A Geek History of Time - Episode 96 - Edition Wars Part II

Episode Date: March 6, 2021

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me though, and I support numbers with those who love me. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid it right through the bar. Oh god, I'm sorry. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage and high coup. How do you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you know what I'm saying?

We had the sexual revolution. It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh, come on. Do you get over it? And I don't understand what the book is. It's a spoiler. Agra has no business being that big.

With the cultists, it's what we all do. This is a key history of time. We connect here to the real world. My name is Ed Blayon, I'm an elementary teacher here in northern California. Currently doing my job over the internet, as capable as I know how. And who are you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony.

I'm a Latin teacher up here in Northern California, and I have been sandbagging since March 13th of last year, baby. Nobody can tell what those kids have learned ever. Yeah, I, you know what? I didn't want to admit it, but now that you have, I feel like my, my sense of honor requires that I actually say, yeah, me too. Yeah, I've, I've been absolutely just like not doing my job at all ever.

Picking grades at random, just giving away grades, making sure that students lose as much learning as possible. I've actually taught them wrong math using my Latin class as a platform for that. Oh, good one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I'm trying to do my best to teach them about devil worship and to tie into class episode. Oh, right.

Yeah, good. Yeah, no, in my case, I've just started drinking it like, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, in my case, I've just started drinking it like 10 a.m. daily. You should do it in front of them. I find that that's good modeling. You know, you know, who says I haven't? Good point.

Good point. You know, so. And of course, you know, for those of you who are new to the show, this is our patented sarcasm in action right there. As dry as Ed's martini at 10 in the morning. At well, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't get the vodka out until at least 11. Okay.

Well, it says bitter as it says bitter is the vermouth that we whisper over it. There we go. And you need to just whisper. Yeah. Too much vermouth. Yeah. I do miss mash for that.

Like they used to have such great things. Like give me the driest martini. I just want you to whisper the word for a move over the gin. My favorite part though was that some of that dialogue was great. Oh, it's so good. My favorite part though is all the different times that Potter would just like, you know, horse hockey, meadow muffins, beaver biscuits, you know, shit like that, it's just so fun. Oh yeah, that's amazing. So, yeah. We're continuing our dive into the development

of Dungeons & Dragons and along the way, we're going to talk about what turned into the edition wars. I move here that we do not call this a dive, but in fact a delve. Seconded, I have the motion carries. There you go. However, the motion is not encumbered because the motion has a good carrying capacity. This is true. Yes.

As a high strength score. Yes. Yes. And I just, I have to say this, and it's totally unrelated to what we're talking about. But of course, you know, as you can now tell, we are, of course, both teachers. And right now, we're both stressed out about what's going to

happen with, you know, when and how we're going to have to go back to work in person. My board last night before deciding that we were going to go back basically as soon as our county goes into the red tier. they had a six minute back and forth over whether a member of the board could introduce a second motion while the first motion was being debated or whether the second motion counted as a friendly amendment. Couldn't they just ask the person suggesting it if it was a friendly amendment. Couldn't they just ask the person suggesting it

if it was a friendly amendment? He wasn't sure which applied. I can see like taking a recess till you could figure that out. Like, yeah, well, in any event, it was, it was, it would have been comedic if it weren't for the fact that watching it the whole time, I was gritting my teeth going fucking vote like just get to the fucking vote. So anyway, sorry.

It's fine. I just realized we added a fourth board to the list of boards I need to go yell at. I've started using the phrase, do I need to put my yelling shoes on? And I don't know why because I don't need shoes to yell. shoes on and I don't know why because I don't need shoes to yell. But you know, if you've got good, if you've got good, good, good lumbar support, it makes a difference. So anyway, we left off last time, talking about, you know, what, what dominant mask culture. Hang on one second. Your board had a guy not sure if he could give a friendly amendment to, okay, cool. I get that.

Our board had a guy suggest a motion, ask for a second, and then they talked right past him as though he wasn't there. Wow. Yeah. Like, so first off, apologies to my neighbors for how you loud I was yelling. Wow. Yeah. So first off, apologies to my neighbors for how loud I was yelling about that. And not even because I cared about one where actually I did agree with his motion, but more importantly, he's the only black male member of our board.

Are they fucking kidding? Of course I'm not kidding. She's because the the president who left my board and made her bones be crushed. Um, she made her blade ship and chatter. Yes. Uh, may she see herself for who she is. Uh, but I know I was that was mean. Um, but uh, she left and the wish version of her is now in charge. Really, like we lost Karen, but we kept Joyce, you know, like it's yeah, but she talked right past the dude and I'm like, what are you doing? Like, oh, I was mad. So there you go.

All right. All right. So yeah. So. 47, go ahead. Not to worry. So we were talking about, or I was talking about, and you were, you know, elucidating,

and insisting on making, you know, pimpin' eight easy puns, about satanic panic and fear of the occult and this whole lunatic mass hysteria that happened in the late 70s, into well into the 80s. You know, that led to parent groups being formed that were you know worried about gents and dragons You know there was there was some police detective from I don't remember where flyover state Who wound up making kind of a second career out of you know Publishing a pamphlet about the dangers of of dungeons and dragons role-playing. And of course it was full of bullshit like yeah like like I remember reading a couple of pages of it as a 15 year old because it had been out for a number of years by that time.

And looking at it going he's never read one of the rule books. Like, so you're kind of rules loyering a continent. There's, well, yeah, you know, but like, but like, it's really clear, he's never actually like witness to gaming session. He's never read any of the source books. There's just so much of this that is fabricated nonsense. And, and, you know, so, so we had, we had that going on, and that lingered like as a stigma around the hobby for a long time. Yeah. And I think, depending on what part of the country you were in, probably affected how bad it was, where I was, it was definitely there. You definitely

heard people make remarks occasionally, but it wasn't like you didn't actually have people try to try to show up to like save your soul because they heard you were playing the game. Like it wasn't that bad, but it was definitely there. I'm sure in parts of the Bible belt, it was a lot worse. Actually up in Alaska, apparently, it was so bad that it interfered with the folk music scene. Um, yeah, it was, it was weird, uh, because there were some people who like refused to believe it. And there are others who like were, don't know taken by that and they were

upset that people were trying to save their souls so you had jewel denial singing Nice. Thank you. I yeah, I twigged to that one literally a split instant before you, before you dropped it. Yeah, good days are. Yeah, well, you know. So you have this, you have this just crazy nut bar lunacy going on. Mm-hmm.

But at the same time, and this is really where I left off, if you look at popular entertainment from the early 80s, I'm just gonna mention a few things here. So X-caliber gets made in 81. And I know somebody's... Back when Patrick Stewart was bald, oh wait. Wait, yeah.

Back when Patrick Stewart was early in Oh wait. Yeah. Back when Patrick Stewart was, you know, early middle age. Yeah. Um, but like I know I'm going to get somebody going, well, you know, that's that's an Arthurian movie. No, it's a D&D movie. It's sword and sorcery. It's it's a it's a sword and sorcery adaptation of the Arthurian legend. Absolutely. You can't you you know you will not change my mind don't try So that was 81 mm-hmm. We've already talked about Conan the barbarian mm-hmm 82 beastmaster 82 dark Dark crystal 82 mm-hmm Crawl 80.

Oh God, that movie. They, okay, they called the goddamn thing a glaive. I'm not that big. I'm not as, I'm certainly not as big a sword nerd and snob like you. Yes, but you can't call a throwing star, which is the size of your head, a Glave like there are so many things wrong with just that alone never mind the

Dutch musket approach to energy weapons that the bad guys had weapons that the bad guys had. I'm sorry, Dutch musket is a new one on me. Okay, you know, the Dutch army when they had the muskets that were basically clubs that could shoot once. Oh, yeah, those are the energy weapons that the bad guys use. Oh, yeah. Then dude has a glaive, but it's not a glaive. It is the size of a hub cap and it like has little things that cheek kind of come out, right? It's not a glaive and also what the shiitleically controlled, right.

And it's at the same time that they're like fetishizing the shit out of ninjas, but Let's make it like the Magnum Colt 45 version of a ninja's throwing star because it's a throwing star But we'll call it a glaive and then you'll only use it once to cut through a wall Further with that's all it was used for. Like if I recall. And now in fairness, it was awesome because it brought us Liam Neeson. Yes. And it had the creepiest looking Cyclops ever. Who yeah, some of the some of the effect work in that movie was like remarkably good for what a effect work in that movie was like remarkably good for what a what a

Kind of crummy overall film. Yeah, like the set design was good like when they were going through the swamp of sadness where our text died Um, I really like away Sorry to this world the movie for you But like how people's eyes went completely black. That was that was a creepy shit. That was cool. Oh, yeah. And you had like you had the bumbling wizard who I always wanted to make that character of like, you know, wild magic, but scroll magic, you know, and I loved the interplay between him and the cyclops, who was super tall. And his name was like one syllable. And and then the other dude is like, you know, had a name with blah, blah, blah, and it was just that,

well, big people just need a little name. You know, I really, there were things I liked about it, but you can't call a throwing star that for some reason, you've decided to increase by 300%. A glaive. And turn into a switchblade. Yeah. He's switchblade throwing star for doing size the size of a citron hub cap for doing drywall work. Admittedly, it's magical drywall, right? I mean, you know, true. Yeah, true. Come on. Good point.

Yeah, no. There were great many things, deeply, deeply wrong with that movie, but the aesthetic of it was. Oh, Sword and Sorcery, absolutely. Like, like, amazing. I showed my kids a beastmaster, by the way. Oh, really? I did, yeah.

They liked it. Julia immediately wanted to play a ranger. Well, yeah. Yeah. I really? I did. Yeah. They liked it. Julia immediately wanted to play a ranger. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, come on. Yeah. So let's see, I got to crawl. And then of course, never ending story where our tax actually does die. Was 84. Conan, the destroyer was 84 and then Lady Hawk in 85 and Labyrinth in 86. I'm not even mentioning Willow, which was. That's going to come a little later. 88. Yeah.

Yeah. So, which is, I think, honestly, the apex of those kinds of movies, because it completely created a world, because I mean, it's George Lucas. That's what he does. So now many elements of that world were cribbed like Hulk Loth from Star Wars. Oh, fully. But you know still. So that that that's what was going on in cinema.

That was that was like there was this explosion of sword and sorcery fantasy films. And you only mentioned the good ones really? Oh yeah, no I didn't get into it, but I didn't even get to hawk this layer. Or Lady Hawk. I thought I thought I thought I'd get to hawk. Oh you did, you did, I'm sorry, yeah, you did say that. And Lady Hawk had its flaws, but it also had an amazing 80s soundtrack. It did, and it also have a sword that shot out at people.

Or is that a different movie? That's a different movie. Oh, okay. I don't think that was Lady Hawk. And I would also point out that you mentioned the good ones and the good ones included crawl Yeah, there was a lot of shit. Did you mention red Sonya because I think as a world that shit was great Even as a plot honestly My kids won't be listening to this anytime soon, but I've totally cribbed that

plus the Jason Mahmoas Conan as the plot for their D&D game Nice. Yeah, okay, that works. But like I mean that that movie was was stick and schlock and stuff like that But it's still further that world Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, no and when a lot of them had in common, like crawl, for example, had amazing world building, but like no plot. Yeah. Or there was one, but it was kind of feeble.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And so there's this weird skits of frenty kind of thing going on in the popular imagination. And you know, the, the sword and sorcery stuff is very much like as we talked about in, in our episodes, talking about Conan the barbarian and Robert E. Howard, the movie of Conan is emblematic of the hyper-masculine ideals that are going on. Yes. And you see in nearly every one of the movies I just mentioned,

never ending story, maybe not, but like practically all the rest of them. There's a very strong, you know, the hero is a dude, and there's this very, very traditional idea of, you know, how what his role is as the hero. Yes. Okay, labyrinth, sorry, labyrinth is the other exception. No, but by and large, that's an easier story to tell because Wimpin' ain't easy. Sorry, yeah, but by and large that's an easier story to tell because

Wimpin ain't easy That that one that one hurt that one truly hurt. So, but there's this again the the quote unquote traditional masculine ideal in several of these cases literally blown massively out of proportion. Yes. Look at the you aren't. You know with with this very kind of, you know, patriarchalist outlook on power structures and how everything works and all this. So it's fantasy, but it's fantasy with this very traditionalist kind of outlook.

And a toxic one at that. At a timer, we didn't have the word for that. Well, yeah, because again, it was the water we were swimming in. So we didn't even think that could be a thing. And so we're taking comfort in escapism that reinforces these traditional ideas, which by the way, ties in really well to what you pointed out in this episode about no fault divorce and single moms being a thing in a big way. know there's there's a there's this this weird stew in the zit guys going on that that directly affected the development of Dungeons dragons because the development of the second edition

of AD&D started in 1987. Okay. Now Gary Iaxe had left TSR in 86 over major, major business disagreements with other members of the board. The company in 85 had wound up falling into a massive financial crisis. And the publication of Unearthed Arcana was his way of pulling the company out of that. Okay. Unearthed Arcana sold enough copies that they were able to make enough money off of it to pay off a lot of their bills. There was other stuff to happen, but Unearthed Arcana was a huge big deal there. And so he wound up buying back a majority share of shares the company and and did all this stuff. But then realized that his position just was not going to be sustainable. And so he essentially let himself be bought out and he left. Okay. And so that was an 86. Now he had been planning on doing a second edition of AD&D previously.

And his plan had been, it's just going to be again, a consolidation. We're going to take all the stuff that we've put out in these other supplements in the Monster Manual too and all those other stuff. we're going to consolidate those into a new rules set that is going to be the players handbook, DMG monster manual that we're just going to tie it all together. What it wound up turning into was a huge revamp and a big part of that revamp was to move away from the negative publicity that the game had garnered from, you know, Jack checked, you know, dungeons and whatever it was tracked, which, you know, plenty of people are going to are going to recognize me talking about even though I can't remember the title right now. And, and, you know, the

negative, just a bullshit negative, negative stories that have been told about the game, they consciously moved away from it in a bunch of ways. Mm-hmm. And I remember, I remember this happening because of course in 87 when this process started, I was 12. Okay.

And D&D was my hobby. Like, that was it. Right. Like now, now I have way too many hobbies to devote enough time to any one of them to be very good at very many of them. But, you know, you were the kid who knew shit about D&D. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that was, that was my thing. Um, and so I, as I mentioned in our last episode, I spent a lot of allowance money on buying drag in magazine every month. And there was a lot of backing and forething about we're going to put out a second edition of the game.

And you know, people writing in letters to the editors, to the staff of T.S. are saying whatever you do, don't do this thing. Please don't kill off this class. Please don't whatever. Wow. And... But hang on. This reminds me of that guy who lost his 43rd level wizard or whatever it was, can't you just keep playing the the

class? Like you see behind you. You see behind me, right? You see that entire bookcase filled with Star Wars books. Yeah. None of them are canon anymore for a fictional world that was created in the 70s that I grew up loving. They're not canon anymore because another company bought them. And when that other company bought the entirety of Star Wars, every page in every one of those books immediately went blank. Oh no, they didn't, because they're my fucking books. Like, I can read them anytime I want to.

I don't get it. Okay, yeah. I mean, and again, I can't. You are. Yeah. It is a, it is a bizarre mindset. And here's the deal. I'm going to cop to a little bit of this myself.

And there is, and like, I'm totally fine going and playing a second edition now that we're in fifth edition. I'm total like right now, my wife and I are playing once a month in a second edition game that is being run by the same guy who is my DM and college that I told you about in the last episode. Hi Ryan, how you doing? I gotta say, I am insanely jealous that you have a spouse who actually buys into it, is sticking with it. And like that, I don't know,

there's something really, like both of my ex-wives tried to play to their credit. They absolutely tried to play. And I was grateful that they attempted, but we also both knew that they didn't want to go on with it. And that was perfectly fine. You don't have to have the same interest as your spouse, that's cool.

But how fucking rad is it that your wife is so thoroughly investing in you that she's doing that and probably finding the joy in that? That's really cool, man. Oh yeah, no, we're having a lot of fun with it. My character, I'm playing a cleric for only the second time in my role playing career.

And the biggest thing I'm having fun with is the fact that my character has already decided he's madly in love with her character. And she does not have the time of day for him. So you guys are really just like playing as though you were in high school? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because yeah, because we've determined that had we met when we were when we were that age, I was way too much of a nerd and she was a total social butterfly.

So I just would not have rated. So thank God we met far later in life. So, but they they're backing before things. Please don't kill off this plan. Yeah, there's there's there's there's there's this there's this consternation within the community about you know what what what is the new game going to look like? What are you going to do to it? Because they said, from the outset, the developers, the guys who were writing it, a Zeb Cook being the main force behind it, was very clear about the fact that there's going to be some changes made and there's going to be some stuff that's going to go away. Because the game's

gotten kind of clunky and bloated and we're going to do some streamlining and that led to like a flood of letters going to Dragon magazine don't kill X class and I actually vividly, vividly remember the editorial response in one episode in one one issue of the magazine was was titled quote don't kill x end quote where where cook went through and said okay look you know a cavalier really isn't that different from a fighter. Right. Which hurt me to my core because the character that I had been playing for two years at that point was a cavalier. Hang on one sec.

Cavalier reminds me. Did you mention when you were talking about popular history, the cartoon? No, I didn't like how it how did we both miss the cartoon that I've shown my daughter and son in its entirety and and was literally named for the game. Yeah, like and they remember they were developing an action figure series for it to us. And there was that weird fish fish finned guy in his helmets. And he was wearing like basically something to protect his shoulders. But then he was naked. And then he had pants. Don't you mock war duke. Okay. War duke. Yes. Don't you even we do

not we do not minimize the bad ass or he that is the 70s metal cover. Yes of The Warduke. No, I I liked him. I thought he was right. Okay. I liked his accent when he came walking in He's like well, is this a party? I see before me Warduke Come on dog. Why don't you come on down with me? I'll smother you with all kinds of weird jelly that tastes like salt. That's right, I will.

Marma, Duke. Okay. Okay. That one didn't. Not as well. Yeah. Yeah. You remember when Jim Varney was doing it, though?

And he was, no. I'm waiting. No, what I mean Verne. Just just yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no loved Cavaliers, you played them for two years, and they just cut it and they were just Cavalier about it. Yeah, actually, yes, a little bit. I mean, not not into it. They were like, we understand this is, this is, you know, a thing, but in the new edition, that's not how this is going to work. And we're going to drill that part of your memory out of all of your heads. Yeah, yeah. of all of your heads. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and the thing is, what I was trying to get around to a minute ago, but we got distracted from was there is this attachment to the idea that whatever the current iteration of the rules set is the official one and there and therefore somehow it is the legitimate one.

And if you're not playing that one, it somehow feels lesser, lesser off. That's what's weird to me. And it doesn't make any sense. Like I fully recognize that it's that it's silly. Mm-hmm. But it's there. And for a lot of people who are really invested in the game, in the hobby, that was a real thing. Now I will go on where it comes from or what it's rooted in But it's but it's it's it is it is that That attachment to the idea of legitimacy

That is the real source of the heat that we wind up seeing in another couple of additions when we really see. I think I think the ugliest period of the edition wars. Now, I will say this. I, when you told me you're playing a second-ed game, I kind of mocked that because I'm sitting there going, why would you play second-ed when fifth-ed is right there? Now, the reason I mock that though is not because, oh this is new, therefore it's more legitimate. It's this did away with all the problems that were built into that that we didn't realize until we found new additions. So for me, it's a mockery of why are you doing the impractical thing. Now having said that, I stand hard for the West End games version

of Star Wars because I think it's the most Star Wars-y Star Wars game there is, except for Fantasy Flight games is version, where you have dice pools and stuff like that, because not because of the dice pools, I think that's kind of ridiculous, but, and that's largely I don't understand the system, but the way that people play it, it's much more of a cooperative role playing game

and it's not as adversarial. And I think that's even more Star Wars-y. But the mathematics and the use of the attributes for the Weg version of Star Wars, the D6 version, make the most Star Wars-y sense because the ones that came after quite frankly were trying to D&D star wars. Yes, they were.

They were. Like explicitly. Yeah. And it was trying, it was wizards of the coast who were going to get to in a minute, trying to take star wars and apply the D20 system to, because that was their gaming license. And yeah, and it just, and I had a problem with that. I played it a couple of times. I mean, it was Star Wars, so I had fun,

but it just never, it was, oh, I can't do this special power yet. Why not? Oh, cause you're a consular and you're only a third level consular. So you have to wait so that unlocks and I'm like, this is not Star Wars. like that's not how that works That's not that's not how this operates you know and at the same time I I think too much of that still exists in the latest fantasy fight games version Because it does still rely on levels

Yeah, and I I don't think levels exist in Star Wars. And by the way, by the way, that's one of the elements that we didn't come up with as a defining characteristic of D&D. Oh my God, the last episode. So D&D. But character levels are a huge thing. Well, no wonder like we took it completely for granted

because it is, yeah, wow, okay. So anyway, yeah, I stand hard for the one I stand hard for and I's teasing you for the one I teased you for, but not because I'm a traditionalist and not because I'm a hipster about it, because I go in two different directions on that, right? I'm like, no, this one that was made in like the late 80s and this one that was made just two years ago. I'm going in two different directions, but they both

are for the same reason because it comes back to practicality. Yeah. And that's a logical pragmatic way of approaching it, but what we know from being fans and from being surrounded by other nerds is so many of our fellow nerds are not. True. A lot of pragmatic about these kinds of things. They're very deep emotional kind of issues tied up in this stuff. So there was this huge consternation within the D&D community about what is second edition going to look like oh god. And then it came out, it was released in 89. And the biggest change is wound up being the streamlined classes, they eliminated a bunch of special edge classes. Barbarians went away, Cavaliers went away. Assassins disappeared. And a big portion of the stuff that went away

was to respond to negative publicity. As I've said a couple of times now, Ben. Right. now been right the assassin the assassin class specifically got next. Mm-hmm. Half works as a player race were eliminated. Devils got renamed. What were they? The plane the plane they existed the set of planes they existed strong were still the nine hells but now they were the botezou. exists, we're still the nine hells, but now they were the Bataezu. Demons became the Tenari. This is also the first time we see anybody mentioning the blood war between lawful evil and chaotic evil outer plane or entity is fighting for domination of the lower portion of the outer planes, which became a huge part of the lore of the game forever afterward.

And the artwork got changed. The neck-edness and the, Frank Frisette-esque pen-up-looking elements of artwork got taken out and it got cleaned up and directed at a younger audience. So now it's being sold directly marketed and sold at teens rather than largely at adults. Now teens or preteens? Early teens.

Okay. Now what year is this? 89. Interesting. And, um, tonally, there was, they eliminated a lot of the moral ambiguity that had been involved in, in the tone of, uh, first edition 80 andD, and they focused an awful lot more on themes of heroism, cooperation, the Gygaxian idea of the DM being the antagonist to the other players was significantly softened or done away with. And they introduced the Thaco, which is still a divisive term. In AD&D, first edition, there was a table that you rolled on. And you rolled a D20 and

you came up with whatever your your two hit total was. And you looked on the table, let's see what armor class you would hit. Now what's important about that, what's important about that table is on that table, 20, wound up taking up five or six spots. So if you rolled a ninth, for example, if you were a first level fighter and you rolled a modified 19, you'd hit a number class of one. Okay. If you were a first level fighter and you've got to modify 20, you'd hit everything down to like an armor class negative four or negative five with lower numbers in first edition 18, and of course being better. Right. Those are tougher to hit. Those are tougher to hit.

So if you got them, if you got a 20, you made a huge jump in what you hit. And so the table was not strictly straight up like mathematics. They simplified that to turn it into the number two hit AC zero. You would roll and add up all your bonuses and then compare that to your number two hit AC zero, do the math and figure out what armor class you would hit. Now having lived for more of my life without Thaco than with Thaco, it seems way overwrought and overly complex in a way that does not benefit the game, the players, or the story.

Now having said that, it was Thaco, was a simplification of what had come before, and what had come before was perfectly adequate at that time. Yes. Yeah. So, so this this, this, the Thaco and the classes getting killed off. The streamlining and simplification of a lot of the rules set. And the and the change in tone led to this, this really being the first place that there was kind of a schism within the fandom. Like there were people who walked away and said, I'm not buying any of this stuff. This is bullshit.

I'm walking away. And so this was a fracturing point, if you want to call it that within the community, but we didn't have the internet. And so the people that said, I'm walking away, well, either they walked away and everybody in the group said, yeah, okay, we're just gonna stick with plan first edition and we're good. Or they had to talk with their friends who were like, no, we actually like the changes to the rules set better. And let's figure out how to house rules stuff. We don't like about it or whatever.

Right. And so it didn't turn into, there was not a forum or a milieu in which it could turn into a religious schism. Right. I like this better and your mom should die. Yeah, basically. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, my friends and I, who, you know, had been playing the first edition of the game since we were nine or ten. So overall, we'd been playing it five or six years. Sure. Well, four or five years depending on which of us you're talking about, we wound up adopting it with the verb.

Like I was disappointed that Cavaliers went away, but I looked at the rest of the rules and I was like, no, I really like this. I think this is an improvement. And this is the edition of the game that I have the most hours with. From 14, from 14 up through the end of my college days. This was the edition of my college days. This was the addition that I was playing. Now, I'm going to challenge that just a little bit. Do you think that if 5e had come out when you were 14,

that that would then have taken the most of your hours of play? Or if Pathfinder had come out at that time, because from 14 through the end of your college days that's A who it was aimed at, B think about leisure time, like and think about like if you aim it at the 14 year old they're going to be loyal customers for quite some time. And then at the end of your college days you're going to have harder time finding games and players and stuff like that. So, oh yeah. Okay, so it's not by virtue of... I don't say that.

I don't say what I'm... When I say that, it's the version of the game I have the most hours with. I'm not saying that as like an endorsement, I'm just stating the facts of this. This was the addition that I wound up. This is the one that made the biggest imprint on my life. Sure. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm actually, well, we'll get into my opinions about editions later on. So the second edition players' handbook was my biggest birthday present for my 14th birthday. birthday present for my 14th birthday. And I'm trying to remember, yeah, no, my, my, my, my, here's the

all. So, so what's, what's, what I find funny about this in in retrospect is so many parents were so freaked out by their kids playing Dungeons and Dragons. My mother was of the opinion that, okay, look, if you're here, with all of your friends sitting around our dining room table from seven o'clock, when everybody gets here, right, until you all, you know, curl up in sleeping bags at two in the morning. You're not doing drugs. You're not out on the street. You're not getting into trouble. Whatever stupid adolescent boy sexist in the way only teenage know teenage boys can be. If there are girls there I want to do

them. I mean like whatever noddingness you're up to in your head. I know you're not doing anything that you're going to wind up in jail or dead from. Right. And my dad was born two decades or more two early to have really gotten away with being a nerd, but he would have been one if he'd been born later. So he looked at it was like, okay, wait, so explain to me how this works. Nice. Oh, all right, that's pretty cool. And that was basically it.

Like, I was so lucky to have parents who looked at it and were like, look, we know you're not getting into trouble. Like, whatever, you know, I mean, the biggest, the biggest trouble that we could have gotten into would have been because one of the friends that I was playing with, his mom would, when we were over at his house, we loved going over to his house because we'd get over there, his mom would order pizza for all of us,

and then she would go out looking for a replacement for my friend's dad who she had divorced. That's when we were, we were in elementary school, and so we'd have the house to ourselves, you know, we can be as loud as we wanted to yeah, we still we still weren't going out anywhere Doing anything right the trail you're still safe Yeah, just about your teenage teenage boys left unsupervised in the house so like you know And you know, it's the conversation I've had with my mom about that as an adult

kind of funny because she's been like, yeah, you know, if I'd been thinking about it more, I might have volunteered her house more often than his. Right. You know, but otherwise, meh. Play it on, yeah. Yeah. And my first, my first ex wife, her, her her mom so my first mother-in-law She said the same thing about D&D because the way I met my first ex-wife was her brother

Was a good friend of mine who played D&D with with us when I was again 18, you know, and he had this whole world Which I recently just found by the way Yeah, it was kind of cool. I was able to share some cool stuff with my daughter about it but Her comment was the same. She even had parents are like, how can you have them do that? She's like, I know where they are. Yeah. And now you know, your kid is over here too. So you're good too. You're welcome. You know, and it was a real short story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's as simple as that. Mm-hmm. So yeah So for my 14th birthday, I got the the you know basic rule books for second edition AT&D

Mm-hmm, and my friends and I had a combination gaming session and Conan the Barbarian watch party. Oh, yeah And and root beer floats because you, you know, hell, yeah. It was pretty cool. And in retrospect, the only part of that that my parents probably should have been concerned about was some of the scenes in Conan the Barbarian, because we actually got a videotape version instead of the TV version. Hell, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, my folks went to bed and we were like, oh wait, we haven't seen these scenes before yep. Oh, wiping. Oh, okay Okay, thank you sandal Bergman. Yeah, yeah, so And and so role-playing as a genre of hobby expanded dramatically in the 90s so yes to dramatically in the 90s. So second 18 is 89. And then in the 90s, it all exploded. My friends and I cycled through playing D&D,

playing Cyberpunk, and then Cyberpunk 2020, when it came out, with... GERPs. We never got into GERPs. I played around a lot with character creation with grips, but my friends were never interested enough to actually try the game out. Sure. But yes. And then the world of darkness games showed up when I was in high school.

And of course, we also had a campaign we played for about a year and a half. It was a Mecton campaign. Oh, Mecton data. Yeah, you still have really fun memories of, um, friend of the show, Bishop, if you ever comes on here, we'll have to talk about, um, some of the stuff you got up to. I'm sorry. How much plastic explosive did you use?

Dot dot dot. Um, and so, you know, the genre use? Not, not, not. And so, you know, the genre as a whole wound up getting a lot more diverse. There were a lot of different kinds of games. Mechton Zeta is about as different from D&D mechanically, thematically, like in so many ways. I mean, almost as you can get. Yeah.

And overall, there was a trend toward more complex themes, more adult themes, gritty or kind of darker themes, and like especially the World of Darkness series, which I think really marked an inflection point in the hobby overall. World of Darkness was really deeply very thoughtful and explored some really deep themes. And if you really had a committed group who weren't just like caught up in being as emo as they could get, there was a lot of stuff you could really get into there. That's grist for another episode. But in this expanding market, TSR, which of course, gagax it left, as I mentioned back in 86, TSR fell back into

trouble. Without going into too much detail, they made less than great marketing decisions, they cannibalized their own product by just printing too much stuff. And so they fell back into a hole. And in 1997, they got bought, oh, I wasards of the coast had been a nobody. Who are these guys up in the Pacific Northwest? They make a card game. And the thing is that card game made them a lot of money. Card game like canasta or

like magic the gathering. I've heard of that. Yes. Yeah. You you being being a nerd, it's almost impossible that you wouldn't have. Yeah. And and that wound up and magic the gathering

is is in many ways kind of a Dungeons and Dragons in that before magic the gathering collectible card games weren't really a thing Magic was the first one that that gained any kind of major following and it wound up spawning an entire genre of game. Like now there are game stories you can go into now and 80% of their business is collectible card games.

And there's a whole separate game ecosystem for CCGs and it's a thing. Well, okay, so in some ways it sounds like the perfect marriage because you had TSR, which had been created out of whole cloth in many ways. And it wedged its way into a market, created a niche where none had existed previously. And then you have wizards of the coast that did the exact same thing and made a lot more money. You know, it did the same thing, but it was neon turquoise and purple because it was the 90s. purple because it was the 90s. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. So they wound up buying the company out in 1997. And they closed the offices in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They continued the TSR label operating for a year or two and then shut it down. And they now owned Dungeons and Dragons. TSR was now totally defunct and Watson owned the game. And I remember, now this is the very, very beginnings of mass exposure to the internet at about the same time. This is really the first time that you start seeing online communities or web pages or chat groups, chat rooms,

where you start seeing there being a lot of people who were very upset and very Worried about what this new company was going to do with right Dean I remember I remember there is our baby and these guys are they they play card games like this is not their thing What are they gonna do? right Yeah, there was talk of incompetence and predatoryness. Like they're just in it for the money.

They're just I remember that. They run a company. What do you think they're ready for? But, you know, like, when everybody says that as a criticism, I'm like, and that's not necessarily always a bad thing. Like, you know, like, you know, it can lead people to make bad decisions,

but if they're running a company, yes, they're in it to make money, that's at least part of their motive. Like, and that's okay. It's, you know, if you have problem with their practices on how they make the money, then let's talk about regulating them. It's not hard. Yeah. So's not hard. Yeah.

So in any event, so Wizards of the Coast looked at D&D and they said, you know what, this is fit for a revamp. We want to put our own mark on this, because if we just keep printing second edition books, we're not getting a lot of buy-in to the hobby. We're not getting a lot of new people joining the hobby. So, Monty Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams collaborated on developing the core system for third edition. Now, since the basic rules have been phased out, since 95, they dropped the word advanced and the game went back to being called just Dungeons and Dragons. But they cycled the edition number forward to third edition anyway. And they looked at the rules and they said, let's simplify this, make this make more sense,

Thacko sucks. And instead of having one set of dice your role for your Thieves abilities, another set of dice your role for this thing over here and then combat is all D20 We're just gonna make everything based on a D20 roll. Mm-hmm. Yes, very streamlined as far as comparing those two things Yes, yeah, and they turned it into what everybody now recognize as the D20 system. Yes They put everything out under the open gaming license, which was a revolutionary marketing move. Basically saying, you know what, you can use these rules without having to give us any money. Just make sure to include this statement on the back page of what you're doing.

on the back page of what you're doing, and run with it, which freed up all kinds of independent publishers to start putting out stuff. And it also meant that they got now because of that, it's kind of like when Doritos says, well, if you want to sell Doritos, you have to sell all our flavors of Doritos. And it's not because they really think that you're gonna eat the avocado flavor Doritos. It's because avocado flavor Doritos takes up space on the shelf. So now those bastards

over at Laze don't get to use that part of the shelf. You're just literally flooding the market with your product. And that's brilliant. Like, yes, please come and use our system because that'll take up so much shelf space. Yeah, that yeah. That will run those idiots at West End games completely out of business. Sadly. So, you know, it like yes, it is a bummer, but again, you know, all those books that are over there did not emulate, you know, they didn't go blank, it doesn't really raise them. Yeah, no, no. So this is where we see five foot squares

and all of the modern quote unquote modern tactical ideas that you hear about about Dungeons and Dragons combat, all of that was codified in the third edition rules. Now, I had never picked up this supplement, so I hadn't realized it, but it turns out the beginnings of those rules had actually been played with in second edition in a rules supplement. No kidding. There was a series that got released

in the 95, 96 called Players Option. Okay. And one of them was optional rules for combat and the ideas that are in the 3.5 rules had their genesis in that supplement. Okay. But third edition is where they got codified and made. No, no, this is how the game works.

Right. So real quick, I have a version of, I've got the players handbook and the DMG and the Monster Manual several other 3.0 and 3.5 stuff. And as my daughter is super into D&D and stuff like that, I wanted, she asked me some questions about Halflings, and I remembered like there was the page that shows you the relative heights of each of them. Yeah, and other Halfling traits,

and she wanted to know about Halfling naming conventions and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, well, I actually have a source that does some of that stuff. So I went and got that book down for her and showed it to her and she went Gaga over it. I think she's now keeping it in her room for right now. It's on her borrowed book shelf. And she opened it up and actually there's a note in there from my ex-wife at the time she was my wife. And Julia was stunned to find out that her mom had ever played

Dungeons & Dragons. And it was a note. She had bought me that book, and I can't wait to spend the rest of our lives playing games together and all that kind of stuff. And so it was a wonderful, sweet thing, and I'm choosing to keep it as a sweet memory because I get to.

But Julia was astounded that her mom had played, and here's the sad part for most people, that we had been in that much love. And I was like, oh yeah, we had played, man. It was freaking awesome. It was terrific. But yeah, it was neat. It was really neat. She really, you know, and now she reads it all the time. Her main, her chief complaint is,

why are there so many skills? Like, why do you need a skill for listen and for spot and for search? Why? And she's, because she came up on five. Because because the game is a direct error of Gary guy guy. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. And I've explained that to her. I said, you should see the old one. And that's when I pulled out the old one. I didn't tell her, oh, by the way, this is from a different family. So they don't,

they don't know about that yet. But, but yes, but yes, it's really quite something to see here reacting to that. Oh yeah, so interestingly, they introduced an actual skill system. Second edition had relied on proficiencies, and you had a limited number of proficiencies that you could do. If you were a fighter, you got this many weapon proficiencies, and you got this many proficiency slots. And at first level, you could choose to know how to do this many things. And then you got to be fourth or fifth level, you would get more proficiency slots, and you could learn how to, you know, you could learn survival or, you know, you could learn this and the other thing. Okay.

And when 3.0 came out, I looked at that skill list and I went, oh my God. I can finally have a fighter character who can do more stuff. Yes, because there were cross class skills and yeah. Yeah, you could, there was, there was all this, there was, there was wonderful depth in, in what you could do with skills. And it meant that one of the things that, that got old for me eventually, and got old for a lot of people. And it was one of the big

criticisms that led people to get into other role-playing games entirely was so much of what you wind up rolling dice about in Dungeons and Dragons is hitting people over the head with a sharp object. Right. And what if I want to play a game where I'm a diplomat and I want to try to convince people of something instead. What if I want to play a game where you'm a diplomat and I want to try to convince people of something instead. What if I want to play a game where I have to craft something or solve a riddle or do this? And third edition made a real stab at making that a thing. Yeah, it did. And relative to its predecessors, it did a good job. Yes.

Although I do also remember, because we were in the middle of an Al Qadim game when that happened. And the guy run in the game, who might think you know, it's Mark. But the guy run in that game, he converted it for us, which was pretty cool. And then he said something to the effect, he's like, yeah, the grapple rules are still garbage though. What the heck? I mean, he ran a game store, you know, he knew this stuff inside now,

and he knew enough to be able to convert it for God's sake, you know, and by the way, critical hits and critical failures were still a big deal. You didn't just do double the damage, there were effects that happened in the game as a result. And I remember like he, you know, and that was still a chart. And it was still, you know, that kind of stuff. Then you had decks of cards for it. They were finding ways to monetize. Oh, all the other materials and all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, no, they found ways to make money off of it. Because they were, in fact, in it for the money. But that's not always a bad thing.

Sometimes that gets you shit. Classes, sorcerers got introduced for the first time as a separate thing from Wizards. Oh, wow. I didn't know that it was that recent. Okay. Yes, that was 3.0. Okay.

Halfworks came back. Wait, so let's back it up a second. Sorcerers, you said, got introduced. There had been Sorcerers in previous editions, but they were just classed as Wizards. Yeah. Okay. Okay. First edition AD&D sorcerer was a level title for a wizard. Okay. Because I remember in the Alkadim game, my friend Martin played a sorcerer who was a mage weaver. Yes. And so and that was a sorcerer, but okay. So it was it was a type of wizard.

Sorcerer, but okay, so it was it was a type of wizard. Arcane arcane spellcasters magic users were it was all one class and it all drew from the same pool. Okay, I get you're from the same pool. Okay. And so they also introduced thieves, renamed into being rogues. And there we go. About that. Yeah.

I'm not I'm not going to go on the rant, but I'm still bitter about it. Anybody who's heard that previously in other episodes knows it's a thing for me. They introduced the idea of prestige classes, where if you got to level eight or whatever level as a fighter range or whatever, you could take this other class that might last for 10 levels, might only last for five, but it created all of these ways to customize characters. Yes. So really make your character different from every other one like it. So that your Cavalier could indeed be different materially from... Yes.

...in a rules manner for everybody else. Yes. I remember, though, that was the drag on 303.5 was. We're gonna get into that. All right. Gonna get into that. So they brought demons and devils back as demons and devils. Mm-hmm.

The artwork still stayed tame, but they brought back demons and devils because by that time, the crest of the panic had passed and they could get away with doing that. Yep They introduced feats This is where feats appear. Yes, I remember that being a significant because at that time I only played martial characters It was amazing as a guy who who plays fighter and paladin types forever. Feats were such a big deal. Like, oh my God, you mean I can do fancy shit other than just a swing and hit. I can hit eight people around me now.

Like holy crap. Like, oh my God. Yeah, it was huge. Now at the same time, at the same time though, with feats, still very clearly tied to guy gags because in order to get this feat, you have to get this one and to get that one you need to get this one.

And prerequisites, which are this, that and the other, oh yeah, yeah, very much. To get whirlwind attack, you need, and it's just like, oh my God. Oh yeah, so by the way, my very next note says, Way granular, very much a child of the Gaiag's mindset of there's a system for that. Yep.

And in a lot of ways, third edition helped Wizards of the Coast overcome a lot of community suspicion. Mm-hmm. Because it was so good. because this game was amazing. And now it's interesting that high Ryan, how you doing? My DM did not like third edition. Still doesn't. Okay.

like third edition. Oh, still doesn't. Okay. He he he has run it or he's run three five. Because his players have basically said, I really don't want to play second. Like I want to we we all collectively want to do this other thing. We want feeds. Yeah. So there's been there's been a campaign. I've been in with him that was 35 because that was what everybody wanted to play. But given his preference, he prefers the feel of second. And he would go into statements about, you know, it doesn't make... Dwarves shouldn't be wizards, you know, and other arguments that are based on, you know, just second edition got it right and the changes that they made in third he didn't agree with.

Okay. And again, I'm kind of painting with a broad brush and I know he would be able to articulate arguments, but again This is an example, but the reason I bring it up at all is because this is an example of again We have an addition change and there there were a whole bunch of people who were like, oh my god This is amazing and there was a smaller but

non-zero group of people who were like no, I don't like it now this was in 2000. And so there was some sniping back and forth on the internet between groups about the change. And I've already mentioned skills were a huge big deal. I could build a game using skills and feeds. I could build a character that was uniquely mine and who could do crazy amazing stuff. Right. But the game did have problems.

And every D&D campaign I'd played in up until 3.5 had been basically one year long because in college, yeah, in college, every year we'd started a new campaign. We'd had a new cast of characters and we'd gone from level one up through whatever level we got to by the end of the year. Okay. So in 3.5, uh, with a group of people who included some of the folks from that group from college. Uh-huh. I played my first multi-year long-running single-story arc campaign. Nice. Rand for somewhere between three and four years. And it was a wonderful experience. With a group of friends, I still value it. As I mentioned already, it was therapy for me when I was going through my divorce.

Sure. But over the course of that campaign, as our class levels went up, some really serious issues with the rules set came up. Let me stop you right there. I was playing, I think we were playing Star Wars by that time, but I was playing with I think we were playing Star Wars by that time, but I was playing with that group of guys

and when my first wife left. And I told them during a game, it was like, you know, just so you know, she's leaving, she'll not be living here starting like next week or something like that. We're all sitting around in my cramped apartment So sorry man as terrible, you know, what can you do? You know? Dada-dada-dada, what do you need?

Good group of guys Previously it had been talked about how one of our players, Martin Was one of the most helpful and kind fellows there is to the point where his friends called him Switzerland. Because he helped another player in the group, Logan. He helped Logan's ex-girlfriend move because she'd asked. And Logan was not particularly bitter about it, but also you don't let your friend forget

that he had once helped your ex move. You know? So they asked, they're like, oh man, so sorry, what can we do? I said, you know what, honestly, you guys are doing it. We can just, we're gaming, this is good. I might need to call someone from time to time, but I'll be okay. know, I might, you know, need to call someone from time to time, but I'll be okay. And then I said, but Martin, could you not help her move?

And that's so Martin too. It is. And so everybody is wonderful. He's such a kind of wonderful man. Yeah. Everybody laughed. And that's it. At that moment, all of them knew I was going to be perfectly okay. laughed. And that's it. At that moment, all of them knew I was going to be perfectly okay. Yeah. And, and, and those are the moments that you can have with a group. Yes. In a, in a game like this, that's the kind of, that's the kind of relationship you can build with people. And that's the wonder of the hobby. Yeah. For me. But, uh, carry on. Yeah, the limitations of 3.5 really became clear, especially as we got up to high level. And I think we've been going at this for a little while now. And I think that would be a good place for me to begin with our next episode, because when we discover the problems with 3.5, and I've been talking

about 3.0 this whole time, and 3.5 came out in 2003, but they're essentially the same game. 3.5 was tweak off of third, not really a new system. But when we start talking about the flaws in the system of 3.0, 3.5, we then start getting into the shift from third to fourth. And that is when the religious pogroms really occurred in the D&D community online. Yeah. For reasons that we can get into in the next episode and it led to and it led to of course a whole new game being born Mm-hmm Because of that so awesome there we are. I look forward to that. Yeah There's there's there's a lot of meat on this bone. There. There's just there's a lot of marrow to crack into and enjoy. I loved the open-sourceness of it all.

I thought that was really good. You said you were going to get to one of the big problems of 303.5. But I loved the open-sourceness of it. I loved that there was so much variability that you could really, like, one of the problems I had with earlier D&D was, I roleplay this character, but then I play and roll this character. And that was it.

And you, like, you basically, if you're going to be in a game, you're going to probably min max to some extent what your character can do so that he can survive in the campaign that is built on rules of adversarial relationship. Yeah. So you have to min-max to have him survive so that then he can do the things that you want him to do as a character, right? So if you really into the role playing, you still have to min-max it to some extent or another.

To the point where honestly, like I still have that struggle with some of the guys I play with and some of the DMs that I've played with in a recent memory of just like, you know, oh well you're sub optimizing your character. Yeah, but it's cool and it's interesting. Oh, you're sub optimizing it. I mean, I did that with my sorcerer in our game. Oh yeah. He was so sub optimized.

It's so fun. Yeah, but he was so much fun to play. Yeah, no. And bouncing off of him was way too much fun. Like, and I actually wound up, I very nearly, like the closest I've ever been to actually lunging across a game table and throttling somebody. Oh.

Was in a short-lived three-five game. Uh-huh. There was, there was being run by my friend Ryan, where another player who was, I don't know, a decade and a half younger than me, uh-huh, uh, and, and who, you know, three, three-five was, was his vehicle. Uh-huh. three three five was was his vehicle and who was thoroughly immersed in it and was a truly truly very well educated rules lawyer found out that I was playing a fighter at a certain level and that I had spent feet on two weapon

fighting and and my and my reason for doing it was because I wanted to play spent feats on two weapon fighting. And my reason for doing it was because I wanted to play Mad Martin. Right. Like, cause why wouldn't you? Yeah, you know. Oh yeah. You know, and I had, you know, I had a backstory to an anti-character.

I was having fun playing a character. And he looked across the table at me with like utter incredulity and he was like, but why? And, and, and, you know, and, and then proceeded to explain to me how I was playing a fighter wrong. Oh. And, like, I, I, yeah, I have not wanted to actually grab somebody by the four lock and slam their face into a gaming table so hard, like ever. And you got to understand, I was in my 30s. Like this is not like, you know, any teenager getting pissed off about so I was just like how the fuck dare you.

Right. Like and and that that moment crystallized for me so much about like everything I've been angry about about gamer culture ever since. Mm hmm. Is like we're here to have fun. Why do you have to tell me I'm having fun wrong? Yeah. Like how dare you tell anybody they're not allowed to do this thing or like you don't own the fucking game. Yeah. And if you do take it somewhere else, because I don't really want to play with you. Yeah, like yeah. Fuck off. Yeah. And yeah. So I went out, I didn't wind up sticking with the campaign very long after that.

Because like, I actually apologize to Ryan. I said, I'm having fun playing with you and a company that had a couple of the other people with the table are awesome, but that jackass is just ruining it for me. Like screw that. And then there was another kid, Martha problem was I was so much older than everybody else

at the table, kind of like here. I don't see that as a problem for this. Only more so. Yeah. But another one of them was just would spout off with, you know know typical 20 something You know, I'm smarter than everybody else political opinions because like he hadn't had a life yet and I Don't I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to put up with it

I don't want to come in here and have to and and either have to have the argument or consciously Not have the argument right consciously not have the argument. Right. Why does he get to suck all the air out of the room? Yeah. Just because he read and ran. Yeah.

And the funny part of it was like he had come to the set of conclusions that were like half iron, and half. Like I don't even know what others, but he would spout off. In one moment, he'd say something that was so leftist it hurt. And then he'd be talking about, you know, iron rand and figure it the fuck out, kid. You don't even know what to understand that you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. So anyway, but back to back to the original point, the, you know, you're having fun wrong, mid-maxing, right?

Kind of merge is a problem. And we're going to part of what I'm going to talk about is that the three five, three five heads and problems that exacerbated that mechanically. Mm-hmm And it would make sense though. I mean three five was the era parent to the system that Was again built on your supposed to min max if you're not min maxing then you're you're not playing right because your DM's job is to kill you. So that makes sense. If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. So, all right. Well, what are you reading if anything?

Cause I know that last time we talked, you were hip deep in student work. Have you crawled out of enough of it? Or do you assign more so that you have too much to do? I didn't assign any more of it, but it's slow going. Gotcha. Fair, totally fair. So giving good feedback is a long process and takes a lot of time. Yes. Yes, so. And so this time around, I'm going to probably, I'm going to hold off on recommending anything.

Well, no, you know what? No, I'm going to change that. If you can find them anywhere, there was a really great series of comics that DC, I think it was DC, did, that was based around a set of characters in the Forgotten Realms. And this is, I don't know, a bunch of years ago. So you'd have to look it up online or, you know, comb through a comic book story's shelves. But it was, it was a really good encapsulation of the kind of stories that would be told by a group of people in a D&D campaign, nice, in a comic book format that actually had genuine arcs of development for all of them was a paladin who wound up, wound up losing his paladin abilities

because he suffered a fall. Gotcha. From grace, and they did not pull any punches in regard to him into that then driving him even farther into a despair spiral. And it actually got the places in which it got really heavy, which I was really impressed with at the time. So if you can find the Forgotten Realms comics, I recommend them. How about you? I'm going to recommend actually different media than reading this time. I'm going to recommend that you go on the YouTube's and you type in the dead ale wives dungeons and dragons.

Oh, I wish I'd thought of that and there are two of them and many people have animated them and they are wonderful. Absolutely a great send up of the Satanic panic that we had mentioned in the previous chapter, or episode, and it just so, so good. So go listen to that. It's only gonna give you. It's so spot on. Yes, it's only gonna take you about 10 minutes

out of your time if you listen to both episodes even. Dungeons and Dragons. It's Satan's game. So, anyway, that's what I'm going to recommend. So where can people find you on the social medias? I can be found at the address, EH Blalock on both the Twitter machine and on Instagram, as a matter of fact,

and you can find the two of us and on Instagram, as a matter of fact. And you can find the two of us if you want to send us hate mail over our stated opinions about a given edition, you can find us collectively at Geek History Time on Twitter. And where can I find you, sir? You can find me every Tuesday night on twitch.tv, forward slash capital puns.

You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram at at the harmony two Hs in the middle. And you can find me there. Also, do us favor, hit that subscribe button, tell your friends, get them to hit the subscribe button. You know what? Go there and hit the share button and then send it to like three of your friends. People that you know would love our geeky shit. Not necessarily this episode. If you don't have any D&D friends, my apologies. But there are plenty of other episodes where we take on all kinds of cool stuff. So find one, send that to them, and then tell them to subscribe. And then rate and review our podcast

and let us know what you think. So yeah, that's, I think those are all the places you can find us. So for a day and a day of the history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and until next time, don't walk away or we'll take an attack of opportunity. Until next time, don't walk away or we'll take an attack of opportunity.