October 15, 2025 • 53 mins
We break down all our favorite moments from Rats vs. Commoners as well as answer questions and give insight into the making of the episode.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to the Tall Tale Tavern.
I'm your Tavern master and host Kyle.
I'm here with Scott. We're here for The Chaser
episode 4, Rats versus Commoners.
That was that was the fanfare. Everyone's so excited at home.
That's. That was the town of of the
common, the whole. Town plane.
(00:21):
Cheering as celebrating the lives of those who are lost, the
lives lost to to keep the rat men in Ratovia.
Yeah, it was actually. That noise was the sound of a
gas leak escaping, and the Commonwealth of Planktonville
has now blown up in every. Has it exploded and everyone's
dead? Well, great.
(00:43):
We are here to discuss that crazy one shot that we did that
was a whole lot of fun. Maybe one of the funniest
episodes of the podcast. Definitely one of the funnest
episodes of the podcast. So we've ever.
Done. Yeah, I would say that there's
there's no maybe about it. It was a lot of fun, although it
was it was one I was very anxious for before we did it.
I was really worried that I was just going to like, freeze, you
(01:05):
know? Like they're just going to have
to. I'm just going to come up with
nothing for the character. It's very daunting.
It's kind of a lot of pressure to to to be like, hey, we're
going to do this one shot. It's just kind of like improv.
You just got to come up with stuff on the fly and it's going
to be great that that's essentially what my pitch was to
you when you were like, OK, I think this sounds fine.
(01:27):
I would say for most of this process I was like, I don't see
how this will be good, but I just trust that.
Usually when Kyle is like when you have an idea that you seem
really hooked on and I'm like, Idon't really see it at all.
I usually just go along with it because I know it'll end up
working out in some way. It usually does.
So in this case it did. I would describe that for like
(01:48):
every Destiny Cops episode though.
Like you wrote, I remember specifically you wrote like the
one that Mtash was in and we like filmed it once and it like
it sucked. And I was like, I don't
understand what you're going forat all.
And you had to like have him redo it or something.
I was like, OK, this makes some sense.
Now that you've redone it, I cansee what you were going for.
And it did work out in that instance too.
(02:08):
Yeah, that was that was the one where I was going to have him
get a helium balloon. And yes.
You were going to make him buy ahelium balloon?
He was, he was going to do it and then he, he like went out, I
think he went out to find one and like there was a helium
shortage or something and he could not find a it is.
A finite resource, you know. I I think he had to.
(02:29):
I think about that sometimes. Someday there'll be no helium
left on this planet, you know, it's the days.
Won't know how to make their voices sound high and funny at
parties. No more balloons, just none
balloons. Are there other gases if you put
nitrogen in a balloon? I mean the they are mostly that.
Works out well, right? Let's talk about hydrogen.
(02:54):
I think that'll be good. That's good.
Does nitrogen explode Nitrogen? No, actually nitrogen I only
think of. Course, it probably explodes.
Everything explodes eventually. I don't know if that's.
I mean, oxygen is flammable. We don't put blocks.
Look up Does nitrogen explode? Are the air is mostly nitrogen,
(03:17):
right? It's like 90% nitrogen or
something. Pure nitrogen gas is not
explosive, in fact it's a non flammable SO.
Would pure nitrogen, I just wonder if it's more dense or
less dense than the actual atmospheric air.
And let's see, probably just probably just flow, probably
just falls. To the ground float.
This is really the most important thing that we figure
(03:38):
out what happens when when. Pure nitrogen goes away.
Slightly lighter than air and has a small amount of buoyancy,
but not enough to make a standard balloon float.
So there's the trouble. We have to come up with a new
balloon. This is the most important thing
so that so that we know that ourchildren and grandchildren will
have balloons yes, when that's. The thing that we're, I think
(04:02):
we're worried about leaving behind for them, it's, it's
balloons. What are what are we doing?
Oh, we're doing a chaser episodefor rats versus commoders.
Well. We're no perfect pivot point.
Speaking of our our children, our ancestors, our progeny, the
dingleberries am I. Right.
You know, it's the, the, the, the family that has been wiped
(04:23):
out. Maybe, maybe they I I picture I
picture the dingleberries as having many many.
More, I picture them as a fairlyrobust clan.
I I I figure there were at leastfifty of them sharing like 6
double wide somewhere is how I picture them.
Yeah, I picture the they're likethe facts and and the bear.
I don't know. You've watched most of the bear,
The FAC family, yes. Yeah, I know the FAC family.
(04:47):
There's always, like new facts that are coming in and that's
kind of like the dingleberries to see that could see that.
Gosh. Oh, man.
Well, this is. Yeah.
The prep for this was, boy, I'm not sure how this is gonna this
is gonna go. We had a guest on the podcast we
haven't had before. Daisy.
She was amazing. She was great.
Based on her. Yeah.
(05:08):
Based on her TikTok content thatI'd seen, I knew that she was
gonna be great for it. But that was like an unknown as
well. Just someone that we hadn't
played with before and just this, yeah, crazy one shot that
was like, well, I think it's going to work out fine and be a
lot of fun. And and it did it was it was
(05:29):
what a fun, what a fun recordingto do.
But we can walk through it, go through it as the as the
adventure occurred and happened.It started off in the in the
town, the Commonwealth of Planktonville as as the but the
mayor's son was addressing the crowd, rallying everybody up
(05:49):
because no heroes had arrived and looking for volunteers.
And the four people volunteered were your old lady character
that started us off and tiddly is as a cat character.
I think she. Was the cat I was old Lady
Withers. Tyler was obviously one of the
dingleberries. Dorcas Dingleberry.
I've got it up. This first, OK.
(06:10):
Ginger was tiddly and then Johann von Hepsburg.
Johann von Hapsburg, yes, that was.
I think one of the most the the the one of the things I was
really looking forward to in this was when Brandon Bilworth
slips on the the mossy rainy step and falls.
(06:31):
Like I really wanted to roll enough to have him just die
immediately from that role. Yeah, I could.
I mean, I could tell that was the hope on that.
Just go down right away and really set the tone.
And luckily the tone got set anyway.
I think, you know, like with theexplosion that killed all of our
characters right away, so. Yeah, that was yeah.
(06:55):
Oh, man, I'm just going to laugh.
This is like a we've joked that this was like catharsis for the
DM. Where where I just, I just get
all my plans ruined all the timeby by everybody, by all the
players, which. And then this is just catharsis.
You know, I just got to murder 28 of your characters.
But yeah, it was there was a chance for you guys to save
(07:18):
against that fire explosion, butthree of you failed and.
It was Johann who lived, right, I think.
Yeah, Johann had the Nat 20 on his perception, so he could
smell the natural gas coming andand watch out for it.
I can't remember when so old lady Withers is already gone so
I might as well. I feel when I was old lady
(07:40):
Withers, I feel like I made reference to her husband at some
point. And it was because I was hoping
I knew for this adventure you gave us the the document that we
had was like, we had to roll forhow much health and what type of
damage and like if it was rangedor melee or whatever.
So I knew necrotic was on there.So I was trying to seed the idea
(08:01):
of like her husband early because I wanted him to stumble
in. I talked about this when we
recorded because it never happened, but I wanted him to
have like a gross broken like necrotic foot that he used like
a bone sticking out with necrosis.
I planted some seed for that butnever came to fruition because
the dice wouldn't give me necrotic unfortunately.
(08:22):
Yeah, I don't think anybody rolled Necrotic if I remember,
because Necrotic was one that was like, oh, that'd be fun to
roll and have somebody come downas like, yeah, trying to undead
or like there's like a skeleton that rises from the from the
crypt itself. That's like a skeleton or, you
know, like, you know, that wouldhave been a.
Would have been good. I think you're right though that
(08:43):
it didn't. It didn't come up.
You guys go down into the cryptsand start fighting the start
fighting the rats after immediately having your 3
characters die and then going down and starting to roll and
fighting fighting some rats. This is the beginning of the
editing challenges too, because normally when we do episodes, I
(09:05):
put the names that we're playingabove everybody's characters.
And so for this one, I was like,well, everybody's characters die
all the time and change. So if you're watching, if you
watch the video version, every single time someone dies, I
cross out their name and put thenew one on there.
But when I make the name thing, I don't do that in the video
editing software. I do that in Photoshop.
(09:26):
So I had to make 52 different title cards for that that I
exported. I love that detail though, it
was worth it. It's worth.
Worth it for you? I don't know.
I have no idea how long that actually took you, but worth it
for. Incredibly long time.
It was mostly just going like, keeping track of where like
people who needed to be crossed off in what order and adding
(09:48):
them, you know, it's the only real hard.
It is satisfying at the end whenyou just see a pile of those
like XS behind the names. I messed up at one point and
like forgot to cross somebody off like and did like 15 more.
I was like, I had to go all the way back and redo them to
because the XS would have been wrong on the other people's
names, names or whatever. But it was fun.
(10:08):
It was worth it. I agree.
And I knew I was gonna do that. So when I was editing, I marked
like every time somebody died, which ended up working out too
when we were doing the music andyou were like changing up the
music whenever new people joined.
Yeah. Which was, Yeah, that was fun.
Initially I thought it would be yeah, the the music editing.
I I said, oh, it'll probably be pretty simple, you know, battle
(10:31):
music. I pick one track and then like
as everyone's coming in, I'm like, Oh no, this.
This definitely requires to music changes as these, you
know, different flavors of. Characters because everybody has
such strong individual flavors to them that it's hard to get.
Just like doesn't have the same punch with just generic dungeon
music for like 2 hours you know underneath.
(10:52):
Yes, yeah, like Giuseppe Limon needed to have some Italian
kitchen music behind him as he came in, but that's later.
Right now, are giant rats much less here's a good Tyler asks a
question. Like from Adm perspective, was
balancing stuff even a consideration?
It was. It was actually pretty easy when
(11:14):
I looked at the giant rat stat block.
Giant rat has seven hit points. I know that commoners with your
step blocks, you guys were doingan average of two damage a turn
and and so you know, that would basically take, you know, three
or four hits on this giant rat with an AC of 13.
But the bite attack by the giantrats is an average of five
(11:37):
piercing damage. And if there's two of them, they
get packed tactics. So I knew that like initially,
this first fight was going to have a lot of death and that's
really the extent of what I looked at for this encounter.
Balancing was just OK. The giant rats, they're
defeatable eventually, but but they are doing enough damage
where they're taking people out.I think the main balancing
(12:01):
thing, that decision that was made as part of like, like the
how the mechanics of this would work, death saving throws.
We didn't do death saving throwsfor this because you guys were
just playing as NPC's. I think that it's important for
like a for this style of one shot where you're just trying to
(12:22):
get characters in and out like really rapidly because death
saving throws adds like some complexity to it.
Yeah, it really would have slowed things down to to have
that in there. I think it's a good choice to
get rid of that. I think I may not have thought
of doing that if we hadn't had. When we did the Gladion Theaters
adventure afterwards, we had talked about, I can't remember
(12:46):
if that was on a chaser or not, but I we had talked about how if
I would, if I were to redo Gladion Theaters, I would get
rid of the death saving throws just because that added the
level of complexity to it in that, in that adventure where
it's like, well, people are supposed to be against each
other. And then it.
Yeah. I think like death ceiling,
(13:08):
obviously a great mechanic for when you're playing your normal
adventure and it's like the goalis you don't want any of your
characters to die, you know, like you want to extend the
chances to live. But for this and for gladiators,
both are like, we're trying to kill as many people as possible
of this adventure, basically. Like, yeah, makes sense to get
(13:28):
rid of them I guess, for those sorts of things.
But but yeah, this, this fight was, it was, it was great
because I, I, I, you know, you guys all immediately died.
And then it was like, Johan's still there.
So it's like, OK, Johan goes down with his new group of, of,
of, of friends or commoners. And then we did initiative and,
(13:51):
and the funniest thing was this is when Jimmy Olsen dies, right?
Yeah, I do think it will not. It was, it was, it wasn't Jimmy
Olsen, but it was Jimmy Olsen, but I can't remember what it
was. Pete Olsen.
Pete Olsen. That's right.
Yeah. Runs in.
And I had to have it attack someone.
So I think so. I was like, Scott, here's your
new character and they're gone. That's gone.
(14:15):
Yeah, That's sad. Sad, but you get used to it as
you keep going in this adventure, you know.
But yeah, I was that that both both character 1st 2 characters
did nothing. They both just died immediately
I think that I had. So that's good.
And we also got Bartles of town Fool Tiddly's character that
(14:36):
lasted quite a while. Tiddly had the most long lasting
characters. I think she only had total of.
Total of four, yeah, for her, which was yeah, I was.
I honestly thought when I was editing at one point I was like,
did I miss something? Like she's been alive for so
long as Bartles, but no, she shehung in there.
It was just the dice kept picking Daisy and me to attack I
(14:58):
feel like. That's right.
Yeah. In the beginning I was like
felt. So, yeah, I, I, it was one of
the times where I've like, I waslike considering, do I like have
an attack somebody else? Because I really don't, I don't
change what the dice roll, you know, that's part of the fun for
me. But in this instance, it was
like, here's our new guest on the podcast and I keep rolling
(15:21):
for her to get attacked and having to come up with new
characters. And I was like, oh man, this
feels really bad as like a host,right?
Like, yes, come on to our show, and then you're going to get
singled out and be put in the spotlight the most constantly,
Yeah. I think it evened out for her
near the end by the end, becauseshe had a couple of characters
near the end that were around mywall man stuck around.
(15:42):
Yeah, but but yeah, immediately I was like, this sucks.
Is the the D4 I was rolling justkept rolling for for Daisy?
Yeah, but yeah, the I love Bartles of Town Fools that I
love loved the delivery of of the rat jokes.
I got I got to ask tiddly sometimes.
She did any prep on those jokes or she was just off the Dome
(16:06):
firing off? These thinking, I'm thinking,
thinking I'm actually, yeah, writing them down, like in
between turns. Yeah.
The The funny thing. So eventually in this, she she
like does one and like, it misses.
And I have you and Tyler do the Constitution saving throws,
(16:26):
which in my head, in my head is like, all right, cool.
This is a fun moment for them totake one point of damage from
this. Easy peasy.
It's just like, ah, they get hurt from this joke, this
ricochet of this, like, you know, terrible psychic damage,
and then it kills both of you. Was I coach Carl at that point?
(16:46):
Yeah, you were. It was Coach Carl.
And you're like, you're like Dewey.
I believe Dewey was the sickly one that Tyler rolled that threw
rocks. That you were coaching, Yes.
Wow, All right, both of them. And that coach was literally
just, we sat on the episode, butI had taken dot to Little League
that day and I was literally just basically impersonating the
(17:09):
vibes of one of her Little League coaches so.
It was, it was fantastic. That was like the, Yeah, the the
first character that felt reallyout-of-the-box to me, you know,
and then and then it just, you know, kept getting ridiculous
more and more ridiculous throughall the other characters, too.
(17:30):
Daisy had Bill character. This is one of my favorites.
I love Bill, the setup for Bill was great.
Bill Bill's setup was so funny, him talking to his wife about
how he's retiring soon and then he's just going down to his
normal job with a flashlight doing range radiant damage.
Love Bill Bill was not around for very long.
No, he was not. He didn't last, unfortunately.
(17:54):
Granny Nitzwell was also there. Whose name I didn't know what to
put. They were, I think they were
introduced as Granny Nitwell andthen we're always referred to as
Nitwell or possibly vice versa. And I wasn't sure like that.
One of the names when they were first introduced was different
than how it was said the majority of the time, but I
think I went with Nitswell, which was maybe.
(18:15):
Maybe Nitwell is her name, but everybody refers to her as
Nitswell because she just she knits well and so that's she
just goes by. Both names maybe her first name
is Nitwell and her last name is Nitswell and so people Granny.
Knitwell knits. Well, yeah.
Granny Knitwell knits. Well, Yep, love the shuffling
(18:37):
and the the static electricity shock of that that damage type.
And then Timmy and Doug Dingleberry.
I don't remember duh which one I.
Can't remember every dingleberrythere's there's so many.
I had to text Tyler at one pointbecause I couldn't tell when I
(18:58):
was putting the names if it was dingleberry with some twang or
if it was dangleberry like actual dangle.
So I. Had.
Oh yeah, some of them are Dangleberry, Yeah.
And Fenn Banklin. Fenn Banklin was great.
There's a lot of lightning damage.
I think we had a lot of good amount.
Of lightning we got eels later to Fenn Banklin was fun with
(19:20):
just me. It's just Googling Ben Franklin
quote page and trying to search for any quote that remotely
applied to whatever situation was going on was fun scrambling.
You guys. Felt like in that one, it's just
scrambling. It's my turn.
Ben. Ben Franklin, Look up, Ben
Franklin quotes Quick. I don't know anything about him.
(19:43):
Oh no. The you guys finished up the
giant rats and there were the four chests in the room, one of
which was a mimic that I rolled random for, and it was, it was
Daisy again, wasn't it? No, yes, yes, it was Daisy.
(20:04):
Yes, because it wasn't Tyler forsure, because I remember him
saying, well, that can't happen twice.
I'm going to open his. Yeah, that's right.
So I do think it was poor Daisy who just got the short end
because I don't think I even went to open one.
No, you didn't. Fenn Banklin stood back.
He abstained from greed in this situation.
(20:26):
This is a man dignity. Let me I'm going to pull up the
so that the I wanted to mimic there, but the it's so funny.
These monsters are like, you know, a a giant rat is ACR one
8th 181 over eight 1/8 of ACR is.
(20:47):
A .125 for you decimal enjoyers out there, OK.
Got any decimal enjoyers? Sound off in the comments.
It's like decibels. I want those decibels up for
decimals, everybody. Makes them no.
Anyways, a mimic is ACR 2, so it's like.
(21:10):
So I wanted to mimic there, but yeah, it was the mimic was just.
Designed to be a math at home, that's 16 times as powerful.
Holy smokes. But the mimic does this.
There is a there is a trap to eat one person and then slink
off. Because, you know, think about
it as as a as a commoner, it only has an AC of 12 but has 58
hit points and it's bite attack does average of 7 + 4, you know?
(21:36):
This does tie back into a TTTTTTTTS question that we had
right, didn't we? Very true.
Yes, Yeah, the I guess. This is evidence that I wasn't
wrong on that, but still. Oh well, well, that whole
discussion is it can you successfully try and like find
it in your house and once you find it, can you leave That's.
(21:57):
True. That's true.
That's true. That's what that.
Was so you could. You can still escape it because
it does only have a it's. Really just if it gets a single
opportunity attack off that hitsyour dad though, you know, you
just have to avoid that one attack.
And you're fine. And then you get a was it
$1,000,000? I don't know.
We'll have to we'll. Have to.
You'll find out in the future listener maybe?
(22:18):
Does this go on the Patreon? It does.
This is our first Patreon Chaserepisode.
I don't. Know if it should.
OK. We'll talk about, well, only
because Rats versus Commoners came out before the announcement
of the Patreon. So if you see you got that and
you didn't know, you weren't going to get a chaser for it,
you know? Will not put it on the Patreon.
(22:38):
Yeah, OK. No, you won't.
You get this for free. Way to go you.
Way to go. Yeah.
So the mimic attacks and you guys move on down to the room
with the rope over the over the pit, the deep dark pit where we
had a. Lot of it.
A lot of people that could not pass this thing.
This is one of the puzzles whereI was like, OK, everybody could
(23:00):
just roll over A10 and get and get past it and we just that's
it. Or we spend a lot of time here
and Sky you specifically could not roll.
I only, I only had, I think I only had two people die in the
pit. And basically it was like.
Five. And then you had me.
You were like if or maybe I had three people die.
(23:20):
Maybe Clary Nettle also died in the pit.
I think Fenn Banklin, Clary Nettle.
And then you were like, let's just keep rolling and add up how
many you get. And I had one unnamed make it.
I made it on my 4th roll I thinkis what it was.
Yeah, so the third one was the unnamed The Drifter that came
down. Yeah, just the stranger.
(23:42):
He yeah, that. I'd like to think that was an
estranged dingleberry who had amnesia down there, you know,
and he thought he found his family, then he died.
That's how I'm going to, that's what I'm going to give him
canonically. Having Doug Dingleberry I think
die down there and leave the thependants of the commodites that
(24:04):
gave plus one to attacks and damage.
That was such a that giving the pendants was just like AI felt
like such a middle finger almost.
I'm like, this is going to be gone immediately, you know?
Like it's like, what's the pointof this?
Well, the pendants like if they ended up in the bottom of that
pit, right, so. No, they didn't stay in the
bottom of the pit. No, they didn't because lunch
(24:25):
went down and got them, which was great.
But yeah, that was something where it's like if they would
have died, then your next character could have picked up
the pendant as they like played.You know, we just.
Sort of dropped that as we went.We didn't.
Yeah, both the lunk, yeah, Lunk had them and then after Lunk
died. I think that that was it.
(24:46):
For nobody, yeah, we just forgotto.
I forgot to say, hey, you can pick up those pendants.
As you, I mean, I also didn't ask about it.
I didn't want to be like every character I come down.
I keep you in the wall. I'm going to circle back and
grab those pendants every time if no one.
Else, yeah, it would have been alittle would have felt felt a
little clunky to do that. Yeah, good.
And then you guys got to, you guys got past that and then this
(25:07):
is a point. That's when I'm actually, I
would like to bring up a plot hole, one of my favorite
potholes in this, which is we got past that rope thing and it
killed like 5 people and then we're operating under the
assumption that every other person just makes it through.
Or should there really be like 80 people on the dead
Commonwealth of Planktonville statue because there's so many
unnamed characters that died on the.
(25:28):
Eventually that pit fills up with bodies and so people can
just walk across. Yeah, that was when I was
writing the module for this withthe which the module will be up
on our Patreon. For $5 you can purchase the
module. Run your own.
Rats versus. Commoners.
Yeah, run it yourself. It's APDF.
Probably the easiest D&D thing that you could run with, like,
(25:51):
at a moment's notice, you know? Oh.
Yes, easy, easy any. Friends you.
If you're sitting around with four friends who like D&D, they
don't even have to make characters that you just sit
down and you fucking start random rolling, you know?
Yeah, it's, but that's up on ourPatreon as you don't have to be
a subscriber to buy it. It's there as like extra
content. A la carte.
(26:13):
A la carte de the Yeah. So you guys get to this next
encounter, which when I was doing the module, I was like, Oh
yeah, the the commoners that arerunning down have to get over
the pit. And also you guys are in front
of this puzzle and then there's a swarm of rats behind you.
And so somehow those commoners are getting in to where your
(26:34):
characters are in between there.That's just, it's just working
out. It's just happening.
That's, that's that's how that works.
But. There's a little side door that
we kind of missed, you know, until we got over the whole, oh,
there's a door that just goes around all this that just comes
right here. Oh my bad.
Yeah, they're coming down from the side hallway.
(26:54):
But this is the maybe the only time in the podcast where I
realized that I that I didn't have enough prepared that you
guys were only in this for like an hour.
And the next, the next encounterthat I planned was the last
encounter. And I had this idea of this
little like pressure plate encounter that could happen if I
(27:16):
needed it, but I didn't like write it out or anything.
You guys got to this. And it was only like an hour
into playing. I was like, oh, crap.
I got to like come up with, I have to add more content, which
like never happens on the podcast.
So this whole pressure plate thing, it was, yeah, nothing
that I'd written out, but not truly like on the fly, come up
with a puzzle from scratch. But it was, it was something
(27:39):
that I had a little moment of like not, not panic, not true
panic, but just like, oh crap. Like is that?
Why you made us take that 30 minute break where you were
crying in the corner the whole time during the record.
I don't know what to do. It's just him.
Patreon subscribers you get the the the cut of the cry cut of
(28:01):
would be included with. 30 minutes of crying added back in.
Yeah, that's funny. Oh, my gosh, yeah.
The, this this whole encounter was balanced or not balanced,
but it was just three pressure plates.
Two of them will make your character get incinerated and
(28:22):
you have to roll for a new character.
And then the swarm of rats behind you attacking at the same
time just was going to be this little deathtrap hallway.
And yeah, that was it was good. We overcame it.
Yeah, you guys, you guys rolled the right spot for the I say
(28:43):
rolled because every time you stepped on it, I was rolling AD
3 to see which one was the safe 1.
So like as you stepped into the as whoever stepped in the first
play, they picked the middle one.
I rolled the D3, it rolled A2 safe and then.
And then for the later ones I threw the dead bodies onto the
plates as lunk to figure out what they were at by the end.
(29:09):
But that was a Heckler. Ben was joined at that point.
I like the idea of a psychic range damage guy just being like
Boo and it's pretty fun. Billy the town Smithy who
couldn't hit anything with his hammers at all until the Nat 20
at the end and did like 3 damage.
(29:30):
Fortunately she just. I know.
Played as this guy who hit. She played his characters who
did nothing basically the whole time.
Yeah, couldn't. Couldn't hit anything.
She didn't even know what the damage role was by the at the
end. Do you remember she was like,
what do I roll for damage because I haven't hit anything?
Might have been the first time she did damage.
Was that crip? I don't know.
(29:50):
For three Crip. For three?
Gosh, that's sad. Yes, I had a.
Who else? Who else came in there?
So I would Well for Lunk, I willsay that was me just Googling
Encino man Caveman and his name is Link.
And so I changed it to Lunk. That was the only caveman I
could think of. I knew Tyler at least would
(30:11):
appreciate it when we were doingit.
He. Was great.
He was beefy. He my.
Favorite dingleberry I feel likeis the one that used the the
electric eels but I don't know if he even got to attack.
I just like the idea of the electric eel.
Weirdo. I can't remember when that
dingleberry came up. Yeah, I can't remember if he was
(30:31):
Dylan or Durian Dingleberry. I think maybe Dylan because that
just sounds like more of a the type of kid who's playing with
electric eels to me. I did spell Dylan, Dylan.
So I feel like that's an electric eel kind of that's.
A yeah, that's, yeah, that's thetype of that's the wild card,
(30:52):
Dylan. Exactly.
I got to ask Tyler what his preferred spelling would have
been for that. I guess I didn't check, but he
just felt like a Dylan kind of Dylan.
In the one of the people that just died in the pit was Daisy's
character, Val Thorne, the valiant knight I think, and that
was the drunk Dragonborn that just stumbled and fell in I
(31:13):
think. She also had the snowball fight
kid. Oh yeah.
Yes, because that I think that'severybody's first thought of
like what to do for ranged Cold is snowball, right?
I was kind of happy that I didn't roll that one after that
got picked. So I don't know what else to do
for that. I don't know.
Mr. Freeze comes downstairs. Sure.
(31:37):
Gosh, we had two bills, by the way, because she was tiddly was
Billy the town Smithy? And then Bill was the name of
the guy who said goodbye to his wife.
I realized that was too. I was like, oh, that's kind of I
wonder. Probably why Billy goes.
That's probably why Billy goes by Billy.
Yeah, that makes sense. Doesn't want to be confused.
Doesn't want to get confused with with Bill good the past the
(32:04):
pit you guys leave the pit and go into the final area you pass
the. Pressure plates into the final
area. The portal with the people of
Ratovia. Ratovia.
Ratovia Ratman of Ratovia. But you saw the portal, you saw
(32:25):
the portal on the ground as these rats are coming out of
this tiny portal. And then the rat man squeezes
out. I really thought we were going
to lose at that. Honestly, at that point, I was
like, there's really no way we can win this adventure.
This is how I felt. So yeah, yeah, the the balance
of this encounter is that you can destroy the orb, you can
(32:47):
potentially steal it from the rat man, but a where rat is what
this guy was and there's there'sno defeating the were rat.
The were rat was another CR2 character, 60 HP.
It's he's got 2 attacks which you can use as a scratch or a
hand crossbow, which is average of 6 damage on both.
(33:09):
But like just like would not have been able to, you know,
defeat him. You might have been you.
You very well could have wrestled the wrestle the orb
away from him. Maybe with like everybody's
joint efforts, you know, like all it would take is one of us
gets it and throws it to anotherperson, you know, and then maybe
they can haul with it. But but my my only thought was
(33:32):
definitely attack the crystal thing.
And I love that Mav in the in the species is like, well, what
if the crystals thing that's like stopping the portal from
getting bigger or whatever. I'm like that's so that's
classic Mav overthinking. I'm like, there's no way Kyle
put a crystal on a pedestal nextto this portal in this already
impossible scenario and me breaking the crystal is going to
(33:53):
make it even worse. Like who cares?
Ratovia takes over the world of Ellaria.
You're our home campaign takes place in Ellaria, so it would
have totally wrecked the home campaign.
And you do keep it can with withthe show our home campaign.
Of course, it all ties in. These are kind of not even
(34:14):
writing these these. Things.
No, Ellaria, this world, this isa world where William is from.
This is where you guys do your Arkendale school.
I think of this as a living. So what I'm hearing is I can now
next IRL session have Amper insists that we visit the
Commonwealth of Planktonville and and tie us all into the pot.
(34:37):
Yes, and it is current day therewhere you could see the statues
there. I'll say that because I was
debating on saying, well, what if you guys do make is the
Commonwealth of Planktonville and you meet outside of the town
travelling in the juice, the thethe fruit vendor, Giuseppe Lemon
and you meet some of these characters.
Before but. Unfortunately, before the.
(34:58):
Event It would have to be Giuseppe Lemon Junior.
I was really another thought I had was next time like when we
play next, like have you guys get a letter and it's a letter
from the Commonwealth of Planktonville asking for heroes
to come help them and. Then we find like we find it.
It's like, oh wait, this is an old piece of mail.
It's like a year old piece of junk mail or.
Something you know, and then, yeah, I was thinking of it as
(35:22):
current and then you guys could choose to go and help them or
choose not to and then. Well then if we chose to go and
help them, I guess it would haveto, we would have to get there
and find the statue because likeyou said, it is all Canon.
It is all it's this already happened and I know that Amper
and the group didn't help so right.
Yeah, but but just just for the home world of Ellaria that we
(35:46):
have any one shots and stuff, anything that you do in the
campaign to me is my own fun little playground of a world
that I can build and build all this lore into based on anything
we do here. So it's so I don't have plans to
like always do the one shots forthe podcast in Ellaria, but I
think in the future there probably will be, you know,
(36:09):
little one shots that happen in that world and that's kind of
like a living world a little bit.
So that's mostly mostly just funfor me on that because you know.
Easter eggs just for kind of like Kyle and the like, two
people who play in our home gamewho listen to this podcast.
That's kind of the box we're going for.
Yes. So yeah, big yes, exactly.
(36:36):
You guys get in there, the portal opens, the Rat Men army
is marching through. I yeah, I really thought that
you guys were going to lose at the end.
There was as the Rat Men army was coming in, there was the
kind of fail safe option that's written that was written in
there like there's a crevice with that natural gas coming
out. You could, you could, you know,
(36:57):
explode the whole place and selfsacrifice to to destroy the the
orb and the rat men as they camethrough.
And eventually that's what it leads to is is that occurring?
And in that last one, we had some really good characters come
through. Giuseppe Limonas.
We have discussed many or brought up many times already,
(37:21):
it's squeezing lemons over the over the orb, trying to do acid
damage to it. I don't know how else to do acid
melee damage as like, because inmy mind for all these two, it's
like, I know they're fantastical.
Like they can be anything, but it's also like, well, they're
commoners. So like, I don't want like
somebody who has like acid handsor something, you know, like
(37:41):
that'd be a real powerful thing.It's got to be puny acid.
It's kind of the citric acid. Something like relatively common
yeah versus like, you know a Godin human form showing up and
he's just in his his vessel formout.
That's that's the kind of stuff I would have done as a player is
just like gone way off the rails, I think, but I had a lot
(38:04):
more time to think about the possibilities as the one like
writing it so but. I was expressly forbidden to
think about possibilities. Yes, you are.
I was like characters prep 1 character.
That's it. That's all you get.
If we forgot, I can't. I can't gloss over Monty the
Mime, my other character, that there was somebody who asked
(38:26):
like most disappointing death orsomething like that.
I think it was maybe vanilla in the chaser questions.
Monty the mines are my most disappointing death only because
I acted out his whole like getting dragged away thing and
they didn't actually die. Then he died like after that so
acting screen was unnecessary. Yeah, I think he got blown up in
(38:46):
the explosion as well, but he might have.
Because he was the rat men were just like carrying picked you up
and were carrying Monty out. They didn't like immediately
attack you. I love the idea of doing that
type of damage and having it be this dumb little mime things of.
I just wanted one thing to hit. I wanted that wall when I put up
(39:07):
the wall to try to stop them. I wanted that to work so badly
that I know favorite idea that whole.
Sequence of you putting up the wall.
And then like Dingus Dingleberry, I think possibly,
like he had to make a couple checks to not get hit by an
opportunity attack. Maybe one opportunity attack.
I'm gonna end it. And it hit, and then he died.
(39:28):
I was like, oh man, they're really going to lose.
Yeah, it sure felt like it. And then who is it?
That's was it a dingleberry who ended up saving us in the end?
The most valiant dingleberry? Or was it?
No, it was. Was it tiddly?
The slightly addled Darren Jill.You're right, it might have
been. Who was.
Did you get that? That was supposed to be a pun
(39:49):
that named Darren Jed. No.
Yeah, I had to. I came into Tidley's.
She was streaming and I I jumpedinto her like voice chat, 'cause
I was trying to finish that in the episode.
And I was like, how do you spellDarren Jed?
And she's like, it's a pun. It's a joke.
I was like, what do you mean? She's like, it's deranged.
It's. Supposed I didn't know I was
like what? I did not get that I.
(40:11):
Did not get that at all. I did not get that until until
you saw the text. Yeah.
So it was all the text. I saw it and I was like, oh,
deranged. Got it.
So shout out to Tivoli for that very subtle work on that word
play there. I guess that nobody picked up on
it in the episode, I don't think.
Yeah, because the way, yeah, I spelled it completely different
(40:33):
in my notes. You.
Know I spelled it like Darren, like you know Darren or whatever
is. What I had DARINJEDD, Darren,
Jed and then we also got Caravaggio on that fight.
I forgot about Caravaggio, who Iloved.
Caravaggio Master Splitter no. That was the best part.
(40:55):
That was what sold Caravaggio for me, was that he's.
Running up. Wild that there's a turtle
that's pretty fun anyway, but that they worked in.
Obviously there's a giant rat person here.
They would think it was that. Turtle.
And there's a turtle. You know, this is like D&D race.
Yeah, but yeah, love. Yeah, Caravaggio was really fun.
And then I really, OK, here's mymost disappointing death.
(41:19):
Dirk Dingleberry, Tyler's character, because he described
him as like a real hero looking guy running down.
I really wanted him to save on the saving throw at the end just
so that he could have so so he could have been the the one guy
alive as he comes. Claimed all the glories and all
the everything that happened. Yeah, exactly because he
(41:42):
probably would have just well, no, the the whole statue would
have been made, but but Dirk would have been in the front of
it as the as the true hero at his.
Feet while he's like holding a sword, you know, up high.
There'd be all these people behind him or something.
Yeah. Oh well.
That was well, that's not how itwent down.
(42:02):
Vanilla also asked favorite favorite death.
Not sure which one is my. Honestly I mean my favorite
death is probably the the the Bartels joint killing us.
I feel like that's when Bartels did the joke and you talked
about already. Like killing two of us off of an
allies joke is probably my favorite.
(42:24):
One HP, I think I'm, I think I might like, I think Petey
Olson's death was really funny when it was like, great, he's
dead and like, great, he's dead.You know what we haven't talked
about yet, though? This just popped in my head,
unrelated. It's Tyler and I kept rolling
exactly the same. Like, yeah, five times where we
(42:46):
rolled the same thing. It was very odd.
We rolled the same initiative maybe twice it.
Was like a roll. You had the arranged budgeting
damage that got you the coach and the and the kid and.
We had some, we already had something before that hand and
we definitely shared initiatives.
There was just a lot of a lot ofa lot of lining up in there.
(43:08):
Tyler and I are In Sync. I'm sorry.
Other favorite deaths? Were there any other that come
to mind? Kyle.
I mean, they're all good. That's the thing.
Every single one of them was. So it just feels weird to have a
character die like at all in DNTreally.
It doesn't happen that often. So every single one of them was
(43:29):
just hilarious to me that it's just immediately it happens, you
know, Like, I don't think that Ifeel like Lunk was maybe my
longest lasting guy and he didn't even last that long.
So this was a great time. Yeah, I have You ever, have you
ever had a character, a real character die?
I have not had a real character.Indeed, I don't think so either.
(43:55):
Now that I I'm trying to think back on it.
I guess we. Haven't had a lot I guess if you
count Gladion theaters. Yeah, but I don't because I made
Belk knowing he wasn't going to win, like I knew I was dead.
So I don't really think about that.
In a straight up adventure, though, no, Imtero would have
been the closest. He almost could have died that
(44:18):
one time, that one episode. That's probably the closest I've
ever even really come to death. Yeah, there was, yeah.
That was in the the huge battle where it was like very much a
possibility of things went wrong, that a lot of damage
would have, you know, taken you guys out.
But yeah, so the So going from zero to how many characters did
(44:38):
you have in this? Did you ever write 8 of them?
Yeah, 8 character deaths. Wow.
I guess hooks. Almost died.
He didn't really die, but Hooks is another fake 1.
He was made knowing he was goingto like disappear, you know?
Sorry, just pop back in my head.I'm still trying to think if
there was anybody. I don't think there is.
Kyle, you're the first one to ever kill me.
(45:01):
Wow, it's such an honor I would love to do it again.
Favorite character? I've so many of our favorites.
I'd probably pick Juice up as myfavorite favorite, but there's
like, I feel like a kid like, well, this is my favorite, but
this one's also my favorite and this one's my favorite, you
know? I like Dewey Dingleberry, but I
(45:22):
also like Durian dingleberry andDylan dingleberry and Dorcas
dingleberry. Like all the Dinkleberry.
I mean, I know Bartles is great.I was also.
I don't even have to say Bartlesis my favorite.
Bartles is a favorite for our for Maggie and for many
listeners. I feel like people just love
Bartles. The Yeah I.
Think Bartles is great? Yeah, Bartles.
(45:44):
Bartles is real good. Changes you would make for the
future? Tyler asked if I had to make any
changes to this one. I didn't.
Sometimes when I do the modules I've written, I've written 4
modules. I've went and written one for
DIS Elderly Conduct, Zoonopia, and Wild Love.
Those three are available on Patreon for a collective that
(46:06):
you get all three for $10. There's there's a couple things
in those adventures that I've like, slightly tweaked the
encounters to make it a little bit better than what how I ran
it, but not changing a ton, justmaking it make more sense for a
module. I don't think I did anything for
that for this when I wrote the module.
So I think it's perfect. I think I did a perfect.
(46:29):
Job. I guess if I had to say if I
would change anything I might add like a pressure plate puzzle
probably like 3/4 of the way in to kind of extend it in case
things are going too quickly. That's right, there's that,
There is that. It's that one thing that you
might want to. Add there is the one thing, but
no, I, I think of thing I have after this was done, like the
(46:55):
characters are so memorable for this for me.
Like after we did this, there's a couple days where I just kept
the characters kept popping in my head.
Like I just kept thinking about about like Granny Nitzwell and
stuff. It was just very fun.
So I heard he was like, man, this would be fun to do again
someday. And so I think I've had ideas of
like, you know, things that I would do differently.
(47:18):
I mean, we've talked about possibly the maybe the commoners
go into Retovia for something, or maybe there's a you, you you
had pitched. Maybe there's a flip where the
rat, the rat men have to come into they've.
Got a commoner invasion? Yeah.
Rats versus commoners too. You play as rats.
Yes, they're the, they're the first ones named.
(47:43):
They're the real stars. That's who I want to be, right?
Any other ideas for unique one shots question from Tyler?
We have a we have a running list.
I think of one shot ideas but. Give those away for free.
Come on, we. Don't give them away.
But yeah, there's not one that comes to mind specifically
(48:03):
that's in this style of like meme, meme.
It's. Very unique, basically it's own
system. This one shot, you know, like
it's barely, it's, it's, it's, it's being supported on like the
left pinky bone of D&D. You know, like it's so barely
D&D. Yeah, I would love to do more
(48:24):
like this though. I really had fun with this.
And so more like really dumb concepts that are just a single
episode, I think are. True once I agree.
I mean, I have this is a ton of fun to play and especially I
mean, for me, it's so easy with this specific one since we
weren't allowed to prep or anything like that, you know,
like just for me to show up and play.
(48:46):
So I agree you should do more like these Kyle that are
incredibly easy for me. Yeah.
But I think that brings us to the end of talking about the
episode. What other thoughts, takeaways.
Do you have anything else that we forgot to that forgot to say?
(49:09):
I am. I think I'll make a confession
right now, Kyle. I think we need to delete the
episode and release it again because in good faith I think
there was one time when I knew Irolled the same thing as Tyler
again and I lied about what I rolled one of my.
Characters. Remember what it was.
It's all a farce. It's a Commonwealth.
(49:30):
I'm changing it. The Commonwealth of
Planktonville is now new Ratovia.
The rat men are going to take over Alaria.
We will charge forward, Give allthe humans and all the all the
humans I'm. Sorry, I'm sorry to all the
people of the Commonwealth of Planktonville that I did this.
(49:51):
I got nothing else. It was a great time and I hope
people had fun listening to it. Well cool, me too.
Excellent time. I think this is the time of the
Chaser episode where we usually tease the next adventure.
Yeah, you're right, it is. Kyle.
What's coming up next in the pipeline for the Tall Tale
(50:13):
Tavern of mine? Well, wouldn't you know it, we
actually have a guest here todaythat would like to help with
announcing this. No.
Jesus, Are you ready for a pirate adventure, Scott?
(50:34):
I am a captain. Well, perhaps you'd like to take
a journey. A journey to a world shaped like
a giant bowl of milk. A world of islands made of
toast, pastries, coffee, waffles, and honeycombs.
A world where not only is the land made of food, but so are
the people. Perhaps you'd like to become a
(50:56):
pirate. A pirate in the world of
Ceramica. And we are announcing the
Pirates of Ceramica adventure. This is a pirate adventure that
takes place in the world of Ceramica, which is a giant bowl
of milk, and it's been a very exciting, very fun adventure.
(51:18):
I'm just can, could not be more excited for this one.
We don't have a release date to share yet.
Why? Yet.
It'll be, but it's imminent though.
Yeah, it's it's imminent. You won't have to wait too
terribly long for it. We only have, you know,
recording of the adventures, only two more episodes.
(51:38):
It will be an 8 episode adventure that will be released
weekly when it comes out and that will be a whole lot of fun.
But. But yeah, super excited for that
and. And in the meantime, while
you're waiting for that, if you haven't heard yet, we got a
Patreon going. So go listen to that and
(51:58):
there'll be other content you can listen to while we finish up
the, you know, the prep for Ceramica, the prep for the
release. Yeah, but you've met one NBC and
his name is Captain Spoon Leg, Aman with a wooden spoon for a
leg, a man made out of cornflakes and.
Corn fights with bones. I just think everybody who's
(52:19):
listening should know the food has bones in it and that will be
explored. That will be explored.
The bones are shriveled, the shriveled core of them.
Kind of cool. Well, with that, I think we
should close out the Chaser. Thank you all for listening.
(52:40):
Future Chaser Chasers will be onour Patreon.
Please subscribe. That really helps support our
show. If you would like the modules
for rest for the versus commoners, like I said, it's on
our Patreon to purchase as an extra for $5.
Thank you. Tuesdays are to the for the
artwork. Thank you to Tyler Adelsberger
for the intro music. And with that, we will see you
next time at the Tall Tale Tavern.
Welcome back to the Tall Tale Tavern.
I'm your Tavern master and host Kyle.
I'm here with Scott. We're here for The Chaser
episode 4, Rats versus Commoners.
That was that was the fanfare. Everyone's so excited at home.
That's. That was the town of of the
common, the whole. Town plane.
(00:21):
Cheering as celebrating the lives of those who are lost, the
lives lost to to keep the rat men in Ratovia.
Yeah, it was actually. That noise was the sound of a
gas leak escaping, and the Commonwealth of Planktonville
has now blown up in every. Has it exploded and everyone's
dead? Well, great.
(00:43):
We are here to discuss that crazy one shot that we did that
was a whole lot of fun. Maybe one of the funniest
episodes of the podcast. Definitely one of the funnest
episodes of the podcast. So we've ever.
Done. Yeah, I would say that there's
there's no maybe about it. It was a lot of fun, although it
was it was one I was very anxious for before we did it.
I was really worried that I was just going to like, freeze, you
(01:05):
know? Like they're just going to have
to. I'm just going to come up with
nothing for the character. It's very daunting.
It's kind of a lot of pressure to to to be like, hey, we're
going to do this one shot. It's just kind of like improv.
You just got to come up with stuff on the fly and it's going
to be great that that's essentially what my pitch was to
you when you were like, OK, I think this sounds fine.
(01:27):
I would say for most of this process I was like, I don't see
how this will be good, but I just trust that.
Usually when Kyle is like when you have an idea that you seem
really hooked on and I'm like, Idon't really see it at all.
I usually just go along with it because I know it'll end up
working out in some way. It usually does.
So in this case it did. I would describe that for like
(01:48):
every Destiny Cops episode though.
Like you wrote, I remember specifically you wrote like the
one that Mtash was in and we like filmed it once and it like
it sucked. And I was like, I don't
understand what you're going forat all.
And you had to like have him redo it or something.
I was like, OK, this makes some sense.
Now that you've redone it, I cansee what you were going for.
And it did work out in that instance too.
(02:08):
Yeah, that was that was the one where I was going to have him
get a helium balloon. And yes.
You were going to make him buy ahelium balloon?
He was, he was going to do it and then he, he like went out, I
think he went out to find one and like there was a helium
shortage or something and he could not find a it is.
A finite resource, you know. I I think he had to.
(02:29):
I think about that sometimes. Someday there'll be no helium
left on this planet, you know, it's the days.
Won't know how to make their voices sound high and funny at
parties. No more balloons, just none
balloons. Are there other gases if you put
nitrogen in a balloon? I mean the they are mostly that.
Works out well, right? Let's talk about hydrogen.
(02:54):
I think that'll be good. That's good.
Does nitrogen explode Nitrogen? No, actually nitrogen I only
think of. Course, it probably explodes.
Everything explodes eventually. I don't know if that's.
I mean, oxygen is flammable. We don't put blocks.
Look up Does nitrogen explode? Are the air is mostly nitrogen,
(03:17):
right? It's like 90% nitrogen or
something. Pure nitrogen gas is not
explosive, in fact it's a non flammable SO.
Would pure nitrogen, I just wonder if it's more dense or
less dense than the actual atmospheric air.
And let's see, probably just probably just flow, probably
just falls. To the ground float.
This is really the most important thing that we figure
(03:38):
out what happens when when. Pure nitrogen goes away.
Slightly lighter than air and has a small amount of buoyancy,
but not enough to make a standard balloon float.
So there's the trouble. We have to come up with a new
balloon. This is the most important thing
so that so that we know that ourchildren and grandchildren will
have balloons yes, when that's. The thing that we're, I think
(04:02):
we're worried about leaving behind for them, it's, it's
balloons. What are what are we doing?
Oh, we're doing a chaser episodefor rats versus commoders.
Well. We're no perfect pivot point.
Speaking of our our children, our ancestors, our progeny, the
dingleberries am I. Right.
You know, it's the, the, the, the family that has been wiped
(04:23):
out. Maybe, maybe they I I picture I
picture the dingleberries as having many many.
More, I picture them as a fairlyrobust clan.
I I I figure there were at leastfifty of them sharing like 6
double wide somewhere is how I picture them.
Yeah, I picture the they're likethe facts and and the bear.
I don't know. You've watched most of the bear,
The FAC family, yes. Yeah, I know the FAC family.
(04:47):
There's always, like new facts that are coming in and that's
kind of like the dingleberries to see that could see that.
Gosh. Oh, man.
Well, this is. Yeah.
The prep for this was, boy, I'm not sure how this is gonna this
is gonna go. We had a guest on the podcast we
haven't had before. Daisy.
She was amazing. She was great.
Based on her. Yeah.
(05:08):
Based on her TikTok content thatI'd seen, I knew that she was
gonna be great for it. But that was like an unknown as
well. Just someone that we hadn't
played with before and just this, yeah, crazy one shot that
was like, well, I think it's going to work out fine and be a
lot of fun. And and it did it was it was
(05:29):
what a fun, what a fun recordingto do.
But we can walk through it, go through it as the as the
adventure occurred and happened.It started off in the in the
town, the Commonwealth of Planktonville as as the but the
mayor's son was addressing the crowd, rallying everybody up
(05:49):
because no heroes had arrived and looking for volunteers.
And the four people volunteered were your old lady character
that started us off and tiddly is as a cat character.
I think she. Was the cat I was old Lady
Withers. Tyler was obviously one of the
dingleberries. Dorcas Dingleberry.
I've got it up. This first, OK.
(06:10):
Ginger was tiddly and then Johann von Hepsburg.
Johann von Hapsburg, yes, that was.
I think one of the most the the the one of the things I was
really looking forward to in this was when Brandon Bilworth
slips on the the mossy rainy step and falls.
(06:31):
Like I really wanted to roll enough to have him just die
immediately from that role. Yeah, I could.
I mean, I could tell that was the hope on that.
Just go down right away and really set the tone.
And luckily the tone got set anyway.
I think, you know, like with theexplosion that killed all of our
characters right away, so. Yeah, that was yeah.
(06:55):
Oh, man, I'm just going to laugh.
This is like a we've joked that this was like catharsis for the
DM. Where where I just, I just get
all my plans ruined all the timeby by everybody, by all the
players, which. And then this is just catharsis.
You know, I just got to murder 28 of your characters.
But yeah, it was there was a chance for you guys to save
(07:18):
against that fire explosion, butthree of you failed and.
It was Johann who lived, right, I think.
Yeah, Johann had the Nat 20 on his perception, so he could
smell the natural gas coming andand watch out for it.
I can't remember when so old lady Withers is already gone so
I might as well. I feel when I was old lady
(07:40):
Withers, I feel like I made reference to her husband at some
point. And it was because I was hoping
I knew for this adventure you gave us the the document that we
had was like, we had to roll forhow much health and what type of
damage and like if it was rangedor melee or whatever.
So I knew necrotic was on there.So I was trying to seed the idea
(08:01):
of like her husband early because I wanted him to stumble
in. I talked about this when we
recorded because it never happened, but I wanted him to
have like a gross broken like necrotic foot that he used like
a bone sticking out with necrosis.
I planted some seed for that butnever came to fruition because
the dice wouldn't give me necrotic unfortunately.
(08:22):
Yeah, I don't think anybody rolled Necrotic if I remember,
because Necrotic was one that was like, oh, that'd be fun to
roll and have somebody come downas like, yeah, trying to undead
or like there's like a skeleton that rises from the from the
crypt itself. That's like a skeleton or, you
know, like, you know, that wouldhave been a.
Would have been good. I think you're right though that
(08:43):
it didn't. It didn't come up.
You guys go down into the cryptsand start fighting the start
fighting the rats after immediately having your 3
characters die and then going down and starting to roll and
fighting fighting some rats. This is the beginning of the
editing challenges too, because normally when we do episodes, I
(09:05):
put the names that we're playingabove everybody's characters.
And so for this one, I was like,well, everybody's characters die
all the time and change. So if you're watching, if you
watch the video version, every single time someone dies, I
cross out their name and put thenew one on there.
But when I make the name thing, I don't do that in the video
editing software. I do that in Photoshop.
(09:26):
So I had to make 52 different title cards for that that I
exported. I love that detail though, it
was worth it. It's worth.
Worth it for you? I don't know.
I have no idea how long that actually took you, but worth it
for. Incredibly long time.
It was mostly just going like, keeping track of where like
people who needed to be crossed off in what order and adding
(09:48):
them, you know, it's the only real hard.
It is satisfying at the end whenyou just see a pile of those
like XS behind the names. I messed up at one point and
like forgot to cross somebody off like and did like 15 more.
I was like, I had to go all the way back and redo them to
because the XS would have been wrong on the other people's
names, names or whatever. But it was fun.
(10:08):
It was worth it. I agree.
And I knew I was gonna do that. So when I was editing, I marked
like every time somebody died, which ended up working out too
when we were doing the music andyou were like changing up the
music whenever new people joined.
Yeah. Which was, Yeah, that was fun.
Initially I thought it would be yeah, the the music editing.
I I said, oh, it'll probably be pretty simple, you know, battle
(10:31):
music. I pick one track and then like
as everyone's coming in, I'm like, Oh no, this.
This definitely requires to music changes as these, you
know, different flavors of. Characters because everybody has
such strong individual flavors to them that it's hard to get.
Just like doesn't have the same punch with just generic dungeon
music for like 2 hours you know underneath.
(10:52):
Yes, yeah, like Giuseppe Limon needed to have some Italian
kitchen music behind him as he came in, but that's later.
Right now, are giant rats much less here's a good Tyler asks a
question. Like from Adm perspective, was
balancing stuff even a consideration?
It was. It was actually pretty easy when
(11:14):
I looked at the giant rat stat block.
Giant rat has seven hit points. I know that commoners with your
step blocks, you guys were doingan average of two damage a turn
and and so you know, that would basically take, you know, three
or four hits on this giant rat with an AC of 13.
But the bite attack by the giantrats is an average of five
(11:37):
piercing damage. And if there's two of them, they
get packed tactics. So I knew that like initially,
this first fight was going to have a lot of death and that's
really the extent of what I looked at for this encounter.
Balancing was just OK. The giant rats, they're
defeatable eventually, but but they are doing enough damage
where they're taking people out.I think the main balancing
(12:01):
thing, that decision that was made as part of like, like the
how the mechanics of this would work, death saving throws.
We didn't do death saving throwsfor this because you guys were
just playing as NPC's. I think that it's important for
like a for this style of one shot where you're just trying to
(12:22):
get characters in and out like really rapidly because death
saving throws adds like some complexity to it.
Yeah, it really would have slowed things down to to have
that in there. I think it's a good choice to
get rid of that. I think I may not have thought
of doing that if we hadn't had. When we did the Gladion Theaters
adventure afterwards, we had talked about, I can't remember
(12:46):
if that was on a chaser or not, but I we had talked about how if
I would, if I were to redo Gladion Theaters, I would get
rid of the death saving throws just because that added the
level of complexity to it in that, in that adventure where
it's like, well, people are supposed to be against each
other. And then it.
Yeah. I think like death ceiling,
(13:08):
obviously a great mechanic for when you're playing your normal
adventure and it's like the goalis you don't want any of your
characters to die, you know, like you want to extend the
chances to live. But for this and for gladiators,
both are like, we're trying to kill as many people as possible
of this adventure, basically. Like, yeah, makes sense to get
(13:28):
rid of them I guess, for those sorts of things.
But but yeah, this, this fight was, it was, it was great
because I, I, I, you know, you guys all immediately died.
And then it was like, Johan's still there.
So it's like, OK, Johan goes down with his new group of, of,
of, of friends or commoners. And then we did initiative and,
(13:51):
and the funniest thing was this is when Jimmy Olsen dies, right?
Yeah, I do think it will not. It was, it was, it wasn't Jimmy
Olsen, but it was Jimmy Olsen, but I can't remember what it
was. Pete Olsen.
Pete Olsen. That's right.
Yeah. Runs in.
And I had to have it attack someone.
So I think so. I was like, Scott, here's your
new character and they're gone. That's gone.
(14:15):
Yeah, That's sad. Sad, but you get used to it as
you keep going in this adventure, you know.
But yeah, I was that that both both character 1st 2 characters
did nothing. They both just died immediately
I think that I had. So that's good.
And we also got Bartles of town Fool Tiddly's character that
(14:36):
lasted quite a while. Tiddly had the most long lasting
characters. I think she only had total of.
Total of four, yeah, for her, which was yeah, I was.
I honestly thought when I was editing at one point I was like,
did I miss something? Like she's been alive for so
long as Bartles, but no, she shehung in there.
It was just the dice kept picking Daisy and me to attack I
(14:58):
feel like. That's right.
Yeah. In the beginning I was like
felt. So, yeah, I, I, it was one of
the times where I've like, I waslike considering, do I like have
an attack somebody else? Because I really don't, I don't
change what the dice roll, you know, that's part of the fun for
me. But in this instance, it was
like, here's our new guest on the podcast and I keep rolling
(15:21):
for her to get attacked and having to come up with new
characters. And I was like, oh man, this
feels really bad as like a host,right?
Like, yes, come on to our show, and then you're going to get
singled out and be put in the spotlight the most constantly,
Yeah. I think it evened out for her
near the end by the end, becauseshe had a couple of characters
near the end that were around mywall man stuck around.
(15:42):
Yeah, but but yeah, immediately I was like, this sucks.
Is the the D4 I was rolling justkept rolling for for Daisy?
Yeah, but yeah, the I love Bartles of Town Fools that I
love loved the delivery of of the rat jokes.
I got I got to ask tiddly sometimes.
She did any prep on those jokes or she was just off the Dome
(16:06):
firing off? These thinking, I'm thinking,
thinking I'm actually, yeah, writing them down, like in
between turns. Yeah.
The The funny thing. So eventually in this, she she
like does one and like, it misses.
And I have you and Tyler do the Constitution saving throws,
(16:26):
which in my head, in my head is like, all right, cool.
This is a fun moment for them totake one point of damage from
this. Easy peasy.
It's just like, ah, they get hurt from this joke, this
ricochet of this, like, you know, terrible psychic damage,
and then it kills both of you. Was I coach Carl at that point?
(16:46):
Yeah, you were. It was Coach Carl.
And you're like, you're like Dewey.
I believe Dewey was the sickly one that Tyler rolled that threw
rocks. That you were coaching, Yes.
Wow, All right, both of them. And that coach was literally
just, we sat on the episode, butI had taken dot to Little League
that day and I was literally just basically impersonating the
(17:09):
vibes of one of her Little League coaches so.
It was, it was fantastic. That was like the, Yeah, the the
first character that felt reallyout-of-the-box to me, you know,
and then and then it just, you know, kept getting ridiculous
more and more ridiculous throughall the other characters, too.
(17:30):
Daisy had Bill character. This is one of my favorites.
I love Bill, the setup for Bill was great.
Bill Bill's setup was so funny, him talking to his wife about
how he's retiring soon and then he's just going down to his
normal job with a flashlight doing range radiant damage.
Love Bill Bill was not around for very long.
No, he was not. He didn't last, unfortunately.
(17:54):
Granny Nitzwell was also there. Whose name I didn't know what to
put. They were, I think they were
introduced as Granny Nitwell andthen we're always referred to as
Nitwell or possibly vice versa. And I wasn't sure like that.
One of the names when they were first introduced was different
than how it was said the majority of the time, but I
think I went with Nitswell, which was maybe.
(18:15):
Maybe Nitwell is her name, but everybody refers to her as
Nitswell because she just she knits well and so that's she
just goes by. Both names maybe her first name
is Nitwell and her last name is Nitswell and so people Granny.
Knitwell knits. Well, yeah.
Granny Knitwell knits. Well, Yep, love the shuffling
(18:37):
and the the static electricity shock of that that damage type.
And then Timmy and Doug Dingleberry.
I don't remember duh which one I.
Can't remember every dingleberrythere's there's so many.
I had to text Tyler at one pointbecause I couldn't tell when I
(18:58):
was putting the names if it was dingleberry with some twang or
if it was dangleberry like actual dangle.
So I. Had.
Oh yeah, some of them are Dangleberry, Yeah.
And Fenn Banklin. Fenn Banklin was great.
There's a lot of lightning damage.
I think we had a lot of good amount.
Of lightning we got eels later to Fenn Banklin was fun with
(19:20):
just me. It's just Googling Ben Franklin
quote page and trying to search for any quote that remotely
applied to whatever situation was going on was fun scrambling.
You guys. Felt like in that one, it's just
scrambling. It's my turn.
Ben. Ben Franklin, Look up, Ben
Franklin quotes Quick. I don't know anything about him.
(19:43):
Oh no. The you guys finished up the
giant rats and there were the four chests in the room, one of
which was a mimic that I rolled random for, and it was, it was
Daisy again, wasn't it? No, yes, yes, it was Daisy.
(20:04):
Yes, because it wasn't Tyler forsure, because I remember him
saying, well, that can't happen twice.
I'm going to open his. Yeah, that's right.
So I do think it was poor Daisy who just got the short end
because I don't think I even went to open one.
No, you didn't. Fenn Banklin stood back.
He abstained from greed in this situation.
(20:26):
This is a man dignity. Let me I'm going to pull up the
so that the I wanted to mimic there, but the it's so funny.
These monsters are like, you know, a a giant rat is ACR one
8th 181 over eight 1/8 of ACR is.
(20:47):
A .125 for you decimal enjoyers out there, OK.
Got any decimal enjoyers? Sound off in the comments.
It's like decibels. I want those decibels up for
decimals, everybody. Makes them no.
Anyways, a mimic is ACR 2, so it's like.
(21:10):
So I wanted to mimic there, but yeah, it was the mimic was just.
Designed to be a math at home, that's 16 times as powerful.
Holy smokes. But the mimic does this.
There is a there is a trap to eat one person and then slink
off. Because, you know, think about
it as as a as a commoner, it only has an AC of 12 but has 58
hit points and it's bite attack does average of 7 + 4, you know?
(21:36):
This does tie back into a TTTTTTTTS question that we had
right, didn't we? Very true.
Yes, Yeah, the I guess. This is evidence that I wasn't
wrong on that, but still. Oh well, well, that whole
discussion is it can you successfully try and like find
it in your house and once you find it, can you leave That's.
(21:57):
True. That's true.
That's true. That's what that.
Was so you could. You can still escape it because
it does only have a it's. Really just if it gets a single
opportunity attack off that hitsyour dad though, you know, you
just have to avoid that one attack.
And you're fine. And then you get a was it
$1,000,000? I don't know.
We'll have to we'll. Have to.
You'll find out in the future listener maybe?
(22:18):
Does this go on the Patreon? It does.
This is our first Patreon Chaserepisode.
I don't. Know if it should.
OK. We'll talk about, well, only
because Rats versus Commoners came out before the announcement
of the Patreon. So if you see you got that and
you didn't know, you weren't going to get a chaser for it,
you know? Will not put it on the Patreon.
(22:38):
Yeah, OK. No, you won't.
You get this for free. Way to go you.
Way to go. Yeah.
So the mimic attacks and you guys move on down to the room
with the rope over the over the pit, the deep dark pit where we
had a. Lot of it.
A lot of people that could not pass this thing.
This is one of the puzzles whereI was like, OK, everybody could
(23:00):
just roll over A10 and get and get past it and we just that's
it. Or we spend a lot of time here
and Sky you specifically could not roll.
I only, I only had, I think I only had two people die in the
pit. And basically it was like.
Five. And then you had me.
You were like if or maybe I had three people die.
(23:20):
Maybe Clary Nettle also died in the pit.
I think Fenn Banklin, Clary Nettle.
And then you were like, let's just keep rolling and add up how
many you get. And I had one unnamed make it.
I made it on my 4th roll I thinkis what it was.
Yeah, so the third one was the unnamed The Drifter that came
down. Yeah, just the stranger.
(23:42):
He yeah, that. I'd like to think that was an
estranged dingleberry who had amnesia down there, you know,
and he thought he found his family, then he died.
That's how I'm going to, that's what I'm going to give him
canonically. Having Doug Dingleberry I think
die down there and leave the thependants of the commodites that
(24:04):
gave plus one to attacks and damage.
That was such a that giving the pendants was just like AI felt
like such a middle finger almost.
I'm like, this is going to be gone immediately, you know?
Like it's like, what's the pointof this?
Well, the pendants like if they ended up in the bottom of that
pit, right, so. No, they didn't stay in the
bottom of the pit. No, they didn't because lunch
(24:25):
went down and got them, which was great.
But yeah, that was something where it's like if they would
have died, then your next character could have picked up
the pendant as they like played.You know, we just.
Sort of dropped that as we went.We didn't.
Yeah, both the lunk, yeah, Lunk had them and then after Lunk
died. I think that that was it.
(24:46):
For nobody, yeah, we just forgotto.
I forgot to say, hey, you can pick up those pendants.
As you, I mean, I also didn't ask about it.
I didn't want to be like every character I come down.
I keep you in the wall. I'm going to circle back and
grab those pendants every time if no one.
Else, yeah, it would have been alittle would have felt felt a
little clunky to do that. Yeah, good.
And then you guys got to, you guys got past that and then this
(25:07):
is a point. That's when I'm actually, I
would like to bring up a plot hole, one of my favorite
potholes in this, which is we got past that rope thing and it
killed like 5 people and then we're operating under the
assumption that every other person just makes it through.
Or should there really be like 80 people on the dead
Commonwealth of Planktonville statue because there's so many
unnamed characters that died on the.
(25:28):
Eventually that pit fills up with bodies and so people can
just walk across. Yeah, that was when I was
writing the module for this withthe which the module will be up
on our Patreon. For $5 you can purchase the
module. Run your own.
Rats versus. Commoners.
Yeah, run it yourself. It's APDF.
Probably the easiest D&D thing that you could run with, like,
(25:51):
at a moment's notice, you know? Oh.
Yes, easy, easy any. Friends you.
If you're sitting around with four friends who like D&D, they
don't even have to make characters that you just sit
down and you fucking start random rolling, you know?
Yeah, it's, but that's up on ourPatreon as you don't have to be
a subscriber to buy it. It's there as like extra
content. A la carte.
(26:13):
A la carte de the Yeah. So you guys get to this next
encounter, which when I was doing the module, I was like, Oh
yeah, the the commoners that arerunning down have to get over
the pit. And also you guys are in front
of this puzzle and then there's a swarm of rats behind you.
And so somehow those commoners are getting in to where your
(26:34):
characters are in between there.That's just, it's just working
out. It's just happening.
That's, that's that's how that works.
But. There's a little side door that
we kind of missed, you know, until we got over the whole, oh,
there's a door that just goes around all this that just comes
right here. Oh my bad.
Yeah, they're coming down from the side hallway.
(26:54):
But this is the maybe the only time in the podcast where I
realized that I that I didn't have enough prepared that you
guys were only in this for like an hour.
And the next, the next encounterthat I planned was the last
encounter. And I had this idea of this
little like pressure plate encounter that could happen if I
(27:16):
needed it, but I didn't like write it out or anything.
You guys got to this. And it was only like an hour
into playing. I was like, oh, crap.
I got to like come up with, I have to add more content, which
like never happens on the podcast.
So this whole pressure plate thing, it was, yeah, nothing
that I'd written out, but not truly like on the fly, come up
with a puzzle from scratch. But it was, it was something
(27:39):
that I had a little moment of like not, not panic, not true
panic, but just like, oh crap. Like is that?
Why you made us take that 30 minute break where you were
crying in the corner the whole time during the record.
I don't know what to do. It's just him.
Patreon subscribers you get the the the cut of the cry cut of
(28:01):
would be included with. 30 minutes of crying added back in.
Yeah, that's funny. Oh, my gosh, yeah.
The, this this whole encounter was balanced or not balanced,
but it was just three pressure plates.
Two of them will make your character get incinerated and
(28:22):
you have to roll for a new character.
And then the swarm of rats behind you attacking at the same
time just was going to be this little deathtrap hallway.
And yeah, that was it was good. We overcame it.
Yeah, you guys, you guys rolled the right spot for the I say
(28:43):
rolled because every time you stepped on it, I was rolling AD
3 to see which one was the safe 1.
So like as you stepped into the as whoever stepped in the first
play, they picked the middle one.
I rolled the D3, it rolled A2 safe and then.
And then for the later ones I threw the dead bodies onto the
plates as lunk to figure out what they were at by the end.
(29:09):
But that was a Heckler. Ben was joined at that point.
I like the idea of a psychic range damage guy just being like
Boo and it's pretty fun. Billy the town Smithy who
couldn't hit anything with his hammers at all until the Nat 20
at the end and did like 3 damage.
(29:30):
Fortunately she just. I know.
Played as this guy who hit. She played his characters who
did nothing basically the whole time.
Yeah, couldn't. Couldn't hit anything.
She didn't even know what the damage role was by the at the
end. Do you remember she was like,
what do I roll for damage because I haven't hit anything?
Might have been the first time she did damage.
Was that crip? I don't know.
(29:50):
For three Crip. For three?
Gosh, that's sad. Yes, I had a.
Who else? Who else came in there?
So I would Well for Lunk, I willsay that was me just Googling
Encino man Caveman and his name is Link.
And so I changed it to Lunk. That was the only caveman I
could think of. I knew Tyler at least would
(30:11):
appreciate it when we were doingit.
He. Was great.
He was beefy. He my.
Favorite dingleberry I feel likeis the one that used the the
electric eels but I don't know if he even got to attack.
I just like the idea of the electric eel.
Weirdo. I can't remember when that
dingleberry came up. Yeah, I can't remember if he was
(30:31):
Dylan or Durian Dingleberry. I think maybe Dylan because that
just sounds like more of a the type of kid who's playing with
electric eels to me. I did spell Dylan, Dylan.
So I feel like that's an electric eel kind of that's.
A yeah, that's, yeah, that's thetype of that's the wild card,
(30:52):
Dylan. Exactly.
I got to ask Tyler what his preferred spelling would have
been for that. I guess I didn't check, but he
just felt like a Dylan kind of Dylan.
In the one of the people that just died in the pit was Daisy's
character, Val Thorne, the valiant knight I think, and that
was the drunk Dragonborn that just stumbled and fell in I
(31:13):
think. She also had the snowball fight
kid. Oh yeah.
Yes, because that I think that'severybody's first thought of
like what to do for ranged Cold is snowball, right?
I was kind of happy that I didn't roll that one after that
got picked. So I don't know what else to do
for that. I don't know.
Mr. Freeze comes downstairs. Sure.
(31:37):
Gosh, we had two bills, by the way, because she was tiddly was
Billy the town Smithy? And then Bill was the name of
the guy who said goodbye to his wife.
I realized that was too. I was like, oh, that's kind of I
wonder. Probably why Billy goes.
That's probably why Billy goes by Billy.
Yeah, that makes sense. Doesn't want to be confused.
Doesn't want to get confused with with Bill good the past the
(32:04):
pit you guys leave the pit and go into the final area you pass
the. Pressure plates into the final
area. The portal with the people of
Ratovia. Ratovia.
Ratovia Ratman of Ratovia. But you saw the portal, you saw
(32:25):
the portal on the ground as these rats are coming out of
this tiny portal. And then the rat man squeezes
out. I really thought we were going
to lose at that. Honestly, at that point, I was
like, there's really no way we can win this adventure.
This is how I felt. So yeah, yeah, the the balance
of this encounter is that you can destroy the orb, you can
(32:47):
potentially steal it from the rat man, but a where rat is what
this guy was and there's there'sno defeating the were rat.
The were rat was another CR2 character, 60 HP.
It's he's got 2 attacks which you can use as a scratch or a
hand crossbow, which is average of 6 damage on both.
(33:09):
But like just like would not have been able to, you know,
defeat him. You might have been you.
You very well could have wrestled the wrestle the orb
away from him. Maybe with like everybody's
joint efforts, you know, like all it would take is one of us
gets it and throws it to anotherperson, you know, and then maybe
they can haul with it. But but my my only thought was
(33:32):
definitely attack the crystal thing.
And I love that Mav in the in the species is like, well, what
if the crystals thing that's like stopping the portal from
getting bigger or whatever. I'm like that's so that's
classic Mav overthinking. I'm like, there's no way Kyle
put a crystal on a pedestal nextto this portal in this already
impossible scenario and me breaking the crystal is going to
(33:53):
make it even worse. Like who cares?
Ratovia takes over the world of Ellaria.
You're our home campaign takes place in Ellaria, so it would
have totally wrecked the home campaign.
And you do keep it can with withthe show our home campaign.
Of course, it all ties in. These are kind of not even
(34:14):
writing these these. Things.
No, Ellaria, this world, this isa world where William is from.
This is where you guys do your Arkendale school.
I think of this as a living. So what I'm hearing is I can now
next IRL session have Amper insists that we visit the
Commonwealth of Planktonville and and tie us all into the pot.
(34:37):
Yes, and it is current day therewhere you could see the statues
there. I'll say that because I was
debating on saying, well, what if you guys do make is the
Commonwealth of Planktonville and you meet outside of the town
travelling in the juice, the thethe fruit vendor, Giuseppe Lemon
and you meet some of these characters.
Before but. Unfortunately, before the.
(34:58):
Event It would have to be Giuseppe Lemon Junior.
I was really another thought I had was next time like when we
play next, like have you guys get a letter and it's a letter
from the Commonwealth of Planktonville asking for heroes
to come help them and. Then we find like we find it.
It's like, oh wait, this is an old piece of mail.
It's like a year old piece of junk mail or.
Something you know, and then, yeah, I was thinking of it as
(35:22):
current and then you guys could choose to go and help them or
choose not to and then. Well then if we chose to go and
help them, I guess it would haveto, we would have to get there
and find the statue because likeyou said, it is all Canon.
It is all it's this already happened and I know that Amper
and the group didn't help so right.
Yeah, but but just just for the home world of Ellaria that we
(35:46):
have any one shots and stuff, anything that you do in the
campaign to me is my own fun little playground of a world
that I can build and build all this lore into based on anything
we do here. So it's so I don't have plans to
like always do the one shots forthe podcast in Ellaria, but I
think in the future there probably will be, you know,
(36:09):
little one shots that happen in that world and that's kind of
like a living world a little bit.
So that's mostly mostly just funfor me on that because you know.
Easter eggs just for kind of like Kyle and the like, two
people who play in our home gamewho listen to this podcast.
That's kind of the box we're going for.
Yes. So yeah, big yes, exactly.
(36:36):
You guys get in there, the portal opens, the Rat Men army
is marching through. I yeah, I really thought that
you guys were going to lose at the end.
There was as the Rat Men army was coming in, there was the
kind of fail safe option that's written that was written in
there like there's a crevice with that natural gas coming
out. You could, you could, you know,
(36:57):
explode the whole place and selfsacrifice to to destroy the the
orb and the rat men as they camethrough.
And eventually that's what it leads to is is that occurring?
And in that last one, we had some really good characters come
through. Giuseppe Limonas.
We have discussed many or brought up many times already,
(37:21):
it's squeezing lemons over the over the orb, trying to do acid
damage to it. I don't know how else to do acid
melee damage as like, because inmy mind for all these two, it's
like, I know they're fantastical.
Like they can be anything, but it's also like, well, they're
commoners. So like, I don't want like
somebody who has like acid handsor something, you know, like
(37:41):
that'd be a real powerful thing.It's got to be puny acid.
It's kind of the citric acid. Something like relatively common
yeah versus like, you know a Godin human form showing up and
he's just in his his vessel formout.
That's that's the kind of stuff I would have done as a player is
just like gone way off the rails, I think, but I had a lot
(38:04):
more time to think about the possibilities as the one like
writing it so but. I was expressly forbidden to
think about possibilities. Yes, you are.
I was like characters prep 1 character.
That's it. That's all you get.
If we forgot, I can't. I can't gloss over Monty the
Mime, my other character, that there was somebody who asked
(38:26):
like most disappointing death orsomething like that.
I think it was maybe vanilla in the chaser questions.
Monty the mines are my most disappointing death only because
I acted out his whole like getting dragged away thing and
they didn't actually die. Then he died like after that so
acting screen was unnecessary. Yeah, I think he got blown up in
(38:46):
the explosion as well, but he might have.
Because he was the rat men were just like carrying picked you up
and were carrying Monty out. They didn't like immediately
attack you. I love the idea of doing that
type of damage and having it be this dumb little mime things of.
I just wanted one thing to hit. I wanted that wall when I put up
(39:07):
the wall to try to stop them. I wanted that to work so badly
that I know favorite idea that whole.
Sequence of you putting up the wall.
And then like Dingus Dingleberry, I think possibly,
like he had to make a couple checks to not get hit by an
opportunity attack. Maybe one opportunity attack.
I'm gonna end it. And it hit, and then he died.
(39:28):
I was like, oh man, they're really going to lose.
Yeah, it sure felt like it. And then who is it?
That's was it a dingleberry who ended up saving us in the end?
The most valiant dingleberry? Or was it?
No, it was. Was it tiddly?
The slightly addled Darren Jill.You're right, it might have
been. Who was.
Did you get that? That was supposed to be a pun
(39:49):
that named Darren Jed. No.
Yeah, I had to. I came into Tidley's.
She was streaming and I I jumpedinto her like voice chat, 'cause
I was trying to finish that in the episode.
And I was like, how do you spellDarren Jed?
And she's like, it's a pun. It's a joke.
I was like, what do you mean? She's like, it's deranged.
It's. Supposed I didn't know I was
like what? I did not get that I.
(40:11):
Did not get that at all. I did not get that until until
you saw the text. Yeah.
So it was all the text. I saw it and I was like, oh,
deranged. Got it.
So shout out to Tivoli for that very subtle work on that word
play there. I guess that nobody picked up on
it in the episode, I don't think.
Yeah, because the way, yeah, I spelled it completely different
(40:33):
in my notes. You.
Know I spelled it like Darren, like you know Darren or whatever
is. What I had DARINJEDD, Darren,
Jed and then we also got Caravaggio on that fight.
I forgot about Caravaggio, who Iloved.
Caravaggio Master Splitter no. That was the best part.
(40:55):
That was what sold Caravaggio for me, was that he's.
Running up. Wild that there's a turtle
that's pretty fun anyway, but that they worked in.
Obviously there's a giant rat person here.
They would think it was that. Turtle.
And there's a turtle. You know, this is like D&D race.
Yeah, but yeah, love. Yeah, Caravaggio was really fun.
And then I really, OK, here's mymost disappointing death.
(41:19):
Dirk Dingleberry, Tyler's character, because he described
him as like a real hero looking guy running down.
I really wanted him to save on the saving throw at the end just
so that he could have so so he could have been the the one guy
alive as he comes. Claimed all the glories and all
the everything that happened. Yeah, exactly because he
(41:42):
probably would have just well, no, the the whole statue would
have been made, but but Dirk would have been in the front of
it as the as the true hero at his.
Feet while he's like holding a sword, you know, up high.
There'd be all these people behind him or something.
Yeah. Oh well.
That was well, that's not how itwent down.
(42:02):
Vanilla also asked favorite favorite death.
Not sure which one is my. Honestly I mean my favorite
death is probably the the the Bartels joint killing us.
I feel like that's when Bartels did the joke and you talked
about already. Like killing two of us off of an
allies joke is probably my favorite.
(42:24):
One HP, I think I'm, I think I might like, I think Petey
Olson's death was really funny when it was like, great, he's
dead and like, great, he's dead.You know what we haven't talked
about yet, though? This just popped in my head,
unrelated. It's Tyler and I kept rolling
exactly the same. Like, yeah, five times where we
(42:46):
rolled the same thing. It was very odd.
We rolled the same initiative maybe twice it.
Was like a roll. You had the arranged budgeting
damage that got you the coach and the and the kid and.
We had some, we already had something before that hand and
we definitely shared initiatives.
There was just a lot of a lot ofa lot of lining up in there.
(43:08):
Tyler and I are In Sync. I'm sorry.
Other favorite deaths? Were there any other that come
to mind? Kyle.
I mean, they're all good. That's the thing.
Every single one of them was. So it just feels weird to have a
character die like at all in DNTreally.
It doesn't happen that often. So every single one of them was
(43:29):
just hilarious to me that it's just immediately it happens, you
know, Like, I don't think that Ifeel like Lunk was maybe my
longest lasting guy and he didn't even last that long.
So this was a great time. Yeah, I have You ever, have you
ever had a character, a real character die?
I have not had a real character.Indeed, I don't think so either.
(43:55):
Now that I I'm trying to think back on it.
I guess we. Haven't had a lot I guess if you
count Gladion theaters. Yeah, but I don't because I made
Belk knowing he wasn't going to win, like I knew I was dead.
So I don't really think about that.
In a straight up adventure, though, no, Imtero would have
been the closest. He almost could have died that
(44:18):
one time, that one episode. That's probably the closest I've
ever even really come to death. Yeah, there was, yeah.
That was in the the huge battle where it was like very much a
possibility of things went wrong, that a lot of damage
would have, you know, taken you guys out.
But yeah, so the So going from zero to how many characters did
(44:38):
you have in this? Did you ever write 8 of them?
Yeah, 8 character deaths. Wow.
I guess hooks. Almost died.
He didn't really die, but Hooks is another fake 1.
He was made knowing he was goingto like disappear, you know?
Sorry, just pop back in my head.I'm still trying to think if
there was anybody. I don't think there is.
Kyle, you're the first one to ever kill me.
(45:01):
Wow, it's such an honor I would love to do it again.
Favorite character? I've so many of our favorites.
I'd probably pick Juice up as myfavorite favorite, but there's
like, I feel like a kid like, well, this is my favorite, but
this one's also my favorite and this one's my favorite, you
know? I like Dewey Dingleberry, but I
(45:22):
also like Durian dingleberry andDylan dingleberry and Dorcas
dingleberry. Like all the Dinkleberry.
I mean, I know Bartles is great.I was also.
I don't even have to say Bartlesis my favorite.
Bartles is a favorite for our for Maggie and for many
listeners. I feel like people just love
Bartles. The Yeah I.
Think Bartles is great? Yeah, Bartles.
(45:44):
Bartles is real good. Changes you would make for the
future? Tyler asked if I had to make any
changes to this one. I didn't.
Sometimes when I do the modules I've written, I've written 4
modules. I've went and written one for
DIS Elderly Conduct, Zoonopia, and Wild Love.
Those three are available on Patreon for a collective that
(46:06):
you get all three for $10. There's there's a couple things
in those adventures that I've like, slightly tweaked the
encounters to make it a little bit better than what how I ran
it, but not changing a ton, justmaking it make more sense for a
module. I don't think I did anything for
that for this when I wrote the module.
So I think it's perfect. I think I did a perfect.
(46:29):
Job. I guess if I had to say if I
would change anything I might add like a pressure plate puzzle
probably like 3/4 of the way in to kind of extend it in case
things are going too quickly. That's right, there's that,
There is that. It's that one thing that you
might want to. Add there is the one thing, but
no, I, I think of thing I have after this was done, like the
(46:55):
characters are so memorable for this for me.
Like after we did this, there's a couple days where I just kept
the characters kept popping in my head.
Like I just kept thinking about about like Granny Nitzwell and
stuff. It was just very fun.
So I heard he was like, man, this would be fun to do again
someday. And so I think I've had ideas of
like, you know, things that I would do differently.
(47:18):
I mean, we've talked about possibly the maybe the commoners
go into Retovia for something, or maybe there's a you, you you
had pitched. Maybe there's a flip where the
rat, the rat men have to come into they've.
Got a commoner invasion? Yeah.
Rats versus commoners too. You play as rats.
Yes, they're the, they're the first ones named.
(47:43):
They're the real stars. That's who I want to be, right?
Any other ideas for unique one shots question from Tyler?
We have a we have a running list.
I think of one shot ideas but. Give those away for free.
Come on, we. Don't give them away.
But yeah, there's not one that comes to mind specifically
(48:03):
that's in this style of like meme, meme.
It's. Very unique, basically it's own
system. This one shot, you know, like
it's barely, it's, it's, it's, it's being supported on like the
left pinky bone of D&D. You know, like it's so barely
D&D. Yeah, I would love to do more
(48:24):
like this though. I really had fun with this.
And so more like really dumb concepts that are just a single
episode, I think are. True once I agree.
I mean, I have this is a ton of fun to play and especially I
mean, for me, it's so easy with this specific one since we
weren't allowed to prep or anything like that, you know,
like just for me to show up and play.
(48:46):
So I agree you should do more like these Kyle that are
incredibly easy for me. Yeah.
But I think that brings us to the end of talking about the
episode. What other thoughts, takeaways.
Do you have anything else that we forgot to that forgot to say?
(49:09):
I am. I think I'll make a confession
right now, Kyle. I think we need to delete the
episode and release it again because in good faith I think
there was one time when I knew Irolled the same thing as Tyler
again and I lied about what I rolled one of my.
Characters. Remember what it was.
It's all a farce. It's a Commonwealth.
(49:30):
I'm changing it. The Commonwealth of
Planktonville is now new Ratovia.
The rat men are going to take over Alaria.
We will charge forward, Give allthe humans and all the all the
humans I'm. Sorry, I'm sorry to all the
people of the Commonwealth of Planktonville that I did this.
(49:51):
I got nothing else. It was a great time and I hope
people had fun listening to it. Well cool, me too.
Excellent time. I think this is the time of the
Chaser episode where we usually tease the next adventure.
Yeah, you're right, it is. Kyle.
What's coming up next in the pipeline for the Tall Tale
(50:13):
Tavern of mine? Well, wouldn't you know it, we
actually have a guest here todaythat would like to help with
announcing this. No.
Jesus, Are you ready for a pirate adventure, Scott?
(50:34):
I am a captain. Well, perhaps you'd like to take
a journey. A journey to a world shaped like
a giant bowl of milk. A world of islands made of
toast, pastries, coffee, waffles, and honeycombs.
A world where not only is the land made of food, but so are
the people. Perhaps you'd like to become a
(50:56):
pirate. A pirate in the world of
Ceramica. And we are announcing the
Pirates of Ceramica adventure. This is a pirate adventure that
takes place in the world of Ceramica, which is a giant bowl
of milk, and it's been a very exciting, very fun adventure.
(51:18):
I'm just can, could not be more excited for this one.
We don't have a release date to share yet.
Why? Yet.
It'll be, but it's imminent though.
Yeah, it's it's imminent. You won't have to wait too
terribly long for it. We only have, you know,
recording of the adventures, only two more episodes.
(51:38):
It will be an 8 episode adventure that will be released
weekly when it comes out and that will be a whole lot of fun.
But. But yeah, super excited for that
and. And in the meantime, while
you're waiting for that, if you haven't heard yet, we got a
Patreon going. So go listen to that and
(51:58):
there'll be other content you can listen to while we finish up
the, you know, the prep for Ceramica, the prep for the
release. Yeah, but you've met one NBC and
his name is Captain Spoon Leg, Aman with a wooden spoon for a
leg, a man made out of cornflakes and.
Corn fights with bones. I just think everybody who's
(52:19):
listening should know the food has bones in it and that will be
explored. That will be explored.
The bones are shriveled, the shriveled core of them.
Kind of cool. Well, with that, I think we
should close out the Chaser. Thank you all for listening.
(52:40):
Future Chaser Chasers will be onour Patreon.
Please subscribe. That really helps support our
show. If you would like the modules
for rest for the versus commoners, like I said, it's on
our Patreon to purchase as an extra for $5.
Thank you. Tuesdays are to the for the
artwork. Thank you to Tyler Adelsberger
for the intro music. And with that, we will see you
next time at the Tall Tale Tavern.
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