We Attack The Darkness

Jonathan and Ariel discuss tabletop role playing and drink mountain dew.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerdron Collider podcast is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey everybody, Welcome to the Large Nerddron Collider.
The podcast. It's all about the geeky things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me as always

(00:32):
is bumping his mic. Jonathan Strickland. I'm still buffering and bumping. Hey, Hariel, Yes, Jonathan,
I got a question for you. Okay, Ariel, here's your question.

(00:53):
It's more of a scenario as I am want to do.
You have landed the job to design, locate and build
the next Hall of Doom for the Legion of Doom.
Where do you put it? To sign? Where do I
put the next Hall of Doom? Yes? Where would you

(01:14):
locate the Hall of Doom where all the supervillains gather
for their supervillainry underneath the LaBrea tar pits. Okay, so
you're torturing the So what you're doing is you're you're
you're defeating evil by taking on a contract and then
locating their their villainous layer in a very inconvenient, sticky place.

(01:37):
I mean, a lot of supervillains like kind of gross places.
So I assume it's right up their alley. I assume
they have the evil tech to survive the tar and
would pick a location like that. I pick a location,
but they would desire that location because it would keep
other people out while their evil tech would allow them

(01:57):
to survive quite comfortably. There. That's fair. I see your answer,
and I have I brooked no argument with it. And
maybe they'll bring sabertooth tigers back. I'm assuming they are
savor tooth tigers and the lubriad tarpids. I mean, you know,
it stands to reason. I've never actually been. What about you,
Jonathan Wow, I like your answer a lot. Mine is Orlando, Florida. No, yeah, Orlando,

(02:25):
Florida's where I'm going to locate. It is that because
you want to join and you spend so much time there. No,
it's mostly because I think that I think that, uh,
Florida in recent years has been a bit of a mess,
and it just seems like that would be like putting
it smack dab in the middle of the state would
make the most sense. I think Florida is the right answer,

(02:45):
and I could put it on, say one of the
Florida Keys, and then we wouldn't ever have to worry
about the Legion of Doom ever again, because they would
be so mellow. They would never they would never get
around to doing evil because they would just all be
burnt out sitting on the beach listening to Jimmy Buffett.
In which case I just won. So maybe I do
put them on the keys instead. I mean, I don't

(03:06):
know if a key could support their evil, Like, what
if they just destroy it and sink to the bottom
of the ocean. I guess, win, win. I've never been
to the Florida Keys. I assume that they're just floating sandbars. No,
they're islands. I mean, it's it's not like you it's
not like walking in the Okifinoki. By the way, if
you don't know, in the Okifinok, you get these areas

(03:29):
that look like they're solid ground, but in fact it's
like a bunch of stuff that's all kind of gloamed together,
and it's like walking on a waterbed until you walk
on a thin patch and then you fall through, and
then you get to learn how to remove leeches. It's
fun stuff, great for the whole family. But the Florida
Keys are solid islands. I've never fallen into the Oki Pinocchi.

(03:53):
I've visited it once, but they were like walking paths
and trails. I might visit it again this month. Actually,
Oh exciting. I love the Okifinoki. Yeah, no, buts I'm
talking about going deep into the swamp as opposed to
you're probably talking about like the Okifinoki park where you
can go there. Yeah. I love that park. It's a
great park. I have never actually gone deep into the swamp.

(04:14):
I'm not a swamp person. I've just seen video of that,
and it's fascinating and terrifying, especially when you sit there
and think about some of the stuff that's in the Okifinoki.
I'm not not so much worried about the alligators, but
the snapping turtles are vicious. And then they're all the
different kinds of snakes. Those are the ones that worry me.
It sounds almost like a D and D adventure, Jonathan,

(04:36):
and you do like those, Yeah, And that's a great
way to segue. Thank you, Ariel, very good job. So
if you did not know this episode that we are
doing bringing to you right now, this is what we
in the biz call a buffer episode, and the purpose
of This is so that we have episodes to cover
when one of us is absent, and this one's going

(04:57):
out while I'm on the cacion. So we won't be
bringing any news because we can't predict what's going to
happen in a couple of weeks. But we are going
to talk a bit about D and D and um
I'm just curious. Well, first of all, not just D
and D, but role playing games in general, Ariel, what
was your first exposure to role playing games? Was it

(05:20):
Dungeons and Dragons or was it something else? I think,
like I knew about Dungeons and Dragons, but I think
that my first actual exposure to role playing games outside
of like theater. I was a theater kid, you know, um,
which is kind of it's role playing. Um it is.
I was in a Shakespeare troupe when I was a

(05:41):
teenager and I was doing some Shakespeare play. I think
maybe it was Hamlet, and I made friends with a
guy who, uh, real cool dude who learned, and he
was like, I think you'd enjoy this, and I said,
I think you're right, And um, I had art. You know,

(06:01):
I had been trying to get into the Georgia Renaissance Festival.
When I was eighteen, I went to the Georgia Renaissance
Festival and I went to my first lap, which was
actually like a this is you, you opened a can
of worms. It was actually like a little larp convention,
and there were a few like one shot games that
went on. So I got to play a few different
characters and got sucked right in. And then that group

(06:22):
brought me into like D and D in Seven Seas
and things like that. Uh. You Well, first of all,
it's fascinating to me that you jumped right into the
deep end. You skipped the pencil and paper stage and
went straight to full immersion in your in your role playing.
You dive into the deep end, and then you wade
back to like the shallow end, because if you dive

(06:42):
into the shallow end, you're just going to break your neck. Yeah.
I gently waded into the shallow end. Um. So my
first exposure was to basic Dungeons and Dragons, because that's
what it was called back in the day. Uh. Because
you gotta remember, I was born in the seventies, so
Basic D and D. I remember. I have a memory

(07:03):
of my dad trying to get me interested in it.
And I was more interested in throwing the dice at
the time. That's the kind of age I was, so
I wasn't quite mature enough to uh really care about
the game. It wouldn't be until I was in middle
school in high school and I started playing Advanced Dungeons

(07:24):
and Dragons, which also used to be a thing. And
then they came out with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition,
which made a lot of the mechanics of D and
D much more simple. So for those who aren't familiar obviously,
you know, role playing games consists of both a premise
and a set of rules to help guide how a

(07:47):
story unfolds. And uh, you know, I fell into the
same trap that a lot of people fall into early
on and role playing games, and that the rules became
the most important component for me as supposed to telling
a story that would change over time. But it took
a while to learn. You see. Yeah, I from the
get go, I'm like, I don't I just I just

(08:09):
want to role play. I just want to act. I
don't want to I don't want the rules. Yeah. Well,
see it's too it's too often that you find people
who are into rule playing, is what what it tends
to derogatory lee be called, but it's where you really
focus on, like the stats of a character, right, You're
trying to maximize your stats and minimize any weaknesses you

(08:30):
have that you know, you have people who are fudging
dice rolls in order to get that eighteen double zero
strength for their warrior or maybe it's even a wizard,
and they're like, no, I still want a eighteen double
zero and you say, well, that's not it doesn't apply
to that class, doesn't matter. So so dn D was
like my first like that was and um actually was

(08:52):
a game master way more than I was a player,
but that was my exposure to role playing games. And
since then, UM, I've played tons. I played Paranoia, which
is a comedy sci fi game in which you're pretty
much guaranteed to get wiped out before the game's over.
Um I've played uh Star Wars role playing game. I

(09:16):
played a Marvel Superhero and a DC Superhero role playing game.
I've played Teenage Mutant, Ninja, Turtles, Ghostbusters, Tune, uh tons
of different games, although if you listen to those, you'll
notice that they're all like centered around the late eighties,
early to mid nineties. That was like the heyday of

(09:37):
my game playing and since then I have not really
played any role playing games. So I started with seven CS,
which is like a It's like adeed. You have like
d tens, I think, and you have little dots for
each of your your skills and then your stats and
you roll that many dice. So if I have like
a three in charisma and then a two in seduct

(10:00):
s or whatever. Because I played a courtier, um, it
was like a high seas. It was like a Pirates
of the Caribbean swashbuckling sort of political game. Then you
would roll five D ten and you'd keep the statumount,
So five D ten keep three, which was real easy
for me. So when I jumped into D and D
and I played a lot of them. I played ravens Loft,
I played Midnight, I played a big guy small mouth.

(10:22):
I played I think it was Brant Adventures, though that
was short lived um and I don't super remember it. Also,
I've also played other games. I've played Changeling, I've played
Monster of the Week, I've played Amber Dice List role
playing System, I've I've played a game called Heroes or
something where figuring out your character build and then doing

(10:43):
anything with it was like doing calculus. Oh yeah, No,
there was a game I had where I never got
beyond making a character because just making a character it
was like a three hour long process and there literally
wasn't I'm not making this up a role that you
had to make during the character creating process where if

(11:04):
you roll badly enough, your character died before you ever
played your character, like literally while you're making your character.
It turns out the part of your characters backstory is
they failed to survive something, And you think, why was
this even put into the game? What, what's the purpose
of this apart from like some developer trolling me? Um.

(11:25):
But the the explanation for seven seas makes me think
of also Champions, which I think only uses six sided
die as another superhero role playing game. And you also
made me think of another one, GIRPS generic universal role
playing system, which is an underlying set of rules, and
the idea was you could use the same set of

(11:45):
rules for all sorts of different settings, So you could
have detective film noir setting, you could have Western, you
could have high fantasy, you could have science fiction, but
you would have the same generic set of rules that
would underlie whatever campaign setting you chose. I mean D
twenty has kind of done that as well. Um, and

(12:07):
then I've I've played games, so I used to tabletop
a lot, and then I took a long, long break
from it, and now I'm just starting to tabletop again. UM.
My my friends that I gained through my husband. Um,
we're all playing a game of Call of Cthulu where
it started out the same way. Everybody started in the

(12:30):
same setting and then went from there with new characters
each time. So that was a lot of fun. Um.
They put a lot of effort into their game, as
if you listen to our post Halloween episode, you're aware
of that because it's the same group of people I'm
playing ever on with. UM. But yeah, I I really
I prefer role playing with people who role actually role play.

(12:52):
I don't mind rule playing, like there's something for that.
I've been max character before and that, like that power
draw is exciting. Um, but I don't think it should
be all. There is no no, I think because at
that point you could just have a sheet of stats
and a random number generator and and it doesn't mean anything, right,

(13:13):
You're like, you're not It's the story. I think that
really matters more. And like I said, I got to
learn that more. I've really embraced it when I really
focused on being a game master rather than a player.
And I love the I love the role of game
master because I love setting up challenges for players and
seeing them come up with solutions. One thing I would

(13:36):
tell any aspiring game master out there is that never
underestimate your players and never like bank that the players
are going to do a specific set of actions, because
I can almost guarantee you they will pick some other
thing to do, some of the direction to go, and
it will be something you didn't think about, and then

(13:56):
you've got to adapt on the fly. So it's better
to have an outline of what you want to have happen,
but not to you know, have it feel like it's scripted,
because they don't have a script and they will not
follow it. And it doesn't matter how many clue by
fours you give them, they're gonna miss whatever path you're

(14:17):
trying to put them on. Yeah, I see, it sounds
like you like d m NG, and it sounds like
you kind of jumped into the deep end of d
m NG. I will never d m A table top ever. Ever,
because I've been on plenty of plot committees and I
have learned that creating adventures for other people to run

(14:40):
through is just not my cup of tea. I'm really
good at coming up with ideas they're filling in blanks
or adjusting on the fly, but like, just yeah, being
a part of the plot committee and making sure that
the world is interesting for other people is very stressful
to me understandable and also as a person who you know,
rules are not my first thought and something that I've

(15:02):
I'm pretty I've gotten decent at them now, but I've strued.
I struggled with in the past, Like I just I
hated rules, Like you have to really know the rules
to d M. You can break them once you know them.
But yeah, well yeah, and if you like, if you
are breaking them with intent and because that is what's
going to make a better adventure, that's great. If you

(15:23):
go forward where it looks like you don't know what
you're doing, then it just becomes not fun for everybody.
So there is like you do need to know them
so that you know in times where you need to
rely upon them because it will get you out of
a jam. They're invaluable, right. There are gonna be times
where you're like, well, I can't see for a reason

(15:45):
why you can't do that, so go ahead and roll.
And then the role comes out and you're like, all right,
that role is not good enough to do what you
wanted it to do, so now you have to do
what I wanted you to do. Like like that sometimes helps. Uh,
it's when they make those darn rules, those characters. Um, yeah,
one of these. I love world creation, and I love

(16:08):
creating the scenario that people have to play through. And
the thing I learned was that just trying to make
it flexible enough where it's okay if they don't go
through every room. I mean, it might stink. If you
spend a long time setting something up that was particularly
interesting or funny or entertaining and they just didn't go there.
That does kind of it stinks, but doesn't mean that

(16:31):
you've lost it. You can always find a way to
pick it up and poured it into some future adventure
and still make use of it. It just won't be
where you intended. I mean, I get this is where
my mind is, like if and it's a lot harder
to do in a LARP than it isn't a tabletop. Um,
but if you like, let's say you've got two rooms,

(16:52):
one on the right and one on the left, and
they don't go into the right room where you've got
all the lute and the monsters. You just put them
in the left room. That's also true. That's also true.
You can also you know, they don't know what's behind
the other door. Yeah, that's a great point. Well, we
have more to talk about with role playing games, but
first we're gonna take a quick break. So Ariel, Ariel, Ariel, Ariel.

(17:31):
So what if I picked what if? What if? What
if I pitched to you? What if I pitched to
you my idea for a D and D campaign, Because
I've got one that I've been working on and I
was going to invite you, but you don't know about
it yet, and this is all true. Um, then I
think that would be cool and I would like to
hear it, and uh, yeah, that would be awesome. So

(17:56):
all right, First of all, full disclosure. My idea is
is heavily inspired by the most recent season of The
Adventure Zone, which is called ether Sea, which is set
under the ocean. It's underwater adventures, but it's using the
basic D and D rules with a lot of interpretation.

(18:16):
You've you've you've already got me because you know I
have a little mermaid. Well exactly mine is not mine
is not a mine is not under the ocean. I
was thinking of one a world where once upon a
time there was a lot more land mass. But because
of this big cosmic event that happened thousands of years

(18:36):
before the events of the the players, uh, the world
was mostly drowned and so now it's just chains of islands,
and so it becomes more of a pirates kind of thing,
but there's a lot more seafaring, and all the different
races have sort of adapted to this new reality, with

(18:57):
different ones doing different things. Like the Gnomes have steamships
that they use to get across the ocean. The elves
have ships that leave no wake. They just skate across
the water. Uh. You know, the dwarves have like big
Viking ships whenever they leave, which is not often because
they don't like going after Each of these ideas t

(19:18):
M T M t M T M TM and um
and so so my ideas that it would be the party,
the adventuring party would be made up of people who
grew up in this world. They weren't there in the
pre days when everything was, you know, different, but they
are one and the same with this world, like they
know how it works, and that a lot of the

(19:39):
adventures would involve seafaring. It may not be that all
of them take place on the sea, because I think
that that would get repetitive. But yeah, it would have
the characters themselves. The classes would all have a twist.
So instead of your you know, classic fighter, you would
have like more like swashbuckler UM, which might be kind

(19:59):
of a a rogue sort of character um, that kind
of thing. So that's my pitch. Are you interested? I
am interested. So fifth edition at least for Ebron, but
I think it's in general rogues already have a swashbuckling subclass.
I know this because you play one, because I play one.
So it was between Swashbuckler, Inquisitive, and Mastermind, and I

(20:21):
went with Inquisitive UM because I'm well, yeah, like I
think because in the old second edition D and D
they came out with the complete blank handbooks and it
was for each of the main classes. I had the
complete Fighter's Handbook, the Complete Thieves Handbook, that kind of thing,

(20:42):
and in these they had tons and tons of subclasses
that you could become instead of you know, your standard
thief for your standard fighter. And I know that fifth
Edition has done a lot of the same with that,
with introducing it in various supplemental materials, So it would
be kind of falling in that realm where Swashbuckler is
this kind of almost a class that spans fighter and

(21:04):
thief a little bit. I also look forward to having
Bards and their instruments include things like squeeze boxes, like
like the idea like like like the stuff you would
see in a pirate movie or the kind of music
that typically blaze during Bard movies. Okay, so I want
to play your game and I want to be a
Bard of baryon which anybody who listens to this show
knows that's like my thing. It's not really a dual class,

(21:28):
but could totally be a dual class. And I'm going
to bring like an actual like jug and squeeze box
to your games and learned to play them as we go. Um,
and I also request that we play like we rent
a pontoon boat and play on it. And I know
you're gonna go aerial, what happens if we accidentally roll
a dice off the ship, Like who doesn't have so

(21:50):
many dice that It's like, it's not going to be
a problem. I mean, I got a place where we
can do that. I've even got a boat doc that
we can do that. So I'm just saying, uh, yeah,
So this was like that it was silly for me
to bring this up for this episode, but it really
is something that I'm working on. It's kind of that's

(22:10):
sort of an indication of the kind of ideas I
go for when I'm creating a game world, Like to me,
that's one of the biggest responsibilities of a game master.
And there are a lot of resources out there for
lots of different games where they have established game worlds,
whether they are based on the real world or it's
some fantasy or science fiction world that has its own history,

(22:31):
you know, like the Star Wars universe, or tons of
Dungeons and dragons, Like there's the Forgotten Realms and there's
the Gray Hawks setting and the dragon Lance setting, So
there are a lot of different options to go with.
I always loved creating my own, although I will borrow
heavily from existing material because I am not Tolkien. I

(22:52):
cannot go through every single step of creating every single
element of a world and its mythology. You don't have
to help people that they will think that you can,
even when you're making it up on the fly. I mean,
you are praying to your God of Roscoe, god of
canned goods. So so it's it's interesting that you said

(23:17):
Tolkien though, because like I, you know, I didn't I
didn't start gaming until I was a teenager or anything
beyond like computer games or maybe like text based adventures.
But you know that that love of fantasy was already
there because my mom raised me on things like a
kidney King, Arthur's Court and Lord of the Rings and

(23:37):
you know, sci fi and stuff like that. So, uh,
you know, it is interesting that a lot of those
things that wouldn't inspire a lot of the games nowadays
or or whatnot. Well, let me ask you this, what
are what are some of your I mean, we know
you love to play barbarians, particularly in LARPs, because you
like to swing big foe maxes and whack people on

(23:59):
the and also because I don't have to remember a
lot of political information all that. I like playing characters
where it's just point me in the way of the
fight and I'll go and swim things. I can make
funny jokes and I can hit things, and I don't
need to invest a lot of time actually learning world history.
I love world history, but oftentimes I just don't have time. Okay,

(24:22):
continue on. But do you have any favorite characters or
character types that you've encountered, whether you were playing them
or someone else, was just stick out in your mind
as being like this is this is something that I
never would have experienced without role playing. Um. So in

(24:44):
my first second first for tied, for First Lark, I
had a an acting troop and there was an acting
troop in the Lark and they did Comedia dell ar
taste stuff um and that was my introduction to Comedia
dell Arte. Uh. So I would not have experienced that

(25:05):
without gaming. Um. But other than that, I don't know.
I honestly don't know. I've I've my friends get really
creative with their characters m hm. And so I feel
like if I've seen at all, I mean like there's
certain there's some that just stick with me that like

(25:28):
it's not that the character was unique to the point
of it being you know, super special, but I will
never forget that. One of the reasons why I wanted
to do this, this high seas version of D and
D is that when I was a game master as
a teenager, one of the players in my game created

(25:51):
a gnome swashbuckler, So a swashbuckler who's three ft tall
and yet has a long cape and a big musketeer
style hat and considers himself suave. And this is before
I had ever read the Terry Pratchett novels, where there
is a character in the Terry Pratchett novels it's very
similar to this, but it was one of my favorite

(26:13):
characters because the the player was treating the character seriously,
but obviously the character itself was a joke, but it
was in that transition of the player treating it like
it's very serious but everything that comes out is very
funny that just it was one of those interactions that

(26:33):
you think of with friends and you think, this is
like a genuinely good time and I'm very much enjoying myself.
That was the kind of experience that came out to me. Gotcha.
I mean, I guess I just I game with really
good people because they all do the thing where they
find their opposites and the character and so their characters

(26:55):
are not one note, you know, they aren't just a fighter.
Even even like when I played a Barbarian and I
play AID with one of my friends, Caitlin, who she
is just like my favorite person to team up with
in a larp, um, and we inevitably do so often, um,
because we'll both be kind of we'll both build kind
of kick ass characters. And then like when I was

(27:16):
a Barbarian, she was like a Viking, and then we
teamed up and we started a bakery together. Um, and
we're the battle suffer We're the battle bakers. We'd go
around with our baked goods that we made before each
game and deliver them door to door for in game money,
and then like put her baskets down and fight monsters. Um.

(27:36):
It was just yeah, Yes, it's hard to pick out
of curiosity. Like so, I'm sure a lot of our
listeners have had at least some experience with role playing games.
But for those who don't, Uh, are there any in
particular that you would recommend for people who are interested
in role playing games but they don't know where to start?

(28:00):
If you're playing, Yes, Um. The recommendation about to make
is not as great if you are d M ng um,
unless you just really like creative work writing and that
would be Monster of the Week. The way that that
game is as a player, um, if you want to
ease into some rules is you role play everything and
you just try to come up with solutions and then

(28:22):
at a certain your point, your d M will say
that's going to require a role and that's when that's
when you bring in in the stats and things like that.
So um, it's it's really great I think for dipping
your toes in if you are not rules minded. Um.
Like I said, seven CS is not another really good one,
but you just have to be. There's lots of the

(28:43):
options for lots of types of characters you can play,
but it is it is more political, um, and it's
kind of set in a mirror like Renaissance world to ours. Um,
So like that has to be your your sort of JAM.
I love Dungeons and Dragons if the edition has certainly
made some things easier, but I don't think it's a
great beginner game. No, I agree. I think I think

(29:06):
it's almost unfortunate. The Dungeons and Dragons is associated so
closely with role playing games that for some people they
mean the same thing. They're synonymous. And it is unfortunate
because as much as I love D and D and
I love it a lot, it is a difficult system.
It could be inscrutable to someone who's just joining, especially
when you consider how many supplemental materials come out that

(29:29):
expand upon the basic rules that are already pretty complicated. Um,
I mean there are all these different dice that are involved,
and they're all these different uh types of rules that
can apply to any given situation. It's it's daunting, and
um it is unfortunate that that became the standard bearer
for role playing games, because there are other role playing

(29:51):
games out there that are easier, that are more friendly
to two newbies. And when it's easier to pending on
how much burden it puts on the game master, it
can just be a lot more fun. Some of these
easy games require you to have a whip smart game
master because they're essentially making calling all the shots, like

(30:13):
all the weight has been taken off the players and
then put on the game master. Tell a good story.
So so what because you have that, you have a
lot more d M experience than I have. I have
what would be your recommended starter game for a player,
and then also your recommended starter game for a dungeon
master or someone wanting to run a game for their
friends who want to play. Gosh Okay, well, I mean

(30:37):
so here's Here's the unfortunate thing is because I haven't
been playing in so long, I've been out of the
quote unquote game so long, then my recommendations are all
like a lot of them are out of print. You
would have to really dig them up to find them. Um.
I think a game that's pretty easy to run is,
as I recall is Ghostbusters because, uh, first of all,

(30:59):
everyone's familiar with the setting. The rules are pretty simple,
and it's meant to be funny, so you don't have
to worry too much about being hard and fast with
the rules. Uh. If I were telling people like, if
you really want to play some fun Duchess and Dragons games,
like some fun adventures, if you could find a copy
of Castle gray Hawk, which those those adventures include some

(31:24):
of the most fun adventures, and they're both serious and comedic.
There's some very funny ones in there. Those would be
the ones I would recommend, recommend to two people interested
in that kind of stuff. If you want to think
about world building, I suggest listening to podcasts that are
dedicated to D and D and there or or role

(31:44):
playing in general, and there are tons of them. I mean,
I mentioned The Adventure Zone, which is a very loosey
goosey kind of approach to role playing, but it's it
focuses more on storytelling, particularly after you get past the
first ten or so episodes of the first sees in UM.
But there are other ones out there too that are

(32:04):
a little more serious and a little more in depth
that there's no shortage of them, but it will give
you an appreciation for the process of world building if
you if you should get an itch to do it yourself. Yeah,
so I think that they came out with some new
Grayhawks stuff a few years back, but I couldn't be certain. Also,
it's like you don't want to build a world and

(32:26):
you don't want to create a character, but you do
want to kind of toy it role playing UM, as
long as you don't get mad at your friends. Very easily,
you could play bs G the board game if you
like Battlestar Galactica the new series, and just role play
those characters. It's really funny. If you do um you
have to go in with until you until it turns
out that that you were betraying everyone the whole time.

(32:48):
I mean, best story. I was playing with some friends
and one of them was Guys Baltar and Guys baal
Turgets three. You get cards that share your loyalty. Guys
Baltark it's three, so he has an extra chance of
being the bad guy. And my friend was playing it
like Guys Baltar. We'd have a check where we'd have
to put in a certain number of whatever to beat it,
and he'd be like, no, no, I got this guy's

(33:09):
and he put in something that would hurt us. And
we found out that he wasn't a bad guy. He
wasn't a Cylon. He was just playing like the character.
And half of my friends get really upset, and the
other half of my friends absolutely love it. I'm in
the love it camp because I'm like, yeah, you know,
that's that's what the character would do, and the character
wasn't a Cylon. Spoilers if you haven't watched bsg um

(33:33):
Well and and you know it's that game is kind
of similar to some of the identity based games like
Werewolf and Mafia and that kind of thing. It has
some elements of that, and that is a discussion that
we'll have to hold off for another day. And I
can tell you about why I hate the game Werewolf,
but for now, we need to go to break and
when we come back, we're going to take on a

(33:54):
role ourselves. We're gonna take on the role of screenwriters
pitching our brand new movie mash up idea after these messages.

(34:19):
All right, so we're back, and our mashup this week
is just inspired by a really good adventuring party, The Hobbits,
et cetera from Lord of the rings Um and then
just what the heck can we throw with it? Which
is the Predator? So that's our so so uh so,

(34:41):
you said, like the Hobbits in general. I chose The Hobbit,
the actual, the original novel, which is still my favorite
book of all time. I got a copy of it
sitting out of frame of camera, which no one listening
to this can see. But Ariel Ariel also can't see
it because it's out of frame. So anyway, the Hobbits
my favorite book, and it's you know, obviously it's a

(35:03):
fantasy story about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who goes
on an adventure with a bunch of dwarves in order
for them to defeat a dragon that had taken over
their ancestral home of the the Lonely Mountain. I almost
said Lonely Island, but that's a different thing. It would
be dwarf in a box, the Lonely Mountain. And uh.

(35:25):
Then of course you have Lord of the Rings, which
I'm sure everyone listening is familiar with because Peter Jackson
made sure of it, And then we have Predator, Yes,
and explain it's just about to Predator is and I'm
going to explain it poorly because I have watched these movies.
Predator is about these aliens that come to Earth and

(35:47):
hunt for like basically like Biggest Challenges, big corey. Um,
so people, Zeno morphs, whatever. Usually it's humans because we're
the most dangerous game. Yes, yes, And they have heat vision,
so they can see your body heat. And that's kind

(36:07):
of at least how they look when they're looking through
like their helmets. What they do they've got really we
get alien point of view shots where it's always thermal vision. Yes, um,
and so like that's that's really the first. The first
Predator takes place in like the Jungles of South America
near Guatemala, and then the second one takes place in

(36:28):
like New York City. Um, and then I haven't watched
all of them, but they quickly go off the rails. Yeah,
like you mentioned, there is an alien versus Predator movie,
and then there was the more recent The Predator, which
less said about that the better in my opinion. But uh, yeah,
so we're gonna mash these things up, and um, who

(36:49):
do you want to go first? I'll go first? Um,
And I went with the very first Predator, which dealt
was in the Jungles of South America slash Guatemala, where
Arnold Schwartzenegger played the main character of Major Alan dutch Schaefer.
All right, this is called the Bredator. Anna guns Alves

(37:12):
survived a lot of things. She was a guerrilla military person,
but after surviving the Predator attack and Major Alan dutch Schaefer,
she decided not to test her luck any further and
made her way home to Guatemala to live a quiet
rest of her life. However, shortly after settling down Vulcan
de fuego erupted the volcano that is active in Guatemala

(37:35):
uh and while she made it through the eruption, something
was off. She would often feel like there was something
or someone invisible following her around. Cold breezes would blow
by in still rooms, quiet footsteps and empty hallways, and
pantries ransacked. She tried to shrug it off as maybe
a mouse or a rat, but she felt as if
she was being stopped. Then reports started coming in from

(37:56):
all over the neighborhood. People's fish tanks, henhouses, pet rabbits,
and other live stock were being slaughtered by an invisible force.
Anna was sure that the predator had changed its mind
and was after her to finish its kill and was
just toying with her. Also forgot to mention predators can
go invisible, and so she prepared for the worst. Then
one day, while she was cooking a late breakfast, it happened.

(38:18):
She heard a clatter in her kitchen. Cut to heat
vision of Annah and the stove. She turned around spatula
in hand, cut to heat vision. Looking from Anna to
the stove, she heard a hiss. Did it say? Eleven?
Se cut to heat vision, running towards Anna and the stove,
she was tackled to the ground by an invisible force.
She struggled with it and heard a small metal clatter

(38:40):
on the floor, and that's when the creature appeared in
front of her face, small furry footage, chomping wildly a
small laden hand. She couldn't tell if it was a
kitchen knife or some fantastical weapon. This was not like
any predator she had seen before. But then the creature
lunched past Anna and started devouring her food on the stove. Sausages, potatoes, bread.
It's houred every inch of the kitchen, eating all the

(39:02):
food before it realized it could be seen. Anna grabbed
a kitchen knife of her own and cornered it against
some cabinets. The creature looked around, confused and started gaining
its composure. She asked, what kind of predator are you?
As it inched towards where the metal clattering occurred and
it spoke, I said, I'm paregrine took not a predator. Well,
I guess I am hobbit. Maybe maybe I am a predator.

(39:26):
I do eat game. I fell into or came out
of volcano. It seems really confused, But then it was
not confused on one item, it said, I need food.
It ran to the small metal object, which was a
ring that had made the clattering noise, and slipped it
on and it was gone. Anna heard screams as other
people's houses were being ransacked by an invisible force. But

(39:48):
after the life she had led, she realized that this
problem wasn't so bad, and she went back to her retirement,
but not before putting locks on all of her pantries.
The Hobbit Predator creature became a feared legend in the neighborhood.
The locals call it the Predator for its penchant for
breakfast foods. The end now is it? Now? Is it

(40:08):
rating breakfast foods? It does so twice a day, twice
a day, second breakfast technically, like in my mind, Cannon.
It just eats constantly, like everybody's starving. I mean, when
you look at the story, yeah, when you look at
the story of the Hobbit, you and they lay out
how many meals the Hobbits have, that's pretty close. They

(40:32):
are pretty much constantly eating. All right, here's mine. Mine
is titled the Predator or there and back again. Bilbo
Baggins has a problem. This tall old dude who shoots
fireworks out of a stick invited a ton of folks
to his house without asking permission. First, there's Peely and

(40:53):
Keeley and Oin Andlin and Dutch and Poncho and Blaine
and Billy. It's your typical mixture of dwarves and c
i A backed military rescue team members, the usual. In
other words, turns out the visitors want Bilbo to come
along with him on a mission. That mission to infiltrate
the Lonely Mountain and to rescue a government official. Apparently

(41:16):
the official was captured by a dragon. Bilbo is not
super keen ongoing, but then Sergeant Blaine Cooper uses some
really hurtful language to shame him into participating, and we
come to realize that the dwarves are pretty greedy so
and so's with a chip on their shoulder for getting
kicked out of their ancestral homeland, and the military team

(41:37):
has made up of a lot of misogynistic homophobes. But anyway,
Bilbo is convinced to go, and partly out of a
sense of adventure and partly because Blaine scares him a lot.
So Dutch, the leader of the group, does this thing
where he reaches out his hand for Bilbo to take
and then Dutch flexes like super big, like like super

(41:57):
super big like. He wants to do some sort of
arm wrestling thing in the air with Bilbo, but Bilbos
this tiny little thing, so he ends up getting thrown
across the room and then everybody laughs apart from Bilbo,
and then they're off. They begin their journey, and once
they leave the safety of civilization, things take a turn.
There's this one point right where like the whole group

(42:17):
except for the old guy with a fireworks stick, get
caught by these giant trolls. But then the old guy
tricks the trolls into sticking around until daybreak, and that's
when the trolls turned to stone, so it's all okay.
They keep on going until they reach the Misty Mountains,
and as they make their way through a treacherous pass,
they find a place to sleep in a cave and
they hold up. But the cave ends up connecting to

(42:39):
a network of other caves that are all inhabited by goblins,
which is a real bummer, and that leads us on
this big adventure in which you know, the dwarves and
the military guys and the old dude and Bilbo all
gets separated, and Bilbo ends up going down the wrong
path as goblins are chasing him, and he finds himself
in a subterranean lake. There he hears this weird chattering

(43:01):
clicking noise and there's something moving around, but Bilbo can't
really see anything. There's just a sort of shimmering figure
that that is going on. It's like like something was there,
but it's blending in with the background. Well, Bilbo quietly
slips into the water, which is good because it turns
out this thing it has this cool POV shot we

(43:23):
get and we're going into thermal vision. But then, you know,
because Bilbo has gone into cold water, he's not really
showing up so well, so whatever this thing is, it
doesn't really see Bilbo. But eventually the thing shimmers into
appearance and we see it's a predator, only he's kind
of short for a predator, but he's got that wild
helmet and you know, like the gauntlet and the cool

(43:44):
armor and stuff. And Bilbo aghast stays very still. He
knows it's in here, don't we. My precious says this voice,
and Bilbo remains silent, listening. We want to play with it?
Don't We don't? Does it like? Riddles? Asks the predator.
Riddles what are you want about? Asks Bilbo. Ah, so

(44:07):
it understands us riddles riddles. We asks it and if
it doesn't answer, we eats it. But if it asks
us and we do not answer, we lets it go,
says the predator. Fine, here's my riddle. What does sergeant
Blaine not have time for? Asks Billbo? Whoa, says the predator.

(44:28):
We thinks it is cheated. Nope, says Billbo. This is
a famous quote on IMDb and everything. What does Sergeant
Blaine not have time for? Well, crap, says the predator.
I don't get out much. Um chet chat wrong, says Bilbo.

(44:49):
He ain't got time to bleed. I win, And the
predator lets out a howl and then says, well, come
on out, you one. Well, Bilbo knows better than that,
and this whole time he's been quietly sneaking up on
the predator. So they jumps out of the water and
plunges his dagger sting into the predators side, and there's

(45:10):
this big fight and Bilbo gets bashed around a lot,
and he nearly gets taken out with his like shoulder
mounted predator cannon, but he eventually wins, and after winning,
he curiously removes the Predator mask, only to reveal the
underneath wasn't a Predator alien at all. I know, I
was like totally surprised. To no, guys, it was Andy Circus.
So Bilbo takes the Predator armor and he puts it on,

(45:33):
and this lets him go all invisible. Well we all
know how this story ends, right, Most of the team
ends up dying, but some of them make it to
the mountain and then Bilbo sneaks in because you know,
he's wearing the Predator armor, and he uses an arm
rounded laser to blast the dragon into ash, killing him instantly,
and then everyone heads to the chopper. Wait, no, I
mean they head to the Eagles the end. No, I

(46:00):
really like the mashup. I'm still stuck on Andy Circus
being under the Predator. I mean, that's I gotta I
gotta subvert your expectations. But once again you show that
sometimes our wildest ideas are actually a match made in heaven.
Who would have thought that there are so many similarities
between the Predator and the Hobbit Hobbit Yeah, yeah, you

(46:23):
know it's I mean, really there, they're a hair's breadth apart,
like two sides of the same coin when you get
down to it, a couple of a couple of counties. Yeah,
all right, Well that wraps up this buffer episode of
Large Nerd Drunk Lighter. Hope you enjoyed it. If you
have suggestions for things we should mash up in the future,
or maybe you've got your own mix up of the

(46:46):
Hobbit or and the Predator, or maybe you've got stuff
to say about role playing games, like if there's a
favorite you have that you think is great and more
people need to play, let us know. We would love
to hear it, and the best way to do that
is to send us an email. The email address for
the show was l n C at I Heart Media
dot com. Ye. You can also reach out to us
on social media on Twitter where Ellen c Underscore podcast,

(47:08):
and on Instagram. We're Large Nor Drawn Lighter. We really
do love hearing from you, um, and we'd also love
your friends to hear from you as well. If you
like the show, please share it with them or really
anybody you know who's a geek or geek adjacent you
know like the show, Leave review and we love you. Yes,

(47:29):
and until next time, I'm Jonathan make a Saving Throw
Strickland and I am Ariel Natural one casting. Oh, I
was gonna call you a natural twiny. M m m

(48:02):
hm hm. The Large Nur John Collider is production of
I Heart Radio and was created by Ariel Kasten. Jonathan
Strickland is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited,
and published by Torri Harrison. For more podcasts on my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows