February 7, 2025 • 63 mins
We dissect the mind of a mad man and break down Lament of the Void with our guest DM Ryan Singerman!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Tall Tale Tavern,the monthly one shot adventure
TTRPG podcast. I'm your Tavern master and host
Kyle and we are here for the Chaser episode for Lament of the
Void. I am joined by Scott AKA Bug and
Ryan AKA the DM for this adventure.
Welcome guys. Good to be here, you know.
(00:21):
Glad to have you. Guys, I don't like the name of
the chaser on this one 'cause I don't want to feel like I'm
getting chased, 'cause it's scary because it was a Horror
Story, am I right? I mean, come on, this is our
best episode yet already I've filled it.
The only horror was how badly itwas written, but beyond that?
Hey, don't you say that, Sir. Badly.
(00:42):
It was written. Jeepers, you're the one who
wrote it, you silly. You're.
Right, that's true. Shoot, no.
It's always a lot of fun. Yes, it was.
And this is a special one for mebecause it's a this is the first
episode that I've not been a been a part of.
No. I've been a part of the other
one, no. Wait, you aren't?
(01:02):
No, this is. I'd say this is the first one
you were not involved in. Yeah, and not capacity.
Why are you even here? Get the fuck out of here.
You wouldn't be part of the coolclub.
You wouldn't be part of it. Yes.
This was a special treat adventure.
Much many extra special. Many thanks to Ryan for taking
(01:23):
on like all all the work. No, no additional DM for Kyle to
help and a special I don't know.It was my idea to do a couple
bonus adventures along with expedition untold.
I feel like, but only possible thanks to the tremendous work of
Ryan. So I just a little right off the
front. I'm just giving you a little
(01:44):
applause. Thank you.
Thank you. So much, it's a lot of them
doing the even doing the music part, which the music is mostly
my job. It's kind of a group effort with
me picking the music and Scott plugging it in.
And you even did that part for me, which was which was great
because these bonus episodes arereally these bonus adventures
(02:05):
while the campaign's going on. I was all for it as long as I
could really, you know, just focus on the campaign because I
wanted to make sure that I couldfocus on that.
So so thank you for for doing all those things for it to make
it happen. Thank.
You for letting both of us pass the buck on to you for doing
music. The two of you have provided so
(02:26):
much entertainment and so much work, and it was fun to be able
to give back a little bit and also to kind of learn how the
sausage is made a bit. And frankly, it gives me nothing
but tremendous respect for the two of you.
Now I have deemed a few of thesefor the Avern and one thing I've
(02:46):
really learned and I'm still trying to learn is how to manage
time well and to allow people initiative while also trying to
keep it contained. And, and as many times as I do
this, the more I just come to appreciate how well you do it.
Kyle and Scott, the the audio editing and then all the extra
flavor you added to this episodeand layering in with the music.
(03:07):
It was just, it was phenomenal. You guys deserve an incredible
amount of credit. Wow.
Thank you. Thank you.
You know what? Thank you.
We do. We do.
Yeah, there we go. Cheers for us.
Pat ourselves. I'll pat you on the back, Scott.
From the pat me on the. Back so it doesn't feel like
we're. Yeah, we're both patting each
ourselves. That's nice.
We're in the same room right now.
Oh. We always record sitting
(03:30):
back-to-back so we can pat each other on the back the whole
time. You know there's a ton of
padding going on in here. Speaking of creepy.
Boards which padding ton. Oh jeez.
I will say for the audio editingstuff, Ryan, is that you make.
You made it easy because you setup like you set up moments that
(03:50):
just inherently lended themselves to additional audio,
like effects that were easy to put on to sell them further, I
would say. So kudos to you for the way you
structured it. That's mostly that's a that's a
mostly that's that should be a acompliment to you, Scott, but
(04:11):
you but you framed it as a compliment to Ryan for setting
you up for doing some cool editing stuff.
So the editing was great, Scott,the editing was great and we got
multiple comments on it. Especially my favorite part was
with Will reading that line or reading some the log and then
did he did he deliver that like in a different way because you
(04:35):
also gave him inspiration Ryan after reading it, but I was
curious about that. Yeah, it's a great, great
question. So for those who have gone on
the Discord and look at the the logs that we created, I I
actually created log files for people to find and kind of had
them themed so that they looked well, like a log book might
(04:57):
look. But then as there was some
creepy changes, some some changes in perception that are
happening to people that are writing it, some of the text did
did get glitchy and look a little bit aberrant or
abhorrent. And so when he was reading it,
he did actually intone the in ina creepy way, modulated his own.
(05:23):
Voice, Yeah. It was so good because it.
Sounds so good in the final product like I was like Dang
that sounds really good the I'm glad.
So I took those spots where there was already natural
intonation from him and I progressively pitch shifted them
down like a little bit more as they were going.
(05:45):
And then I added behind it, there's like screams on them
because I just took audio of roller coaster screams and put
it underneath him. That's that roller coaster
screams. That's great.
It was. It was well done.
You did that a few other times too.
I think there were a couple of locations when you added in some
(06:07):
screams in the background. That was really well done.
I oh, I did there when you mentioned whispers or like
discord. Those are just me saying like
let me out, release me. And then I played them in
reverse and added like reverb and pitch shifted them a little
while so they would sound scarier.
That's great. But you say let me out is scary
(06:27):
enough, but then play. It backwards.
Is also scary. Let's back it up a little bit
and kind of start from the beginning of when this was, I
guess, being created by you. Ryan, I'm curious, what gave you
the inspiration to want to to dosomething like this, to do this
adventure? And I think you had pitched it
(06:49):
to us at some point or said, hey, I got this idea for one or
something like that. But yeah, what was some of your
inspiration for this? So we had had several different
adventures to different flavors and one thing that we hadn't
quite done is try to get something more in the pseudo
(07:12):
serious body horror, psychological horror.
And one thing that I was wantingto do was could I set up a
scenario where there is tension built in because of a, a theme,
a trap, a pressure. But then you can I figure out a
(07:32):
way to maybe hopefully make the players not trust each other
either. And to try to give a, a chance
for them to not only not trust what's going on in the game, but
also start to distrust each other.
And then could that just lead tosome fun moments?
So that was just some thinking on it.
And then ever since we had some of the wonderful DM being done
(07:55):
previously on the the mothershipand just the whole adventure in
the astral sea was not somethinghad really put much thought
into. But that really captured me.
And I started reading more aboutthat and got some of the books
and diving into it and it was just enjoying, you know, having
a bit more like a higher tech, you know, sci-fi fantasy
(08:17):
crossover. But then could we bring in
something like your your lost ghost ship on the ocean or you
maybe something akin to the event horizon or aliens?
Or how would that look if you brought it all together?
And so it just kind of started coming up with these ideas.
And then as ever, I started justdeveloping back story and ideas
(08:39):
and it kind of slowly came together.
And, and I really think that I'mgoing to spend some time to
Polish it up a bit more and maybe just let people like post
it out on on Earth Arcana or something that let people have a
module to play through because it was fun.
I would love that. I've I've pitched before, but if
we had the time like magically to organize everything, I would
(09:01):
love it if Kyle could like post materials so people could run
the one shots that he's written like I remember on their own.
Yeah, I remember us talking about that like after the first
like couple episodes came out because like the the the quote,
I guess test run if I feel like for this podcast was dis elderly
(09:21):
conducts, Zenobia and wild love.Those are the three that I was
like, let's let's see how these go.
And like, like during those I was like, OK, cool, yeah, oh,
I'm going to turn these into oneshots then like write them out
and make it so like people couldrun them.
And then I realized how much work it is to actually convert
my notes into something presentable and something like
(09:43):
good. And yes, I would love to to be
able to do that. But I remember even start, I
started on dis elderly conduct trying to do that and just
realized how much work it was going to be to to actually put
together a nice little finished product.
Yeah. And this is no shade to you
Kyle, but I do fully believe that Ryan has the extra
(10:07):
organizational strength to make that happen.
Put out the the amount of back story that he'll that you
clearly put into this like the amount of thought and boring.
The fact that you made the data logs to send to us and made us
like schematics of the ships andstuff that you were sending to
(10:28):
us is like just the next level amount of work and detail you
always put into your adventures.But I could.
Easily see you've done a lot of it and a comment on just the
real quick on those things that you made.
You had posted those in the discord.
I copied them and put them in our a bonus episode bonus
materials folder on the on the on the on the drive essentially.
(10:53):
So if you want to go look at allof those things, even the magic
items in there quote magic I guess like coms.
All of that the most useless magic item of all time, The COMS
system. Because there was no fucking way
you were splitting up for even the second I was.
It could have happened, you don't know.
(11:14):
Short of you forcing it to happen, there was no way Bug was
letting anybody go in a different room than he could see
at any moment like. What I love about the comms is
that I may have stolen them. We may be seeing comms in the
devices in the in the far future, but but yes, yeah, that
(11:36):
so all that all that stuff is inthe in the folder.
But yeah, starting off with the like listening to the episode.
One thing I'd really appreciate about your DM ING style, Ryan
now playing in multiple or I guess listening to this one
playing in other one shots and also playing in your own camp
campaign where you DM Scott and I and and your home campaign.
(11:59):
It's just how believable you make the world and how it
really, it feels so full. When I start playing in one of
your adventures, you know, it feels like everything is worked
out. You've got like lingo for the
ship. You've got all this stuff that
just makes it feel like we're absolutely stepping into this,
like, campaign book essentially,you know?
(12:21):
Well, that's our. It's a huge compliment.
Thank you. Take it till you make it, I
guess. But I'll take that as a
compliment. I it's nice to know that I have
everybody fooled, that I have this master plan and it all
comes together at the end. It definitely fools me.
It always feels like I'm entering like a world that has,
(12:41):
like, A-44 millennia long, like,geopolitical history that you
figured out, like, before I evengot there, you know, like, OK,
he knows. He knows the structure of this
government. He knows every bureaucrat who
works in this building. It feels like when we're
playing, so you're doing a good job.
Well, thank you. It's you know, sometimes it's
(13:04):
having kind of people at the ready to put in when when you
need someone. Other times, you know, for me
when I've been making this one shot and other ones, I I kind of
need to know the world that I'm playing in to be able to tell a
story in that world, which is part why, as there might be some
people who want to get together and do some like one off
(13:24):
adventures and not as part of the podcast.
I'll probably keep playing, I think for a little bit in this
Astro C world, because it reallyleads itself to to one off
missions. You're working for a corporation
to go do things. So it helps to have some
framework of what's out there and who's there.
And Scott, you had commented andI didn't think about this, but I
(13:45):
thought it was interesting that having built the framework to
have people on a mission also really helps to lend itself to
this podcast because it kind of puts you on a rail a little bit
and and builds in some initial trust because these are your
crew mates. Yeah, I think that's really
pivotal in the one shots to havelike a shared objective baked
(14:07):
into the character creation in away, even though I love our
episodes that don't necessarily have that, like Zoonopia, those
ones are always more of a struggle in the beginning to to
be unified. Oh, yeah, My, my character
doesn't know these people. Do I trust them?
Like you're, you're thinking, trying to think through all
these things versus it's, it's alot easier to jump in to the
(14:31):
when you kind of come together and say, OK, we're all part of
this team or, you know, share the same ideal or, or whatever,
it makes it easy to jump in for a one shot.
Yeah, having having an objectivethat your character has already
agreed to before the adventure starts rather than here's a
situation you're in and you all are going to decide how to
(14:54):
tackle it, but you don't have any like thing linking you other
than you're in a shared situation, I guess.
It also helps you balance the the characters so that they're
all really balanced. Like you have 1 character that's
really strong like bug wise. Right.
And really big like bug was big it.
Was good, it was good. I loved that we were all
(15:16):
weaklings though I. Loved that it.
Fit perfectly for being like space themed characters.
I really thought that that was kind of just lucky happenstance
because. You all had you all had -1 to
strength of a bug head like a luck stone that made him a + 0
yes. Everybody else is small sized or
something and you're like medium.
(15:38):
So you're this like nervous bug character that?
Fully expected to be the weakling, the nervous little
weakling. And then no, everybody is as
weak as me. But that's space for you, right?
I mean, you're not building muscle from there.
So it just it just works out perfectly.
It was great. We got to and our team was
great. I thought I'll say like I
(16:00):
thought all the players did a really good job in this one.
And especially I think Chad was our first, our only new player
for this one. And I thought Chad as Glorp,
just he did a great job. Like, he latched on to us being
like friends, you know, which I always love when there's another
(16:20):
player who latches on to to having a relationship with me.
And I didn't know how. I've never played with him at
all before. I just knew Chad like through
Twitch and I knew he kind of like D&D.
So I was like, hey, you want to play on an episode?
I didn't know how good he would be or not.
And thankfully he was great, so.You guys have delivered my
favorite line ever, which was I'm just a frog in space trying
(16:46):
not to croak. It still makes me laugh, it was
so good. Such a great line.
Frame it, put it somewhere. I have a question about about
Chad specifically. Which is he?
He started naman on those bugs that were like, did any part of
you want to like inflict some sort of psychedelic impact on
(17:08):
him for doing that? Because I was really worried
that he was going to eat those bugs and it'd be like, great,
now you've eaten like dark evil magic bugs and you're like, your
brain is getting poisoned by them or something.
You know, to pull the the veil back a little bit.
I cut so much out of this. Like I had more encounters
(17:29):
planned, I had more ideas what was going to be happening, but
you can never tell how long people are going to spend in an
area and do a thing or what people are going to choose to
fixate on. So I had to be a little careful
to not make it get boring or mundane.
And and yeah, I wanted to keep messing with people's minds.
In fact, the time when he was looking out the window and he's
(17:51):
like, Yep, Purple Cloud and. You know.
But you know, there, there was ahint, I want to have people know
because depending how much time you took, if you're going to say
we're going to spend the next 5 hours investigating this or
whatever, there was a chance that cloud was going to actually
come super zoom the the ship andadd even that next level of fear
(18:14):
or just hysteria. And, and so, yeah, there's a lot
of different possibilities. That's so interesting to me
because I kind of figured there was the chance that that could
happen, that something like thatcould happen.
And I pushed so much for us to move this ship out of the way.
(18:34):
But it's funny because it's likeme, that's bug, bug in the
moment wants that to happen. But then me, Scott, sitting
here, I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have done that because
I kind of wonder what it would have been like in the episode.
Yeah. Like I want to know what
happened for it. Well, Amy and and Will and Chad
were were so great at jumping inand we had really good
(18:57):
discussion in the the discord channel prior to this kind of
flesh you some things out, giving me some background, asked
really great questions. And and I had asked, you know,
just to make this fun to jump inand just kind of let yourself be
captured by the moment and let the narrative take you where it
did. And I don't think anybody ever
(19:18):
did anything that wasn't true totheir character, that they
weren't All in all the time. And it was it was so much fun to
to watch people react to each other.
And I thought it was pretty believable that you guys had
been, you know, best friends andcrew mates for for many
missions. The way that you interacted, you
did such a great job. I give, I give credit to them
(19:41):
because I always feel like I don't.
I don't deserve credit for doingwell in the one shots because I
have the most practice, right? I play in them all the time, so
I'm used to jumping in. So I'm always impressed by the
other players when they can justdive in and stay true to like
character because it's hard to make a character that you've
never played before and be like,OK, I'm in this mindset now.
(20:04):
Like the and I'm being recorded the first time I'm ever being
them. Like that is daunting in a way.
And I think I agree with you that everybody did.
A great job and you set everybody up well in that first
episode, even with like their character intros where they
were. I love that Gorp was gambling
with me just nervously trying toget him to stop.
(20:25):
And I love that we established, I guess Gulian was casing the
joint possibly. I think, I think he was not so
much casing as he was literally slumming it like he was
illegally staying in there in their sub basement, just living
in a bucket trying to save money.
So you know, he could have been casing.
(20:46):
We we don't know for sure. I love plasmoids.
I think this is maybe I think myboth of my favorite races or
species is in this. Are they in this episode
Thricreens and plasmoids. I think those what were my think
of like my favorite characters I've played.
Thwick is probably #1 which is a, you know, very similar to
(21:10):
Bug. Thwick and Bug would probably
get nothing done together. They're too frayed.
They're very nervous about it. They're very nervous.
All the time. I love, I love Bug just having a
giant scarf knit, knit, knit around him.
Like he's always just knitting with his hands.
Yeah. I I really wanted to make a
character that had one immediately endearing quality,
(21:33):
Right. I feel like that's why Becca
always makes characters that bake because, like, baking is a
very endearing thing. And I knew we were doing a
horror thing. So it's like, I need somebody
who has something where you're like, I'm endeared to them right
away. I don't want horrible things to
happen to them. So I really, yeah.
I was like, oh, they care about everyone.
They try to keep them warm at all times.
(21:54):
You know, they're very nurturing.
And then they're in the worst hellscape.
Possible, yeah. And and then Will's plasmoid,
you know, I, you know, like, I just love playing Bob and the
possibilities of just being an ooze and just it just makes me
so happy that that that that Will's character sleeps in a
(22:15):
bucket. Like it's just.
It is so funny to me that Ryan, you don't know Will that well,
but both Will and Kyle both are.They played the two main
characters in our old YouTube machinima series, Tragus and
Winters. They played Destiny cops.
And I just love that when I toldWill like we're doing a space
thing, which of these races fromlike a space thing do you think
(22:36):
would be? He said plasmoid right away and
then he said he wanted him to bea janitor, which is exactly what
Kyle was. And I was like, you can't do
that only because it's literallybeen done by Kyle.
I literally just did that. Oh, it's fantastic.
Because they're so insane. Think as partners and they
played janitors in Destiny Cops as well for a couple episodes.
(22:58):
We sure did. That is so fantastic.
Man. Wills plasmoid.
Just a plasmoid with a gun. I just like that image.
I know. I love that too.
And I like, I think I would loveto see Bob and Gulian together.
The one is blue and one is greenand that's the only thing
(23:19):
separating them. I.
Feel Bob can be any color because he's because he can do
disguise self, you know, becausehe's got that, you know he can
he can look however he wants, But yes, he is blue at his his
base, his his normal, I guess, is blue.
And I do want to say for Goose, this is a huge monumentous
(23:40):
occasion in that. Is this the first time she's
been on the podcast and not donea British accent for her
character? I remember that was her intro as
as her I'll fated character in the Gladion D adventure had
something to do with how she canonly do a British accent but she
stretched herself for Artie. And even read an entire
(24:01):
monologue in that accent and nailed it.
It was so well done. She did a great job.
And then psych, I'm all over theplace, but just Speaking of
monologues, circling way back tothat first one where I did the
like staticky effects on your voice or whatever.
You did such a good job in reading that one that it was
(24:23):
just, I loved how that came out with those effects especially
added on to it. It was just.
It was really cool. And you also put you and Scott,
you put the that audio clip out before the first episode was out
and I think as a teaser. And that was and that was great
it. Felt like a perfect like teaser
to the story. You know, it's just here's a
(24:44):
distress beacon and we're space horror thing like you know it.
I feel like that was perfectly baked in way to sell the
adventure. I've got to say that it it
really made me excited to see what you were planning because I
had no idea you're going to do that.
And and to see that little teaser come out and went, Oh my
gosh, Scott is that is nailing this.
And from all the feedback I've heard, everybody is just giving
(25:08):
you major kudos for just that, that voice editing work you did
and setting it up. So it's.
I don't. Want to phone it in like I do
when Kyle? Yeah.
Man. But yeah, so moving on, I want
to talk about some of the encounters in this one.
So some of the the comment combat encounters with these
(25:31):
absolute horror horror monsters.Just the the scariest most
disgusting things that have everbeen described in DMD probably.
Probably not, but thank you. I'll take the credit, but
that's. Good.
But we have a the listener comment from your own son Ryan.
What did you use for the monsters?
What was was that your own creation or did you adapt
(25:52):
something? I'm curious on how you built
these things. Yeah, so a good question, and I
think that a lot of DM ING is taking inspiration from things.
If you find something that can work, just kind of tweaking it.
There is actually the first creature that everyone fought is
(26:13):
called a gauge as a GAJ. It's an aberration that was
introduced in one of the mini beast trees that are out there
and it the description it without coming around and
telling it is kind of what they look like and what they do.
(26:35):
But they are these kind of giantmantis horror insects that are I
think just really wonderful withits ability to do a multi
attack. It's got a mine probing
Probuscus. It's able to paralyze people and
(26:55):
it really seemed to fit the theme of what was happening to
the ship. Now.
They were actually a kind of a floating through the astral sea
and just landed on the ship looking for easy prey.
They didn't have anything to do with what happened on the ship,
but they were just on the deck and the the other thing that
(27:19):
would end up being fought. Well, I'm actually curious.
I know you you DMA lot and you've read the Monster Manual
quite a bit. Did it?
Did it ring any kind of bell at all?
What was it? Do you know if it's in the
Monster Manual or Monster the Multiverse?
(27:40):
I'm thinking Monster the Multiverse, but I don't know.
It's actually in the monster's manual, believe it or not.
You're going to make your I've I've flipped through this book
so many times and it's going to drive me nuts that it's in there
and that I'm not going to be able to to pull it, pull it out
and. It's all good, I was just
curious because it was just very, very slightly reskinned.
(28:02):
It's a corpse flower. Oh yeah?
Well, we fought one of. We've had one of these on the
podcast before. Yeah, it's cool.
OK, yeah, that's cool. When?
Did we fight one in Dis? Elderly conduct, Dis.
Elderly conduct. Yeah.
You guys fought the corpse flower.
Cool. I had no idea that this was the
same monster, so good job reskinning it.
(28:23):
Literally putting skin on it. Yeah.
What you what you did? You know, you, you gave it a few
legendary actions, you make it alittle bit more reskinned, but
that, that was one, there was a a combat that was avoided.
Tell me more, Tell me more. So one of the questions we had
(28:46):
for this episode was basically asking what was going on with
this Purple cloud? What was happening with the slug
Engineer drank? How did this all come about?
And there were a few small logs,I don't know that were actually
(29:08):
discovered. So I did put all of them in
Discord for those who want to goback and look at that.
But what was hopefully able to tease apart, but what I had kind
of put in my head was because the Bright Wardens Aria had been
the flagship for the Yankees elite for so long in this like
(29:33):
never ending war to rid the universe of the threat of the
illithed that they had done a pretty good job of driving the
illithed mostly off of this plane.
But the illithed wanted revenge.And during that shore leave,
they were able to target one person and get them slugged and
(29:56):
and get them with a tadpole inside of the engineer.
And the elephant are like mind flayers.
They are mind flayers, right? That's like their race, or I
don't know if that's a race or what.
Well, the mind flayer is the elephant are actually a bit more
than just mind flayers. I think mind flayers are the
most common representation of them, and this is just because I
(30:17):
went deep into the Lord to figure out more about them.
So the mind flayer by itself is a pretty powerful creature to
fight. It's got a a challenge rating of
seven. They have an incredible amount
of telepathic abilities. But the mind flayer that most
people envision is subservient to a kind of like senior mind
(30:43):
flayer, a more powerful mind Flayer.
People think about mind flayer. They've got like the tentacles
that come down to maybe chest orjust just to out to their chest
like a modest beard. There is a bigger, deadlier,
scarier version of it, Holland Ulitharid, and that is what
(31:05):
Tallrid had been, I was being transformed into.
She was becoming a a much larger, scarier version of a
Mind Flayer. And even the Ulithid don't like
to keep these guys around, so they will convert somebody to an
(31:29):
Ulah thyroid and send it far away because they're scary.
And that's basically what was happening.
And so while she was becoming converted and these psychic
emanations are coming out of her, she couldn't control it.
She was starting to go a little bit crazy.
They locked her under the command of Captain Tolrich into
(31:50):
this pod and put it into the cargo Bay, hoping that they'd be
able to release her well while she was in there.
Although she was in stasis, her mind was still going and slowly
was corrupting everyone around her and sending out a psychic
beacon as like a homing signal to bring illicit fleets to her
location. And that was the real threat
(32:13):
that was coming in the Purple Cloud.
That's what I kind of loosely inferred about the situation
when Bug was like, let's psychicemanations match, let's get the
shit out of here, you know? So then the question I have is,
did we really stop it by launching it into space?
(32:34):
Or is it just like floating in the astral sea now waiting to
bump into another ship and in fact the next one?
And I don't know, like I think all we did was launch the stasis
pod, right? Yeah, we launched the stasis pod
up into the void. So I think that's a really good
question for maybe Part 2 if that ever comes out.
(32:57):
We ever go crazy. I was.
Gonna say if this were really like a horror movie franchise,
that would be how the sequel hasto like start is some new ship
bumps into that stasis spot and recovers it and we're all in the
audience. Like dude, you don't.
Don't open that thing. Or it starts with the Ulithid
character, Female. She's the bad guy, right?
(33:20):
She's and it's like she's turning into it and then she
sees the prey. It knocks into the ship and then
there's three characters versus this one or something crazy like
that. That would.
Be crazy. I don't know how to do that.
And then it's stalking them all across the decks and it becomes
like the Alien or Predator kind of version.
Yeah, usually a lot of fun. This is a question I meant to
(33:41):
ask a general question because you, you did our first like real
horror one shot. Are you a horror fan, Ryan?
I don't really know your horror,how versed you are in horror as
a genre. You know, I guess a bit
ironically, not tremendously. I find horror in general
entertaining, but I don't seek it out.
(34:05):
I guess I'd be more likely to play a horror video game, board
game, or read novels that have horror or suspense elements to
it. But it's not usually what I
gravitate to. But there is something about D&D
dark fantasy that intrigues me, and so I enjoy writing it and
(34:31):
thinking about, I guess, the psychological aspects of it.
So that side I enjoy more than just straight gore and viscera,
if that makes any sense it. Makes sense to me totally.
I will say, Speaking of straightgore and viscera, it is
unfortunate to have like a doctor riding all of this
(34:51):
disgusting horror stuff that. I had one of your quotes down
just like person with halitosis just cracked me up because I was
like, that's like a diagnosis, right?
Like that's what you said at onepoint, like smells like a person
with halitosis and just, it justcracks me up when the doctor,
when the doctor comes out a little bit.
I think most people know what halitosis means, but.
(35:14):
Shitty bad breath, Yeah, yeah. I don't know what makes you
diagnose it but I know it's bad breath but.
Well, there's something called azenchor diverticulum.
Perfect. It just felt like every.
Time you were describing, every time you were describing
something that was like really gross or like disfigure stuff, I
was like, he's he's, he has medical expertise.
(35:36):
He's seen this sort of shit before.
You know, he's seen some of thisstuff.
It makes it feel extra real. And I, it was very
uncomfortable. So good job.
It is, yeah. When you know that the person
has seen someone's insides, you know, and it's been up close
with them before it, you wonder a little bit.
You know it's adds a, adds a, adds a little bit of a layer
(36:00):
there. Well, sometime not for this
podcast, you can ask me about the time I spent with the
coroner. That was a whole different
experience, let me tell. You.
Well, here's a question for you about the halitosis.
Ryan. If someone in the office tells
you they have halitosis, do you confirm that diagnosis or do you
believe them? Do you get up because of
(36:21):
personal to smell the halitosis?I have to say, from my personal
history, I have learned that they don't have to tell me.
You know it when you walk in theroom.
You say your personal history because I I confirmed it once
and then decide. You know what?
I don't think I need to confirm anymore.
If someone tells me they have bad breath, I don't need to like
waft at my direction you. Know we can usually tell even
(36:43):
though we're sitting a couple offeet away.
Like very true. No, that's a good call out
though. Yeah, so the so the the
basically the end of the the entire adventure.
I I love will just be in his character like that.
There's someone in the pod that's like help me and he's
(37:04):
like, I'm jettisoning this. You know that's we're done.
We're not we're not dealing withthis.
I love Will as a player because it if, if his characters feel in
one way it's, that's what's going to happen, you know?
And I felt a little bit, I will say this, I felt a little bit
bad for Will and for Ryan as well, just because you're
talking about things that got skipped and stuff.
(37:25):
And I felt almost guilty becauseI, I feel like sometimes when
we're recording, I have to be the person who's thinking like,
well, I have to edit this and ithas to come out in a certain, it
has to be a certain length, right?
It can't be like a six hour record.
It only can. You can't upload a podcast that
long. You just can't.
It still won't work. And so I could tell like Will
(37:46):
was like, I'm going to explore every inch of this ship.
If we were just playing this like at a table, I know he would
have wanted to like really go through room to room and get
every day to log that you set out for us.
So I almost feel bad making thisbe an episode of the podcast in
a way, and kind of feeling like I'm forcing us to rush through
(38:09):
it at. Times that is a great Segway to
a question I have for Ryan because you are not just running
this for the podcast, are you? You have a other group that
you're running this for? I do.
There are some colleagues and friends of ours and somebody who
(38:29):
also listens that yeah, math. I was going to call them out,
but yeah, math, we'll call them math.
That's fine. We, we set out to play this
mainly because we were going to play something else people fill
through. So we won't do one shots.
Well, hey, I've got this ready to go.
And I, I have to say, it's been so much fun watching their
(38:51):
characters develop as they explore this, setting out mostly
on the same premise, but the waythey are approaching things is
so different and the way that they are spending so many hours
exploring the ship and encountering stuff, I don't have
to hold back. And it it really changes the
narrative in a ways I wasn't expecting.
What are some of the big changesthat you've had running it in
(39:13):
with the different group like that that have been wide
deviations from from the podcast?
Well, you know, it's, it's interesting that the very first
thing that surprised me was bothsets decided to choose the
shuttle with the sensor array, which I thought was interesting.
They everyone chose to land on the flight deck, which I also
(39:35):
thought was interesting because I tried to make it pretty clear
that you could have basically attached that ship wherever you
wanted to. And you could have attached
yourself to the the cargo Bay doors and started right there or
somewhere else, but everyone landed up there the way that
they encounter. Fight deck.
You know I'm stupid, so flight deck laying on the fight deck
just makes sense. Totally.
(39:57):
OK Yeah, it it was just a way tosee, you know, what would people
choose to do? But what I thought was
interesting is where your crew Scott went to the aft 1st and
started exploring the crew headquarters in the galley.
This crew went to the. Before 1st and started going
through the navigation and the bridge which gets them
(40:18):
information and challenges immediately and also the way
that they encountered that initial kind of mind freak if
you will, when they all had to do their secret wisdom save to
me and. And Criss Angel Mind Freak was
there. He was absolutely is in my mind
the whole time. That is actually.
More terrifying to me. Criss Angel rounded the corner
(40:40):
on that ship, and Criss Angel was levitating in hallway.
I'd have noped out. The the way that they decided to
deal with trying to to break thethe psychic overlay where your
team has was describing it to people and helping them to see
it, they just started inflictingdamage on each other.
(41:08):
I didn't tell them not to, but they're like I'm going to shock
and grasp them so they can be shocked into seeing what I'm
seeing and like. Go for it.
So good, yeah. But the other thing that was fun
is they took some time to now dive into this ship's actual
electrical and computer systems,trying to understand what's
(41:30):
going on, making roles to to navigate, to see where power is
being drained. And, and so it's just a whole
different way of diving into it.And it just makes you realize
that you can prepare so much, but you just got to go where
your players want to go. And it'll be very interesting to
see where they end up and how they approach the same thing.
But they're also going to have other encounters that you didn't
get to experience, one of which was you were going to fight
(41:53):
three giant rats and you're like, what giant rats?
Big deal. Like why they're giant rats.
But what you would have realizedafter killing them is that they
they didn't seem to react like giant rats really were.
And then once you could breakthrough the the psychic
overlay, they were going to be intellective hours.
Oh, Jeepers, here's a question. Deadly.
(42:17):
Those would have. Those could have taken over
somebody else's mind. Your your guys's minds were
already affected that that wouldbe cool.
I'm actually a little surprised that we didn't get, I mean, I
know we have like a ton of lore to explore, but I'm a little
surprised we didn't get a more deadly encounter purely for
like, this being the horror thing.
I really expected someone to diebefore we even like, started
(42:39):
playing. I was very worried that we were
going to have our first like real genuine death.
Have we had one on the podcast that I'm forgetting other than
the gladiator turn? Yeah, the gladiators.
That's that's we have not. There was no choice but to die
in that one. Yeah, we've not had a genuine
death on the podcast. It wasn't impossible.
(43:00):
You guys had some clutch saves that really made a difference
and and I think that had the choice not been made to flush
Tallra. That Ulotharid base HP is 130
with an AC of 15 and is ACR 9 and I wasn't messing around.
(43:25):
CR9 you guys were like level 5 right?
Or what were? You level 5?
Oh yeah, big toast. I didn't even consider that that
was like a an encounter that could have happened at the end.
It just felt like a, yeah, it makes total sense that that
could have gone either way, you know?
But for for whatever, it just felt just felt nice, Like it
felt like a good package story that that you guys like figured
(43:48):
it out at the end and Dan shot her away.
But like just great natural storytellers and we could tell
that we've been playing for like3 hours, so probably easier to
launch that bitch into space to try to fight her.
Although it could have also ended in a very quick wipe and
into the Horror Story entirely differently then we'd be back to
that would have been. Awesome.
(44:08):
And if we all died, that would have been so if we all died
except for Bug. That's what I would have loved
if Bug lost the second hive. Like.
Of crew members, Yeah. Just brutal.
How did he my my main one question I wanted to get through
or get to was just how the wisdom saving throw, how that
(44:31):
mechanic works specifically for for when everybody had them had
to make that that save and then people were seeing different
things. So the initial save, everyone
had to make it when they first entered the actual vessel and
they were seeing their their fellow crew mates with their the
(44:53):
kind of body horror with the icar dripping from their eyes
and all that. That save did two things, one is
it actually set DC's for them inthe future to be easier or
harder depending how they saved on that one and the second one
is they. What is this fucking AI price
modeling over here? I get charged more because I did
(45:14):
a good job on my role. This is outrageous.
Well the other thing it did is it let me communicate to
everybody individually. I was DM ING them what their
response to it was and that may have affected the way some
people were acting and and. I mean, I was highly suspect of
everybody. I felt like until we had that
(45:34):
moment where we, like, sat down and did insight checks on each
other, you know, like, really, I'm really looking at them.
Are you OK? Until that moment, I really was
not sure if especially Glorp because he was so nonchalant
about everything that I was like, there's a good chance that
he has like, been corrupted in my mind.
(45:57):
So you did, you did. So some paranoia in me at least.
Well, then I would say that thatjob well done with that one, but
it also did set arty up to be more susceptible.
And she was the one who end up being compelled to run into the
to the engineering, oh, not engineering, but into the cargo
Bay. And then we had the kind of roll
(46:20):
off between Gulian and Glorp to see who is going to release
versus who was going to open that that pot.
And and frankly, I mean, that's how close it was to you guys
possibly being literally wiped out.
It really came down to that role, that initiative role,
because I I wasn't going to holdback.
(46:42):
This thing was the OR maybe still is the revenge of the
illithed on the get Yankee for their campaign of eradication.
And yeah, it would have been interesting to see what
happened, but that's just not what happened this time.
That's. What I love About DNDI want to
know how theirs ends up going inthe end.
(47:03):
So you'll have to yeah, the other group totally like how it
rounds out once that you all getfinished, because I do I'll.
Definitely do that. Yeah, that it's my experience
that that was the gladiator tournament, which was just so,
just so fun to see how people will think through different
encounters and use different abilities and just it's a yeah,
(47:26):
DND is a great game. It's a great game.
Play it. If you're listening to this
podcast, you've never played it before.
You should give it a chance. Should join a discord and join
the I'd like to play group. You never know, we'll be running
through other just one off one shots and just having fun as a
group. I have some of my favorite
quotes from the two episodes down here.
(47:48):
I loved, I loved Goose covering her steel Defenders ears when
she was like somewhat disposable, just like crack me
up. I I loved already, said the
person with halitosis thing. There was there was a quote in
there about the bathroom being foul.
And then I think Scott, you werelike, yeah, someone took a huge
(48:09):
dump in there or something like that.
Just crack me up it. Didn't flush.
I mean, that's. Disgusting.
Those were a couple of the the my favorite quotes that I had in
there. What were your guys favorite
parts? Any favorite parts that stick
out that we haven't already talked about?
(48:30):
Anything that you would Yeah, any anything that you were not
expecting Ryan as as the DM or. Something I have one thing.
I have. One favorite part that a glorp
moment that I'm not even sure ifyou really pick up on it.
If you're only listening to the audio or even in the video, it
might. I feel like it was kind of quiet
when he said it, but I liked when we were talking about every
(48:54):
time he blinked, he saw like horrible things.
So then when we got on the ship and we were like, do we want to
keep going or whatever, he was like just pulled out some tape
and like taped his eyes open so that he wouldn't blink anymore.
I really like that a little bit.Oh, and then my favorite quote,
I I didn't get to my favorite quote.
It was will asking if there's anything in value in the room.
(49:16):
It was just just covered in gutsor whatever.
And then Ryan, you're like depends on how much you value in
trails goes. His response was Nope, nothing
of value. Nope, nothing.
Yeah, I think, I think for me, the the thing that was
surprising was, you know, you set this up and and this call it
(49:41):
Providence or not. I really had not thought about
somebody just coming up and deciding to eject the cargo pod.
I really honest to goodness had not thought about it.
And I'm like, yeah, I mean, it'sthere, but, but why not?
Why not have a a boss encounter that has an easy out if you're
looking? And so I thought.
We're an encounter, so you were literally not expecting them to
(50:03):
just jettison it out. I really wasn't.
And that was. Amazing.
Awesome. But it was great.
It worked so well within the thelore of the world.
It was just sitting there and yeah, then it makes sense.
That highlights such a, a, a unique thing from the DM's
perspective and a player's perspective of, of the game.
(50:25):
Because from the DM's perspective, you can like, like
create a really cool encounter. Feel like, oh, this is going to
be such a fun boss fight. Feel like you, you've prepped
really well for it. And then the characters can come
up with something like the players come up with something,
some way to cheese it, somethingwhere you it's like, oh, yeah,
that would work. That totally would work.
(50:46):
And from the DM's chair, you're thinking, you know, behind the
screen, you're like, oh man, like this is going to feel like
not as fun for them because, youknow, you're thinking about how
this encounter would have gone with these fun things.
And from the player, the player's seat, like those things
are so fun when you can just like cheese and encounter real
quick, you know, or like do something that just totally
(51:07):
wrecks the DM's plans, like so much fun.
And, and what's the purpose of DND but to have fun on both
sides of the screen. But but when you're.
Absolutely agree with what you're saying because to me as a
player, like I never even thought for a second about
opening that thing. When you mentioned it was in the
jettison, I was like, great, we're fucking jettisoning that
(51:29):
thing out like there's no way we're opening it.
And that is what I wanted. It felt so much felt so true to
the story as we were going that like, no, we, we everything on
the ship says the thing that's in there is very bad, so get rid
of it. Well good and I am glad that the
(51:50):
the painted horror landscape resonated well and that the big
shining sign that said do not touch this, you guys listen to
it and did not and so job well done.
Yeah, any any other thoughts from the episode?
One more thing. I broke out a a very serious
(52:12):
question. Who cursed Goose's digital dice?
Why did she roll so many sevens?She goes so.
Bad goose is the anti Becca. Like.
She just has the worst luck on this podcast.
I feel like she died immediatelyin the in the.
Gladiators. Yeah, just immediately died.
I feel like even in hell half nofury I feel like she didn't roll
great most of the time. Like she just, she just has bad
(52:35):
luck. I got to stop being on parties
with her. She's got to, she probably has,
we got to check your dice, Goose, because you might have
like a, you might be using like AD 12 or something instead of AD
20, you know, an accident. It's so funny too.
Is that because you gave us like, opportunities to roll the
things that we are good at? You know, like, oh, you can
choose your spot in the ship andguess what?
(52:57):
You get to use your best stat. And then every time she got to
use her best stat, it'd just be,Nope, just I was 76.
Just awful rolls repeatedly. Yeah, it it is.
You never know how the dice godsare going to smile upon you.
And yeah. They were on my side.
I was crushing it. Yeah, I had tons of Wisdom,
(53:19):
though. This was, it was a great time to
be a cleric on that ship becauseeverything was like Wisdom saves
and I was like, I poured it all into that.
I didn't know that that's what it was going to be, but I felt
very fortunate that I did. Yeah, absolutely.
And the the thing that I'm thinking about for the future,
if we ever do another horror one, I'm already thinking of
(53:40):
ways to make this a bit more chaotic.
So we'll have to see what comes out in that time.
Listener beware, you're in for ascare.
Last, last thing that I'll say is the flavor for the beginning
and end of the ends of the episodes with the Tavern.
(54:03):
Ryan, you nailed it. You've sent me the intros and
stuff and we you were like, hey,like, how does this work right
now? There's this, you know, there's
this campaign going on. How does it fit in with the
lore? How does that work?
And I love the ending, how the ending of the second episode
with with that guy the gets Yankee like reading and the
(54:28):
Tavern, everyone's gone and the and the bartenders there as eyes
flare red, the smell of sulfur in there.
It was perfect. It was so good.
And we'll see how that fits in how what's going on.
You know in the world right now that this story was being told,
I hope. So much the expedition unknown
(54:49):
makes it trip. How dare you get the name of the
adventure wrong? For the event, for the chaser?
For the episodes where I mispronounced the name of the
adventure in the beginning of them.
But it was selectively edits andnobody knows.
I know. Well it wasn't just selectively
edited, I rerecorded myself saying it to disguise that I
(55:10):
said it wrong and froze my camera in the video to make it
look like a video glitch was theonly problem and not that I
fucked up the name of the adventure and we had like a
minute long. What did you say?
I said instead of Lamento the void, I said voids lament.
Like I was like, wait, which oneis it?
And then I didn't give myself like a clean edit.
Point it's because you're thinking of show choirs lament.
(55:33):
That's sophomore year comedy routine.
So yes, of course, because I. Have which you have the solo of
course. Yes, so I.
On YouTube you can watch it, it's there somewhere.
Well, there are couple. Real sneaky edits in this in the
episodes, Ryan, you might remember that.
Oh yeah, when we did the becausewe had the above the table talk
(55:57):
at the very end of the episode for how much time we had left to
record. And that directly coming out of
that, we like directly contradicted the plan we had
just made. But there was no way to meld the
two together, so I had to like take a clip from like 10 minutes
earlier in the episode or of yousaying like that I had the wrong
(56:18):
idea of where the navigator was to try to disguise transitioning
into US going to the navigator'sroom instead.
It was so well done and and it looks or looks, feels and
listens to these very seamless. The other one that I really
appreciate is in the initial reading, I stumbled like crazy
(56:39):
trying to pronounce the word utilitarian and I could not for
the life of me get it out. And so in the edit I just said
can you fix that to where I got it right?
And it's like the. First note in the music, The
music notes you gave me is. Can you maybe fix this part?
And you know, it's, it's fine, it just, but it's, it's humanity
(57:00):
and it's great. I understand amazing that I, I
constantly want to fix little flubs like that.
I have, I have empathy. I I was like, I can, I can fix
for this bad boy. I can I can blend this.
Whenever I send notes like that to Sky, he's like, now I'm not
fixing that. No.
All right. Well, I guess.
It's fine. No, it it's great and I love the
fact that a lot of stuff we do keep in though, like me
(57:22):
forgetting to double all the damage dice on sneak attack.
But that's that's normal. And it's about having people all
playing together and just realizing that we're not
perfect, but that's why we have the the books to go back to and
go, Oh yeah, that's right. And move on.
And and God bless Goose for, youknow, sticking with us to the
wee hours of the morning on her end for this and letting us do
(57:43):
crazy hijinks. It was.
It was a blast in double double.Props to Goose because I
remember specifically that she had come from a different D&D
session that was like an hour away that she had been playing
for like 4 hours before she started recording.
This a lot of D and DI know she's.
She's never going to want to play D&D again.
(58:06):
I don't believe that until next week.
Yeah. Well, the group was great.
You know, like you guys said earlier, as a listener listening
to the group, it felt like you guys had played through
campaigns together before. Like, it just felt like you guys
melded and meshed really well. And Ryan did an excellent job.
Scott, you also did a great job with the outro.
(58:26):
The first episode was great. Yeah.
You know, when the camera pans out in the Tavern, the guys
reading the stories like, oh, that's weird.
And that's has cracked up so much at that.
I was, I realized like, oh, wait, we didn't plan anything
for how this ends. And then I was like, how do
these, how do these normally end?
Oh wait, Kyle always has like a thing and I don't have a thing,
(58:46):
so. And and instead of selectively
editing that, what we'd edited was, you know, not having the
initial name read right in the beginning.
Yeah, but it's important to me. I think the moments that feel
like they really capture what happens at the table, like like
what like you said with forgetting the double the the
(59:07):
the sneak attack dice, those arelike real mistakes that happen
at table and people have a discussion and it helps you re
solidify the rules. And I feel like things like that
when I'm a listener, I want to be reminded of the rules
sometimes. So I'll leave in those sorts of
discussions. But when it's just me fucking up
the name for the in within the 1st 10 seconds of the episode
(59:28):
so. What you should have done though
is what we did for crowning AI achievement where I just decided
that was the name. Apparently after after like
saying hey is this the name? And then Mav saying yes at one
point, but then. Like.
Changing it but not telling me or something like that.
It was something weird and then and then like, oh, I guess
that's the name just. Well, I do want to say one other
(59:50):
thing that got a lot of accolades, especially going back
to you again, Scott, was the number of people who told me how
much they liked the aberrations you added to the theme song.
That has gotten a lot of people's attention.
They've really enjoyed that. All I did, I was just like,
well, this has to be scary. And I and I've made I can't
(01:00:13):
remember why I made the screen color different to make it scary
too, because I wanted I know what here's here was my thought
process for the whole intro. I take you through it.
It's called Lament of the void. So the word void needs to be
black on the screen. But I always have a black screen
with white text. So I had to put some color on
the title cards on that right. That makes it scary.
(01:00:33):
And then it didn't feel scary with the normal music and I
didn't have a song to put in andI didn't have time to ask Tyler
to make a new song for us or anything.
So I was like, well, what if I start it normal and then it gets
a little creepy by just pitch shifting it to hell down like
halfway through? So you're like not at ease.
And whatever Tyler wrote for that theme song just happens to
(01:00:56):
sound really industrial and scary when you lower it down.
Like that's great. So.
It wasn't as much. It sounds like there's a lot
done to it, but. Yeah, I know.
It's literally just. I just put on a pitch shift and
drug it way down and it just ended up sounding really cool
and scary that way to me, so I was like, I'm going to keep it.
I want to add to that, I think that all of us together, we came
(01:01:18):
to make a a narrative that was, you know, creepy horror
adjacent. I don't know, you have people
having fun playing games. It's never going to be all that
scary, but it was fun and and I do feel that we achieved our
goal because there were a coupleof comments in person then even
on Discord people was like, yeah, I always try to fall
asleep to this, but this was notthe episode to fall asleep to.
(01:01:40):
And right there, I felt like, hey, we did what we set out to
do. We did and I really felt like I
always try to think of these like what if they were actual
books that you can read? And this one really felt to me
like here's like this pulpy kindof garb, like not garbage, but
you know, like a a paperback horror novel you could grab and
and read. And I really I really enjoyed
(01:02:02):
it. So good episode everyone.
Good episode, any final thoughtsfrom you 2 about this one?
Any anything burning on your mind, you got to get out.
And you're a freak. You're a freak, Ryan.
You're disgusting. It's horrible.
I'm so I'm afraid. All I can say is you guys
apparently bring it out on me and listen to it again.
(01:02:24):
I'm excited to take another crack at it.
Sounds good. Well, on that note, we'll close
the chaser for the episode. What?
Do we say? Close.
That's what I'm saying right now.
So we don't do them as often anymore.
So I don't know. One in a minute.
We we shoot the chaser, I guess.We shoot the chaser.
Yeah. And then you.
(01:02:44):
Bottoms up, chug. Chug the chaser.
So like the salt. Bite the bite the I don't know,
it's a bite the the slug in yourbrain.
But on that note, if you like us, give us one of those good
five star reviews. Join our discord to being in all
(01:03:05):
the action. You can give us chaser questions
and and just be a part of the community that we're building in
on the Discord. It's been, I don't know, it's
been just so much fun to talk topeople like D&D.
Thank you Tyler Adamsburger for the intro music.
Thank you to Azar for our artwork.
And with that, we will see you next time at the Tall Tale
Tavern. Bye.
Welcome to the Tall Tale Tavern,the monthly one shot adventure
TTRPG podcast. I'm your Tavern master and host
Kyle and we are here for the Chaser episode for Lament of the
Void. I am joined by Scott AKA Bug and
Ryan AKA the DM for this adventure.
Welcome guys. Good to be here, you know.
(00:21):
Glad to have you. Guys, I don't like the name of
the chaser on this one 'cause I don't want to feel like I'm
getting chased, 'cause it's scary because it was a Horror
Story, am I right? I mean, come on, this is our
best episode yet already I've filled it.
The only horror was how badly itwas written, but beyond that?
Hey, don't you say that, Sir. Badly.
(00:42):
It was written. Jeepers, you're the one who
wrote it, you silly. You're.
Right, that's true. Shoot, no.
It's always a lot of fun. Yes, it was.
And this is a special one for mebecause it's a this is the first
episode that I've not been a been a part of.
No. I've been a part of the other
one, no. Wait, you aren't?
(01:02):
No, this is. I'd say this is the first one
you were not involved in. Yeah, and not capacity.
Why are you even here? Get the fuck out of here.
You wouldn't be part of the coolclub.
You wouldn't be part of it. Yes.
This was a special treat adventure.
Much many extra special. Many thanks to Ryan for taking
(01:23):
on like all all the work. No, no additional DM for Kyle to
help and a special I don't know.It was my idea to do a couple
bonus adventures along with expedition untold.
I feel like, but only possible thanks to the tremendous work of
Ryan. So I just a little right off the
front. I'm just giving you a little
(01:44):
applause. Thank you.
Thank you. So much, it's a lot of them
doing the even doing the music part, which the music is mostly
my job. It's kind of a group effort with
me picking the music and Scott plugging it in.
And you even did that part for me, which was which was great
because these bonus episodes arereally these bonus adventures
(02:05):
while the campaign's going on. I was all for it as long as I
could really, you know, just focus on the campaign because I
wanted to make sure that I couldfocus on that.
So so thank you for for doing all those things for it to make
it happen. Thank.
You for letting both of us pass the buck on to you for doing
music. The two of you have provided so
(02:26):
much entertainment and so much work, and it was fun to be able
to give back a little bit and also to kind of learn how the
sausage is made a bit. And frankly, it gives me nothing
but tremendous respect for the two of you.
Now I have deemed a few of thesefor the Avern and one thing I've
(02:46):
really learned and I'm still trying to learn is how to manage
time well and to allow people initiative while also trying to
keep it contained. And, and as many times as I do
this, the more I just come to appreciate how well you do it.
Kyle and Scott, the the audio editing and then all the extra
flavor you added to this episodeand layering in with the music.
(03:07):
It was just, it was phenomenal. You guys deserve an incredible
amount of credit. Wow.
Thank you. Thank you.
You know what? Thank you.
We do. We do.
Yeah, there we go. Cheers for us.
Pat ourselves. I'll pat you on the back, Scott.
From the pat me on the. Back so it doesn't feel like
we're. Yeah, we're both patting each
ourselves. That's nice.
We're in the same room right now.
Oh. We always record sitting
(03:30):
back-to-back so we can pat each other on the back the whole
time. You know there's a ton of
padding going on in here. Speaking of creepy.
Boards which padding ton. Oh jeez.
I will say for the audio editingstuff, Ryan, is that you make.
You made it easy because you setup like you set up moments that
(03:50):
just inherently lended themselves to additional audio,
like effects that were easy to put on to sell them further, I
would say. So kudos to you for the way you
structured it. That's mostly that's a that's a
mostly that's that should be a acompliment to you, Scott, but
(04:11):
you but you framed it as a compliment to Ryan for setting
you up for doing some cool editing stuff.
So the editing was great, Scott,the editing was great and we got
multiple comments on it. Especially my favorite part was
with Will reading that line or reading some the log and then
did he did he deliver that like in a different way because you
(04:35):
also gave him inspiration Ryan after reading it, but I was
curious about that. Yeah, it's a great, great
question. So for those who have gone on
the Discord and look at the the logs that we created, I I
actually created log files for people to find and kind of had
them themed so that they looked well, like a log book might
(04:57):
look. But then as there was some
creepy changes, some some changes in perception that are
happening to people that are writing it, some of the text did
did get glitchy and look a little bit aberrant or
abhorrent. And so when he was reading it,
he did actually intone the in ina creepy way, modulated his own.
(05:23):
Voice, Yeah. It was so good because it.
Sounds so good in the final product like I was like Dang
that sounds really good the I'm glad.
So I took those spots where there was already natural
intonation from him and I progressively pitch shifted them
down like a little bit more as they were going.
(05:45):
And then I added behind it, there's like screams on them
because I just took audio of roller coaster screams and put
it underneath him. That's that roller coaster
screams. That's great.
It was. It was well done.
You did that a few other times too.
I think there were a couple of locations when you added in some
(06:07):
screams in the background. That was really well done.
I oh, I did there when you mentioned whispers or like
discord. Those are just me saying like
let me out, release me. And then I played them in
reverse and added like reverb and pitch shifted them a little
while so they would sound scarier.
That's great. But you say let me out is scary
(06:27):
enough, but then play. It backwards.
Is also scary. Let's back it up a little bit
and kind of start from the beginning of when this was, I
guess, being created by you. Ryan, I'm curious, what gave you
the inspiration to want to to dosomething like this, to do this
adventure? And I think you had pitched it
(06:49):
to us at some point or said, hey, I got this idea for one or
something like that. But yeah, what was some of your
inspiration for this? So we had had several different
adventures to different flavors and one thing that we hadn't
quite done is try to get something more in the pseudo
(07:12):
serious body horror, psychological horror.
And one thing that I was wantingto do was could I set up a
scenario where there is tension built in because of a, a theme,
a trap, a pressure. But then you can I figure out a
(07:32):
way to maybe hopefully make the players not trust each other
either. And to try to give a, a chance
for them to not only not trust what's going on in the game, but
also start to distrust each other.
And then could that just lead tosome fun moments?
So that was just some thinking on it.
And then ever since we had some of the wonderful DM being done
(07:55):
previously on the the mothershipand just the whole adventure in
the astral sea was not somethinghad really put much thought
into. But that really captured me.
And I started reading more aboutthat and got some of the books
and diving into it and it was just enjoying, you know, having
a bit more like a higher tech, you know, sci-fi fantasy
(08:17):
crossover. But then could we bring in
something like your your lost ghost ship on the ocean or you
maybe something akin to the event horizon or aliens?
Or how would that look if you brought it all together?
And so it just kind of started coming up with these ideas.
And then as ever, I started justdeveloping back story and ideas
(08:39):
and it kind of slowly came together.
And, and I really think that I'mgoing to spend some time to
Polish it up a bit more and maybe just let people like post
it out on on Earth Arcana or something that let people have a
module to play through because it was fun.
I would love that. I've I've pitched before, but if
we had the time like magically to organize everything, I would
(09:01):
love it if Kyle could like post materials so people could run
the one shots that he's written like I remember on their own.
Yeah, I remember us talking about that like after the first
like couple episodes came out because like the the the quote,
I guess test run if I feel like for this podcast was dis elderly
(09:21):
conducts, Zenobia and wild love.Those are the three that I was
like, let's let's see how these go.
And like, like during those I was like, OK, cool, yeah, oh,
I'm going to turn these into oneshots then like write them out
and make it so like people couldrun them.
And then I realized how much work it is to actually convert
my notes into something presentable and something like
(09:43):
good. And yes, I would love to to be
able to do that. But I remember even start, I
started on dis elderly conduct trying to do that and just
realized how much work it was going to be to to actually put
together a nice little finished product.
Yeah. And this is no shade to you
Kyle, but I do fully believe that Ryan has the extra
(10:07):
organizational strength to make that happen.
Put out the the amount of back story that he'll that you
clearly put into this like the amount of thought and boring.
The fact that you made the data logs to send to us and made us
like schematics of the ships andstuff that you were sending to
(10:28):
us is like just the next level amount of work and detail you
always put into your adventures.But I could.
Easily see you've done a lot of it and a comment on just the
real quick on those things that you made.
You had posted those in the discord.
I copied them and put them in our a bonus episode bonus
materials folder on the on the on the on the drive essentially.
(10:53):
So if you want to go look at allof those things, even the magic
items in there quote magic I guess like coms.
All of that the most useless magic item of all time, The COMS
system. Because there was no fucking way
you were splitting up for even the second I was.
It could have happened, you don't know.
(11:14):
Short of you forcing it to happen, there was no way Bug was
letting anybody go in a different room than he could see
at any moment like. What I love about the comms is
that I may have stolen them. We may be seeing comms in the
devices in the in the far future, but but yes, yeah, that
(11:36):
so all that all that stuff is inthe in the folder.
But yeah, starting off with the like listening to the episode.
One thing I'd really appreciate about your DM ING style, Ryan
now playing in multiple or I guess listening to this one
playing in other one shots and also playing in your own camp
campaign where you DM Scott and I and and your home campaign.
(11:59):
It's just how believable you make the world and how it
really, it feels so full. When I start playing in one of
your adventures, you know, it feels like everything is worked
out. You've got like lingo for the
ship. You've got all this stuff that
just makes it feel like we're absolutely stepping into this,
like, campaign book essentially,you know?
(12:21):
Well, that's our. It's a huge compliment.
Thank you. Take it till you make it, I
guess. But I'll take that as a
compliment. I it's nice to know that I have
everybody fooled, that I have this master plan and it all
comes together at the end. It definitely fools me.
It always feels like I'm entering like a world that has,
(12:41):
like, A-44 millennia long, like,geopolitical history that you
figured out, like, before I evengot there, you know, like, OK,
he knows. He knows the structure of this
government. He knows every bureaucrat who
works in this building. It feels like when we're
playing, so you're doing a good job.
Well, thank you. It's you know, sometimes it's
(13:04):
having kind of people at the ready to put in when when you
need someone. Other times, you know, for me
when I've been making this one shot and other ones, I I kind of
need to know the world that I'm playing in to be able to tell a
story in that world, which is part why, as there might be some
people who want to get together and do some like one off
(13:24):
adventures and not as part of the podcast.
I'll probably keep playing, I think for a little bit in this
Astro C world, because it reallyleads itself to to one off
missions. You're working for a corporation
to go do things. So it helps to have some
framework of what's out there and who's there.
And Scott, you had commented andI didn't think about this, but I
(13:45):
thought it was interesting that having built the framework to
have people on a mission also really helps to lend itself to
this podcast because it kind of puts you on a rail a little bit
and and builds in some initial trust because these are your
crew mates. Yeah, I think that's really
pivotal in the one shots to havelike a shared objective baked
(14:07):
into the character creation in away, even though I love our
episodes that don't necessarily have that, like Zoonopia, those
ones are always more of a struggle in the beginning to to
be unified. Oh, yeah, My, my character
doesn't know these people. Do I trust them?
Like you're, you're thinking, trying to think through all
these things versus it's, it's alot easier to jump in to the
(14:31):
when you kind of come together and say, OK, we're all part of
this team or, you know, share the same ideal or, or whatever,
it makes it easy to jump in for a one shot.
Yeah, having having an objectivethat your character has already
agreed to before the adventure starts rather than here's a
situation you're in and you all are going to decide how to
(14:54):
tackle it, but you don't have any like thing linking you other
than you're in a shared situation, I guess.
It also helps you balance the the characters so that they're
all really balanced. Like you have 1 character that's
really strong like bug wise. Right.
And really big like bug was big it.
Was good, it was good. I loved that we were all
(15:16):
weaklings though I. Loved that it.
Fit perfectly for being like space themed characters.
I really thought that that was kind of just lucky happenstance
because. You all had you all had -1 to
strength of a bug head like a luck stone that made him a + 0
yes. Everybody else is small sized or
something and you're like medium.
(15:38):
So you're this like nervous bug character that?
Fully expected to be the weakling, the nervous little
weakling. And then no, everybody is as
weak as me. But that's space for you, right?
I mean, you're not building muscle from there.
So it just it just works out perfectly.
It was great. We got to and our team was
great. I thought I'll say like I
(16:00):
thought all the players did a really good job in this one.
And especially I think Chad was our first, our only new player
for this one. And I thought Chad as Glorp,
just he did a great job. Like, he latched on to us being
like friends, you know, which I always love when there's another
(16:20):
player who latches on to to having a relationship with me.
And I didn't know how. I've never played with him at
all before. I just knew Chad like through
Twitch and I knew he kind of like D&D.
So I was like, hey, you want to play on an episode?
I didn't know how good he would be or not.
And thankfully he was great, so.You guys have delivered my
favorite line ever, which was I'm just a frog in space trying
(16:46):
not to croak. It still makes me laugh, it was
so good. Such a great line.
Frame it, put it somewhere. I have a question about about
Chad specifically. Which is he?
He started naman on those bugs that were like, did any part of
you want to like inflict some sort of psychedelic impact on
(17:08):
him for doing that? Because I was really worried
that he was going to eat those bugs and it'd be like, great,
now you've eaten like dark evil magic bugs and you're like, your
brain is getting poisoned by them or something.
You know, to pull the the veil back a little bit.
I cut so much out of this. Like I had more encounters
(17:29):
planned, I had more ideas what was going to be happening, but
you can never tell how long people are going to spend in an
area and do a thing or what people are going to choose to
fixate on. So I had to be a little careful
to not make it get boring or mundane.
And and yeah, I wanted to keep messing with people's minds.
In fact, the time when he was looking out the window and he's
(17:51):
like, Yep, Purple Cloud and. You know.
But you know, there, there was ahint, I want to have people know
because depending how much time you took, if you're going to say
we're going to spend the next 5 hours investigating this or
whatever, there was a chance that cloud was going to actually
come super zoom the the ship andadd even that next level of fear
(18:14):
or just hysteria. And, and so, yeah, there's a lot
of different possibilities. That's so interesting to me
because I kind of figured there was the chance that that could
happen, that something like thatcould happen.
And I pushed so much for us to move this ship out of the way.
(18:34):
But it's funny because it's likeme, that's bug, bug in the
moment wants that to happen. But then me, Scott, sitting
here, I'm like, maybe I shouldn't have done that because
I kind of wonder what it would have been like in the episode.
Yeah. Like I want to know what
happened for it. Well, Amy and and Will and Chad
were were so great at jumping inand we had really good
(18:57):
discussion in the the discord channel prior to this kind of
flesh you some things out, giving me some background, asked
really great questions. And and I had asked, you know,
just to make this fun to jump inand just kind of let yourself be
captured by the moment and let the narrative take you where it
did. And I don't think anybody ever
(19:18):
did anything that wasn't true totheir character, that they
weren't All in all the time. And it was it was so much fun to
to watch people react to each other.
And I thought it was pretty believable that you guys had
been, you know, best friends andcrew mates for for many
missions. The way that you interacted, you
did such a great job. I give, I give credit to them
(19:41):
because I always feel like I don't.
I don't deserve credit for doingwell in the one shots because I
have the most practice, right? I play in them all the time, so
I'm used to jumping in. So I'm always impressed by the
other players when they can justdive in and stay true to like
character because it's hard to make a character that you've
never played before and be like,OK, I'm in this mindset now.
(20:04):
Like the and I'm being recorded the first time I'm ever being
them. Like that is daunting in a way.
And I think I agree with you that everybody did.
A great job and you set everybody up well in that first
episode, even with like their character intros where they
were. I love that Gorp was gambling
with me just nervously trying toget him to stop.
(20:25):
And I love that we established, I guess Gulian was casing the
joint possibly. I think, I think he was not so
much casing as he was literally slumming it like he was
illegally staying in there in their sub basement, just living
in a bucket trying to save money.
So you know, he could have been casing.
(20:46):
We we don't know for sure. I love plasmoids.
I think this is maybe I think myboth of my favorite races or
species is in this. Are they in this episode
Thricreens and plasmoids. I think those what were my think
of like my favorite characters I've played.
Thwick is probably #1 which is a, you know, very similar to
(21:10):
Bug. Thwick and Bug would probably
get nothing done together. They're too frayed.
They're very nervous about it. They're very nervous.
All the time. I love, I love Bug just having a
giant scarf knit, knit, knit around him.
Like he's always just knitting with his hands.
Yeah. I I really wanted to make a
character that had one immediately endearing quality,
(21:33):
Right. I feel like that's why Becca
always makes characters that bake because, like, baking is a
very endearing thing. And I knew we were doing a
horror thing. So it's like, I need somebody
who has something where you're like, I'm endeared to them right
away. I don't want horrible things to
happen to them. So I really, yeah.
I was like, oh, they care about everyone.
They try to keep them warm at all times.
(21:54):
You know, they're very nurturing.
And then they're in the worst hellscape.
Possible, yeah. And and then Will's plasmoid,
you know, I, you know, like, I just love playing Bob and the
possibilities of just being an ooze and just it just makes me
so happy that that that that Will's character sleeps in a
(22:15):
bucket. Like it's just.
It is so funny to me that Ryan, you don't know Will that well,
but both Will and Kyle both are.They played the two main
characters in our old YouTube machinima series, Tragus and
Winters. They played Destiny cops.
And I just love that when I toldWill like we're doing a space
thing, which of these races fromlike a space thing do you think
(22:36):
would be? He said plasmoid right away and
then he said he wanted him to bea janitor, which is exactly what
Kyle was. And I was like, you can't do
that only because it's literallybeen done by Kyle.
I literally just did that. Oh, it's fantastic.
Because they're so insane. Think as partners and they
played janitors in Destiny Cops as well for a couple episodes.
(22:58):
We sure did. That is so fantastic.
Man. Wills plasmoid.
Just a plasmoid with a gun. I just like that image.
I know. I love that too.
And I like, I think I would loveto see Bob and Gulian together.
The one is blue and one is greenand that's the only thing
(23:19):
separating them. I.
Feel Bob can be any color because he's because he can do
disguise self, you know, becausehe's got that, you know he can
he can look however he wants, But yes, he is blue at his his
base, his his normal, I guess, is blue.
And I do want to say for Goose, this is a huge monumentous
(23:40):
occasion in that. Is this the first time she's
been on the podcast and not donea British accent for her
character? I remember that was her intro as
as her I'll fated character in the Gladion D adventure had
something to do with how she canonly do a British accent but she
stretched herself for Artie. And even read an entire
(24:01):
monologue in that accent and nailed it.
It was so well done. She did a great job.
And then psych, I'm all over theplace, but just Speaking of
monologues, circling way back tothat first one where I did the
like staticky effects on your voice or whatever.
You did such a good job in reading that one that it was
(24:23):
just, I loved how that came out with those effects especially
added on to it. It was just.
It was really cool. And you also put you and Scott,
you put the that audio clip out before the first episode was out
and I think as a teaser. And that was and that was great
it. Felt like a perfect like teaser
to the story. You know, it's just here's a
(24:44):
distress beacon and we're space horror thing like you know it.
I feel like that was perfectly baked in way to sell the
adventure. I've got to say that it it
really made me excited to see what you were planning because I
had no idea you're going to do that.
And and to see that little teaser come out and went, Oh my
gosh, Scott is that is nailing this.
And from all the feedback I've heard, everybody is just giving
(25:08):
you major kudos for just that, that voice editing work you did
and setting it up. So it's.
I don't. Want to phone it in like I do
when Kyle? Yeah.
Man. But yeah, so moving on, I want
to talk about some of the encounters in this one.
So some of the the comment combat encounters with these
(25:31):
absolute horror horror monsters.Just the the scariest most
disgusting things that have everbeen described in DMD probably.
Probably not, but thank you. I'll take the credit, but
that's. Good.
But we have a the listener comment from your own son Ryan.
What did you use for the monsters?
What was was that your own creation or did you adapt
(25:52):
something? I'm curious on how you built
these things. Yeah, so a good question, and I
think that a lot of DM ING is taking inspiration from things.
If you find something that can work, just kind of tweaking it.
There is actually the first creature that everyone fought is
(26:13):
called a gauge as a GAJ. It's an aberration that was
introduced in one of the mini beast trees that are out there
and it the description it without coming around and
telling it is kind of what they look like and what they do.
(26:35):
But they are these kind of giantmantis horror insects that are I
think just really wonderful withits ability to do a multi
attack. It's got a mine probing
Probuscus. It's able to paralyze people and
(26:55):
it really seemed to fit the theme of what was happening to
the ship. Now.
They were actually a kind of a floating through the astral sea
and just landed on the ship looking for easy prey.
They didn't have anything to do with what happened on the ship,
but they were just on the deck and the the other thing that
(27:19):
would end up being fought. Well, I'm actually curious.
I know you you DMA lot and you've read the Monster Manual
quite a bit. Did it?
Did it ring any kind of bell at all?
What was it? Do you know if it's in the
Monster Manual or Monster the Multiverse?
(27:40):
I'm thinking Monster the Multiverse, but I don't know.
It's actually in the monster's manual, believe it or not.
You're going to make your I've I've flipped through this book
so many times and it's going to drive me nuts that it's in there
and that I'm not going to be able to to pull it, pull it out
and. It's all good, I was just
curious because it was just very, very slightly reskinned.
(28:02):
It's a corpse flower. Oh yeah?
Well, we fought one of. We've had one of these on the
podcast before. Yeah, it's cool.
OK, yeah, that's cool. When?
Did we fight one in Dis? Elderly conduct, Dis.
Elderly conduct. Yeah.
You guys fought the corpse flower.
Cool. I had no idea that this was the
same monster, so good job reskinning it.
(28:23):
Literally putting skin on it. Yeah.
What you what you did? You know, you, you gave it a few
legendary actions, you make it alittle bit more reskinned, but
that, that was one, there was a a combat that was avoided.
Tell me more, Tell me more. So one of the questions we had
(28:46):
for this episode was basically asking what was going on with
this Purple cloud? What was happening with the slug
Engineer drank? How did this all come about?
And there were a few small logs,I don't know that were actually
(29:08):
discovered. So I did put all of them in
Discord for those who want to goback and look at that.
But what was hopefully able to tease apart, but what I had kind
of put in my head was because the Bright Wardens Aria had been
the flagship for the Yankees elite for so long in this like
(29:33):
never ending war to rid the universe of the threat of the
illithed that they had done a pretty good job of driving the
illithed mostly off of this plane.
But the illithed wanted revenge.And during that shore leave,
they were able to target one person and get them slugged and
(29:56):
and get them with a tadpole inside of the engineer.
And the elephant are like mind flayers.
They are mind flayers, right? That's like their race, or I
don't know if that's a race or what.
Well, the mind flayer is the elephant are actually a bit more
than just mind flayers. I think mind flayers are the
most common representation of them, and this is just because I
(30:17):
went deep into the Lord to figure out more about them.
So the mind flayer by itself is a pretty powerful creature to
fight. It's got a a challenge rating of
seven. They have an incredible amount
of telepathic abilities. But the mind flayer that most
people envision is subservient to a kind of like senior mind
(30:43):
flayer, a more powerful mind Flayer.
People think about mind flayer. They've got like the tentacles
that come down to maybe chest orjust just to out to their chest
like a modest beard. There is a bigger, deadlier,
scarier version of it, Holland Ulitharid, and that is what
(31:05):
Tallrid had been, I was being transformed into.
She was becoming a a much larger, scarier version of a
Mind Flayer. And even the Ulithid don't like
to keep these guys around, so they will convert somebody to an
(31:29):
Ulah thyroid and send it far away because they're scary.
And that's basically what was happening.
And so while she was becoming converted and these psychic
emanations are coming out of her, she couldn't control it.
She was starting to go a little bit crazy.
They locked her under the command of Captain Tolrich into
(31:50):
this pod and put it into the cargo Bay, hoping that they'd be
able to release her well while she was in there.
Although she was in stasis, her mind was still going and slowly
was corrupting everyone around her and sending out a psychic
beacon as like a homing signal to bring illicit fleets to her
location. And that was the real threat
(32:13):
that was coming in the Purple Cloud.
That's what I kind of loosely inferred about the situation
when Bug was like, let's psychicemanations match, let's get the
shit out of here, you know? So then the question I have is,
did we really stop it by launching it into space?
(32:34):
Or is it just like floating in the astral sea now waiting to
bump into another ship and in fact the next one?
And I don't know, like I think all we did was launch the stasis
pod, right? Yeah, we launched the stasis pod
up into the void. So I think that's a really good
question for maybe Part 2 if that ever comes out.
(32:57):
We ever go crazy. I was.
Gonna say if this were really like a horror movie franchise,
that would be how the sequel hasto like start is some new ship
bumps into that stasis spot and recovers it and we're all in the
audience. Like dude, you don't.
Don't open that thing. Or it starts with the Ulithid
character, Female. She's the bad guy, right?
(33:20):
She's and it's like she's turning into it and then she
sees the prey. It knocks into the ship and then
there's three characters versus this one or something crazy like
that. That would.
Be crazy. I don't know how to do that.
And then it's stalking them all across the decks and it becomes
like the Alien or Predator kind of version.
Yeah, usually a lot of fun. This is a question I meant to
(33:41):
ask a general question because you, you did our first like real
horror one shot. Are you a horror fan, Ryan?
I don't really know your horror,how versed you are in horror as
a genre. You know, I guess a bit
ironically, not tremendously. I find horror in general
entertaining, but I don't seek it out.
(34:05):
I guess I'd be more likely to play a horror video game, board
game, or read novels that have horror or suspense elements to
it. But it's not usually what I
gravitate to. But there is something about D&D
dark fantasy that intrigues me, and so I enjoy writing it and
(34:31):
thinking about, I guess, the psychological aspects of it.
So that side I enjoy more than just straight gore and viscera,
if that makes any sense it. Makes sense to me totally.
I will say, Speaking of straightgore and viscera, it is
unfortunate to have like a doctor riding all of this
(34:51):
disgusting horror stuff that. I had one of your quotes down
just like person with halitosis just cracked me up because I was
like, that's like a diagnosis, right?
Like that's what you said at onepoint, like smells like a person
with halitosis and just, it justcracks me up when the doctor,
when the doctor comes out a little bit.
I think most people know what halitosis means, but.
(35:14):
Shitty bad breath, Yeah, yeah. I don't know what makes you
diagnose it but I know it's bad breath but.
Well, there's something called azenchor diverticulum.
Perfect. It just felt like every.
Time you were describing, every time you were describing
something that was like really gross or like disfigure stuff, I
was like, he's he's, he has medical expertise.
(35:36):
He's seen this sort of shit before.
You know, he's seen some of thisstuff.
It makes it feel extra real. And I, it was very
uncomfortable. So good job.
It is, yeah. When you know that the person
has seen someone's insides, you know, and it's been up close
with them before it, you wonder a little bit.
You know it's adds a, adds a, adds a little bit of a layer
(36:00):
there. Well, sometime not for this
podcast, you can ask me about the time I spent with the
coroner. That was a whole different
experience, let me tell. You.
Well, here's a question for you about the halitosis.
Ryan. If someone in the office tells
you they have halitosis, do you confirm that diagnosis or do you
believe them? Do you get up because of
(36:21):
personal to smell the halitosis?I have to say, from my personal
history, I have learned that they don't have to tell me.
You know it when you walk in theroom.
You say your personal history because I I confirmed it once
and then decide. You know what?
I don't think I need to confirm anymore.
If someone tells me they have bad breath, I don't need to like
waft at my direction you. Know we can usually tell even
(36:43):
though we're sitting a couple offeet away.
Like very true. No, that's a good call out
though. Yeah, so the so the the
basically the end of the the entire adventure.
I I love will just be in his character like that.
There's someone in the pod that's like help me and he's
(37:04):
like, I'm jettisoning this. You know that's we're done.
We're not we're not dealing withthis.
I love Will as a player because it if, if his characters feel in
one way it's, that's what's going to happen, you know?
And I felt a little bit, I will say this, I felt a little bit
bad for Will and for Ryan as well, just because you're
talking about things that got skipped and stuff.
(37:25):
And I felt almost guilty becauseI, I feel like sometimes when
we're recording, I have to be the person who's thinking like,
well, I have to edit this and ithas to come out in a certain, it
has to be a certain length, right?
It can't be like a six hour record.
It only can. You can't upload a podcast that
long. You just can't.
It still won't work. And so I could tell like Will
(37:46):
was like, I'm going to explore every inch of this ship.
If we were just playing this like at a table, I know he would
have wanted to like really go through room to room and get
every day to log that you set out for us.
So I almost feel bad making thisbe an episode of the podcast in
a way, and kind of feeling like I'm forcing us to rush through
(38:09):
it at. Times that is a great Segway to
a question I have for Ryan because you are not just running
this for the podcast, are you? You have a other group that
you're running this for? I do.
There are some colleagues and friends of ours and somebody who
(38:29):
also listens that yeah, math. I was going to call them out,
but yeah, math, we'll call them math.
That's fine. We, we set out to play this
mainly because we were going to play something else people fill
through. So we won't do one shots.
Well, hey, I've got this ready to go.
And I, I have to say, it's been so much fun watching their
(38:51):
characters develop as they explore this, setting out mostly
on the same premise, but the waythey are approaching things is
so different and the way that they are spending so many hours
exploring the ship and encountering stuff, I don't have
to hold back. And it it really changes the
narrative in a ways I wasn't expecting.
What are some of the big changesthat you've had running it in
(39:13):
with the different group like that that have been wide
deviations from from the podcast?
Well, you know, it's, it's interesting that the very first
thing that surprised me was bothsets decided to choose the
shuttle with the sensor array, which I thought was interesting.
They everyone chose to land on the flight deck, which I also
(39:35):
thought was interesting because I tried to make it pretty clear
that you could have basically attached that ship wherever you
wanted to. And you could have attached
yourself to the the cargo Bay doors and started right there or
somewhere else, but everyone landed up there the way that
they encounter. Fight deck.
You know I'm stupid, so flight deck laying on the fight deck
just makes sense. Totally.
(39:57):
OK Yeah, it it was just a way tosee, you know, what would people
choose to do? But what I thought was
interesting is where your crew Scott went to the aft 1st and
started exploring the crew headquarters in the galley.
This crew went to the. Before 1st and started going
through the navigation and the bridge which gets them
(40:18):
information and challenges immediately and also the way
that they encountered that initial kind of mind freak if
you will, when they all had to do their secret wisdom save to
me and. And Criss Angel Mind Freak was
there. He was absolutely is in my mind
the whole time. That is actually.
More terrifying to me. Criss Angel rounded the corner
(40:40):
on that ship, and Criss Angel was levitating in hallway.
I'd have noped out. The the way that they decided to
deal with trying to to break thethe psychic overlay where your
team has was describing it to people and helping them to see
it, they just started inflictingdamage on each other.
(41:08):
I didn't tell them not to, but they're like I'm going to shock
and grasp them so they can be shocked into seeing what I'm
seeing and like. Go for it.
So good, yeah. But the other thing that was fun
is they took some time to now dive into this ship's actual
electrical and computer systems,trying to understand what's
(41:30):
going on, making roles to to navigate, to see where power is
being drained. And, and so it's just a whole
different way of diving into it.And it just makes you realize
that you can prepare so much, but you just got to go where
your players want to go. And it'll be very interesting to
see where they end up and how they approach the same thing.
But they're also going to have other encounters that you didn't
get to experience, one of which was you were going to fight
(41:53):
three giant rats and you're like, what giant rats?
Big deal. Like why they're giant rats.
But what you would have realizedafter killing them is that they
they didn't seem to react like giant rats really were.
And then once you could breakthrough the the psychic
overlay, they were going to be intellective hours.
Oh, Jeepers, here's a question. Deadly.
(42:17):
Those would have. Those could have taken over
somebody else's mind. Your your guys's minds were
already affected that that wouldbe cool.
I'm actually a little surprised that we didn't get, I mean, I
know we have like a ton of lore to explore, but I'm a little
surprised we didn't get a more deadly encounter purely for
like, this being the horror thing.
I really expected someone to diebefore we even like, started
(42:39):
playing. I was very worried that we were
going to have our first like real genuine death.
Have we had one on the podcast that I'm forgetting other than
the gladiator turn? Yeah, the gladiators.
That's that's we have not. There was no choice but to die
in that one. Yeah, we've not had a genuine
death on the podcast. It wasn't impossible.
(43:00):
You guys had some clutch saves that really made a difference
and and I think that had the choice not been made to flush
Tallra. That Ulotharid base HP is 130
with an AC of 15 and is ACR 9 and I wasn't messing around.
(43:25):
CR9 you guys were like level 5 right?
Or what were? You level 5?
Oh yeah, big toast. I didn't even consider that that
was like a an encounter that could have happened at the end.
It just felt like a, yeah, it makes total sense that that
could have gone either way, you know?
But for for whatever, it just felt just felt nice, Like it
felt like a good package story that that you guys like figured
(43:48):
it out at the end and Dan shot her away.
But like just great natural storytellers and we could tell
that we've been playing for like3 hours, so probably easier to
launch that bitch into space to try to fight her.
Although it could have also ended in a very quick wipe and
into the Horror Story entirely differently then we'd be back to
that would have been. Awesome.
(44:08):
And if we all died, that would have been so if we all died
except for Bug. That's what I would have loved
if Bug lost the second hive. Like.
Of crew members, Yeah. Just brutal.
How did he my my main one question I wanted to get through
or get to was just how the wisdom saving throw, how that
(44:31):
mechanic works specifically for for when everybody had them had
to make that that save and then people were seeing different
things. So the initial save, everyone
had to make it when they first entered the actual vessel and
they were seeing their their fellow crew mates with their the
(44:53):
kind of body horror with the icar dripping from their eyes
and all that. That save did two things, one is
it actually set DC's for them inthe future to be easier or
harder depending how they saved on that one and the second one
is they. What is this fucking AI price
modeling over here? I get charged more because I did
(45:14):
a good job on my role. This is outrageous.
Well the other thing it did is it let me communicate to
everybody individually. I was DM ING them what their
response to it was and that may have affected the way some
people were acting and and. I mean, I was highly suspect of
everybody. I felt like until we had that
(45:34):
moment where we, like, sat down and did insight checks on each
other, you know, like, really, I'm really looking at them.
Are you OK? Until that moment, I really was
not sure if especially Glorp because he was so nonchalant
about everything that I was like, there's a good chance that
he has like, been corrupted in my mind.
(45:57):
So you did, you did. So some paranoia in me at least.
Well, then I would say that thatjob well done with that one, but
it also did set arty up to be more susceptible.
And she was the one who end up being compelled to run into the
to the engineering, oh, not engineering, but into the cargo
Bay. And then we had the kind of roll
(46:20):
off between Gulian and Glorp to see who is going to release
versus who was going to open that that pot.
And and frankly, I mean, that's how close it was to you guys
possibly being literally wiped out.
It really came down to that role, that initiative role,
because I I wasn't going to holdback.
(46:42):
This thing was the OR maybe still is the revenge of the
illithed on the get Yankee for their campaign of eradication.
And yeah, it would have been interesting to see what
happened, but that's just not what happened this time.
That's. What I love About DNDI want to
know how theirs ends up going inthe end.
(47:03):
So you'll have to yeah, the other group totally like how it
rounds out once that you all getfinished, because I do I'll.
Definitely do that. Yeah, that it's my experience
that that was the gladiator tournament, which was just so,
just so fun to see how people will think through different
encounters and use different abilities and just it's a yeah,
(47:26):
DND is a great game. It's a great game.
Play it. If you're listening to this
podcast, you've never played it before.
You should give it a chance. Should join a discord and join
the I'd like to play group. You never know, we'll be running
through other just one off one shots and just having fun as a
group. I have some of my favorite
quotes from the two episodes down here.
(47:48):
I loved, I loved Goose covering her steel Defenders ears when
she was like somewhat disposable, just like crack me
up. I I loved already, said the
person with halitosis thing. There was there was a quote in
there about the bathroom being foul.
And then I think Scott, you werelike, yeah, someone took a huge
(48:09):
dump in there or something like that.
Just crack me up it. Didn't flush.
I mean, that's. Disgusting.
Those were a couple of the the my favorite quotes that I had in
there. What were your guys favorite
parts? Any favorite parts that stick
out that we haven't already talked about?
(48:30):
Anything that you would Yeah, any anything that you were not
expecting Ryan as as the DM or. Something I have one thing.
I have. One favorite part that a glorp
moment that I'm not even sure ifyou really pick up on it.
If you're only listening to the audio or even in the video, it
might. I feel like it was kind of quiet
when he said it, but I liked when we were talking about every
(48:54):
time he blinked, he saw like horrible things.
So then when we got on the ship and we were like, do we want to
keep going or whatever, he was like just pulled out some tape
and like taped his eyes open so that he wouldn't blink anymore.
I really like that a little bit.Oh, and then my favorite quote,
I I didn't get to my favorite quote.
It was will asking if there's anything in value in the room.
(49:16):
It was just just covered in gutsor whatever.
And then Ryan, you're like depends on how much you value in
trails goes. His response was Nope, nothing
of value. Nope, nothing.
Yeah, I think, I think for me, the the thing that was
surprising was, you know, you set this up and and this call it
(49:41):
Providence or not. I really had not thought about
somebody just coming up and deciding to eject the cargo pod.
I really honest to goodness had not thought about it.
And I'm like, yeah, I mean, it'sthere, but, but why not?
Why not have a a boss encounter that has an easy out if you're
looking? And so I thought.
We're an encounter, so you were literally not expecting them to
(50:03):
just jettison it out. I really wasn't.
And that was. Amazing.
Awesome. But it was great.
It worked so well within the thelore of the world.
It was just sitting there and yeah, then it makes sense.
That highlights such a, a, a unique thing from the DM's
perspective and a player's perspective of, of the game.
(50:25):
Because from the DM's perspective, you can like, like
create a really cool encounter. Feel like, oh, this is going to
be such a fun boss fight. Feel like you, you've prepped
really well for it. And then the characters can come
up with something like the players come up with something,
some way to cheese it, somethingwhere you it's like, oh, yeah,
that would work. That totally would work.
(50:46):
And from the DM's chair, you're thinking, you know, behind the
screen, you're like, oh man, like this is going to feel like
not as fun for them because, youknow, you're thinking about how
this encounter would have gone with these fun things.
And from the player, the player's seat, like those things
are so fun when you can just like cheese and encounter real
quick, you know, or like do something that just totally
(51:07):
wrecks the DM's plans, like so much fun.
And, and what's the purpose of DND but to have fun on both
sides of the screen. But but when you're.
Absolutely agree with what you're saying because to me as a
player, like I never even thought for a second about
opening that thing. When you mentioned it was in the
jettison, I was like, great, we're fucking jettisoning that
(51:29):
thing out like there's no way we're opening it.
And that is what I wanted. It felt so much felt so true to
the story as we were going that like, no, we, we everything on
the ship says the thing that's in there is very bad, so get rid
of it. Well good and I am glad that the
(51:50):
the painted horror landscape resonated well and that the big
shining sign that said do not touch this, you guys listen to
it and did not and so job well done.
Yeah, any any other thoughts from the episode?
One more thing. I broke out a a very serious
(52:12):
question. Who cursed Goose's digital dice?
Why did she roll so many sevens?She goes so.
Bad goose is the anti Becca. Like.
She just has the worst luck on this podcast.
I feel like she died immediatelyin the in the.
Gladiators. Yeah, just immediately died.
I feel like even in hell half nofury I feel like she didn't roll
great most of the time. Like she just, she just has bad
(52:35):
luck. I got to stop being on parties
with her. She's got to, she probably has,
we got to check your dice, Goose, because you might have
like a, you might be using like AD 12 or something instead of AD
20, you know, an accident. It's so funny too.
Is that because you gave us like, opportunities to roll the
things that we are good at? You know, like, oh, you can
choose your spot in the ship andguess what?
(52:57):
You get to use your best stat. And then every time she got to
use her best stat, it'd just be,Nope, just I was 76.
Just awful rolls repeatedly. Yeah, it it is.
You never know how the dice godsare going to smile upon you.
And yeah. They were on my side.
I was crushing it. Yeah, I had tons of Wisdom,
(53:19):
though. This was, it was a great time to
be a cleric on that ship becauseeverything was like Wisdom saves
and I was like, I poured it all into that.
I didn't know that that's what it was going to be, but I felt
very fortunate that I did. Yeah, absolutely.
And the the thing that I'm thinking about for the future,
if we ever do another horror one, I'm already thinking of
(53:40):
ways to make this a bit more chaotic.
So we'll have to see what comes out in that time.
Listener beware, you're in for ascare.
Last, last thing that I'll say is the flavor for the beginning
and end of the ends of the episodes with the Tavern.
(54:03):
Ryan, you nailed it. You've sent me the intros and
stuff and we you were like, hey,like, how does this work right
now? There's this, you know, there's
this campaign going on. How does it fit in with the
lore? How does that work?
And I love the ending, how the ending of the second episode
with with that guy the gets Yankee like reading and the
(54:28):
Tavern, everyone's gone and the and the bartenders there as eyes
flare red, the smell of sulfur in there.
It was perfect. It was so good.
And we'll see how that fits in how what's going on.
You know in the world right now that this story was being told,
I hope. So much the expedition unknown
(54:49):
makes it trip. How dare you get the name of the
adventure wrong? For the event, for the chaser?
For the episodes where I mispronounced the name of the
adventure in the beginning of them.
But it was selectively edits andnobody knows.
I know. Well it wasn't just selectively
edited, I rerecorded myself saying it to disguise that I
(55:10):
said it wrong and froze my camera in the video to make it
look like a video glitch was theonly problem and not that I
fucked up the name of the adventure and we had like a
minute long. What did you say?
I said instead of Lamento the void, I said voids lament.
Like I was like, wait, which oneis it?
And then I didn't give myself like a clean edit.
Point it's because you're thinking of show choirs lament.
(55:33):
That's sophomore year comedy routine.
So yes, of course, because I. Have which you have the solo of
course. Yes, so I.
On YouTube you can watch it, it's there somewhere.
Well, there are couple. Real sneaky edits in this in the
episodes, Ryan, you might remember that.
Oh yeah, when we did the becausewe had the above the table talk
(55:57):
at the very end of the episode for how much time we had left to
record. And that directly coming out of
that, we like directly contradicted the plan we had
just made. But there was no way to meld the
two together, so I had to like take a clip from like 10 minutes
earlier in the episode or of yousaying like that I had the wrong
(56:18):
idea of where the navigator was to try to disguise transitioning
into US going to the navigator'sroom instead.
It was so well done and and it looks or looks, feels and
listens to these very seamless. The other one that I really
appreciate is in the initial reading, I stumbled like crazy
(56:39):
trying to pronounce the word utilitarian and I could not for
the life of me get it out. And so in the edit I just said
can you fix that to where I got it right?
And it's like the. First note in the music, The
music notes you gave me is. Can you maybe fix this part?
And you know, it's, it's fine, it just, but it's, it's humanity
(57:00):
and it's great. I understand amazing that I, I
constantly want to fix little flubs like that.
I have, I have empathy. I I was like, I can, I can fix
for this bad boy. I can I can blend this.
Whenever I send notes like that to Sky, he's like, now I'm not
fixing that. No.
All right. Well, I guess.
It's fine. No, it it's great and I love the
fact that a lot of stuff we do keep in though, like me
(57:22):
forgetting to double all the damage dice on sneak attack.
But that's that's normal. And it's about having people all
playing together and just realizing that we're not
perfect, but that's why we have the the books to go back to and
go, Oh yeah, that's right. And move on.
And and God bless Goose for, youknow, sticking with us to the
wee hours of the morning on her end for this and letting us do
(57:43):
crazy hijinks. It was.
It was a blast in double double.Props to Goose because I
remember specifically that she had come from a different D&D
session that was like an hour away that she had been playing
for like 4 hours before she started recording.
This a lot of D and DI know she's.
She's never going to want to play D&D again.
(58:06):
I don't believe that until next week.
Yeah. Well, the group was great.
You know, like you guys said earlier, as a listener listening
to the group, it felt like you guys had played through
campaigns together before. Like, it just felt like you guys
melded and meshed really well. And Ryan did an excellent job.
Scott, you also did a great job with the outro.
(58:26):
The first episode was great. Yeah.
You know, when the camera pans out in the Tavern, the guys
reading the stories like, oh, that's weird.
And that's has cracked up so much at that.
I was, I realized like, oh, wait, we didn't plan anything
for how this ends. And then I was like, how do
these, how do these normally end?
Oh wait, Kyle always has like a thing and I don't have a thing,
(58:46):
so. And and instead of selectively
editing that, what we'd edited was, you know, not having the
initial name read right in the beginning.
Yeah, but it's important to me. I think the moments that feel
like they really capture what happens at the table, like like
what like you said with forgetting the double the the
(59:07):
the sneak attack dice, those arelike real mistakes that happen
at table and people have a discussion and it helps you re
solidify the rules. And I feel like things like that
when I'm a listener, I want to be reminded of the rules
sometimes. So I'll leave in those sorts of
discussions. But when it's just me fucking up
the name for the in within the 1st 10 seconds of the episode
(59:28):
so. What you should have done though
is what we did for crowning AI achievement where I just decided
that was the name. Apparently after after like
saying hey is this the name? And then Mav saying yes at one
point, but then. Like.
Changing it but not telling me or something like that.
It was something weird and then and then like, oh, I guess
that's the name just. Well, I do want to say one other
(59:50):
thing that got a lot of accolades, especially going back
to you again, Scott, was the number of people who told me how
much they liked the aberrations you added to the theme song.
That has gotten a lot of people's attention.
They've really enjoyed that. All I did, I was just like,
well, this has to be scary. And I and I've made I can't
(01:00:13):
remember why I made the screen color different to make it scary
too, because I wanted I know what here's here was my thought
process for the whole intro. I take you through it.
It's called Lament of the void. So the word void needs to be
black on the screen. But I always have a black screen
with white text. So I had to put some color on
the title cards on that right. That makes it scary.
(01:00:33):
And then it didn't feel scary with the normal music and I
didn't have a song to put in andI didn't have time to ask Tyler
to make a new song for us or anything.
So I was like, well, what if I start it normal and then it gets
a little creepy by just pitch shifting it to hell down like
halfway through? So you're like not at ease.
And whatever Tyler wrote for that theme song just happens to
(01:00:56):
sound really industrial and scary when you lower it down.
Like that's great. So.
It wasn't as much. It sounds like there's a lot
done to it, but. Yeah, I know.
It's literally just. I just put on a pitch shift and
drug it way down and it just ended up sounding really cool
and scary that way to me, so I was like, I'm going to keep it.
I want to add to that, I think that all of us together, we came
(01:01:18):
to make a a narrative that was, you know, creepy horror
adjacent. I don't know, you have people
having fun playing games. It's never going to be all that
scary, but it was fun and and I do feel that we achieved our
goal because there were a coupleof comments in person then even
on Discord people was like, yeah, I always try to fall
asleep to this, but this was notthe episode to fall asleep to.
(01:01:40):
And right there, I felt like, hey, we did what we set out to
do. We did and I really felt like I
always try to think of these like what if they were actual
books that you can read? And this one really felt to me
like here's like this pulpy kindof garb, like not garbage, but
you know, like a a paperback horror novel you could grab and
and read. And I really I really enjoyed
(01:02:02):
it. So good episode everyone.
Good episode, any final thoughtsfrom you 2 about this one?
Any anything burning on your mind, you got to get out.
And you're a freak. You're a freak, Ryan.
You're disgusting. It's horrible.
I'm so I'm afraid. All I can say is you guys
apparently bring it out on me and listen to it again.
(01:02:24):
I'm excited to take another crack at it.
Sounds good. Well, on that note, we'll close
the chaser for the episode. What?
Do we say? Close.
That's what I'm saying right now.
So we don't do them as often anymore.
So I don't know. One in a minute.
We we shoot the chaser, I guess.We shoot the chaser.
Yeah. And then you.
(01:02:44):
Bottoms up, chug. Chug the chaser.
So like the salt. Bite the bite the I don't know,
it's a bite the the slug in yourbrain.
But on that note, if you like us, give us one of those good
five star reviews. Join our discord to being in all
(01:03:05):
the action. You can give us chaser questions
and and just be a part of the community that we're building in
on the Discord. It's been, I don't know, it's
been just so much fun to talk topeople like D&D.
Thank you Tyler Adamsburger for the intro music.
Thank you to Azar for our artwork.
And with that, we will see you next time at the Tall Tale
Tavern. Bye.
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