00:00:05.83 Kurt Crenwelge Hello and welcome to another week's exciting week. No, this is month's episode. We're doing monthly episodes this season. Hello and welcome to another exciting month's episode of Sidekicks and SideQuest. It's the new year when we're listening to this episode. So happy new year, everyone, one and all. 00:00:25.71 Kurt Crenwelge I've got a wonderful guest for you this month. But before I reveal who my mystery contestant is, i have to do it. I have to leave you in suspense with the first ad read. 00:00:36.39 Kurt Crenwelge which, insert here, for Plus One EXP and RPG Zine Club, if you're looking for indie TTRPGs and such to ah supplement your bookshelves and all that stuff, you should go sign up for their subscription service, get all the cool zines and games, and figure out who your new peeps are that you're getting awesome games from. 00:00:59.96 Kurt Crenwelge And hey, when you're on PlusOneExP.com, use that code RANDOLPH at checkout. and save some coin on your purchase when you're getting a beard balm or a lip balm or a beard RPG, you support the podcast by supporting the sponsor. 00:01:12.67 Kurt Crenwelge Again, plusonexp.com and rpgzine.club. All right. And without further ado, i turn the microphone over to my guest and I ask, hello, mystery contestant. 00:01:24.74 Kurt Crenwelge Would you care to introduce yourself? 00:01:25.57 BDW - Video um 00:01:26.82 Kurt Crenwelge Tell us who it is that you are and what is that you do? 00:01:30.77 BDW - Audio See, that was the dozens and dozens of my fans cheering there. Yeah. ah 00:01:35.21 Kurt Crenwelge Awesome. 00:01:36.27 BDW - Audio It is B-Day Walters. If you're hearing this, we survived 2025. muzzle, you know, um this is me from the past where I was filled with equal parts hope and dread. 00:01:48.79 Kurt Crenwelge Well, we we definitely like to keep this podcast upbeat and positive for the good of all in the the community and for for fun. So I'm going to be optimistic. 00:01:59.81 BDW - Audio Hmm. Whoa. 00:02:00.88 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:02:01.08 BDW - Audio I'm knocking. I'm busy knocking stuff over. Huzzah. 00:02:05.24 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so this is well this is ah certainly a treat for me. i know at the time of this recording, we just recently had Tanya DePass's episode come out live. 00:02:17.02 BDW - Audio Hmm. 00:02:17.25 Kurt Crenwelge and And so she encouraged me, oh yeah, B-Dave, you know, is my he's my really good friend and you should definitely reach out. And i was like, oh, I don't know if I'll ever get B-Dave Walters. 00:02:27.85 Kurt Crenwelge But then sure enough, you you accepted the invitation. I'm so happy that you're here. 00:02:32.92 BDW - Audio Hey, listen, listen, listen. I was like, I don't know if I'm ever going to make it onto sidekicks and sidequests. You know? 00:02:39.13 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 00:02:39.43 BDW - Audio i get it So it's ah it is a through a confluence of forces. We're both knocking stuff off the bucket list. Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. As of the time of this recording, I won't say exactly when it is, so we can preserve the movie magic, but I have to catch a 4 a.m. flight for a con. 00:02:56.51 BDW - Audio So it's, ah you know, and no no rest for the wicked. 00:02:57.15 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:03:01.66 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, yes. Killer song as well by the cagey elephant. 00:03:05.43 BDW - Audio Indeed. 00:03:06.18 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:03:07.18 BDW - Audio Indeed. 00:03:08.58 Kurt Crenwelge Well, for for those of us that are not in the know, I think all of us are. 00:03:12.05 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:03:12.70 Kurt Crenwelge But for those not in the know, the first question here, you know, so who who is B. Dave Walters and what is it that B. Dave Walters does that he does? 00:03:23.15 BDW - Audio So for for time travelers who just arrived from 1999 and those who have just escaped the Soviet gulag, hi, hello, it is I, B. Dave Walters. I am first and foremost a storyteller. I was the first dungeon master with a campaign on television, ah ran the game for the cast of Stranger Things on Netflix Geeked. 00:03:42.92 BDW - Audio I've written an official D&D comic, Dungeons and Dragons of Dark and Wish. I've done At this point, hundreds and hundreds of hours of streaming content, literally everywhere where fine streaming content can be located. All sorts of official stuff for WOTC, for Paizo, for Chaosium. If you can think about it, I have done it. 00:04:02.94 BDW - Audio ah And I will say words about things anywhere somebody will turn on a microphone or a camera. And then I teach also how to run the game at a high level, how to play at a high level, how to design games and how to write for film, television, novels or graphic novels. 00:04:18.48 BDW - Audio Because I've done all those things. I think it's a the only people who have had a success in as many arenas of storytelling are like J. Michael Straczynski and Neil Gaiman and me. 00:04:29.40 BDW - Audio Although ah those guys have bigger bank accounts, but I'm a better person than at least one of them. But I've got my eye on you, Straczynski. So, yeah, that's me. 00:04:39.05 Kurt Crenwelge That's awesome. 00:04:39.41 BDW - Audio Oh, and I guess as of now, the yard D&D is out and fairly new. 00:04:39.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:04:44.73 BDW - Audio Hopefully ah more episodes are still happening by the time this comes out. So there you go. There's also that. 00:04:51.23 Kurt Crenwelge Awesome. Yes. And of course, I know I've had a number of ah of ah very awesome people from Demiplane also on the podcast historically as well. And so I know you've also but involved with our friends over at Demiplane as well. 00:05:05.82 BDW - Audio Indeed, I have. I've done a lot of content for Demi Plain. I was even on the payroll for a time over there. So yes, they're definitely good friends. 00:06:33.64 Kurt Crenwelge And then of course I'd be remiss if I, you know, as i look as we as we as a podcast learned ah from Tanya, you also, you know, you did the the Dark Dice, not Dark Dice, sorry, the Dark, why am I blanking on the name? 00:06:36.99 BDW - Audio Mm hmm. 00:06:52.29 Kurt Crenwelge You did 00:06:52.36 BDW - Audio Black Dice Society? 00:06:53.70 Kurt Crenwelge The Black Dice Society. I know there's a Dark Dice podcast. 00:06:55.24 BDW - Audio Yes. 00:06:56.46 Kurt Crenwelge a very similar name, very confusing. 00:06:57.15 BDW - Audio There is. 00:06:58.72 Kurt Crenwelge And then also you do killer stuff with Vampire the Masquerade as well. 00:06:59.17 BDW - Audio ah 00:07:01.99 BDW - Audio I do. i ah First of all, um shout out to Travis and Caitlin from the Dark Dice Podcast. They are they are also homies. They do really great work. The first time I met them was at D&D in a Castle, where they were recording the sound that the gates made when they creaked and slammed, so that they were going to use for Foley in their podcast. 00:07:19.88 BDW - Audio um 00:07:20.07 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:07:20.88 BDW - Audio Yeah, I was the dungeon master for the Black Dice Society, um ah which was an official D&D Ravenloft stream that ran for about 60 episodes. Very proud of that. Also was lead designer of End of the Motherlands as a project that Tanya and I worked on together. 00:07:31.58 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:07:34.19 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:07:36.88 BDW - Audio And yes, I was fortunate to play Baron Victor Temple for on LA by night and do quite a bit of vampire storytelling in my own right. So it's ah so almost like I got a day persona and a night persona. 00:07:50.22 BDW - Audio i've I've been fortunate to do all the things. 00:07:50.62 Kurt Crenwelge yeah. 00:07:52.92 Kurt Crenwelge I know. Yes. No, you your your resume is like you know a mile long and it's impressive. And ah every you know every podcast friend of mine, like ah my good buddy Andrew Strother, when he was doing Roll for Persuasion and you know all the other great shows that I've listened to that you've ah that you' spoken and guessed on, you just you know you've got it going on. 00:08:07.19 BDW - Audio yes 00:08:14.77 Kurt Crenwelge you've you're You're like a good, genuine dude. And ah you know just, again, happy to happy to have you on. 00:08:21.01 BDW - Audio I appreciate that my plan is working. They're all buying it good. Good. yeah 00:08:29.34 Kurt Crenwelge Awesome. Well, ah you know, the the dead giveaway of this podcast is is obviously that it's Dungeons & Dragons related, so I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, you know, do you currently or have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons before? 00:08:44.33 BDW - Audio Uh, once or twice. Yes. 00:08:46.31 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:08:47.16 BDW - Audio I, I, I travel all over the world running games at D and D that's the between writing for film and television and doing destination D and D games. That's, that's kind of my thing. So yeah. Yeah. i played a couple times. 00:08:58.49 BDW - Audio Yeah. 00:09:00.01 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so that that's got to be pretty awesome to be able to you know travel and and run D&D. I know everyone's like, oh, if you get on one of the big shows, like that's the highlight. 00:09:10.61 Kurt Crenwelge I know like at the time of this recording, it hasn't aired yet, but like you know Campaign 4 for Critical Role's got like the big ambitious project with Brennan Lee Mulligan running you know a Westmarch's style for 13 players at three different tables. 00:09:14.29 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:09:25.95 Kurt Crenwelge So it's like everyone's like, That's in the zeitgeist right now, but, you know, getting to good do D&D in a castle or on a cruise or, like, in a haunted house or wherever, that you know, wherever these ah these places and these games take us. 00:09:38.89 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, that's got to be pretty cool. 00:09:41.72 BDW - Audio I've only got one speed, man. Let's go. You know what i mean? Like ah it's, it's, I've been fortunate to do this on the biggest stages. I've also gotten to do it in the most quiet and intimate. It's just, uh, anywhere we get to tell a story together is definitely a win. 00:09:57.78 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, I would agree. I think I would, i you know, not that I'm trying to say that like, oh, it's only, it only matters if you're on the big stages because I think some of the most, you know, quiet, intimate ah games have like the most hard hitting stories. 00:10:08.82 BDW - Audio Oh yeah. 00:10:14.33 Kurt Crenwelge And it may only be that like, oh, these five people are the only ones who know this story. But, you know, it's a story that has impact and will will last and echo through eternity. 00:10:26.25 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:10:26.81 BDW - Audio You definitely can't measure yourself or your success. It's like back when people used to talk a lot about the Matt Mercer effect, which hopefully I think has been put to bed, that it's like you can't measure your success or your achievement against that, you know? 00:10:41.33 BDW - Audio um 00:10:41.53 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:10:42.53 BDW - Audio Because, yeah, people will say, it's like oh, I can't do what Mercer does. I can't do what Brennan does. I can't do what I do. And they feel bad about it. But I'm like, well, no, you can't actually. You can't do what Mercer does and you can't do what Brennan does and you cannot do what I do, but we can't do what you do. 00:10:59.18 BDW - Audio We can't tell your story. We can't sing your unique song that the world objectively needs. um So all you ever got to do is try and put forward the best and most compelling experience for everybody else at the table. 00:11:17.03 BDW - Audio And that's not just storytellers that's players as well. I think a lot of times players overlook the fact that they are also a vital part of telling the story. So if you're sitting there at the table like this, the whole time, you're not just missing out for yourself. You're take actively taking something away from the other people there versus it's, um, it's a chorus. You're all supposed to harmonize and you know, that's where the music comes from. 00:11:40.20 BDW - Audio Um, And it doesn't matter if you're only doing that in the room for you guys or if you're doing it where millions of people are going to see it. I mean, millions of people have seen my stories, which is wonderful. 00:11:51.53 BDW - Audio um And it's great that I get to have as far reaching of an impact. 00:11:51.99 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:11:58.19 BDW - Audio But at the end of the day, it still ultimately comes down to who's at the table, you know? 00:12:04.64 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And you've been playing from the earliest days of the hobbies, because obviously, you know, I can only claim, oh, Halloween night 2010 with fourth edition was my first time ever playing D&D in college and then made the switch to five, the 2014 5e rules. And that's what I've been rocking. 00:12:22.57 Kurt Crenwelge That's what I'm comfortable with. Maybe eventually getting the 2024 rules or maybe just picking and choosing what I like and then just stick it in my game and just run it my way. But but you've been rocking it since the early days. 00:12:34.30 BDW - Audio Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm way older than I look, for those of you that can see the video. And if you can hear it, I'm way older than I sound. um Yeah, no, i'veve I was there 3,000 years ago, man. Like when the Deep Magic was written, I started playing in a... I've been playing for... 00:12:51.36 BDW - Audio almost 35 years, like back to, back to second edition. Like I've done it all. It was second and three and 3.5. I was a fourth edition refugee. I hated fourth edition, went over and played Pathfinder for a few years, came back with fifth edition, 2014. Um, you know, now I'm learning 2024 because everybody expects me to know it because I have an encyclopedic knowledge of 2014, but not 2024 yet. 00:13:17.54 BDW - Audio I've also been blessed to do way more Pathfinder um second edition, which, you know, which is a different animal here. The con I'm about to go to I'm going to be playing ah Tales of the Valorant game. 00:13:31.08 BDW - Audio You know, like I just um I'm blessed to get to do a lot of different stuff in a lot of different places. 00:13:31.71 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Ah. 00:13:35.73 BDW - Audio So I just kind of soak it all up. But yes, but I bet I was there when the deep magic was written. Yes. but 00:13:43.50 Kurt Crenwelge Well, that's, that's good. I mean, I know, uh, you know, folk like Matt Colville like to talk about like having a good gaming diet and and other guests have echoed it as well. Like if you really want to hone your story crafting and your storytelling, it's like a really good idea to not just all like, Hey, meat and taters are great. You know, all the time. Like I'm in Texas. We love, I'm wearing my, uh, my, the big Tex steakhouse, uh, t-shirt that I got from my vacation. 00:14:09.43 Kurt Crenwelge Everyone in Texas loves steak, but like, you know, we got to eat other things just besides steak too. 00:14:15.08 BDW - Audio Dude, I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas, and there's two kinds of people in Arkansas because Little Rock has no culture. There's a Memphis people and there's Dallas people that you live vicariously through. And I was a Dallas person. 00:14:25.97 BDW - Audio So I've spent quite a lot of time in the Metroplex. My sister is still there, in fact. So, yeah, I know. and know all about it. 00:14:33.32 Kurt Crenwelge Well, fun fact, for a couple months of my early life, I did consider myself a resident of of Little Rock um because I was born in Panama in Balboa, Gorman Army Base. 00:14:40.72 BDW - Audio Hmm. 00:14:47.07 Kurt Crenwelge And then we moved to Little Rock and were stationed there for a little bit before we made the move to West Germany back when it was divided. So I lived in West Germany for quite a few years where my sister was born. 00:14:55.18 BDW - Audio Wow. 00:14:58.98 Kurt Crenwelge And then we made the move back to the States. So military brat life. 00:15:03.22 BDW - Audio That's, you know, it still counts though. It still counts. 00:15:05.23 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, still counts. 00:15:05.56 BDW - Audio Full credit. and quite And quite frankly, infant you probably got all you needed to get out of Little Rock. And I'm like, yeah, no, you you can you can check that bingo card and ah keep it moving. 00:15:13.62 Kurt Crenwelge I can keep it moving. 00:15:14.93 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:15:15.95 Kurt Crenwelge Check it off on the 50 states card. Perfect. 00:15:18.61 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. Look, man, if i if I land and I go to the airport in a place, I count it as me having been there. 00:15:20.20 Kurt Crenwelge Well, 00:15:24.57 BDW - Audio Because first of all, you can learn a lot about a place from its airport. But second of all, I'm like um like, if I was on the ground and smell the air, it counts. 00:15:28.48 Kurt Crenwelge that is true. Hmm. 00:15:32.55 BDW - Audio Like, yeah. 00:15:34.43 Kurt Crenwelge Well, that's that's also a very quick that that that would be a way to speed run it all unless the purists are like, no, you actually have to like do an activity in the state, you know, proper outside the airport in order for it to count. 00:15:39.25 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:15:45.13 BDW - Audio Eh. Eh, bold of you to assume that I care what the purists think, you know? 00:15:50.60 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:15:51.05 BDW - Audio Hmm. 00:15:52.17 Kurt Crenwelge Brilliant. Well, on this podcast, you know the namesake is Sidekicks and SideQuest. So we like to ask all of our guests the first of these questions. Who happens to be your favorite NPC or sidekick character? 00:16:04.36 Kurt Crenwelge They can be from one of the many RPGs you've played in, a video game, movie, film, television, literature, e etc. And why is this character your favorite NPC or sidekick character? 00:16:16.45 BDW - Audio So by NPC or sidekick, I assume we're differentiating from an adversary. 00:16:22.85 Kurt Crenwelge I mean, it could be an adversary, just someone that is not the protagonist or someone that's not being controlled by like a player character. 00:16:32.36 BDW - Audio I mean, ah well, if you can see the, you know, the, the goddess Tiamat back there, like, I mean, she's, you know, she's always with me and long may she reign. So Tiamat would be my first choice. Uh, after Tiamat would come Vecna and then Tasha probably. 00:16:48.53 BDW - Audio Um, in terms of, uh, my, my love, ah um, in, in who holds my whole, whole heart. And, uh, Tiamat, um, 00:17:00.43 BDW - Audio Hold on one second. Sorry. um That's interesting. I have multiple plates spinning all at once. And there was time dependent thing that somebody popped up over there because they're very insensitive to the fact that we're recording a podcast right now. 00:17:17.22 BDW - Audio um So him hang on. Let me let me get her. but You said they can or cannot see the video. 00:17:23.31 Kurt Crenwelge This is an audio only podcast, so so listeners will have to imagine. 00:17:26.30 BDW - Audio well, imagine that Tiamat is incredible and she's gigantic. And, you know, for your sake and solidarity, I'm not going to share her with him. Uh, but she, she's big and she's beautiful. 00:17:37.75 BDW - Audio And, um, the reason why Tiamat has such a special place in my life is during the pandemic on my Patreon, I ran, um, quite a few paid games. I ran between 35, 40 games a month for 18 months, uh, which I do not recommend by the way, that was quite a lot. 00:17:55.42 BDW - Audio Um, And it was all level 20. And there's only so many things you can do to challenge a level 20 party. 00:18:05.06 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:18:05.33 BDW - Audio So it was it very much the premise was they were mercenaries on a spell jammer. And every week, it was like they essentially just had a different mission because it depends on who was there at the time. 00:18:19.47 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:18:19.72 BDW - Audio So i had come up with it with a ah um an adventure where it was like a ah mining operation or something. I don't even remember what the premise was. 00:18:30.48 BDW - Audio And they met, um, the dark lady, uh, which is canonically one of Tiamat's manifestations. And, um, uh, uh, canonically is one of Tiamat's manifestations. 00:18:44.06 BDW - Audio And so they meet her, they're walking around, they're talking to her. And that group of players were, their players were all very, intelligence was all of their dump stat. Like they were just kind of dumb characters. 00:18:56.80 Kurt Crenwelge Mm. 00:18:56.83 BDW - Audio ah They were like warlocks and paladins and stuff. and Like a lot lot of himbos. ah And so I get to the end and it's like, ha ha, rah, I'm Tiamat. 00:19:01.78 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Mm. 00:19:06.54 BDW - Audio You've turned into my, you've fallen into my trap type thing, you know? And when she reveals herself, they're like, our new friend is Tiamat. Yes. Yes. you know And I was like, wait, what? 00:19:20.01 BDW - Audio And they're like, we're so pumped. We're friends with Tiamat now. And I was like, are you guys serious? And they're like, yeah, we're super serious. And so I had her role in sight. And she's like, wait, they are happy to see me. 00:19:32.06 BDW - Audio Huh. And so it kind of turned into this sort of like Dread Pirate Roberts thing where she was like, well, I mean, I could just kill you tomorrow, I suppose. And they're like, cool, come with us. So Tiamat ends up traveling with them on their ship. 00:19:47.18 BDW - Audio And at that time, ah Missy was still the master on Doctor Who, right? So she just sort of this mischievous scamp. And so they'd go on missions, and Tiamat would be like, you know, they're like, oh, we gotta go down there and, you know, take out the bad guy or negotiate. 00:20:02.23 BDW - Audio And Tiamat would be like, well, we could just kill everybody. And they're like, oh, Tiamat, you know? So she kind of became this, like, precocious scamp instead of, like, the ultimate evil type thing. 00:20:15.25 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 00:20:16.31 BDW - Audio And so... She kind of has a very special place in my heart for that because I lean way more into the chaos with her and less into the evil. I mean, she'll do plenty of evil, but like right now, but because of a ah a long sequence of events, because I do keep of a vaguely canonical ordering of how the Forgotten Realms are in my world, especially at a D&D in a castle and the private events I do, I'll have a campaign that I i run. 00:20:28.29 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:20:37.56 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:20:42.43 BDW - Audio ah write a new campaign for the year and then I run that campaign all year And then I pick one of the various ways it is ended is the ending. And so for one of them, Mind Flayers were the adversary. 00:20:55.67 BDW - Audio And at the afterage, they had defeated the Mind Flayers and they had the Mind Flayer Dreadnought. 00:20:55.79 Kurt Crenwelge okay 00:21:01.93 BDW - Audio So they converted it into a temple of Tiamat. So she has her like interstellar, like hedonism palace. 00:21:09.12 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Yeah. 00:21:09.24 BDW - Audio like And they've painted all of the the tentacles on the front of it to look like different dragon heads. stuff and like that's what Tiamat does she has her her flying cathedral of uh where a lot of uh you know insert not pg-13 language here ah happens on board her vessel that's that's what Tiamat does and then you know if you get get on her wrong side well then sure you know it goes where it goes so Tiamat 00:21:32.55 Kurt Crenwelge yeah Yeah. Tiamat. Okay. Yeah. I was going to say like, oh, started off kind of like 1980s cartoon depiction. 00:21:36.26 BDW - Video um 00:21:41.01 Kurt Crenwelge And then like, oh, like cheers. 00:21:40.54 BDW - Video um 00:21:42.69 Kurt Crenwelge Like, oh, you scamp. Like, oh, that's our friend Tiamat. She's always, she's so silly. And then it's like, oh, by the end of it, it's like, oh, like, oh, oh boy. 00:21:47.81 BDW - Audio a 00:21:53.65 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Yeah. So no that's, yeah. 00:21:54.85 BDW - Audio Well, um what was it? a We did for Idle Champions, we did a series called ah the... Was it Trials of Dragon Mountain? 00:22:06.52 BDW - Audio I think it was Trials of Dragon Mountain. Where... um We did, ah because, you know, ah Tyranny of Dragons, one of the things that can happen at the end of ti Tyranny of Dragons is they're they're trying to bring her back, right? 00:22:18.67 Kurt Crenwelge Sure, sure. 00:22:19.32 BDW - Audio So um we had ah two groups that were two different groups that were kind of like attacking the mountain from two different sides. And we were going back and forth, speaking of a West Marches thing. 00:22:31.55 BDW - Audio And we had this like big grand finale where we had 16 players that all showed up to fight Tiamat at the end. 00:22:38.71 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:22:38.78 BDW - Audio It was like the Avengers on your left type thing. And I warned everybody in advance. 00:22:41.58 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah. 00:22:42.77 BDW - Audio I was like, you're probably going to get to do like one thing. So like make your moment count, you know? 00:22:48.22 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:22:48.19 BDW - Audio Um, when they're fighting, fighting and I have her fighting back, I'm not holding back like at all during this whole thing. 00:22:54.66 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:22:55.30 BDW - Audio And one of the people, because I mean that breath weapon, those 91 point breath weapons, they, they stack up quick, no matter who you are. um, 00:23:03.08 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:23:03.74 BDW - Audio and they're fighting, fighting, and Hope Lavelle played a character named Penelope Halfpint, whose character Penelope and my character Freely, like, that when when we finally retired those characters, they got married and, like, went to travel the planes together, but Penelope's whole entire thing was um she wanted everybody to be her friend, and so Multiple times over the course of the adventure, I had Tiamat show up as the Dark Lady and just kind of talk and antagonize them and, you know, be Tiamat. 00:23:34.76 BDW - Audio And Penelope keeps being so sweet and so nice to her the whole time, right? 00:23:40.05 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:23:40.03 BDW - Audio And so they get to the end. They're fighting. We're nearing the end of the time because we're we're actually doing a broadcast. And Mark Mir is playing Baloth Baratel, and he tries to hit Tiamat with Power Word Kill. 00:23:53.20 BDW - Audio And i didn't have to let it go through. But I had it work and everybody's like, hooray, you know, it worked. And I had her turn back to the dark lady and she's there in front of Penelope. And she's like, I could have kept fighting, you know? 00:24:12.01 BDW - Audio And she's like, I know. and then she's like, I stopped for you. Penelope's like, I know. and then I just had her collapse in her arms and die. 00:24:23.64 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:24:23.96 BDW - Audio And it went from this huge, like, hooray, we've slayed the dragon to like, oh, wait, what? 00:24:25.26 BDW - Video um 00:24:30.87 Kurt Crenwelge well 00:24:30.96 BDW - Audio what ah What? And I'm like, yeah, be a real shame if someone were to, like, take that huzzah moment from you and actually make you care, you know? 00:24:39.70 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:24:40.47 BDW - Audio It's me. I'm that person that does that. So, yeah, she got a very special place in my heart. 00:24:46.36 Kurt Crenwelge Wonderful. Brilliant answer. Thank you. and And then of course, on the flip side, what's been one of your favorite side quests or B-plot elements? Again, same criteria of, know, an RPG, video game, movie, film, television, literature, etc. 00:25:01.59 Kurt Crenwelge And why is this your favorite side quest or B-plot element? 00:25:08.50 BDW - Audio Uh, hmm. 00:25:18.47 BDW - Audio In Rise of the Rune Lords, which was a 3.5 adventure that they redid for Pathfinder, um there is a detour to a literal haunted house. 00:25:34.57 BDW - Audio And when you come into the haunted house, I mean, I think this is a B-plot. I think, I mean, you find something in the house that makes you go to the next step of of the adventure for sure. But it's like the fact that there's a haunted house, they were just kind of like, it'd be dope if there was a haunted house. 00:25:45.47 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:25:48.70 BDW - Audio i can I can tell that from the structure. 00:25:49.92 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:25:51.75 BDW - Audio And you come into the house and you hear screaming. And you hear screaming the entire time. And if you make your way up to the ah ah attic, you see there is a woman who is clearly a ghost, and she's standing in front of a mirror, and she's screaming, and it's a revenant, right? 00:26:12.69 BDW - Audio And revenants can't stand their own reflection because they can't stand to see what they've become because they're spirits of vengeance. And it says in Rise of the Rune Lords, if the players break the glass, you will free her from this, but she won't attack you because she's really mad at the big bad, like the big bad killed her, and now she's you know seeking revenge, but she got trapped basically looking at her reflections. 00:26:37.05 BDW - Audio And these were the biggest bunch of murder hobos that you got ever created. I mean, they just killed everything and, you know, kill them first and ask questions later type thing, you know? Like so much so I used to have to have like NPCs, like monologue from up on walls and ramparts and stuff like that, just so they could finish saying what they were going say. 00:26:55.16 Kurt Crenwelge Behind bulletproof glass and blast shields. 00:26:55.75 BDW - Audio but Exactly. Exactly. 00:26:58.19 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:26:58.17 BDW - Audio Yeah. Just like wall of forest. Let me tell you what I have to say. And they're like, cool, cool, cool. Great. Disintegrate. You know? um So I just thought for sure they would jump this ghost. 00:27:09.70 BDW - Audio And the biggest chat out of the entire group was like, I break the mirror. I'm like, what? It's like, yeah, I break the mirror. And I like, okay. 00:27:22.89 BDW - Audio And they break the mirror. And of course she gets out and she's like, I want to go kill that guy. And they're like, cool, go kill him. And again, the way it's written is she will go through and she will just mow down everything and so essentially cut a swath to the last guy. 00:27:38.33 BDW - Audio And they let her do it. 00:27:38.49 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:27:39.58 BDW - Audio And I was like, this is the closest thing to mercy they ever showed before or after this. It's just for whatever reason, they very much read what was supposed to happen and figured it out. 00:27:51.61 BDW - Audio So Yeah, that the the the haunted house with spoiler alert, if you set the revenant loose in the attic, she'll help you. Although Rise of the Ruin Lords is like 20 years old, so I don't feel that bad about it. 00:28:03.15 BDW - Audio um yeah Yeah, I'd say that. 00:28:06.39 Kurt Crenwelge that's That's a pretty cool answer. and And especially for them, unless, you know, maybe maybe they had the foresight to be like, well, maybe if we free you know, she goes on a rampage and she just makes like a straight straight beeline to the to the the big bad we have to go fight or whatever. 00:28:22.09 BDW - Audio Look, man, whatever their rationale, they chose correctly. 00:28:27.42 Kurt Crenwelge Wonderful. And then the way that we round out the personal interview section of the show, B-Dave, what are you passionate about? 00:28:32.63 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:28:36.30 Kurt Crenwelge and why. 00:28:38.62 BDW - Audio Storytelling. um 00:28:41.97 BDW - Audio In my mind, storytelling is the thing that makes us human. Um, in the fullness of time, when we find out what crows and dolphins and elephants are saying to each other, they may be telling each other stories, but as of this exact second, we're the only ones that could do that. 00:28:57.57 BDW - Audio Uh, we're the only ones that can sit around a fire and talk about the labors of Hercules and take real actionable insight about life and our place in it. Um, and that's very powerful. 00:29:09.17 BDW - Audio And I'm blessed to get to do a lot of different things. And, it seems like they're all disconnected. But I know there is a logical through line and it sounds more grandiose than I mean when I say it, but it is reducing human suffering. 00:29:27.47 BDW - Audio That if one of my stories or something I do or a stream we put on or a book you read or or or movie you watch or anything can help a person take their mind off their troubles for a little while or feel like they're not weird or they're not broken or that there's not something wrong with them, 00:29:46.15 BDW - Audio for feeling how they feel and that other people go through the exact same things they go through and ideally overcome those things. Um, then my, my time on the earth has been well spent. 00:29:57.99 BDW - Audio So yeah, storytelling. 00:30:00.94 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. Yeah. Fantastic answer. I, yeah, I, it's an oft, it's an oft given passion answer from people, but it's always interesting to hear the different reasons why people gravitate towards, towards storytelling. 00:30:16.94 Kurt Crenwelge So, you know, it's never, it's never a bad answer to give. 00:30:17.34 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:30:21.06 Kurt Crenwelge It's just, it's always interesting to hear people's, you know, takes and and rationales and perspectives on it, which is all part of storytelling as well. Because obviously, ah you know, we're not going to be able to to tell every story ourselves. 00:30:35.10 Kurt Crenwelge But it is a good idea to listen to each other and hear these other stories and get these nuggets of wisdom to be like, ah, yes, there's something for me to learn from this and to to grow as a person. 00:30:46.66 BDW - Audio Which is, you know, again, back to my previous point of not trying to measure yourself and your achievements against anybody else, you know, um because you got to tell your story. 00:30:56.37 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:31:00.61 Kurt Crenwelge Amen to that. All right. 00:31:02.01 BDW - Audio Mm hmm. 00:31:03.17 Kurt Crenwelge And now that we've made it through the personal interview section, it's now time to head into some NPC creation. 00:31:10.95 BDW - Audio My body's ready. 00:31:17.06 Kurt Crenwelge And NPC creation is brought to you by you, the podcast audience and our patrons from Patreon. So now's in the time in the show where we give a shout out to our comfortable patrons and above with a loud hurrah. 00:31:28.50 Kurt Crenwelge So to you, Anson Jablinski, and good old mom and dad, we say cheers. Again, these folks donate just at least $2 a month, and you know they're able to get a shout out on our monthly episodes. 00:31:40.25 Kurt Crenwelge But all three individuals that I named are actually considered wealthy tier patrons, which means they get to introduce an element of chance to our random tables, which we have here in NPC Creation, 00:31:51.64 Kurt Crenwelge So we might get to hear some of the responses used here today. So if you want to learn more about what the Levitating Platter has to offer as far as our accommodations, I would totally encourage you to go to the show notes below, go to my podcast website, or just go directly to patreon.com forward slash Sidekicks and SideQuests. 00:32:09.45 Kurt Crenwelge Find out about what we've got waiting for you around the corner. Help us to grow and expand our operations in the Levitating Platter in this Demiplane and worlds beyond. Okay. 00:32:20.47 Kurt Crenwelge and um And I know you said, I'm going into this podcast with no preconceptions. I'm going to shoot from the And and so now 00:32:29.25 BDW - Audio Yeah, dear listener, he did so much to try and prepare me. He was like, here's the questions. Here's what's going to happen. I was like, cool, cool, cool. I don't want to know. I'm going to go in completely raw. have no idea what's about to happen. So you're about to learn what I learn right now. 00:32:42.28 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. So in this section of the podcast, we want to make a cool NPC and a side quest to be able to give to the community for everyone to be able to take into their games, for dungeon masters to utilize, for player characters to put in their backstories. 00:32:55.33 Kurt Crenwelge But the question, the first question we have to ask in this question in this section of the podcast is, are you do you have a character locked and loaded that you want to share with us? 00:33:03.74 BDW - Video so 00:33:05.50 Kurt Crenwelge And we just kind of walk our way through the questions and you know discover these facets and layers, or you You got your dice? You want to you want to roll and see what we get off some tables with suggestions that have been given to us by previous guests of the podcast. So it truly is like a a community, hobby, cultural mixing pot, if you will. 00:33:27.21 BDW - Audio Is this, is it percentile or what? 00:33:30.20 Kurt Crenwelge Well, we work our way through the standard array of all the dice. So you get to use every single dice today on this podcast if you show choose. 00:33:38.34 BDW - Audio Well, I got good news for you. I've already packed my dice for the con, so I guess I'll let you do the rolling. 00:33:44.09 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay. 00:33:44.10 BDW - Audio My body's ready. 00:33:45.74 Kurt Crenwelge All right. So you want to roll some dice. All right. Perfect. 00:33:48.05 BDW - Audio Yep. Yep. 00:33:48.96 Kurt Crenwelge All right. I've got my dice roller right here on my phone showing Mr. 00:33:51.71 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:33:54.48 Kurt Crenwelge B. Dave Walters for proof. And okay, so away we go. So the first question we have to ask ourselves is what is going to be the name of our character? The first one dice we roll is a D20 and I show the camera and it's a nine, which from our list, 00:34:09.87 BDW - Audio okay 00:34:11.31 Kurt Crenwelge is a previous suggestion by our good friend, Nicholas Carterelli, who runs the Raised on D&D podcast. And it's pronounced Yohannes, Y-O-H-A-N-N-E-S and pronounced Yohannes. 00:34:27.46 BDW - Audio Yo, honeys dig it. Okay. 00:34:30.22 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. And really realizing I hadn't filled in some of my blanks, so it's good to catch those now. um Let's see, next question. What is the ancestry of our character. 00:34:41.51 Kurt Crenwelge Now, if you do have some physical dice, if you do have some percentiles, this is where we get to roll 2d10s for a d100 effect, if you are wanting to roll those yourself. 00:34:49.27 BDW - Audio And turns out I do, I do have a set of percentiles. Do I have a, some percentile ah got. Some D6s. Actually, well, no, I take that back. I do have a complete set. right Oh, no, I have lots of dice, actually. These are just kind of hard to read, but I have them all, so I guess I can roll. 00:35:05.74 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, okay, there we go. 00:35:05.78 BDW - Audio um but front Here we go. 00:35:06.90 Kurt Crenwelge Are you still, are you, okay. 00:35:07.55 BDW - Audio Percentile. 00:35:09.46 Kurt Crenwelge And you're still okay with the name? 00:35:09.66 BDW - Audio ah 00:35:12.14 BDW - Audio Sure. 00:35:12.98 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, all right. 00:35:13.00 BDW - Audio that's what fate That's what fate decided. 00:35:15.11 Kurt Crenwelge I see, all right, not a problem. 00:35:16.00 BDW - Audio and Now, let's see here. Hold on a second. These are gorgeous, but inscrutable, just like me. So, let me roll... This is very hard to read. It looks like. 00:35:31.45 BDW - Audio It looks like. Oh, so we got a double single digits here. Single digits. We got two, two out of 100, two. 00:35:39.94 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, wow. Okay. Well, ah this would be a triton. 00:35:44.27 BDW - Audio OK, got a fish boy. 00:35:45.34 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:35:45.85 BDW - Audio OK, Johannes, the fish boy. 00:35:46.58 Kurt Crenwelge Yep. Fishbowl. 00:35:47.69 BDW - Audio I get it. 00:35:48.14 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And then let's see the next question. ah What is the job or role in society that Yohannes, the triton, would have? This is a regular role. 00:36:00.35 BDW - Audio Okay, so let's see here. Let me make sure I got your honey's name spelled phonetically here. So regular D 10 we got nine. 00:36:13.05 Kurt Crenwelge Nine. Okay. Well, this answer was provided to us by Hannah Wright, who runs the In Between Story podcast. School teacher. 00:36:21.03 BDW - Audio hmm. 00:36:24.16 BDW - Audio Okay, we got your honey's a Triton school teacher. 00:36:24.44 Kurt Crenwelge So there we go. 00:36:26.89 BDW - Audio And now it's gonna be a school of fish. 00:36:30.60 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, there we go. Perfect. 00:36:32.58 BDW - Audio here 00:36:33.55 Kurt Crenwelge And then let's see what is going to be the age range of our character. This is where we roll a D8 to kind of get like a rough idea of the age range. 00:36:42.99 BDW - Audio D8, we got. I'm rolling these absolutely gorgeous Norse Foundry prismatic glass dice, ah which again are beautiful to behold. 00:36:55.36 BDW - Audio Not incredibly functional. Again, like me. that is ah That is a four. Mm-hmm. 00:36:59.80 Kurt Crenwelge A four, adult. So we have an adult age Triton named Yohannes who is a school teacher. 00:37:03.42 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:37:05.84 Kurt Crenwelge So with all of these details in mind, when you picture Yohannes, Triton, school teacher, adult, can you describe the physical appearance of this character? 00:37:08.46 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:37:13.00 BDW - Audio ye Yep. 00:37:21.00 Kurt Crenwelge It's like, what comes to your mind 00:37:21.86 BDW - Audio Yohannes is a retired member of the Harper's. ah She has been everywhere with a coast. and decided to bring back what she had to um give something to her community. 00:37:37.57 BDW - Audio She is like an aquatic Miss Frizzle. Her hair floats green around her head, almost like kelp. um She wears a dress that is made out of a net um that is an odd fashion choice. 00:37:56.69 BDW - Audio ah But what she knows, it is the only thing that remained of a shipwreck on her last mission that claimed the lives of the rest of her party. 00:38:07.40 BDW - Audio as Umberley decided to call in the debt that she owed for all of her years of good fortune. And now she hopes that by returning here, ah not too far off the coast of Mintarn, by the way, um to help raise a new generation of Tritons, She might somehow be able to atone for the loss of her friends and hopefully make these ah young kids lives ah better and easier than hers, where they'll be able to make new and better mistakes and skip a lot of the pitfalls, um the hooks, you might say, ah that other people bite on to. 00:38:48.16 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. all All improvised off the dome. That's that's amazing. So a former adventurer who lost her friends in ah in a fateful shipwreck and now is a teacher and trying to instill the next generation. 00:39:02.23 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. 00:39:02.41 BDW - Audio A Harper, a spy for Waterdeep. 00:39:02.63 Kurt Crenwelge That's amazing. Ah, yes. 00:39:04.82 BDW - Audio A Harper. 00:39:05.33 Kurt Crenwelge A Harper, of course, could not forget that. 00:39:06.56 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:39:07.37 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. um 00:39:08.42 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:39:09.48 Kurt Crenwelge Brilliant. I mean, is so is there anything more that you could think ah to describe her physical appearance? I mean, it sounds like you've done a fantastic job. and I mean, is there any other notes that are that you're that you're just like, you know what, I think she she has this or she has that? Yeah. 00:39:28.19 BDW - Audio I think... um 00:39:34.20 BDW - Audio She is a 00:39:40.44 BDW - Audio druid, but mixed with totem barbarian. And she works really hard not to lose her temper. But in her home, she has the anchor. of the ship that even though she wears the net of the ship where all of her friends were lost, she being incapable of drowning, swam across and found the enemy vessel and ripped up the anchor and used it to bust in the bottom of the ship to sink that too. 00:40:07.54 BDW - Audio So she's got the anchor of the enemy vessel. Um, that is not at all rested. Uh, it has been well cared for and restored. It looks pristine. It looks decorative. 00:40:17.92 BDW - Audio nobody would know that it was the anchor from a warship or all the lives she used to claim with it so she still got that too but she doesn't take it off the wall unless things get serious 00:40:18.29 Kurt Crenwelge who 00:40:23.26 Kurt Crenwelge Whoa. 00:40:27.48 Kurt Crenwelge I was gonna say, does that classify as a greataxe or a mole when she uses it? 00:40:31.03 BDW - Audio yes yes yeah yes 00:40:33.87 Kurt Crenwelge Just yes. Okay. All right. but Fair enough. Yeah. Okay. And then with Yohannes, if you had to describe her with three adjectives, what three adjectives would you use? 00:40:46.28 BDW - Audio Calm, haunted, thorough. 00:40:50.38 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. And, you know, you you put the image in our minds of Miss Frizzle, which, you know, everyone loves the magic school bus with with the Triton children. 00:40:57.21 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:40:59.50 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:41:00.80 Kurt Crenwelge Does she have that sort of Miss Frizzle appearance? Or as we've learned with the Druid mixed with Totem Barbarian, is she a little more, you know, you know, with this haunted quality and such kind of more like stern with the children of like, these are important lessons you need to learn. 00:41:18.27 Kurt Crenwelge Well, come on, let's go explore a shipwreck now. 00:41:21.73 BDW - Audio She's so chill. She, they, they have no idea. In fact, some of the older kids ah whisper about it because I don't know off the top of my head, how long Tritons live, but some of the older kids, um maybe even the parents ah remember when she came back to town and have heard the stories over people drinking, but it's like, it doesn't add up um because they called her, they called her the tidal wave. 00:41:48.14 BDW - Audio ah because when she came in, she cleaned everything out, but it doesn't seem to add up with the person that is before you now. 00:41:56.00 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Interesting. that That's really, man, this is great. This is great storytelling. Like I'm really intrigued by this character. 00:42:03.86 BDW - Audio I've done this once or twice. Yes. You know, this is you take, take this one and use it. 00:42:05.75 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:42:07.73 BDW - Audio You guys like she, she's on the house. Cause I'm, I'm already thinking about stuff I could do with her, but yeah. 00:42:10.25 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:42:13.01 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. yeah That's the, that's the brilliance of this podcast. You know, that my gift, my humble offering to the community. 00:42:16.85 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:42:19.16 Kurt Crenwelge So I love doing this. So I'm jazzed. 00:42:21.23 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:42:22.25 Kurt Crenwelge I'm excited. So, okay. all right, so we got the adjectives. We have the idea of how she appears. 00:42:27.66 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:42:27.87 Kurt Crenwelge And this is the part now where I get to say, and now we get to go back to some dice rolling because we want all of our NPCs to have something cool on their person. So what's going to be a variable item, piece of lore, secret, or ideal or concept that the character would ascribe to? This is a combination. 00:42:45.27 Kurt Crenwelge So you get to roll a D4 for the category, and then you roll a D6 for a particular thing. 00:42:51.65 BDW - Audio I'll roll both. 00:42:54.37 BDW - Audio Let's see here in my inscrutable glass dice for the four that is 00:43:01.69 BDW - Audio truly difficult to see a one on the four and a five on the die, the six, a five on the D six. 00:43:04.13 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, okay, that's an item. 00:43:10.90 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, perfect. Your answer was provided to us by Allison Kuntz and Ryan Tempty, who run the Kids Table D&D podcast. 00:43:19.82 BDW - Audio Mm-hmm. 00:43:19.95 Kurt Crenwelge ah In Yohani's possession, she has a well-crafted stuffed animal that is the talking doll magic item. 00:43:30.62 Kurt Crenwelge So why is this her valuable? Why does she keep this close? 00:43:36.91 BDW - Audio She has stuffed Triceratops from Chult. 00:43:44.58 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:43:45.50 BDW - Audio um Because the mission that put her on the map um was to Chult. She broke up a necromancy ring was... 00:44:00.24 BDW - Audio was uh, sifting the seabed for corpses, uh, to reanimate, um, for the dead that had washed into shore. 00:44:08.15 Kurt Crenwelge OK. 00:44:10.77 BDW - Audio Um, in Tobago, there is, um, there's two different bays, Trinidad and Tobago. They're a dual Island, um, in the Caribbean. Um, but on Tobago, there's two bays, one's called blood Bay and one's called body Bay. 00:44:26.24 BDW - Audio Because back when there was still active opposition over who was going to control these things, I believe a Spanish ship was sank, but don't quote me on that. But there was a battle, and after the battle, all of the bodies ended up in one bay and all of the blood went to another one just because of the way the tides flowed. So that's why there was blood bay and body bay. 00:44:47.24 BDW - Audio So... somewhere off the Southern tip of Chult, where it seems like there's not a lot down there. um there was a place where after bodies that were lost at sea, just sort of naturally washed up that way. 00:45:00.87 BDW - Audio Um, and these cultures were dredging up whatever was left that the sharks in other Detroit divorce had yet to destroy and creating a really nasty waterlogged zombies. Um, and they helped break up that ring. 00:45:11.08 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:45:13.91 BDW - Audio And afterwards, uh, they went drinking Um, Was it Fort? What the hell's the name of that Fort? sch Port Nianzaro. Port Nianzaro? 00:45:24.75 BDW - Audio Port Nianzaro. I think so. um Well, now they went to a place called Port Nianzaro, if I'm saying it wrong, although I'm pretty sure that's the main one. And while they were drinking, um one of her shipmates... 00:45:36.68 BDW - Audio um who was a cleric of tear, ah bought her this stuffed animal as a gag. ah but she never let go of it. 00:45:48.73 BDW - Audio And she calls it, um, pokey. Cause it's a triceratops. 00:45:56.12 Kurt Crenwelge I thought with the Miss Frizzle imagery you were going to go with Liz, but Pokey is also really good. 00:46:01.17 BDW - Audio Got to keep them guessing. Got to switch it up. Legally distinct, legally distinct. Got to change it by more than 20%. 00:46:05.94 Kurt Crenwelge That's true. That's true. Awesome. That's lovely. Okay. So one of her dear friends got it for and I wonder if she programs certain phrases into Pokey ah to be able to say to the kids or not. 00:46:21.05 BDW - Audio No, I'm right. it's port Yeah, Port Nyanzaru. Look at that. See what I say. Encyclopedic knowledge. 00:46:26.66 Kurt Crenwelge More than me, that's for sure. 00:46:26.94 BDW - Audio um I would say it's her friend's laughing. If she squeezes it, there's an audio clip of all of them like laughing and you hear cups clinking. 00:46:38.78 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, oh my goodness. Wow. Okay. Woo. Yeah. Way to, way to take a seemingly, you know, just like a, like a ah common magic item and kind of put that emotional gravitas behind it. Wow. 00:46:54.16 BDW - Audio ah friends and listeners who are not familiar. That's the thing I do. I take a thing that you're like, oh, and I'm like, but what if it was like, oh, yeah, that's ah that's the thing I do. 00:47:04.54 Kurt Crenwelge Now I just have an image in my head, you know, she's teaching children and maybe like one of the young Triton kids gets scared. And so she like maybe without thinking, she's like, oh, here's Poki. And then like, you know, they're squeezing Poki and then they hear the laughter and the clinking of glasses and they kind of look up at Yohannes and they're like, what's that? 00:47:15.13 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:47:22.62 Kurt Crenwelge And then she has like that thousand yard stare look on her face and she's just like, oh, it's all it's like it's all right. You you know, calm down. it We're good. Sort of a thing. 00:47:31.18 BDW - Audio hey Good news is that you can't cry underwater. 00:47:35.51 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, I feel like that's like an anime thing, you know, where it's like, oh, it's a good day for rain. It's like, you can't cry underwater. 00:47:40.83 BDW - Audio and Exactly. 00:47:42.65 Kurt Crenwelge and 00:47:43.63 BDW - Audio Exactly. 00:47:45.35 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, and then of course, ooh, okay, good good call out for that one. 00:47:46.43 BDW - Audio she definitely She definitely would have to have the haunted one background. Mm-hmm. 00:47:52.52 Kurt Crenwelge um Perfect. And then of course, we like all of our NPCs to have the bright gold exclamation point over their head, offering up a side quest for your heroes to go and interact with. So for the last dice roll of the d12, what's going to be the quest that Yohannes is going to offer up or ask player characters to help her out with? 00:48:11.69 BDW - Audio I have largely rolled very low today. That is going to be a three, three on a D 12. 00:48:17.33 Kurt Crenwelge Three. Okay. Well, this answer was provided to us by previous guests, Skyline Stars. Bank heist for three dragon toes with claws is what she provided to us. So is there Is there one last job that Yohannes needs help with? 00:48:39.06 BDW - Audio Yes. So her ship was destroyed by cultists out of, um, and one of the things that they'd stole was there was a dragon leg that they were bringing back, um, as a trophy, um, from up near Northrend. They killed a white dragon and we're bringing it back as a trophy. 00:49:08.34 BDW - Audio And even though she sank the ship that sank her ship, some of them did manage to escape with some of their spoils. And, um, 00:49:21.38 BDW - Audio Oh, hang was, I was, but I was was about to come up with a name for their fellowship, but I was going to say the wrong thing. Let's see here. Um, the name of her group with a frost foot, um, which was ironic because none of them were from anywhere cold. 00:49:31.09 Kurt Crenwelge boom 00:49:34.50 BDW - Audio Uh, um, and, uh, 00:49:36.17 Kurt Crenwelge The best party games are all ironic and weird. 00:49:39.31 BDW - Audio Yep. Yeah, they were the Frostfoot. um And so they stole they stole this thing, and she wants she wants the people to get it back. Not because they she wants them to go to Am and get it back, um which is ah further inland, but still is further south on the Sword Coast. where Most people don't go down there. It's like ah south of Baldur's Gate is where Am is. 00:50:02.11 Kurt Crenwelge I see. 00:50:02.47 BDW - Audio And um ah yeah, to ah stealback steal back this relic. ah That meant something to her friends and she doesn't even necessarily want you to bring it back to her. She just wants you to do something cool with it. 00:50:15.19 BDW - Audio So make sure that they don't get to have it. It's like, I don't even need it. They don't get to have it. That is basically, yeah, that's her motivation. 00:50:21.86 Kurt Crenwelge so So it was a whole leg, but at this point only the three dragon toes and claws are all that's left of it because they're cultists and they've been using parts of it for nefarious purposes. 00:50:33.70 BDW - Audio yeah 00:50:35.10 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, okay. And so in a further attempt to like disrupt them and, you know, hey, they're not going to get to have it. You know, they don't get to enjoy these spoils. And so she sends the heroes off on this bank heist cult breaking up quest then. 00:50:50.48 BDW - Audio And if you manage to steal something else in there, you can keep that too. 00:50:54.48 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Well, because certainly with our side quest, you know, we got to analyze both sides. So certainly, you know, and it sounds like you've already hinted at this, but, you know, the reward for the side quest is really the spoils of it, you know, because she doesn't want anything personally for herself. But is there something that she would want or offer to the hero characters if they ever come back and they tell her like, oh, yeah, we did the thing and like, here's the proof of it sort of a thing. 00:51:19.76 BDW - Audio she probably would offer whatever was left to Umberley because again, she thinks, um, she thinks her friends died because, um, she owed that she owed ah debt to Umberley. So she would, she would offer, uh, this thing that would have been like a kind of a token of, of the memento, um, to Umberley. And if for some reason they fail and they can't get it back, or if it's destroyed, she would instead end up offering Pokey to Umberley. 00:51:45.65 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. Okay. So the failure of this side quest, if they're not successful, is she gives up her her valuable item as as the offering. 00:51:54.31 BDW - Audio Well, 00:51:55.63 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. And is there anything else? and that I mean, obviously, maybe the the cultists continue to do their bad things because they weren't stopped, but is are there any other further negative ramifications from failure or refusing the call to this particular venture? 00:52:10.43 BDW - Audio well Here's the thing. I didn't want to make it too heavy because just side quest. Otherwise, this becomes the main quest, you know? um So, cult is going to cult, you know? um ah You know? 00:52:22.15 Kurt Crenwelge Sure, sure. 00:52:22.88 BDW - Audio Yeah. Something They're going to insert bad thing here. um 00:52:27.78 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:52:27.91 BDW - Audio I would say... um 00:52:32.45 BDW - Audio They want to use it to be able to resummon a Draconic Spirit, not a full Draco Lich because they've only got the leg, but they at least if they can even get the like shade of a dragon ah that they can set loose, it's going to hurt a lot of people. 00:52:49.36 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm, okay. Yeah, no, that's a pretty good ramification. So then you've got this, you know, shadow dragon or ghost dragon or what have you rampaging the countryside. 00:53:01.97 BDW - Audio Yep, which would be bad. Mm-hmm. 00:53:03.95 Kurt Crenwelge Which would be bad. Okay, well, you know, we've covered what I feel are all the basic questions to kind of nail down an NPC, but I do have alternate questions. If you if you're good, we can roll on to the next section. 00:53:16.01 BDW - Audio My body's ready. 00:53:17.42 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, your body's ready. 00:53:17.40 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:53:18.22 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:53:18.85 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:53:19.09 Kurt Crenwelge So for Yohannes, what are the goals and motivations of her as a character? 00:53:26.31 BDW - Audio Make these kids' lives easier than hers have been. 00:53:30.48 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. And then how do these goals and motivations affect her general personality? 00:53:38.63 BDW - Audio um again i think she is super chill when she's around the children and she even keeps a facade of being super chill around everybody and like very cheerful until um uh again to use an even older analogy than miss frizzle even like a mrs garrett type um from the facts of life until ah you either reveal that you are a particularly capable person or especially if you know any of the harper code words like if you know if youd Like, if you know that she was the tidal wave, or you can flash her a Harper badge, or, like, any of that kind of stuff, then the switch flips, and, like, the old her is right there below the surface. 00:54:18.26 Kurt Crenwelge o Okay, which I feel like 00:54:20.13 BDW - Audio It's one of those things where it's, like, Batman isn't the mask, Bruce Wayne is the mask type thing. 00:54:24.28 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:54:24.88 BDW - Audio Yeah. 00:54:25.90 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Okay. And I feel like that's going to, the ah you know, lead in beautifully to this next optional question. So it seems to speak to like, you know, so generally how she interacts with people, she has like the the public persona, you know, that's how she interacts with people. But if you're a Harper, you know who she really is. 00:54:46.06 Kurt Crenwelge She's going to act or interact with you differently based on like whether you have this particular knowledge or not. 00:54:51.86 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:54:53.16 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Easy enough. Let's see. Does she have a particular accent or language? Does she have any idiosyncrasies in how she acts or speaks? 00:55:05.67 BDW - Audio Let me check the lifespan of a triton real quick because this could be important. 00:55:11.93 BDW - Audio Please hold. 00:55:13.91 Kurt Crenwelge do do doo Do, do, do, do, do. do 00:55:16.19 BDW - Audio one of the things that, ah oh yeah, tritons can live up to 200 years. um One of the things I hated is that they averaged it out and they're like, everybody lives 70 years now. It's like, stop it. 00:55:26.60 BDW - Audio You know? Like, what are you talking about? That's not... 00:55:28.78 Kurt Crenwelge Magic is getting better. 00:55:29.10 BDW - Video um 00:55:30.62 Kurt Crenwelge Everyone's quality of life is improving. 00:55:32.62 BDW - Audio Look. Look. You know what i mean? First of all, how many characters die of old age anyway? um If she can live 200 years, going to say she's about 150. And... fifty ah 00:55:44.32 Kurt Crenwelge so okay 00:55:46.23 BDW - Audio and 00:55:49.37 BDW - Audio As a triton, as a sea creature, um you would think she wouldn't know a lot about that, but I would say her area of expertise was actually the Underdark, ah because the ocean is the easiest way to access the Underdark. 00:56:02.03 BDW - Audio um 00:56:02.36 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. okay 00:56:03.54 BDW - Audio She probably knows quite a lot about the drow, actually, um because as a harper, she probably got sent to keep an eye on the Empire and, um 00:56:15.89 BDW - Audio you know, skulk around Menzo Baranzan. um Which, by the way, um 00:56:23.74 BDW - Audio I was fortunate to meet Bob Salvatore, and he said Menzo Baranzan, and I was like, I always said Menzo Baranzan, and he's like, no, you say it however you want. I'm like, sir, I say it how you say it. 00:56:36.87 BDW - Audio So it's not Menzo Baranzan, it's Menzo Baranzan. um And um I would say idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies, 00:56:49.46 BDW - Audio Well, I can, I can, um as it, it took everything I had to say Menzen Baranzan. already said I'm from Arkansas. I'm not supposed to know these words. Idiosecreties. Man, why can I not say idiosyncrasies all of a sudden? 00:57:00.05 BDW - Audio um 00:57:01.67 Kurt Crenwelge I found the word that trips him up. 00:57:03.44 BDW - Audio Look, we still didn't get there. That and umbrella, you know? um So one of the things about Menzen Baranzan is in drow society is you can topple a house if you can come in there and kill every single person in a single night. 00:57:17.51 BDW - Audio If there's no witnesses, there's no crime. ah But if anybody lives, you're screwed. So she probably is super, super paranoid about where she sleeps and making sure the house is secure. Like her house looks unassuming, but it is probably like a fortress. 00:57:32.89 BDW - Audio And I think she sleeps sitting upright in a chair like Leon from The Professional. Just like ready. 00:57:37.86 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:57:39.42 BDW - Audio And like with that with that anchor just at just within arm's reach. 00:57:39.74 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:57:42.78 BDW - Audio she doesn't She's not holding it. it looks She looks like an old woman that just fell asleep in her chair, but she's anything but. 00:57:49.04 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, that's a really cool detail as far as like, I'll just go catch her and, you know, at her house or whatever. I got a quick question to ask her, but it's like, if you enter the house wrong, it's like, yeah. 00:57:58.89 BDW - Audio yeah no you don't yeah what wow what can I not why can I not say that what yeah wait idiosyncrasy idiosyncrasy yeah i I'd move in I don't know my my tongue is stunned mm-hmm 00:58:01.64 Kurt Crenwelge I clearly have a sign. 00:58:19.78 Kurt Crenwelge Brilliant. Yeah. And you know she tapped and she's like, I have a sign outside that says no visitors past a certain hour. 00:58:25.53 BDW - Audio exactly exactly 00:58:25.64 Kurt Crenwelge So. 00:58:28.18 Kurt Crenwelge she has ah she yo She wholeheartedly believes in the castle doctrine and, you know, hey, this is my property. You come here when you're not supposed to be here. Your fault sort of a thing. 00:58:38.95 BDW - Audio Yep. 00:58:40.06 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:58:40.11 BDW - Audio Yep. A hundred percent. 00:58:42.54 Kurt Crenwelge And, ah you know, I think it's certainly already been explored, but, you know, what impact has Yohannes made on the world? How has she shaped her local area? 00:58:53.29 BDW - Audio Uh, it is super safe. Everybody thinks it's just, um, weird that the swagging don't come around here, you know, and like sharks aren't a problem. It's just, man, what a, what a, what a strange, peaceful, idyllic area. 00:59:07.13 BDW - Audio And it's cause, you know, Anybody that comes to start smoke, ah mysteriously, stuff just tends to happen to them. 00:59:14.52 Kurt Crenwelge Mm, okay. 00:59:15.21 BDW - Audio And everybody thinks it's just good fortune, blessings of Umberley. And she's like, yeah, it's it's not not blessings of Umberley. 00:59:19.64 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:59:22.12 BDW - Audio Yeah, sure. Mm-hmm. 00:59:25.19 Kurt Crenwelge And then final optional question, does Yohannes have any current problems that prevent her from being a bigger player on the stage? 00:59:34.88 BDW - Audio She doesn't want to. 00:59:36.91 Kurt Crenwelge Mm. 00:59:37.83 BDW - Audio You know, she she really thinks it's her fault. Her friends got killed. And she's actually afraid of putting too big of a spotlight on herself and her good fortune because she thinks the gods will just come and take it from her again. 00:59:53.30 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. We have a fully rounded, ah fully actualized NPC that's ready to put in your game. And what better way to test their metal than a random encounter? 01:00:13.31 Kurt Crenwelge And then insert here for the final ad read for Zencaster, the thing that lets me do this podcast on this platform. So, you know, supporting the sponsor helps the podcast. So if you want to start a podcast, Zencaster.com forward slash pricing, use the code side KQ podcast and get 30% off your first month of any Zencaster paid plan, which is which is really cool. So again, thanks for supporting the sponsor. It helps me out. 01:00:39.88 Kurt Crenwelge All right. So now we're here in the section of the show where we get to do a bit of role play, a vignette, a scene with the character that we've made here today. So I think B. Dave Walters is going to do an awesome job portraying Yohannes. 01:00:53.48 Kurt Crenwelge ah But the question becomes, who am I going to be in this scene? Am I going to be one of my podcast adventurer characters um meeting Yohannes and getting the side quest? Am I going to be like one of the children in her class? 01:01:06.89 Kurt Crenwelge Am I going to be an old Harper colleague of hers? Or I don't know. What sort of scene are you interested in showcasing and portraying Yohannes in? 01:01:15.96 BDW - Audio I think you should be um a young Harper recruit from Waterdeep who was told that she retired here and took some mission journals with her that might still be relevant. And you've just been sent to get them back. 01:01:33.13 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. Good. Okay. I've got i've got my motivation. And okay. So would you care to set the scene or shall I set the scene? 01:01:46.43 BDW - Audio off the shores of Mintarn, not too terribly far, where when the sun hits the water at just the right angle, you can actually still see the shattered spires of the castle that were destroyed by the red dragon, Scowderock, in his attack in times long past, when Mintarn was the naval power in this region at the height of its glory, long since fallen into decline. 01:02:16.30 BDW - Audio in a place where the ships tend not to sail across, where the water is blue and pristine and even a little unseasonably warm as the tide currents flow through this village. There is a small settlement of Triton ah Not many, maybe 50 people in all. And even in this small community, ah they are abundant and numerous. And a small group of about 10 little tritons are swimming and playing outside of their elementary school. And there is a woman with flowing kelp-like hair the 01:03:04.99 BDW - Audio A wide smile on her face that doesn't quite reach her haunted eyes, wearing an odd dress made out of an old net that it seems is just sort of watching them happily as you approach. 01:03:20.68 BDW - Audio What would you like to do? 01:03:22.44 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, okay. um Yeah. Well, okay. So I'm from, what I feel like I'm definitely a fish out of water. um So I'm, if, you know, if we're underwater, I feel like I'm someone wearing like a cap of water breathing and I look very out of place. I'm probably like a human. 01:03:40.40 Kurt Crenwelge And I'm just like, ah like ah you know you know, I'm clumsy. I'm trying to look around and just be like, yes, ah ah you know, who whom am I supposed to, where am I supposed to go? 01:03:54.44 Kurt Crenwelge Who am I supposed to talk to? 01:03:55.12 BDW - Audio Ha ha ha ha. Look at that guy. He got a hat on. He can't breathe underwater. Look at him. He can't even swim right. And she's like, shh, shh, shh, shh. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Or he is going to laugh at you when you try and walk on the shore for the first time. 01:04:10.31 BDW - Audio um are you lost, traveler? 01:04:13.37 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, I am. Hello. Hello. Nice to meet you. Make your acquaintance. I'm from Waterdeep and i've been I've been sent here to find someone. 01:04:28.10 Kurt Crenwelge i had a note here and my and he pulls out like a scroll like he had the note, but of course all the ink is washed off and he's like, oh, but oh, oh, oh. o 01:04:37.04 BDW - Audio Hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:04:39.26 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, a code, a phrase. 01:04:39.29 BDW - Audio Some... 01:04:44.53 Kurt Crenwelge ah he he He blurts out like part of a code. Like he's just so nervous and, you know, a bundle of nerves, you know, being, you know, trusting this magic item on his head to not suddenly fill his lungs with water and kill him. 01:04:57.57 Kurt Crenwelge So he's just kind of like, you know, saying, blurting out different parts of the code, not a complete phrase. um But yeah, he's, he's you know, but he's trusting this, this, 01:05:08.36 Kurt Crenwelge adult to kind of help him out in this situation. 01:05:12.65 BDW - Audio That is enough, children, for today. oh yes, yes, yes, I know. Hurry on home. I'm going to help this lost stranger find his way back to his vessel. 01:05:23.97 BDW - Audio Yeah, because he swam so bad. yeah Stop that. You all go right now. I'm going to give you additional homework. Go. Go right now. um And you see they all sort of scatter. 01:05:36.56 BDW - Audio And she looks at you for a moment. And she says, 01:05:44.24 BDW - Audio ah What was that you just said? um The tide only comes in at dawn. Was there something else you wanted to add to that? 01:05:53.30 Kurt Crenwelge uh the title comes in at dawn and uh he tries to he's trying to go through a couple of different rhymes and he's getting a couple of them wrong uh where like the title comes in at dawn and so we party on and he's like no that's not right and so he's like trying a couple of different ones and maybe 01:06:10.83 BDW - Audio While you're stumbling around it, you see she looks at you and her eyes just start to glow a faintly green and all of the plant life and kelp around you starts wrapping around your legs as she casts entangle. 01:06:24.25 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, fuck. 01:06:24.52 BDW - Audio And she says, you should think well, stranger, because if you don't know what it is that you're supposed to tell me, I'm afraid things are about to become abruptly negative for you. 01:06:35.99 BDW - Audio And you definitely feel one of them moving up towards the cap of water breathing to take it off your head. 01:06:40.41 Kurt Crenwelge ah And he's he's floundering around and he he he reaches for like ah a coat pocket or like a lapel or something. And he like pulls it aside to flash like a Harper pin. He's just like, ah i'm I'm nervous. I can't. like I have the water. I can't. I can't think. And he's like desperately pointing to his pin. 01:06:59.12 BDW - Audio Things must be truly terrible up on the surface if they have to send someone so woefully unprepared to meet with me and she just motions and the plants let you go. 01:07:10.88 BDW - Audio Listen, friend, the reason why the codes exist is to complete them. If you know part of one, you could have ambushed an agent and maybe gotten part of it in the commission of it or maybe overheard or eavesdrop. 01:07:23.75 BDW - Audio The fact that you only know some of it is objectively worse than you knowing none of it. 01:07:31.17 Kurt Crenwelge He, he, he's just, he feels so bad. And he's like, I, I know I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. This is my first mission. i know I'm, I'm like book smart. This is my first time in the field. Everyone else is just waiting and they, they sent me to do it. And I don't know why they made me come by myself. 01:07:48.58 BDW - Audio It would seem that perhaps your compatriots don't hold you in as high end esteem as you might have thought, because I assure you, were it anyone else, your first mission might have been your last. Now, since you clearly don't really know how... Hmm... Clandestine operations work. 01:08:10.66 BDW - Audio I'm going to allow you to enter my home so that we can speak freely. You should know it is also so that if I need to eliminate you, I don't want to risk one of the kids seeing. 01:08:21.63 BDW - Audio And she motions. And when she motions, you see her arm goes out and turns into an octopus tentacle and opens the door and then comes back to a normal hand and is like, please, after you. 01:08:33.57 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, of course, of course, of course. And, uh, you know, he's just flustered. He can't, he's like, now he's like guarding every word to be like, I don't want to misspeak. I don't want to make her mad. 01:08:45.28 Kurt Crenwelge I've, I'm like getting flashes of the stories and reports that I've heard before. You know, I know for a fact, if I can't speak any proper words, I know for a fact not to make her mad. So he just, he goes right into her boat and just as she orders. 01:09:00.01 BDW - Audio And when you come in she closes the door and there's a big heavy bookshelf. And she reaches out with a hand and just gives the smallest little grunt and slides this heavy bookshelf in front of the door. 01:09:12.54 BDW - Audio And she says, who is the current Lord Commander of the Harpers? 01:09:19.96 Kurt Crenwelge he He rolls his history check and he does well. So he he tells you the correct answer of who's in charge. 01:09:27.10 BDW - Audio Ah, good, good, my child. I was not looking forward to filling the water in here with your blood. What can I do for you? Take a moment and breathe. 01:09:36.94 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah. 01:09:38.05 BDW - Audio None of this. ah It is unbecoming of a Harper. 01:09:43.22 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:09:43.21 BDW - Audio Focus, speak. 01:09:44.38 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. Okay. he He takes the moment to to calm down and breathe. And then he says, I have been sent here to collect some logs. 01:09:55.35 Kurt Crenwelge we're We're preparing for a mission. And I was told, we were told, my party was told that, you know, a great warrior of ours, of our order was here. 01:10:07.83 Kurt Crenwelge And that she would have the necessary information for us to undertake and fulfill our mission. 01:10:15.16 BDW - Audio there's nothing great about being a warrior, son, but you see, she sort of like pulls her hair back into a ponytail and she's like, so far you have not filled me with confidence about your bravery or your competence. So I have a little mission for you. 01:10:33.66 BDW - Audio Should you succeed and do what I want you to do, then I will give you what it is that you have requested of me. 01:10:43.72 Kurt Crenwelge of Of course, yes. Happy to. You know, stamps his, you know, does the salute across his chest and, you know, trying to emphasize like, yes, I know I'm a harper for real. 01:10:56.16 Kurt Crenwelge I'm in this. 01:10:57.08 BDW - Audio and Yes, I... Yeah. 01:11:07.07 BDW - Audio I don't know what they told you about me. And I assure you, maybe half of it is true. But I have no interest in anything negative happening to you. But there is one thing that I care about even more than that. 01:11:22.74 BDW - Audio And that is the good of the Harpers. So... And you see she reaches out towards you and another octopus tentacle comes out and plucks the badge off of your chest and looks at it. and She says, because if you die on this mission, I don't want anybody tracing this back to our beloved order. 01:11:41.13 BDW - Audio Now, have you ever been to Om? And there you go 01:11:47.56 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. let me yeah Let me do the cue. 01:11:52.84 BDW - Video um 01:11:54.35 Kurt Crenwelge And scene. There we go. that's the That's the way you do it in the random encounter section. 01:11:57.85 BDW - Audio and 01:11:59.96 Kurt Crenwelge that was That was breathtaking. 01:12:00.28 BDW - Audio Yep. 01:12:01.56 Kurt Crenwelge i was I was on the edge of my seat. Like, oh, normally, ah you know, it's like, oh, I get to do like one of my podcast characters. But you were like, this is who you are. And I was like, yes, sir. All right, I'm ready in it. And I was like, I think the fish out of the water was the best angle for me to take. 01:12:11.89 BDW - Audio a 01:12:15.85 BDW - Audio Definitely. ah Because, you know, she's a fish and you're not from water. 01:12:20.92 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so so we've made it here now into the the final thoughts section of the podcast. 01:12:21.27 BDW - Audio Thank you. 01:12:26.29 Kurt Crenwelge So certainly, you know, we like to check in with the guest and and see how their time was on the podcast. But ultimately, how do you think it was getting to be Yohannis now? She could appear in your games now and your canon your homebrew lore? 01:12:40.05 BDW - Audio You know, I think she is a very fascinating character. And Mintarn has a a special place in my heart because ah the comic book that I wrote, Dungeons and Dragons of Dark and Wish, is set in Mintarn. 01:12:51.14 BDW - Audio um and in the Or near Mintarn in the Moonshay Isles. Because I kind of meant for it to be a love letter to the Forgotten Realms. 01:13:01.04 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:13:01.33 BDW - Audio Because they they told me I could kind of do whatever, but I knew they wouldn't let me destroy Waterdeep. Or if I did, i would have to like rebuild it by the time that, uh, the, by the time the story was over. 01:13:13.06 BDW - Audio So I wanted a place that was close enough in the cannon, but far enough away that I could mess it up and nobody would complain. And it was only after I'd already made that choice that I found out that the very first Forgotten Realms story ever written, Dark Walker on Moonshay, was set there. 01:13:27.02 BDW - Audio So much so, it was written before the Forgotten Realms existed, and WotC, I guess at that time it was TSR, bought it and dropped the Moonshay Isles off the Sword Coast. so So there's a lot of very um secret Easter eggs and old school callbacks in that story um for anybody who who is a fan of the OG stuff and knows how to see it. 01:13:49.41 Kurt Crenwelge That's awesome. I know, you know, I, you know, I definitely like to homebrew and have invented my world, but getting to play finally Baldur's Gate 3. And at this point in time of the recording, I've only done one playthrough. I'm working on a on a on a platform co-op with a friend, and I'm hoping to, you know, get another run of it on a higher difficulty level with other iterations of the podcast NPCs made from this podcast or even um taking a page out of Tyler Kamstra's RPGbot.net and trying to basically build the worst optimized ah you know ah ancestry and character class combo and then do an honor mode and just see like how long I could last before I would get taken out or something like that. 01:14:40.21 BDW - Audio Um, well, I mean, uh, the, my main freely, the one who married Penelope half point was a barred paladin warlock sorcerer that I played as a thought experiment of a four class character that was all based around charisma and freely was a monster, uh, just ah hit like an absolute truck. So it's, uh, I'm at the point now that it's like um in my heart, I'm a min maxer, but I've been blessed to do so many things that now I'm like, Oh, I'm a, 01:15:09.12 BDW - Audio Sentient ham sandwich being carried around by Mage Hand? Okay, sure. 01:15:13.05 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, yeah. 01:15:13.85 BDW - Audio You know, let's do it. 01:15:15.54 Kurt Crenwelge At the time of this recording, um you know, it'll be at the end of September, but there's a local con that's happening that I'm going to be running games at, FateCon here in Arlington, Texas. And so I've made some pre-gen characters in what I call the misfit nitwits or the regulars. And so it's basically like, if you don't have a character, you can either pick one of the regulars who's like a, basically a very optimized sort of like pre-gen character. 01:15:39.91 Kurt Crenwelge Or if you want a challenge, you can pick one of the misfit nitwits. And they're basically like, I had to pick like the worst combo and be like, okay, here's a character that you could play and and see how you do in this adventure if you want the extra challenge. 01:15:52.71 BDW - Audio I find it's, it's, I mean, obviously some race class combos work better than others, but there's not any good race, any bad race class combos, but there's definitely some non-favorable multi-classes like, uh, you know, like any, like barbarian in any kind of caster is obviously non-optimal or artificer in almost anything is non-optimal or like monk and 01:16:22.47 BDW - Audio I mean, again, my Artificer. I mean, Artificer is a bad matchup with almost everything. ah But if you're like, I don't know. um ah The problem is I keep having trouble coming up with bad combinations because I can make anything work. 01:16:35.95 BDW - Audio ah Besides being like, you know, mad and not necessarily having the best attributes. Besides that, it all works. 01:16:42.79 Kurt Crenwelge yeah well it'll be it'll be fun and interesting to see who takes me up on the offer and uh will does what they do with the character but all that to say this is final thoughts and so you know i like to get feedback from the guests and just you know how was your time on the podcast and and getting to create and play with johannes and uh you know So it sounds like, you know, she's going to have a ah place in your lore, in your world, and and hopefully other people will be inspired to introduce her into their games as well. 01:17:12.37 BDW - Audio anywhere where you need a retired spy, drop her in. ah No, it's been lovely. It's been delightful. And I appreciate you ah allowing me to come on and getting to make something that's super dope. I can say, I can tell you, I've been blessed to do quite a few podcasts and quite a few interviews. And that is not something I've gotten to do anywhere else. 01:17:28.34 BDW - Audio So mazel. 01:17:29.57 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. Yes, no, I do take pride in the the quirky weirdness of this podcast being like, you know, oh, I can have like my colleague, Dr. Holly Ordway, a Tolkien scholar on. And most people want to talk to her about like the, you know, the Tolkien books that she's written about, but I can just be like, do you want to make an NPC and, you know, talk about Dungeons and Dragons? And she's like, oh, this is delightful. 01:17:53.26 Kurt Crenwelge And, you know, can have friends and family and, you know, other great people in the hobby on. And, you know, at the end of the day, we're we're we're learning about people, we're making awesome characters, and we're having fun at the same time. So, 01:18:05.37 Kurt Crenwelge I would be remiss here at the very end if I didn't leave the soapbox, the microphone, the stage, the platform to you, Mr. Walters, to be able to plug us, ah what you got going on. You know, it's going to be January 14th, hopefully when this episode drops, if all my timing is right. 01:18:22.49 Kurt Crenwelge So any plugs you got to do, where can people find you, how can we stay in touch, and any passions or causes that you want us to know about, lay it on us. 01:18:32.27 BDW - Audio Uh, let's see again. Thank God we just made it to 2026. Um, if it's mid January, I will have just wrapped having been an instructor at dungeon master university. So that was the thing I did. 01:18:45.31 BDW - Audio ah There's my website, the Undisputed Academy, where I have my courses, 14-day player, 14-day DM, where you can learn how to do what I just did. 14-day TTRPG creator and 14-day writer. So if you want to learn how to write ah novels, short stories, screenplays, comic books, graphic novels, I'll take five years off your journey into becoming a professional. 01:19:07.34 BDW - Audio I'm at B. Dave Walters everywhere on all the socials. My... my biggest passion is democracy. Don't let anybody take it from you. 01:19:18.26 BDW - Audio And because it is more precarious than you think. And just be kind to each other. And last but certainly not least, if you are an aspiring storyteller, as start, try. 01:19:29.02 BDW - Audio ah If you are somebody who is already telling stories, but you are not sure about um your skills, skills can be developed. your Skills can be built up and honed and perfected. The most important thing is always remember that it is a blessing to get to take people on a journey. 01:19:46.26 BDW - Audio Uh, it is a blessing to get to share the table with them. Uh, if somebody is playing at your table or watching your stream, they are exchanging their time for you, which is literally their life. They're giving up a part of their essence and their existence to listen to what it is that you want to do. And you should always take that very, yeah seriously, um, in, in, uh, always try to do your best with that and understanding that your best is going to look day to day. 01:20:14.16 BDW - Audio I look different day to day. ah But at the end of the day, it is a blessing to get to do what we do. It is a blessing to get to play these games. It is the blessing to be in a time and a place where this is even available to us. 01:20:25.03 BDW - Audio um And the last thing I would say, even though I just said a lot of heavy, weighty, heady sounding things, remember that it is a game that you're supposed to enjoy as well. um And if you are the storyteller and you're not having fun, something is wrong. 01:20:37.72 BDW - Audio And if you're a player and you can tell your storyteller isn't having fun, something is wrong. um So make sure that you never lose track of the fact that it is a collaborative art. It is a story that you're telling together. It is art that you're creating together and everybody should enjoy that ride. 01:20:53.60 Kurt Crenwelge And there we go. That's the way to do it in the start of our new year, 2026. You know, all all all up from all up from here is what ah what I will say and what I will work to do in my my life and help others do. 01:21:04.19 BDW - Audio yep 01:21:07.81 Kurt Crenwelge So B. Dave Walters, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I can't wait to have you back on making even more interesting NPCs.