scroll the list. Ah, okay. Bearfolk or anything else that's from Cobalt Press. So if you're familiar with some of the ancestries presented by Cobalt Press, I know for me in my game, I took Bearfolk because I was like, these guys are cool. I want Bearfolk in my game. But Bearfolk or anything else from Cobalt Press, if you're more readily familiar with their ancestries than me. 00:43:41.73 Kurt Crenwelge I apparently only know the one. 00:43:42.47 Tyler I'll roll with it. I'll roll with it. I'm partial to the Owlwood myself, but that's because I was a fan of Archibedes from a Sword in the Stone as kid. 00:43:53.40 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, so does Cobalt Press have like an owl-based ancestry? 00:43:57.87 Tyler i I think they do. I just don't remember if it's from ah their book or from somebody else's, but Owlin are a thing. 00:44:06.18 Kurt Crenwelge I do know that Owlins are... 00:44:07.54 Tyler Oh, it's Strixhaven. My apologies. It's Strixhaven. 00:44:09.98 Kurt Crenwelge Right, right. um Let's see. ah Let's see. Cobalt Press... Don't mind me with the Googles over here. 00:44:21.17 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, there's ah there's a whole long list. um 00:44:24.59 Tyler We can stick with the bear. That's fine. I can roll with it. 00:44:26.90 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so you want to be a bear folk named Abaddon Cain. 00:44:30.32 Tyler Yeah, I can see him. He's got like a tiny stovepipe hat kind of thing. I can see it already. 00:44:35.20 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, all right, cool. And then let's see the next question. What is going to be your job or role in society? This, we get to roll a regular D10. 00:44:44.26 Tyler Okay, regular D10. it. We got 10. Ha! Ha! got ten 00:44:52.79 Kurt Crenwelge well, your stovepipe hat may have been a fortuitous guess because this answer provided by our previous guest, Kay Laird, auctioneer, Abaddon Cain, the auctioneer. 00:45:02.66 Tyler oh 00:45:05.13 Tyler Oh Lord. Now I'm just getting... 00:45:06.43 Kurt Crenwelge a 00:45:08.72 Tyler oh gosh, what's his name? the The giant rooster guy from Looney Tunes. 00:45:13.55 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, foghorn leghorn. 00:45:15.12 Tyler Yeah, that's just stuff I'm just seeing that now in my head. 00:45:18.16 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. and then And then let's see. We get to roll one more dice before we take a slight pause on the dice rolling. um What is the age range of our character? This we determine with a d8. 00:45:30.82 Tyler We got two. 00:45:32.73 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so a teenager. 00:45:34.60 Tyler yeah yeah 00:45:34.55 Kurt Crenwelge ah so we have we have a teenage auctioneer named Abaddon Cain. ah That's a bear folk. So with all these details in mind, we got Abaddon Cain, they're a bear folk, they're a teenager, and they're an auctioneer. with So with those details in mind, when you picture this character, can you describe to me in our audio medium audience ah the physical appearance of Abaddon Cain? 00:45:59.94 Tyler physical appearance. Well, he's a teenager, which makes him young, which means he's probably not as big as other bear folk. He's probably a little shorter, i imagine. 00:46:10.61 Tyler Um, probably either I'd say black bear or a brown bear. his name probably is not a great match for him because he does not have a stoic, serious personality. He's probably more slow moving, kind of still figuring things out. You know what i mean? Kind of going with the flow as opposed to like any sense of duty. 00:46:39.19 Kurt Crenwelge and Okay. And then as far as the auctioneer thing and and a teenager, so like, you know, obviously i'm from I'm from Texas here, so it's like, if I just go next door to Fort Worth, like, I could go to the historic stockyards. 00:46:47.20 Tyler Yeah, 00:46:51.78 Kurt Crenwelge I could go to a place where they're having, like, cattle auctions and stuff like that, where it's like, 00:46:52.57 Tyler yeah, yeah. 00:46:56.78 Kurt Crenwelge a bit of 15 a bit of 15 a bit a bit a bit of 20 20 20 i hear 20 20 25 and so it's like how did i don't know i'm just kind of curious the sort of environment that we're going to find abaddon canaan might be kind of hard to figure out how they they stick into your uh your monster hunting guild but maybe there's a nearby town with uh with an auctioneer and uh you know this abaddon cane is trying his chops out or something 00:46:57.27 Tyler Oh yeah. 00:47:07.89 Tyler Yeah. 00:47:17.52 Tyler you know the kid It could work. I mean like i have um have another NPC in the guild by the name of Lern who's a halfling. but He was a white-collar crime kind of a rogue. so He was really good at like forging papers and making off like you know skimming off the top, essentially, from nobles who he didn't like. 00:47:40.28 Tyler But he's also the guild's quartermaster. so He can acquire magic items for people 00:47:46.81 Kurt Crenwelge okay 00:47:47.09 Tyler Through his contacts, maybe Abaddon is who he talks to when he's looking for something particularly unique. 00:47:53.74 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, that's true, yeah, because it's auctioneer. It doesn't say, like, livestock auctioneer. It could be, like, yeah, like, magic item auctioneer, like a, like ah oh, the Sotheby's, like, ah, yes, we have a plus one rapier coming up for auction today, and all the other rich nobles come together, and they're like, ah, this is the civilized way for us to find magic items. No need of delving into dungeons. Why, we just go to the auction house and And we spend all our money on these things. 00:48:25.33 Tyler yeah pretty much um because like that's kind of what my guys can do like if they want a magic item out of the dmg i can be like well you could spend half as much and have the guild artificer try to craft it for you or you could just try to buy it outright but it's like twice the cost and i think there's redone uh tables actually in the dmg for that so it's like four it's like 00:48:44.96 Kurt Crenwelge Right, Xanathar's is the one that updated the prices versus, like, the default DMG. Yeah. 00:48:51.88 Tyler Oh, no, they they actually updated it again for 2024. 00:48:54.06 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, in the 2024 rules, I see. 00:48:56.32 Tyler Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:48:56.57 Kurt Crenwelge Which, again, I don't have the books that I haven't read, so it's all all new to me. 00:48:56.96 Tyler So... 00:48:59.80 Tyler There you Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:49:00.03 Kurt Crenwelge Ha ha ha. 00:49:01.24 Tyler So... They got options, but yeah, yeah. Maybe he's, maybe he's still getting used to it. I think what would be funny though, as an auctioneer, cause like I kind of grew up a little bit around that kind of stuff too. Northern California has got like a very big 4-H kind of community in some areas. So i I remember hearing stuff like that too. And I think maybe he's just not enthusiastic about it. 00:49:22.79 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, interesting. Yeah. 00:49:24.55 Tyler He's just like, Like, okay, like, you know how you like you have auctioneers who just like machine gun fire, right? 00:49:26.32 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:49:31.90 Tyler 95, 95, 96, 96 over there, 98, 98 in the back, right? Like he might just be like, 94. 00:49:38.40 Tyler Oh, there's a hundred over there. oh Oh, 102. Okay. He's just like, kind of like totally not into this, but like no one knows how he got the position. 00:49:51.37 Tyler He just does. 00:49:51.91 Kurt Crenwelge Right. is it Is it a bit of nepotism? Does he have, like, ah a higher-up family member that's like, Abaddon will be good for this. It's like, he builds character. You know, he'll get into the business. 00:50:03.45 Tyler He needs a job that gives him pressure. 00:50:03.34 Kurt Crenwelge And then Abaddon... 00:50:05.64 Tyler yeah baby Yeah, maybe. 00:50:05.76 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:50:07.41 Tyler maybe. Because I figure, like, okay, if you're a bear, right, and you come from a family of other bears, the hilarious thing about this that some people might not know a little bit of D&D lore here. 00:50:18.17 Tyler Like, I'm thinking about, like, werebears in particular. 00:50:20.86 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:50:22.80 Tyler Well... lycanthropy comes in many flavors and some people might remember from things like 3.5 that different kinds of werecreatures had different alignments werebears in particular were lawful good so like the running joke that Smokey the Bear is just a lawful good werebear ranger it's just you know 00:50:42.31 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay. 00:50:43.96 Tyler maybe Maybe along those lines of maybe like his dad was just like, you need a good and proper job. Like, you need something that'll make you good on your feet. Like, think think think on the fly. And he's like, but I don't want to do that. 00:50:57.84 Tyler Well, too bad. you're You're my son and I get to tell you what you do. Okay. 00:51:02.57 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:51:03.46 Tyler Like, almost like a mix of like Winnie the Pooh and almost like your, if you will. 00:51:07.91 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. Okay. So he works in this auctioneer house or he works in this auction house and it's mainly magic items that are that are coming through and and you might use him in your game as far as like, oh, he's a contact at this place that ah your one character is willing to like, but well, maybe not fence items, but certainly to acquire items and perhaps questionable means. 00:51:17.74 Tyler Yeah. 00:51:32.91 Tyler Yeah, like maybe his dad does the actual dealing and maybe he's just a courier for the quartermaster and like brings things to the guild on orders. Because he's like more about seeing the world and like taking the world on his time schedule as opposed to everybody else's. 00:51:41.95 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:51:49.71 Tyler And so it's a major headache for the quartermaster because he always shows up late. 00:51:54.49 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Well, that that's cool. Okay, so... okay so but But for ah anyone else who's going to use Abaddon Cain in their world and in their game, certainly it'd be very interesting to see a Bearfolk teenager you know in an auction house kind of running this very laissez-faire sort of ah auction situation where these people are like desperate to get their bids in because they're trying to outbid and it seems to me like more fights are breaking out in the auctions that Abaddon's running than like other people that are like... 00:52:18.38 Tyler Oh, yeah. 00:52:24.85 Kurt Crenwelge They're keeping it energetic. They're keeping it fun and like getting people hyped up to bid. Maybe people are getting bored in Abaddon's ones or ah you know they're starting fights because they're like, you know you know I've already raised the bid up five times already and Abaddon's still three ones back or something like that. 00:52:40.13 Tyler Or like. 00:52:43.30 Tyler Or like more hilariously, I think if like we didn't want to give him like family and say like his family runs the place. I think what would be even more hilarious is if he was just literally an awakened bear. The reason he's a teenager is because he's only been awakened for like 13 years. 00:53:00.71 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay. 00:53:01.84 Tyler like he's still 00:53:01.79 Kurt Crenwelge That's another way you could do it. 00:53:03.96 Tyler he's still old at heart or he's still an adult at heart. He's just only been awake for so long. And so the running gag is you go to the auction house and you're waiting for the auctioneer. All you see is a bear and a stovepipe hat. 00:53:19.26 Tyler He's like eating and you're just like, what? Where's the auctioneer? And then all of a sudden he just starts talking. 00:53:27.93 Kurt Crenwelge Right. Yeah, that's a different way to do it if your setting doesn't allow for bear folk, per se. 00:53:33.92 Tyler yeah 00:53:33.84 Kurt Crenwelge It's a fun way to twist it as far as, like, an awakened bear. Like, a nice druid just was like, you know what? I think you need a job. This would be a good job for you to have. 00:53:42.11 Tyler oh yeah especially like a druid grove it's like yep that's some abaddon kane why did you give him such a serious name i don't know i was drunk at the time huh okay 00:53:54.83 Kurt Crenwelge I had too much Entmead. 00:53:56.74 Tyler Yeah, pretty much. but I think would be like it just harkens back to like a story I've heard about like making like an awakened horse rogue who just like walks into places and he steals things, but he talks and no one will ever believe that you got mugged by a horse because he's an awakened horse. 00:54:18.22 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. 00:54:18.57 Tyler it's just like It's just like his catchphrase is he'll just like steal something from you. They'd be like, go ahead, report me. Report that you were mugged by a horse. I'm sure that will go over well. 00:54:33.55 Kurt Crenwelge OK, as we're learning about our our fair Abaddon Cain, you know, it it helps us with role playing purposes. We're already kind of figuring and doing that now a little bit, but it describe Abaddon Cain with three adjectives that you think best exemplify this character. 00:54:53.49 Tyler Carefree... laissez-faire and slow moving. 00:55:02.49 Kurt Crenwelge the what what is it ah like the complete opposite of what you want as an auctioneer like you know i'm a slow guy i'm just gonna keep going slower and slower so people are like this is taking forever and it's like someone's desperately holding their hand up and waving it like please register my bid he's like oh yeah and you too yeah you want you you have a bid on this yeah 00:55:07.34 Tyler Absolutely. 00:55:17.98 Tyler oh yeah. Oh, yeah. 00:55:26.08 Tyler Like, he's almost as bad as Tortles. 00:55:28.69 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:55:29.85 Tyler ah 00:55:31.14 Kurt Crenwelge Or sloths from Zootopia. 00:55:33.33 Tyler Oh, Flash. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about 00:55:36.76 Kurt Crenwelge Wait, wait, no, don't distract him. Don't distract. oh you distracted him. No. Oh, I'm getting the weight now. Okay. Yeah. 00:55:43.56 Tyler that. Yup. 00:55:45.73 Kurt Crenwelge Alright, so getting a better idea of Abaddon Cain, and we like all of our NPCs on this podcast to have something cool on their person. 00:55:46.08 Tyler Oh, yeah. 00:55:53.92 Kurt Crenwelge So to randomize this, what's going to be a valuable item, a piece of lore, a secret, or an ideal or concept that Abaddon Cain would ascribe to? This is a combination, so we do a D4 for the category and a D6 for the particular thing. 00:56:09.06 Tyler Okay. I guess I'll start with my d4 here. We got a 1. 00:56:15.86 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, this will be an item and then a D6. What item does Abaddon Cain consider valuable? 00:56:23.08 Tyler Also a 00:56:25.19 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, okay. Well, this answer was provided by previous guest and my niece, Lexi. ah Crystal necklace from the Astral Sea. 00:56:36.67 Tyler Interesting. 00:56:36.78 Kurt Crenwelge So why is this valuable to Abaddon Cain? 00:56:41.01 Tyler Now that's interesting. So I think one of the things that I always like giving characters interesting personality quirks or interesting personal hobbies of theirs. Maybe he has this necklace and maybe it allows him to visit the astral sea while he's attuned to it. So for those of you who've done Spelljammer or any kind of travel into the astral plane, it's very dangerous because your soul is essentially tethered to you by a silver thread. 00:57:10.99 Tyler And if that's ever severed, you are basically lost to the astral plane. Your body no longer has a soul in the material plane, and you're just kind of boned. Maybe... 00:57:20.57 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, so this necklace lets you astral project is what you're saying. 00:57:24.32 Tyler Yes, I think so. Maybe he gets to see other places in the astral plane because that's all he really wants. 00:57:26.11 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:57:31.05 Tyler He's like, you know what? Somebody woke me up 13 years ago, and all I get to see is this. 00:57:33.04 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:57:37.94 Tyler And he points to like... the city. It's gross, it's dirty, it's loud. like What's the point in being in the woods any anymore when you can now talk to people? Do you know what it's tri like to try and talk to a squirrel? 00:57:51.42 Tyler like Come on, man. I need more interesting people. Where am going to find more interesting people? I can't make it to Waterdeep. I can't make it to Baldur's Gate. But I got this neat little crystal necklace and it lets me see people in the astral plane and I go to different like you know um planets and talk to people. 00:58:09.53 Tyler at least for a short time. 00:58:11.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, that's pretty cool. I like it. It's whimsical, you know, kind of keeping on on theme and now just trying to figure out, you know, trying to figure out more about this druid who awakened this bear and then was just like, all right, well, have fun. 00:58:17.59 Tyler oh yeah. 00:58:25.72 Kurt Crenwelge I'm going to go off and do my own adventuring thing, kind of tying into this theme as far as like, Oh, you know, this was someone in like who was busy doing like descent into a furnace or or out of the abyss or something. And then awoke a bear just because they were like, i need to test and see if this works. 00:58:43.93 Kurt Crenwelge And then they were like, all right, good job, bear. 00:58:44.40 Tyler Well... 00:58:46.21 Kurt Crenwelge And it's like, all right, I'm going to go off my adventure now. And then the bear is just like, well, what do I do now? 00:58:51.54 Tyler Well, see, the the funny thing about that is Awaken is a fifth level spell, which means it has to have been a druid of at least some note. But what I think would be hilarious is it was just like the dude, right? 00:59:01.44 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. The 00:59:05.22 Tyler like let In a drunken bender, like he just awakens a bear on a whim. doesn't know what to do with them it's like oh god what is that um what is that terrible comedy movie with like mike tyson and um yeah like the hangover where like they just wake up in vegas and they've got like a tiger or some shit like it's like that like the druid just wakes up from a drunken bender on mead and just like 00:59:23.76 Kurt Crenwelge the hangover 00:59:36.42 Tyler He awoke a bear at some point. He doesn't remember doing it at all. And now he's too ashamed to admit that he's done it. Because now it's like a child, right? It's like this bear is suddenly smart and has all these questions and is trying to ask him all this stuff. And he's like, i I am not ready to be a father. I am. Nope. Sorry, bud. You're on your own. 00:59:57.33 Tyler ah You know, the whole ah the survival of the fittest, right? You're from nature. You'll be fine. And he kind of just like dips. 01:00:04.00 Kurt Crenwelge You're a lot bigger than a lot of other people. Yeah, you're you'll be fine. 01:00:06.68 Tyler Yeah, i mean he just just straight up dips. like 01:00:12.24 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:00:12.40 Tyler like Let's think about druids, right? like I've always seen druids as more like either true neutral or chaotic neutral or neutral good. Like no in between. 01:00:22.79 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:00:23.85 Tyler Because like you're either for nature or you're about the freedom of nature, Yeah. you're not really about society and like laws and like living as man lives. 01:00:36.05 Tyler You would rather do as nature. 01:00:36.73 Kurt Crenwelge Unless you care about the laws of the jungle. 01:00:39.75 Tyler Sure. But then those aren't really laws. Those are just kind of like unspoken, like, all right, if you eat me, you eat me like, you know, like that's how it is. And so, yeah, maybe, I don't know, maybe his druid awakened him in a drunken bender and then just dipped because he didn't want the responsibility of raising a bear child. 01:00:57.66 Kurt Crenwelge we go. Yeah. Yeah, again, whether you take it the bear folk angle or or the awakened bear, i we seem to be having fun dancing between the two of them. So, you know, ah you yeah, it's fun. 01:01:08.36 Tyler I don't know. 01:01:10.54 Kurt Crenwelge ah OK, and of course, we want all of our NPCs on this podcast to be able to have bright gold exclamation points over their heads for when the players go talk to them. 01:01:21.83 Kurt Crenwelge Obviously, if you saw a bear folk in a stovepipe hat or an awakened bear in a stovepipe hat, for that matter, you'd probably want to go talk to them and figure out what it is that they've got going on. So to randomize the last one ah with a D12 roll, what is going to be the side quest that Abaddon Cain is going to offer up to a bunch of heroes to go and do? 01:01:41.36 Tyler We got an eight. 01:01:43.55 Kurt Crenwelge Eight. Ooh, okay. All right. Provided to us by previous guest of the podcast, Britt Anderson. Go find a key piece of an automaton that is missing. 01:01:57.30 Kurt Crenwelge So do you think this is something that's come up in the auction house and like, hey, we can't sell this thing until like this missing piece is found? Kind of a situation you're thinking? 01:02:06.70 Tyler yeah Yeah, you could. 01:02:09.01 Kurt Crenwelge Maybe. 01:02:09.45 Tyler i mean, there's a lot of ways you could weasel that in. um I think one of the funniest ways to add in automatons if you aren't using something like Warforged or like an autodome or something is with Modrons. 01:02:23.49 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, interesting. Okay. I know I kind of treat them like ah minions of a TVA-esque sort of an entity. 01:02:29.85 Tyler Yes, yes. Absolutely bureaucratic bastards. But you could do a lot of hilarious stuff with them too. like I don't know, maybe the auction house has a Modron in their employee who's just like their accountant. 01:02:43.92 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah. 01:02:44.51 Tyler and like a piece of 01:02:44.72 Kurt Crenwelge Ones and zeros. Ones and zeros. It's great at numbers. It knows all the numbers. 01:02:49.51 Tyler Right, but now his brain's missing and he's not working until you go find it. 01:02:54.09 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, and and the longer you take, ah probably the Modron is going to slowly turn into time goop and then just kind of evaporate if it doesn't have it. 01:03:02.83 Tyler or or just Or just keep mucking up their books, man. but 01:03:07.70 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. I mean, so yeah. and um okay so Okay, so we're going to find a key piece of this automaton that's missing, whether it's going to be a Modron or maybe you do a Warforged or you do an Autognome or you have some homebrew Rubits or so or some such... 01:03:23.17 Kurt Crenwelge um 01:03:23.57 Tyler I mean, you could do like a homunculus. um I mean, there's other contraptions. I mean, artificers can literally just make their own, oh God, battlesmiths. They can make their own little robots that help them. I mean. 01:03:36.25 Kurt Crenwelge Right, right. Okay, so so a little automaton, some construct, ah is missing a key piece of them from from functioning properly, and so Abaddon Cain needs your help to go find it, so that way his buddy, his friend, his fellow employee, quote whatever, however you angle it, is ah is is to go back to full functioning form. 01:03:58.40 Kurt Crenwelge So we have to consider... 01:03:58.59 Tyler You know what? I think what would be doubly funny with this too is like maybe he thinks that the Modron or the Automaton is his only friend and they're such a good listener and that's why he's friends with them but the reality is the Modron's just so focused on his work he's not actually listening he's just focused but the bear thinks he's listening and so now he's stopped working and he doesn't know why. 01:04:25.75 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, okay. 01:04:25.88 Tyler oh 01:04:27.84 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Well, of course we want to know like the good, the good and the bad with this. So, you know, the player characters go on this, uh, puzzle hunt, uh, for this missing piece, whatever that adventure is. That's, that's the, the joy of this, uh, you dungeon master out there, uh, get to figure out how this actually works, but the player characters are successful. 01:04:48.90 Kurt Crenwelge They find the missing piece. They bring it to Abaddon Cain. Uh, the, the robots, the automaton is restored. How is Abaddon Cain going to reward the party with success? 01:04:59.81 Tyler I actually have a really good idea for this because I love all kinds of tinkers. One of my recurring NPCs is a tinker gnome. His name is Sprocket Cogsworth. he's He's like a cross between Albert Einstein and Rick Sanchez. All he cares about is the progress of science. But like to get to the point... 01:05:20.69 Tyler there's a particular one shot i ran for my brother and a friend of mine where they were in sigil for like a like planescape type thing doing a one shot where a noble had commissioned time piece from sprocket that could rewind time because you wanted to live forever But he was such a dick to Sprocket that the way he constructed the timepiece was such that the minute he presses the button, he is doomed to relive the same, like, essentially the same death, like, every every five, ten minutes in the most comedic way possible, like, and just increasingly comedic. 01:05:52.22 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:06:04.78 Tyler Like, you get hit by an anvil, a piano falls on you, like, you fall in a portable hole, like... dumb stuff like that. Maybe it is the correct version of this timepiece where like you essentially have a little stopwatch, like a little like a pocket watch. 01:06:22.24 Tyler When you use a magic action to click the button on top, you can rewind six seconds of time and you get yourself another action. It's recharged once a day. 01:06:31.93 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 01:06:35.15 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Only once per day. So it's ah kind of, what is it? Like a galaxy quest where they're like, what does the Omega 13 device do? 01:06:41.35 Tyler Yeah. 01:06:42.91 Kurt Crenwelge Well, it's enough to like take you back six seconds in time to redo one moment. 01:06:43.66 Tyler Exactly. 01:06:47.11 Tyler Exactly. 01:06:49.52 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:06:49.71 Tyler Exactly. Because then like... 01:06:51.37 Kurt Crenwelge But it's all within ah ah the size of a pocket watch device. 01:06:55.75 Tyler Essentially, yeah, like you hit the button and it rewinds six seconds. But just for you, right? Like, you don't physically go back in time. 01:07:01.35 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 01:07:04.02 Tyler Like, i mean, you could weasel it however you want at the table, like story-wise, right? But like mechanically, where I see this going is like, uh, um... ah Gosh, I wish I had another action handy. And you'd be like, you know what? Here you go You get another action with your little timepiece. 01:07:19.94 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 01:07:21.01 Tyler Is it crunching into fighter territory a little? Maybe just a little, but like, you know, once a day having an action surge is kind of cool for other characters. 01:07:31.45 Kurt Crenwelge And it's probably, you know, probably has to be attuned. So, you know, because yeah, got to got to attune to that. 01:07:34.82 Tyler Oh, absolutely. 01:07:37.67 Kurt Crenwelge um But OK, so this is like an ah like a like I don't know like an interesting item that Abaddon Cain has like not put up on the auction block yet or they don't quite know fully what it does. 01:07:49.56 Tyler i I like to think that it's a pocket watch that the Modron themselves had from Mechanus, which makes more sense. So when you put his brain back in, he's like, oh, oh thank thank God. 01:07:56.83 Kurt Crenwelge OK. 01:08:01.01 Tyler I'm so behind on my paperwork. But you know what? i did Here, take this. Because it clearly wasn't working for me. Yeah. 01:08:10.13 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay. That's cool. Okay, so then the Modron gives up this this magic pocket watch device that will allow anyone who attunes to it to get an extra action ah once per day. 01:08:22.49 Tyler Yeah. Yeah. Like maybe it just draws from like Mechanus itself, right? Which like anyone who knows Mechanus, that would make total sense because it's all about machines, right? And all about the order of the universe. 01:08:32.11 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:08:34.46 Tyler So I think that'd be kind of cool, actually. 01:08:37.46 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so you get a really cool ah time stoppers watch ah that lets you have an extra action. But now we have to consider the opposite. What's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure? So they the players stumble across Abaddon Cain, who's like, help my Modron friend. 01:08:57.70 Kurt Crenwelge And they're like, no thanks. Smell you later. or They, you know, however the adventure goes, the brain gets destroyed, lost, ah not returned. Or what's what's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure? 01:09:16.20 Tyler Oh, well, geez. I mean, like, thinking about this from, like, a logical perspective of lore, right? Like, somehow binding a Modron to your service from the plane of Mechanist is difficult enough on its own. Like, maybe, like, a Warlock could pull it off? Because I think you can use, like... I think there is a Summon Construct spell, or there's, like, um... There's some kind of spell, I'm pretty sure. It's, like, a high-level, fifth or sixth-level spell. It lets you summon, like, an extra planar creature. i think you can choose a Construct, but... 01:09:45.79 Tyler Needless to say, it's not easy, right? So somebody had to spend good money to get that Modron here, and now it's broken. So maybe it's a setback, like, with Rep, with that faction, where it's like, well, you know, you were getting a pretty good deal on magic items. Like, you could just buy whatever you want at market price. 01:10:05.95 Tyler Now, now you guys going have to join the auction like everybody else. 01:10:11.16 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, and if it's and you have to do Abaddon Cain's auction, which means it's going to as slow as possible. 01:10:14.35 Tyler Yes! oh Yeah, there's no guarantee you're going to get what you want at that point. 01:10:21.73 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:10:23.03 Tyler Let alone at the price you want it at. 01:10:23.29 Kurt Crenwelge Fist fights are breaking out. Fist fights are breaking out in the audience. People are like half asleep, not even paying attention. And yeah. 01:10:30.08 Tyler Oh, yeah. 01:10:32.17 Kurt Crenwelge All sorts of chaos with a bear who's trying to run an auction. 01:10:33.64 Tyler It's like, it's like, yeah, it's like Ferris Bueller all over again. 01:10:39.58 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yes. ah Yes, the actor. I'm trying to I'm blanking on his name. Wasn't it a ah Stein? 01:10:45.45 Tyler Yeah, something like that. 01:10:45.86 Kurt Crenwelge Let's see. 01:10:46.53 Tyler i know who you're talking about, but the the guy who's just going Bueller. Bueller. 01:10:50.54 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, Ben Stein. Yes. 01:10:51.85 Tyler Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:10:51.95 Kurt Crenwelge So they're American writer and lawyer um who is apparently 80 years old. So there you go. 01:10:58.71 Tyler Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was already in like mid-age when he did Ferris Bueller, so that tracks. 01:11:04.75 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, there we go. 01:11:06.94 Tyler I think it'd be great. 01:11:07.22 Kurt Crenwelge um 01:11:07.78 Tyler Yeah, maybe he just talks like him, too. That'd be hilarious. 01:11:11.28 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, Avedon Cain talks like Ben Stein. 01:11:14.69 Tyler Yeah, just like that character. i think that'd be a great inspiration. 01:11:19.28 Kurt Crenwelge Well, I woke up. The druid awoke my mind, and I just don't understand what's going on. 01:11:28.24 Tyler Pretty much, like... 01:11:29.44 Kurt Crenwelge Bueller. Bueller. 01:11:33.26 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Okay. Alright, so, okay, so we've got, uh, um, and 01:11:38.18 Tyler You gotta develop a lot of patience for him. 01:11:41.35 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, yeah. Okay, so then the failure or the refusal condition is like, okay, the Modron just stays broken. You have to pay full price or double price, and ah you could you're only allowed to go into Abaddon's auctions. They won't allow you to like go to anyone else who's auctioning off items or whatever. 01:11:59.45 Tyler Yeah, like you don't get special treatment anymore. Like you you broke their accountant. you're They're very, very expensive accountant. Sure. Sure. 01:12:06.91 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Okay. All right. And of course, we have optional questions here. If you feel like Abaddon came the I guess we're now deciding on Awakened Bear ah character, you know, if you feel like there's more to explore there or if you're ready to move on to the next section, we can do that, too. 01:12:23.84 Tyler I can do the options. That's totally fine. 01:12:26.04 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:12:26.50 Tyler Motivations. I mean, like I said before, maybe he just wants to see more than just what this world has to offer. He wants to travel the astral and see see all the all that life the universe has to give. 01:12:39.10 Tyler Now that he's awakened, he wants to see it all. 01:12:42.09 Kurt Crenwelge He wants to be the smartest bear. 01:12:45.37 Tyler I don't know about smartest, but, you know, I mean, one could have dreams of seeing the world and traveling. Why not the universe? 01:12:52.30 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. I'm just imagining like a bear gaining wizard levels, and now he has a spell book, and he's just like, oh, I think it's time to cast another fireball. 01:13:04.27 Kurt Crenwelge And he's just... 01:13:05.91 Tyler He just just like sits down on his butt. The grimoire is like hanging around his neck. 01:13:13.41 Kurt Crenwelge And then let's see, how do his goals and motivations affect his general personality? I mean, if we're saying, you know, like Sloan. 01:13:19.51 Tyler Oh, he's depressed. Oh, he's depressed. 01:13:21.02 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 01:13:22.53 Tyler like He's slow and like he's very carefree, but like it's because he has... 01:13:22.83 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 01:13:26.21 Tyler like He's so bored by just life on this particular planet because he just wants so bad to go see other places. The minute he gets off this rock and finds someplace else, oh, then he'll be animated. 01:13:38.70 Tyler Then it's different. Then he's going to be like a kid in Disneyland. 01:13:40.19 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 01:13:41.71 Tyler It's going to be like on candy, dude. 01:13:45.69 Kurt Crenwelge and Now I'm waiting for the stories to emerge where people are like, you know what? Let's bring this bear with us and see what he can do. 01:13:53.35 Tyler Right? Because then, like, ironically, that's when he starts talking fast. 01:13:57.27 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, he gets more powerful. He's like, oh, I'm going to start picking up spell class levels. 01:14:00.42 Tyler but 01:14:03.12 Tyler Like, he's casting spells so fast because of his experience in auctioneering. He's just firing off, like, spell words like they're auctioneering words. Which is frightening to think about. 01:14:12.54 Kurt Crenwelge A fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball. Yeah. 01:14:15.70 Tyler That's frightening to think about, too. Because, like, could you imagine a caster that let's just, like, uses spoken components so fast that they can cast extra spells in combat? Like, that's kind of scary, man. 01:14:25.61 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 01:14:27.96 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, that's like a feat, like the fast talking, like a fast talking feat, like because you could speak so fast, you're able to squeeze in like twice the number of spells and in ah in a casting time or something like that. 01:14:39.17 Tyler Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you could... 01:14:39.89 Kurt Crenwelge As long as it takes an action or something like that. 01:14:42.62 Tyler Yeah, like you could make it like a wizard subclass, right? Like um like Prodigy or something like this, like right? Where it's a class feature where like you can cast one extra leveled spell per turn at the cost of half as many spell slots or something like that, right? Because that's really, really strong. Let's let's be real here, right? like Being able to cast more than one leveled spell a turn is very, very game balance breaking. 01:15:07.40 Tyler there has to be something equally, equally... 01:15:11.16 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, you take ah you use up more of your spell slots faster. 01:15:11.70 Tyler you i don yeah or maybe 01:15:15.14 Kurt Crenwelge It's like a quick draw. So basically Abaddon Cain, which sounds like a wild west cowboy name, basically is like the bear strolls up and like he's fanning the hammer on his six shooter. 01:15:20.51 Tyler yeah yeah yeah which is which is just yeah just finger guns literally 01:15:25.73 Kurt Crenwelge He's like, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball. And then like 01:15:32.64 Tyler That'd be kind of fun. Yeah, maybe maybe that's it. You don't get less spell slots. You just use twice as many per round or something. So you're going, well, that doesn't really work, though. Because, like, ah, doesn't matter. 01:15:42.70 Tyler I can think good about it for another time. That sounds fun. I'll have figure that out. 01:15:45.09 Kurt Crenwelge but That's an initial on paper build of it. But then, of course, a real, you know, you really sit down to do the game design work and then you figure out the way of like how to how to make that seem more taxing of like, oh, you burn up a lot of resources real fast. 01:15:57.83 Tyler Yeah. Yeah. 01:15:59.73 Kurt Crenwelge But you get the feeling of like, I'm a very powerful spellcaster that just like. you know, does all my heavy, powerful stuff on the front load. And then as it fizzles out and I'm out of stuff, I'm just like, I just talk real fast and just do cantrips real fast or something like that. 01:16:15.56 Tyler Oh, yeah. 01:16:16.10 Kurt Crenwelge And that's it. 01:16:16.65 Tyler Oh, yeah. That'd be fun. You know, that'd be even better, too, if you made him like have like a southern drawl, even, like to give him that real cowboy feel. Yeah. 01:16:25.42 Kurt Crenwelge Well, maybe when he talks fast, he does slip into the southern accent, but otherwise he sounds like Ben Stein, which I feel like this. 01:16:31.47 Tyler Yeah. 01:16:32.78 Kurt Crenwelge OK, I mean, as far as like interacting with other people, you know, you know, we're talking lazy, fair and slow. And that's generally how he acts with everyone. Or does he like we he's got his friend the mode drawn. So does he interact and speak with him a little differently than maybe, say, anyone else? 01:16:49.57 Tyler Maybe, yeah, because I almost picture like how like the relationship was between Forrest Gump and Bubba, right? Where Bubba was just a simple dude, right? But like he was a good listener, and that's all that Forrest does is talk, right? like Maybe that was the same way with the bear. Maybe Abaddon just like talks its ear off, and it's just like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But it's like a Modron, so it's still focused on doing its primary directive. 01:17:20.36 Tyler He's just a little too, maybe he's too naive to understand like context and he just thinks the Modron's his buddy and listens to all his problems. 01:17:20.43 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:17:30.20 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Okay. And then it sounds like we're already talking about it, but you know, any particular accent or language or any idiosyncrasies and how Abaddon Cain speaks or acts. So, you know, when he's like, you know, slow, normal self, he's kind of sounds more like Ben Stein, but maybe as he gets more animated, he's exploring the world, he's learning magic, he's doing these things. 01:17:44.48 Tyler Yeah. 01:17:51.66 Kurt Crenwelge Then he starts sounding more like maybe like foghorn leghorn, but like even faster or something. 01:17:55.33 Tyler That's what I'm thinking. Like, I say, I say, like, what are you doing here? Like, you know, and starts doing the the fast. 01:18:02.29 Kurt Crenwelge Boy, you ain't got a lick of sense in you. Yeah. 01:18:04.60 Tyler Oh, yeah, exactly. And I'm like, it's almost actually indicative. God, what is that reminding me of? i mean, definitely Foghorn and Leghorn, but like I think I'm also seeing like Little John from Disney's Robin Hood, right? 01:18:19.49 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah, yeah. That boy. Well, I mean, also, you know, Little John, a bear and Baloo, also a bear ah from Jungle Bear of Jungle Book, as well as Tailspin, which. 01:18:24.50 Tyler Yep. Right? Exactly. like 01:18:31.40 Tyler Yep. That's what I mean. 01:18:32.74 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:18:33.46 Tyler Very laid back bear. Kind of just does what he wants when he feels like it, you know? 01:18:40.09 Kurt Crenwelge OK. And then, you know, what impact has Abaddon Cain made on the world and how has he shaped his local area? Probably not every day you see a talking bear. 01:18:49.85 Tyler Oh, God. I mean, like, I think, like, he would have an absolute horrifying effect on, like, local merchants just because of how slow he talks in auctioneering. Like, people will avoid his auctions on purpose. Or it's like, if you're a merchant who doesn't know the scene very well, and, like, you get invited to attend an auction for Abaddon Cain and you don't know who he is... 01:19:14.79 Tyler Like every other merchant knows that this is basically like a snub, right? Where it's like, oh, I don't want to trade with you, but maybe you'll have better luck with Abaddon Cain and his auctions. And you're like, oh man, that sounds great. I'd love to get on some auctions. And then you get there and you're like, oh God, why was this a good idea? This was not a good idea. 01:19:38.11 Tyler You know what I mean? 01:19:38.01 Kurt Crenwelge Talk about a bear market. 01:19:39.96 Tyler Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The puns. 01:19:42.87 Kurt Crenwelge little finance joke for everyone out there. 01:19:43.24 Tyler maybe maybe Maybe he's got some of that too. Maybe he's full of puns because he thinks he's real clever. 01:19:50.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, well, he's awakened that ah puns are obviously one of the first things, ah you know, when you truly master a language, you're like, oh, this word almost sounds like this word. And, oh, yeah, yeah. Puns. So, yeah. 01:20:04.09 Kurt Crenwelge ah But of course, with the slowness and the dryness of it, maybe doesn't always like people are groaning like, oh, come on. 01:20:09.06 Tyler oh yeah. It doesn't always land. 01:20:13.29 Tyler Yeah. 01:20:14.27 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:20:14.93 Tyler Oh, everybody. 01:20:15.22 Kurt Crenwelge Get on with the auction. He's like, hold on, hold on. There's a real good pun here. You just have to listen for it. 01:20:23.24 Tyler Someone's out there just like, man, this is unbearable. And he's like, I take offense to that. It's like some dumb shit like that. 01:20:33.62 Kurt Crenwelge And then ah any current problems that prevent Abaddon came from being a bigger player on the stage of life and of the world, just the him being stuck. 01:20:40.65 Tyler Oh, yeah, that's easy. He's up. He's a bear. No one takes him seriously. 01:20:47.60 Tyler He has all these dreams of seeing the astral plane and like doing these things and going other places. 01:20:47.92 Kurt Crenwelge him 01:20:52.04 Tyler But it's like, dude, you're a bear. What are you going to do? You don't even got thumbs. Like, come on. He just groans and looks at his front paws because he's got no thumbs. You know what I mean? Like, 01:21:05.55 Kurt Crenwelge Well, he's got, you know, he's got paws with big bear claws on him. I wonder if he could technically become like a blade singing wizard or something like that. Or, you know, 01:21:13.87 Tyler Maybe. i mean, it's possible. 01:21:14.79 Kurt Crenwelge a 01:21:15.75 Tyler Yeah. 01:21:16.21 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. or becomes a celestial-packed warlock or something like that for the astral sea or something like that. 01:21:22.52 Tyler yeah Yeah, that could work. Or like maybe like an old one Warlock to Ogma, because he'll grant him like untold knowledge, right? That'd be good. 01:21:31.60 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, boy. 01:21:32.79 Tyler That'd be fun. Eldritch knowledge from an old god. 01:21:37.23 Kurt Crenwelge Well, look for the bare necessities of life, am I right? 01:21:41.73 Tyler Always good stuff. 01:21:43.55 Kurt Crenwelge All right. Well, we've made it through NPC creation, and I think it's time we took Abaddon Kane and threw him into ah random encounter. 01:21:52.26 Tyler Oh, shit. but 01:21:59.26 Kurt Crenwelge And final ad read insert break here for Zencaster, the service that lets me record the podcast. ah If you're looking to start your own podcast and take advantage of all the cool services they have and you want to save some money on your starting up of a podcast, go to Zencaster.com forward slash pricing. Use the code side KQ podcast at checkout. 01:22:20.41 Kurt Crenwelge save 30% off your first month of any Zencaster paid plan. Doing that supports the sponsor and it gives me a kickback. So again, thanks everyone ah for supporting the sponsors. It really helps us out. 01:22:34.03 Kurt Crenwelge All right. And now we're here in the part of the show where we get to do a little bit of a role play, a vignette, a scene, two dungeon masters enter. ah Only one leaves. No, this isn't Thunderdome. 01:22:43.79 Tyler ah 01:22:44.68 Kurt Crenwelge No, we get to play off against each other. And I think Tyler is going to do a fantastic job being Abaddon Cain. But the question becomes, who am I going to be in the scene? Am I going to be one of my adventuring characters from the podcast roster and they get to meet Abaddon Cain and get this side quest? Is it going to be Abaddon Cain in the Modron talking? 01:23:04.85 Kurt Crenwelge ah Some random merchant convey you know getting stuck in the auction, being run by Abaddon Cain? Or I don't know, what sort of scene are you interested in showcasing and showing off Abaddon Cain in? 01:23:18.15 Tyler all You know, i'm I'm a bit of a wild card. Like I said, I'm i'm not bad at ad-libs, so I say we just kind of see where we go if you want to start. 01:23:28.09 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, so do you want me to bring in an adventuring character or just like some random person stuck in the auction? 01:23:35.90 Tyler ah You can bring adventuring character. That's totally fine. 01:23:39.22 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Well, ah you know, I like to do it. So to quickly go through the Rolodex, we've got Duncan. He's the recklessly brave adventurer for hire. Happy go lucky. 01:23:50.25 Kurt Crenwelge Baldur's Gate three terms. He's a battle master fighter kind of a guy. 01:23:53.55 Tyler Okay. 01:23:54.52 Kurt Crenwelge um 01:23:54.64 Tyler Fun stuff. 01:23:55.69 Kurt Crenwelge We've got Sonia. She's the warrior woman who started off as a barbarian and multiclassed into a paladin who serves a God who wishes to redeem the undead. 01:24:03.98 Tyler Interesting. 01:24:04.12 Kurt Crenwelge We have Korak, who's the lawful evil arcane trickster roguish dwarf. 01:24:10.03 Tyler don't 01:24:10.01 Kurt Crenwelge We have Chrisley, who's the herbalist botanist wood elf druid, who then multiclassed into a cleric who serves living memory. We have Orion, who's the astral elf illusionist wizard, who's 01:24:18.62 Tyler oh 01:24:22.77 Tyler Oh, that would be fun. 01:24:22.78 Kurt Crenwelge We have Agape. 01:24:23.70 Tyler Ha! 01:24:25.42 Kurt Crenwelge She's the lilac colored tiefling Sorlock. Started off as a wild magic sorcerer, made a warlock archfey pact with Proserpina. She affectionately refers to her as Prosperina incorrectly. 01:24:38.18 Kurt Crenwelge um And then, of course, we've got Lifespell, the Necromancer, the forest gnome Necromancer with his ah three skelly bros in tow. And then we've also got a Amblin Mithril Shaper. 01:24:50.99 Kurt Crenwelge She's a dwarvish bard as well, who's ah only been seen in one adventure thus far. But those are the characters that ah have been created for the podcast. And if none of them speak to you, we can always create someone new. 01:25:00.27 Tyler Okay. 01:25:03.97 Tyler Okay. I mean, the Astral Elf, I think, would be a good match considering he wants to see the Astral Plane. 01:25:09.54 Kurt Crenwelge OK, so you would like Abaddon Cain to meet Orion. 01:25:13.63 Tyler Yeah, I think that would be hilarious. 01:25:15.72 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, and would you care to set the scene or for me to, ah you to set the scene or me to set the scene? 01:25:20.73 Tyler I can go ahead and send it That's totally fine. so Orion walks into a large merchant establishment. The sign upon the door reads, Cain and Abel's House of Goods. ah You're not sure if that's a religious dig or not, but at least it stands out. As you approach the desk, what you see is a roundish mechanical looking creature typing in numbers and using an abacus. 01:25:46.06 Tyler And he does not seem to notice you much. But behind him nearby, you could swear, is a brown bear and a stovepipe hat. 01:25:57.27 Kurt Crenwelge o And C, yes, going through our history here, the last time the podcast saw Orion, he had finally managed to make his way back to the Astral Sea because that's where he met Aravind, the Thrykreen astrologer. 01:26:11.08 Kurt Crenwelge And he did help with getting that ah object cleared out of the way. ah oh no, it was exploring the one part of the map and bringing the air... It was the. kind Oh, that's what it was. It was something was blocking the telescope for event from being able to fully map this section or this part of the Astral Sea that he was trying to do. 01:26:32.40 Kurt Crenwelge And so probably as part of that adventure and getting rewarded, our event sent him off back to the mundane world. in order to go get, like, maybe deliver some stuff to his kin that were there on the Prime Material plane. 01:26:48.25 Kurt Crenwelge And so just as part of, ah you know, making his ways and exploring and getting his way back to where he needs to go to be able to successfully ah get the help and resources he needs to plane shift back to the Astral Sea, he finds himself in this auction house because he's wondering, like... 01:27:04.85 Kurt Crenwelge You know, it it does seem kind of odd that I am having to travel all this way. And if I just knew the spell plane shift, maybe there's like an item here that I could look for it. And so when he comes up to this desk and he sees a Modron and then he sees a bear in a hat, 01:27:20.31 Kurt Crenwelge You know, there's a he is a very Spock sort of ah a fellow. So he's like, this seems well, well, one one creature does not belong here and one creature really doesn't belong here. 01:27:29.74 Tyler hu 01:27:32.33 Kurt Crenwelge He doesn't maybe in this instance know which one fits which category. um But he'll he'll like tap on the desk or knock on it or do you know politely get their attention. And he'll just say like, ah hello, I'm I'm here for an auction. Are there surely plane shifting devices, cubic gates or tuning forks or some such things? Yes. 01:27:58.71 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:28:00.60 Tyler Demodron briefly pauses from his paperwork to look up at the desk. Oh, you're a patron. Take a card. And he points to like a little sort of... but was almost looks like... Oh gosh, what are they called? 01:28:19.46 Tyler they They flip around in a circle. They hold business cards. then No one uses them anymore. 01:28:25.30 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, oh, like a Rolodex? 01:28:27.42 Tyler Yeah, it's like a Rolodex. It's like a magical Rolodex that just like spits out numbers. You pull them off on a tab. 01:28:34.23 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:28:34.51 Tyler But as he's talking, there's another voice that's sort of talking over him. you know I would love to see the Astral Plane someday. 01:28:45.81 Tyler stars are so pretty you know what i mean you can't really see them down here or anything they're just so itty-titty-bitty i i just i love to see them up close and you can see like very apparently like the modron is visibly irritated and seems to just tolerate this 01:29:05.51 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, and then Orion is looking around confused, trying to see where the the this other voice is coming from. But is he finally going to be able to maybe with his ah passive perception only finally now notice that it's the bear that's talking and not a mode drawn or a second mode drawn or something like that? 01:29:21.10 Tyler Yes. 01:29:24.27 Tyler Absolutely. And you can see like the mode drawn, like I said, is just tolerating this and like still waiting for an answer from you. 01:29:32.09 Kurt Crenwelge ah So Orion takes a number and then he's just like, oh, this ah seems ah highly illogical. 01:29:44.22 Kurt Crenwelge Are you talking bear? 01:29:47.36 Tyler Oh, you're talking to my coworker. Yes, he's a talking bear. 01:29:56.25 Tyler Abaddon, you have a guest. He's like, he's like so withdrawn from the situation. Like, this is probably an everyday thing for this Modron. But the the bear finally turns around and sees you. 01:30:07.62 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:30:09.64 Tyler And for all intents and purposes, he just looks like a straight up brown bear with a stovepipe hat. But then a voice comes out of his mouth, and which is what throws you off. Oh, huh? And he suddenly his eyes get big and wide as he looks at you. 01:30:25.28 Tyler Well, but I'll be. And all my stars, i I don't think I've actually seen anybody from the stars before. Are you are you from up there? And you can see like a pointed claw points to the ceiling in the sky. 01:30:40.81 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, uh, hello. Um, yes, I come from the Astral Sea is my native realm. yes 01:30:52.23 Tyler o You're from the... He's from the Astral. Zero, what? He's from the Astral! And he's like shaking the Modron. He's just like, oh god, please just stop. what what What's it like up there? Are there lots of stars? I heard of things called spelljammers. They fly around. 01:31:10.25 Tyler You got to have magic talking. and You got to use that to drive, right? Like, you can't just you can't just pick it up and go places. You got to, like, channel your magic into it and whatnot. 01:31:21.46 Tyler I got some magic, you know. I got some books. See, it's around my neck. And he's, like, pointing to, like, what you can see what looks to be like a wizard's grimoire hanging from his neck. I ain't much good at it right now, but umm I'm learning. learned to read here in the last 10 years or so. It's very, very basic, but I'm this close to learning how to cast spells, I swear. 01:31:45.13 Kurt Crenwelge Orion is flabbergasted. His jaw is just hanging open. 01:31:47.72 Tyler ha, ha. 01:31:48.41 Kurt Crenwelge He's just like, in all of the calculations I could have run, this was never in the equation. 01:31:53.10 Tyler Ha, ha, ha. 01:31:55.82 Kurt Crenwelge Like, he's just flabbergasted. He's just going to continue to let this bear talk. He's just like a bear of that talks and a bear that's learning magic. Like, his brain is exploding. 01:32:06.62 Tyler and 01:32:08.98 Tyler And now you suddenly understand why the Modron is just like, oh God, just please just go away. Like it's just tolerating him basically. But, um which it's very unbecoming of a Modron. 01:32:20.24 Tyler You know, they're very driven by bureaucracy and their prime directives and what they're supposed to be doing. 01:32:23.65 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:32:25.02 Tyler the The fact that it's even putting up with this would suggest that maybe this bears a little bit more important than you thought. 01:32:32.74 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:32:33.05 Tyler But it's when he starts to introduce himself that you understand. ah oh I'm sorry. I'm sorry. i but yeah I'm gabbing up the whole air here. I'm so sorry. i'm my My name is Abaddon. Abaddon Cain. And he sticks out up big paw that's like as big as your head because he's a brown bear. 01:32:51.67 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:32:53.04 Tyler And that's when it dawns on you. 01:32:53.42 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, Ryan shakes it very cautiously, but he will shake the paw. He's not going to be rude. 01:32:58.90 Tyler Yeah, he like he like almost like crushes your hand without realizing it because he's still a damn bear. But um it's the name that clicks with you first. As you realize when you walked in, this place was called Cain and Abel's House of Goods. 01:33:13.21 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, you you you are a co-owner of this auction house. 01:33:21.01 Tyler Oh, me? na No, no, no. That's my adoptive father. Yeah, he brought me in. He said I would bring in a lot of money to the establishment, but I'm not real sure what he meant by that. 01:33:33.38 Tyler So I was just happy for, you know, a roof over my head and some food in my tummy because, well, no one really thinks I'm a a person. 01:33:34.46 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:33:42.53 Tyler See, i go I go to market to go buy food and, well, I usually just scare people away. So dad says I got to stay home, you know, on account of scaring people. 01:33:54.06 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, and you see like this Spock like astral elf illusionist wizard kind of get like a, oh, you poor thing sort of a thing. Probably like not not something that would normally happen for him, but he's just kind of like, well, this this guy, this bear is just so endearing. And he's like, 01:34:12.87 Kurt Crenwelge I can't possibly like ignore him or like refuse him or, uh, not want to learn more about him. And so he's just like, fascinating, fascinating. And, and, and, and he points to the, the spell book and he's like, and you're, you're learning spells. And, and so, um, 01:34:30.05 Kurt Crenwelge As a show of ah his magical skill, he will use like minor illusion and he like projects like a solar system type sort of display in his palm with like the galaxy swirling and rotating ah for Abaddon to be able to see. 01:34:46.13 Kurt Crenwelge He's like, yes, this is the sort of magic that I that I do on a normal basis. 01:34:46.52 Tyler Oh, he's... 01:34:50.06 Tyler Oh, he is enthralled. Like, you started conjuring stars in your hand, and all he could do was, like, stare with his mouth agape. You could see the reflections of your illusions, like, in his eyes. 01:35:01.54 Tyler like but Like I said, he's still a bear, so it's, like, hard to read his emotion, really, except he's emotive in ways that are unnatural for a creature like him, so it's a little... 01:35:06.70 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:35:13.21 Tyler It's a little bit of uncanny valley. 01:35:15.48 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Yeah. Kind of like a pick a brave or, or something like that. 01:35:20.19 Tyler Yeah, a little bit. 01:35:20.81 Kurt Crenwelge Like when mom, when mom's in bear form. Okay. 01:35:24.16 Tyler Yeah, yeah. And so he's just kind of like gawking at your magic. 01:35:28.11 Kurt Crenwelge And he's going through stars too. 01:35:28.36 Tyler That 01:35:29.83 Kurt Crenwelge And in Elvish and in common, he's saying like, oh, this star, this star's name is this to my people. And, and, you know, like, oh, ah it we you know, we regale tales about like this star and what it serves in our historical annals and into histories and stuff. 01:35:44.31 Kurt Crenwelge And he's starting to do a couple of those, but then maybe finally now he's picking up on like, you know, this Modron isn't acting very much like a Modron that I've ever seen before. And so maybe he rolls like an intelligence and ah check. 01:35:58.89 Kurt Crenwelge And he's like, and he notices like there's a hunk of the Modron missing. And he'll be like, oh, my my apologies. ah ah He still keeps the illusion up, but, you know, he's trying to... 01:36:10.49 Tyler Sure. 01:36:10.90 Kurt Crenwelge Abaddon, is your... is your um Is your compatriot here all right? He does. he doesn't seem like he's fully himself. Have you noticed a change in him? 01:36:22.45 Tyler Oh, oh, zero one. Oh yeah. He'd been, he'd been on her lately. He's, you know, he's normally a great listener. I talked to him all day. You know, he's, he's got ears for days, but lately he's been a little grumpy. Like I think it's cause of the hole he's got in his head, but, um, 01:36:39.25 Tyler I don't know really where it went. 01:36:39.59 Kurt Crenwelge Holy. 01:36:41.32 Tyler Yeah, he's got like a little bit of a hole in the back, but like, I don't know how he's made or anything. So like, I can't fix him. I just... 01:36:49.67 Kurt Crenwelge m 01:36:50.87 Tyler He kind of just like shrugs a little bit with a clawed finger like pointing to the back of the Modron. where like He kind of like turns the Modron in like his little swivel chair. 01:36:58.52 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:37:02.84 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:37:03.02 Tyler And you can see there's like a whole chunk missing. It's like if you opened up a computer and someone had just like literally ripped out the CPU, but for somehow, some way, the computer's still functioning. 01:37:16.06 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Oh, oh, my. I've, uh, oh, my apologies. This is the first time I've ever been up close with a Modron, but, uh, that does not seem like a good thing for, uh, your, your compatriot here. 01:37:28.08 Kurt Crenwelge Um, is there, have you tried looking around? you need help? Perhaps? 01:37:33.64 Tyler Oh, I'm not supposed to touch anything on account of my hands being dangerous, apparently. See, I started learning spells, but I got so good at it because I talk real fast, right, when I'm doing auctions. 01:37:46.06 Tyler And so, like, I guess I just... He kind of, like, does, like, finger guns. As you can see, he launches out a couple of fire bolts quite by accident. Like, he didn't really mean to. They just sort of happen. 01:37:59.90 Kurt Crenwelge well 01:38:00.15 Tyler Like... And like one of them collides with the Modron on accident and the other collides with like a stack of crates across the room. Yeah, that's kind of why I'm not supposed to touch nothing. 01:38:12.02 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, oh. 01:38:12.27 Tyler ah It may have been my fault that he may be damaged. and He kind of just like sheepishly scratches his head. 01:38:20.06 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, oh, well, ah well, I am a bit of an adventurer. i've I've done a few, I've done a few missions and I've done a few things. If I'm, ah Well, with the promise of maybe you have some ah like a cubic gate or you have some item that will allow me to easily try traverse the different realms and planes of existence. 01:38:40.84 Kurt Crenwelge ah Then I suppose, you know, if I could get into that auction, I can I can help you repair your friend. 01:38:48.85 Tyler Oh, I suppose ah I'd have to check the docket. 01:38:48.95 Kurt Crenwelge Find the missing piece. 01:38:55.23 Tyler I don't really know if we got one moment. he kind It's the weirdest thing for you to see him like walk on two feet because he's a bear. 01:39:06.41 Tyler And he pulls up like a clipboard is flipping through papers. 01:39:06.34 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:39:11.40 Tyler um It looks like we got a an artifact here that can open a gateway but uh it's supposed to be real dangerous like real expensive too but i don't really know what you're packing as far as uh you know your pocketbook goes so uh are you sure as you can afford it if if you get it i'm sure you could travel to where zero one is from and find a replacement 01:39:22.30 Kurt Crenwelge ah o 01:39:39.74 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Yes. Okay. I should be able to. He checks his coinage and some of the materials he's picked up along the way. He's like, yes, I, uh, I think we can manage. 01:39:51.73 Kurt Crenwelge And so, uh, okay. So he'll, he will agree to accept the side quest of finding this missing piece while also getting ready for this, this auction. and is And as they begin to do the montage of going into this side quest adventure of finding the peace, is there anything that would close out the scene as far as Abaddon is concerned? 01:40:12.98 Tyler Um, absolutely. Like, assuming that you were going to go, either whether you finish or not, I think Abaddon would, like, before you walk out the doors of Cain and Abel's House of Goods, uh, he is by the door, and he's sitting on his butt, and, like, before you can leave... 01:40:35.42 Tyler he just two massive paws grasp onto your shoulders and whip you around. and as much of a whisper as he can muster, please take me with you. 01:40:47.56 Tyler I got to see the stars. 01:40:48.82 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:40:49.68 Tyler I can't live here anymore, man. It's so boring here. 01:40:55.83 Tyler Please take me with you. I swear I'll be a good bear. I'm real good with magic. Like I said, ah um I'm good with words. um I can learn stuff real good. 01:41:08.02 Tyler um Please don't leave me behind. 01:41:16.73 Kurt Crenwelge And scene. There we go. ah So how was it getting to play Avidon Cain, the bear auctioneer? 01:41:23.95 Tyler Oh, it's always great fun. I love role-playing characters. That's the whole reason I became a DM. is I get to be every other character, not just my own. 01:41:32.09 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. Yeah. So we're here in the final thoughts section of the show. So, ah you know, we get to share our concluding thoughts and such. And then, ah you know, certainly I always like to leave it to the guest here at the end. 01:41:45.41 Kurt Crenwelge So if there's anything you want to plug, if you want to be found online, you know, with your work or your D&Ds or whatnot, and then certainly any passions or causes we need to be made aware of, I want to leave that to you now. So, um you know, final thoughts, plugs, all that good stuff. 01:42:02.46 Tyler um You know, like i said, D&D is a wonderful hobby. i would always recommend anybody to try it at least once or twice just to see if they like and see if they can't find a community of their own. But as far as blasting myself, I don't really have a whole lot of ah like online presence, but... like What I would do is showcase my wife, actually. 01:42:24.57 Tyler My wife's an illustrator. She has a BFA and was trying to get into children's books. 01:42:26.98 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 01:42:29.94 Tyler But as a long-term player in many of my games, she has illustrated a lot of the content at our table and does a phenomenal job. If you ever want to go see her work and give her a shout out and get her some attention, you can find her on Instagram. Her handle is quackabose. 01:42:45.54 Tyler Quack like a duck, Amos like the cookie, but smashed into one word. So quackabose. um She does just absolute bang up, stand up illustrations. In fact, one of the things on her front page right now, 01:42:59.62 Tyler is a movie style poster she did of that monster hunter game that i was telling you about that we did that was the three-year long-running campaign with all of our characters and it looks absolutely fantastic um but she's drawing all kinds of stuff fantasy related she's got a lot of traditional work um there's a lot of dnd i think she might be opening up commissions again as well as you could always reach out to her and see if that's something you're interested in like 01:43:16.23 Kurt Crenwelge You 01:43:23.90 Tyler I think one of my favorite characters, she's actually in my Thursday game, and I think one of my favorite characters of hers right now is a kobold barbarian by the name of Meeks with an intelligence of seven. 01:43:36.23 Tyler He is dumb as a brick, but God, is he frightening in combat. 01:43:42.11 Tyler But yeah. 01:43:42.01 Kurt Crenwelge Well, we love that. We love husbands that ah support their wives. So buts that's awesome. 01:43:46.38 Tyler Oh yeah. 01:43:47.44 Kurt Crenwelge So, all right, Tyler, it was awesome having you on the podcast. ah Certainly, you know, this is Christmas time at the the time of this episode when it comes out. So certainly here at Sidekicks and SideQuest, we want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and to to play good games with your friends and to make merry and and have a good civil time ah with your friends and loved ones. 01:44:08.09 Tyler Yeah, indeed. 01:44:09.90 Kurt Crenwelge so So thank you again. Yeah, thank you again, Tyler, for being on the podcast. I can't wait to have you back on making even more interesting NPCs. 01:44:14.77 Tyler Yeah, of course. 01:44:20.08 Tyler Sure.