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January 15, 2025 • 24 mins

Two podcasters meet in a tavern...what the heck is Dungeons & Dragons anyway, and what is it like for women? In this classic, Samantha has questions and Anney has answers. Roll for initiative!

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I welcome stuff. I never told you a production of iHeartRadio.
And it's been a long time since we've talked about
Dungeons and Dragons, so I wanted to bring back a
classic on dungeons and dragons and women, especially because one

(00:28):
of my very good friends, who traditionally has not had
a good experience with Dungeons and Dragons and hasn't had
a good experience with board games, has started to play it.
And when I started to play it a lot, she's
in like three or four campaigns.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's blowing my mind.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Now. We hung out last night and she was talking
about the possibility of her being a dungeon master or
game master. I was like, WHOA, You've really, like very
quickly gotten into this, and she's I mean, she's such
a creative person. That makes sense to me, and I
think I'm fortunately, which is something we talk about in
this episode. Part of her bad experience has been feeling

(01:07):
like she doesn't know what she's doing. Men kind of
talking over her or dismissing her character, which is something
I experienced as well, but not not in the campaigns
I've played with friends. No one everyone's so welcoming, and
now I'm kind of like I want her to play
in my campaign so she can show off and show

(01:27):
her like, look, how good of a dungeon master?

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I am really good.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
You know. My partner is ready, So whenever you start
this new campaign, he is in.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yes, yes, I am thinking about the kind out. But
you would be a.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Fun uh spectator, Yeah, a fun spectator.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
But it's been interesting hearing her thoughts and where some
things have gone wrong and some things have gone really right,
especially because they're doing it virtually, and I think there's
pluses and minuses to that. The campaign I was working
on at this time, one of the players moved to
Tennessee and we haven't been able to play since then,
and we've been trying to figure out if we're going

(02:11):
to do it virtually or like have some hangout in
between where we all are I don't know, but yes,
it seems people are really into it these A lot
of the people in her group are much younger, and
so I'm intrigued by the growing popularity of dungeons and dragons.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
So please enjoy.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and what come to
stuff I've never told you production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
So Annie, Yes, I thought for today's Monday, MANI I
was going to do this whole, like big research thing
and then like, oh, yeah, I got to handle on
this subject for sure, because you've been talking to me
about it for so long that I was like, hey,
we're good. I'm just gonna put some little facts in here,
little statistics. And then as I was researching it, I realized, oh,
my goodness, I actually don't know anything about Dungeons and Dragons,

(03:13):
which is what we're going to talk about today. Because
I thought it would be fun for you to tell
us what's going.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
On in your world of D and D.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Right, And I was like, you know what, and for
Monday many, not only will we have the personal things
that are going on, we'll do a little statistics because
I don't know who we've done this. And then as
I was looking things up, I realized, yeah, I have
no idea what this game is. In my head, Dungeons
and Dragons meant you know, there's a dragon maybe, and
someone we're in a costume doing magic possibly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
No.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
And for those who do love D and D, I'm
sorry that was not an insult. I really did not
realize what it all was. And I know you've done
a little bit about.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
D and D before before I came on, right, Yes,
we talked about it briefly when I had Tracy V.
Wilson from Stuff You Missed in History cross on the
show and we did one on tabletop gaming, and we
talked about our experiences playing D and D and like
even with you, Samantha, back when we first started, we
did our Trauma mini series, we did those self care

(04:16):
things at the end, and mine was always Dungeons and
Dragons based. But I would love to of course, me
being a nerd, I would love to come back and
do a whole episode on Dungeons and Dragons. But Tracy
and I talked about how when the game was first developed,
women characters had these things called beauty points where you

(04:37):
would use your beauty to charm someone or I'm guessing
not charm someone, depending on what your character, and just
problematic things like that, and I think some racist like
tropes maybe in there. This is an interesting world because
you've got like dwarves and elves and.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
They have like traits.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
But it's changed, for sure, but back when it's I
would love to trace the evolution of.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
That, right for sure.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, So from what I understand, this originally was geared
toward men, essentially thinking that they would be the ones
that joy enjoyed this. But there was an overhaul and
in the seventies they're like, wait, wait, wait, there's a
lot of women who are really into this as well.
But we started seeing like, but if you're a woman,
you're gonna have to have these beauty points in these
and these and these. But the original creator started by
testing this out with his children when I didn't know that,

(05:26):
and it involved his son and his daughter, as in fact,
the daughter is the one who chose the name Dungeons
and Dragons, So I'm not really sure how they veered
from that to be like, let's make it a little
bit sexist. Yeah, okay, And of course the early editions
had help from other women creators like Jeane Wells and
Keim Mohan and Penny Williams and apparently a lot a

(05:47):
lot more. But yet we still have that like, hmm,
you don't want to credit them for some reason, okay, right,
And that's when I started realizing, Okay, I don't really
know this game. As I'm trying to understand all these things,
and I wanted to ask you, can you give us
the because what I read was there are some already

(06:08):
base characters, but of course it's grown bigger and bigger
into the storytelling and you create your own world.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
But what is the basis of D and D Well,
Let me begin.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
We'll talk about version five E. There have been several versions.
I think the easiest way to explain it is it
is a role playing game where you have a dungeon
master or a game master who runs the game.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
They are the ones that know the rules that tell
the story.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
So if you were playing with me, Samantha, I would
be like, you enter a bar and you hear buzzing
of people talking and people are drunk, Like I would
paint a picture for you right, and you, as a player,
would decide I want to go up and talk to
the bartender and get in a bar fight or you.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Know, you would say what you want to do.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
I would tell you, based on the rules of the game,
what whether or not you can do that, and what
will happen if you do. And that's largely determined by
rolling a D twenty dice and seeing if you succeed.
If you get a twenty good, one very bad. You're
gonna lose that bar fight, Samantha.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
You're probably gonna lose, lose all your money fall.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
And get your head stuck in a bucket in a
bucket even okay, yes, yes, you do not want a
one very very bad okay.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
And so you create these characters.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
You choose the race off like an elf or human
our dwarf, and then the class, which is like a
rogue or a thief character or a mage. You do magic,
and then you roll for stats, and there are six
main stats, and they are things like charisma, which did
yes used to be beauty points or sell well, dexterity,

(07:59):
and constitution, and you determine on what you roll. It
determines if, like, you're good at being charismatic or if
you're terrible at being charismatic, and then that can facts yes,
oh gosh, yes, so you have kind of those base things.

(08:26):
And then there are worlds and maps and storylines that
are already written. So if I wanted to be a
dungeon master, but I didn't want to write a whole story,
then I can just get one of these and do
it that way. I of course like to make things
really really complicated for myself. So I homebrew as it's called,
and that means you write the entire story.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
So there is a base, like there is something that
you can just automatically use or you become creative zone,
which is what I was trying to figure out myself,
like what is what's happening? And speaking of that, as
you were talking about dungeon masters or dms, and obviously
there's been a whole I've noticed a Twitter back and
forth like it's a conversation and they're not arguing, but
more of a conversation about whether or not to change

(09:10):
the term masters. So a lot of people have talked
about using moderators and then just doing the initials the DM,
the GMS and all of that. So that's a whole
different level of conversation. But as I'm reading and trying
to figure out this scientific world of dungeons and dragons, yeah,
that there's not too many women who take on the
DMA or GM role. Can you talk about that a

(09:32):
little bit?

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (09:34):
So for me, when I first got into Dungeons and Dragons,
I did get into it because of a dude and
also because of I thought it would help me figure
out the ending of this thing, I was writing, if
I had to play as this character, what would she do?
And also help with the PTSD, which it's been said
that it does. But the reason I put it off

(09:55):
so long was because I was afraid of the rules.
It's there are a lot of rules, and I thought
it was very technical, and if I start playing with
people who've already played, and a lot of them dudes like,
I'm just going to be scared the whole time to
do anything, and I'm not going to do anything. Which
it was like that, not in terms of people being
mean to me at all, but it was like that

(10:15):
where I was just nervous that I was going to
screw up in heavy quotes, and it is kind of
a it can be really vulnerable, especially with the character
I did, where you do have this kind of close
connection where it's like I felt so timid.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Like well, she would do this.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, and unsure of just how the rules work and
not wanting to really screw up. But I played for
probably a year, and then it became we didn't want
the same person to have to run the game again
because it is a lot of work, but no one
else wanted to run it. I wanted to keep playing,
so I had to. If that was the case, I

(10:53):
had to do it.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
You had to take up the mantle.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
I had to take up the mantle. But I was
extremely intimidated to do it. I will say I had
talked to friends about it and heard about how being
a woman and being a DM, they felt like they
got called out more about like rules knowledge and like
are you sure I think I can get away with it,
you know, like kind of being questioned.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
And these were friends of mine I.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Was playing with, so I wasn't really worried about that,
although in the heat of the game, people will be like,
are you no get out that rule book right right?
And just because I had, I know the rule book
is huge, I would guess, yeah, yeah, And I'm lucky
that I play with people.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Who are pretty flexible.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Unless it gets down to it, then they want to
know the rule but you know, like you're more interested
in the game moving on smoothly than getting every rule correctly.
But I was, you know, me Smith, I'm somebody who
wants to get those things correct and then I start
doubting myself. So I had to get over that, and
I still get nervous, like I'm supposed to play tonight, right,

(11:55):
and I'm already nervous. It's like hours away. Yeah, just
because you want people to have a fun time. And
then I will say something else. I've never experienced this,
but I have seen people experience it or be afraid
that they would. And I've been afraid of it too,
where you're as a woman worried about sexists. It sounds

(12:22):
so strange, but like basically being treated misogynistically in a game,
like your character being.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Treated that way.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
So I've played with random people once and it didn't happen,
but I was nervous. They were all guys, and I like,
what if I'm the only woman character in this game?

Speaker 1 (12:39):
What if they're like flirting with me or like.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
The male villain does something like having that concern.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
And I've heard of it happening, right, I could absolutely
see that.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, so that I've never been afraid of that with
the people I play with. But somebody I did play
with she kind of had. I wouldn't call it a
panic attack, but she removed her character from a situation
where we were all flirting with like the guards, and
then she just was like, no, I don't want to
do this anymore. Yeah, And I think it's kind of
that fear of like, what is this going to escalate?

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Right too?

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Right?

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, Well that's kind of my it's been my experience.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, I mean, and that's where I'm just as I'm
reading about why people are pushing or who they are saying,
and the fact that there has to be justifications of
saying literal articles that say, yes, women belong in D
and D you know, stuff like that tells you, wait,
who said they didn't? Okay, there's a fight for this
to even have to be a conversation. And again, one
of the things I talked about with the DM and

(13:41):
if it was a woman, if it versus being a man,
the conversation was like one of the benefits in having
a female or a woman to be the DM for
this is the fact that they're probably more likely to
anticipate a lot more situations. As you've told me, this
is the one thing I know is that you have
to be ready for any and all posts situations that
the players are going to throw at you. A b

(14:04):
as well as the fact that you are a very
creative storyteller and a lot of the times when it
was just all men, it was just all about mechanics
and the technicalities and instead of setting up a beautiful storyline.
And that's for a lot of even though this is
the kind of a gendered conversation, but it has shown
true that women are more detail oriented in things like

(14:24):
this as well as willing to see a bigger story
and or a detailed story. And so that is a
benefit of having a woman to be the DM. Would
you agree with that? Yeah, in my experience for sure.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
And I I shuddered to think because our big convention here,
Dragon Con, they have a whole floor where you can
play dungeons and dragons, and I just feel like, what's
going to happen if I ever decided to DM that is,
it's just going to be dudes attacking me.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
For the rules.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
But the people I play with are pretty balanced between
men and women, And I will say the thing that
I've noticed anecdotally is that women are more likely to
recognize that it is a game and there are rules,
and sometimes it's not worth like questioning every single thing, right,

(15:18):
Sometimes if you want the story to move on, you
have to just in the back of your play of
brain be like, Okay.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
This is a game.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
And if the if the dungeon master is saying, here's
this important flyer, I wouldn't do it that way. But basically,
if I'm drawing attention to certain things, pay attention. You
should probably pay attention to those things instead of just
being like I want to go that way and.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Then I have to come up with something completely.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
That's what I've noticed is like women are, they'll move
it along, right, And if you're a good DM, which
I like to think I am, then that doesn't usually
become a problem.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
But you'll some players.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Are just like, no, I want to go do this
and okay, and.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
That tells me that I don't need to be playing
D and D because I probably would be that player. No,
you can't tell me what to do.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
I'm gonna do this. I think that I know you
well enough that I could.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
My contrarian personality you'll kind of already know. Yeah, well,
thank you for answering that, because, as I said, as
I was trying to research it, I was like, I
really don't know anything.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
About this. I just know what Annie is doing.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yeah, not the overall, but speaking of what Annie is doing, Annie,
I need an update about what's going on in your
D and D World.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Oh, I'm gonna try to keep this shirt because I
could go on.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
And audit on.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
So the campaign I was talking about when we first
started our Trauma series where I tried to figure out
the ending of that character. I did figure out how
that story ends. It's very sad, of course. But after that,
that was the one I took and it was the
first time I ran a game. And that campaign just
came to an end a couple months ago after three years.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
That's a long time. Three years.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
I've had to figure out how to do it during Quarantine,
which involves like a two laptop setup and an overhead
camera and all this stuff, and it was really.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
I have to say, it was really I felt seen
in a way.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
I wasn't sure I was ready to because it was
a very upsetting storyline and I didn't anticipate how I
was like, do they think I'm like messed up.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
RPG?

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Because they really investigated and I was kind of hoping
they wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
But anyway, that's on me.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
The other one I'm doing I started recently, so it's newer,
and I have, of course my poor Cinnamon roll, poor
print cinnamon role has just been kidnapped.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
In this world.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
It is a world of very many Star Wars based puns,
so many like snowby One, Kenobi, Shenanikins, which like imagine
trying to keep a straight face and perhaps do a
voice when you're saying these things. And I'm lucky that

(18:22):
I play with I play with really good friends of mine,
and they know me really well, so they try to
get me to say all the Star Wars puns. They'll
try to get their characters to get to the bottom
of the very intricate puns I've created.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
I still think, because we've talked about this before's you
need to do a Patreon because it involved savers co
hosts Lauren as well as a stuff I don't want
you to know.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Co hosts.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Ben is no old part of that one too, I remember.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
No, but he helps me write songs for it. My
campaigns have songs in it.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Listen. Oh, I still think you need to do like
a live feed of or recording of you guys playing.
At one point in time, I think people would pay
a little bit of money to.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
See that we actually talked about it. We were going
to try to raise money for a charity. Funnily enough, this.
You know, always keep in mind if you're nervous, other
people are probably nervous too. Because they told me they
were too nervous at first to have it, to play
it and have other people listen to it.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
But I bet they would now now that they've played
a little bit, they got it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
They always do just the silliest thing I think they
can do, And twice they've completely broken me as a
dungeon master where I just couldn't stop laughing. One was
of this time where Ben's character tried to talk to
some fish. I was trying to get them to go
fishing because they needed fish for a meal, and he
tried to talk to He put his head in the water,

(19:48):
tried to talk to the fish, okay, and I could
not stop laughing. I was like, you could just go fishing,
which is not very good as a DM, but I
could stop laughing. And then in the most recent one,
and no one will get this because it's a holiday,
the Star Wars Holiday Special Base, but I was trying
to get them to realize that Mala needs to break
up with Chewbacca and she needs to go hook up

(20:10):
with either Mando Orlando. However, they completely misinterpreted the situation,
and they're trying to get her to hook up with Wicket,
who is the ewok Okay then, and I could not
I was dying laughing because they were like writing notes
and pretending they were from the other characters.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
That's amazing, It was so funny.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, and then I do have a character based on
your dog, Samantha, Peaches.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
I had request just to please put her in there,
to make a lot of mischief because I feel that
represents both me and my dog.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yes, and so Peaches.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Basically the plot line is that they have to go
to eight cities and get something in every city, and
so far they're they're on their third. They're on the
way to Tattooine essentially, so the fourth city, and Peaches
has shown up in everyone and by now, because Peaches
does cause so much trouble, like in the first one,
she was like, I told those guys over there.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Where you were.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
They look really angry, but maybe they just and so
they had to go fight those dudes.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
By now they like grown or Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
I was gonna say, she's gotten quite a reputation. They've
never met my dog, but she's got a reputation, and
which I say, I want her to be a lovable
dog and she doesn't mean to cause these mischiefs.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
It just doesn't happens to be.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
I did toy with the idea that she would be
the big bad at the end, but I've dismissed it. Yeah,
they've turned it into a verb peaches mcfuzzing something, which
means to mess something up.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah. Yeah, so that's about again. I could go on
and on it.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Right, they forgot what was in their bag of holding
and oh that something they made me roll for it.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Oh yeah, So thank you for sharing with me, because
again I was like, yeah, let's just do something fun
because we're pretty heavy duty with our stuff lately, and
this was a good way of talking about gaming. And
as we're coming towards end the pandemic, we know we're
going to do a little more face to face stuff.
And though this is a face to face thing, this
has been a nice distraction, I think for you and

(22:19):
for others to be able to do this over video
conferencing and all that. So I wanted to talk about
it and follow up again because I think people love
hearing what's going on in these make believe worlds that
I know nothing.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
About obviously you should guess.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
But yeah, and obviously a world that I don't know
much about and involving such a huge I mean, the
D and D is probably one of the most popular
games of all time essentially, and it's it's able to
connect a lot of people, like you talk about how
people work at work there some of their trauma, and
you've talked about the fact that you know, maybe some
daddy issues made the thing and able to like find

(23:01):
the ending to your characters whatever in books. This is
an amazing outlet, So thank you for sharing that with us.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Thank you for letting me talk about it.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
I do think as we were having this discussion, I
realized that of the four groups of people I know
that played D and D, all of them have had
a female DM.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
So I think it is having a resurgence.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
And I do think, I know we talked about it
in the Susan care episode with Bridget It does these
skills that have been traditionally seen as more like in
the realm of women. But I mean, even if you
just want to build up skills of like project planning
and reading people, this is for you.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
That's awesome. You can do it. You can do it.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yes, I'm sure there will be more updates in the future,
but until then, listeners. If you're playing d and d Oh,
tell us about your character. If you're running a game,
tell us about your experience. We would love to hear
from you our emails, step Media, mom Stuff at iHeartMedia
dot com. You can find us on Instagram at Stuff
I've Never Told You or on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast.
Thanks as always for our super producer Christina, Thank you,

(24:06):
and thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Protection of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visits iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
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