Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - The Dungeonmaster

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

Conan talks to Turner from Austin, TX about the work that goes into being a quality D&D Dungeon Master and whether or not he could take Stephen Colbert in a LARP fight. Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started. Hi there, Turner. Let me introduce you to Conan and David. Hey, how are you, Turner? Lord O'Brien, you grant me a great honor with this audience.

Bearer of the Arbornish Crown, Lord of the Gangley Reach, Prince of the questionable power. I'm really sorry, shtick is my body's natural defense mechanism to anxiety and so on. That's fantastic. No, I loved it. I was very frightened for a minute that you had a large tumor pressing into your brain and that we were going to immediately have to relieve the pressure. That's not inaccurate.

That is absolutely not accurate. Well, I hope it is because I'm laughing and I hope that it is inaccurate. Oh, no, no, no, you're holding the person. Turner Coats, your name is Turner Coats, is that correct? That is correct. The third. Turner Coats, the third. Indeed.

That's fantastic. What a great name. The name's Coats. Turner Coats, the third. Everybody assumes it's a stage name. They're like, no, no, no, you're real. We are going to need your real name. Like, no, officer, I swear, Turner Coats is my real name.

You know what's interesting? I've always thought that if someone is a, I'm the third or I'm the fourth, the assumption always is that they have a great deal of money, you know, because you think of Thurston Howell, the third, you think of, and that's not always the case. You can be, I could be Conan O'Brien the fifth and have absolutely nothing. I could be driving around in an old neon and living in a $400 a month apartment. Correct. You could have just had a father who was really bad at birth control, but an incredibly not

very creative when it came to gaming conventions either. It doesn't line up at all. It doesn't line up at all. It's Gilligan's Island has given us all the impression that if you're a second or a third or a fourth, that you're driving around in a Bentley and that you have a man's servant. All that, and you can power a cab with coconut milk, so I mean, there's a lot going on. Yes, exactly. But we won't get into the weeds on that one.

Hey, Turner, so much to ask you about. First of all, I know there's got to be a backstory to the way that you greeted me because you had a stunning command of that formal, almost regal language, and I'm going to find out what that's all about. But first tell me, where are you? Where do you live? I'm in Austin, Texas. Ah.

And you are helping keep Austin weird. Well, indeed we're helping. Single-handedly. Single-handedly. You are the reason Austin. If you were to leave Austin tomorrow, Austin would immediately turn, would lose all of its weirdness. Immediately go Republican, and it's just things which it's completely turned upside

down. Dogs and cats living together the whole night. Yeah. So you live in Austin, and what kind of stuff do you do? How do you plot? What is your trade? How do you make your living? How do you get the dough?

My day job, I am a director of purchasing for a large commercial design firm that specializes in senior living and multifamily community. Okay. But my side hustle is a different story. All right. Let's talk about your side hustle. That would be a Dungeon Master Conan. Okay.

Ah. A Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master. Correct. Not a sex thing. Let's be perfectly clear. I'm pretty sure that they cleared that up. Oh. Yeah.

Oh. Well, I just lost all my enthusiasm for this. I swear to God, I swear to God, I totally, I'm completely, I'm just going to hang up on you now. No. That's to be expected. That's to be expected. No.

I'm going to be honest with you. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, and I know nothing about it. And I know it's a huge thing, and people take it very seriously. And so I want you to educate me about this Dungeons and Dragons world. You are the Dungeon Master, which means you run the games. Is that right? I am effectively the referee and host for a group of players who come together and to experience a collaborative storytelling experience.

The Dungeon Master is the writer, director, producer, and every single background character. Ah. So you're sexually harassing everyone? Ab. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wait. I'm also the HR department, so who are they going to talk to?

There you go. Yeah. It's the best scam of all. It's interesting because I happen to know people take this very seriously, and I've heard through friends that the actor Joe Manganiello is... I can speak to that personally. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Well, you tell us, because I've heard he's incredibly, he takes this very seriously. So seriously that I think I made one too many jokes and wasn't asked back. Oh, no. Right. And I don't want to tell tales out of school, but he has a converted wine cellar that is now a dungeon in his home filled with thousands of D&D figurines, like the army's mass... I love how you're not telling tales out of school. You just completely...

Goes right into it. You just completely sold out Joe Manganiello. What? He's a lovely guy, by the way. I've met him many times. He is very lovely. He's a lovely guy, and he's really funny. He's got a great sense of humor, but he takes Dungeons and Dragons really seriously, and

I can imagine, Matt, you being there making your quips as you do, and trust me, I've been on the verge of kicking you out of this enterprise many times, because you're just quipping away and chuckling over there in the corner. So people do take it quite seriously, and there's a lot of work that goes into having an effective game. Is that correct, Turner coats the third? Absolutely. If you're just to build a world that you can immerse players in, you spend a lot of time

doing research, and players like poking funds at the boundary of that research, they love to ask for non-player character names on the spot to see if you've named every third townsperson that you've put into this small village. This reminds me of, it's very similar to, if you ever go to Old Sturbridge Village, which is about 40 miles from where I grew up in Massachusetts, it's one of those communities where everyone dresses like a pilgrim, pretty much, and they live in a little pilgrim village. When we were in grade school, they would take us there, and I would walk around with my classmates and you'd go in.

Basically, the illusion is that you're supposed to be time traveling. So there'd be a smithy in there, and he'd be hammering away at the shoes of a horseshoe and saying, ah, these young folk have come, Prithee, have a seat, and we were assholes. We'd be like, hey, what do you think this is? And show them our shitty digital watch, 1980 digital watch. What do you think this is? And you could see the guys just eyes glaze over, and he'd go, oh, Prithee, Gadzooks, Tis, Witchcraft, upon ye rest, this magical, and you know, just like these crappy kids

coming in. And that's essentially what sometimes I'm guessing people are trying to do in a Dungeons and Dragons game and why Matt Gurley was kicked out. Well, it's very important that whenever you go into a new group situation that you make sure that you're playing the same game, D&D can be deadly serious. You can really get into the Shakespearean Henry V depths with it. That's not what I tend to play. I go a lot sillier with it because that's kind of what I enjoy.

We do very well. Do you have the authority as Dungeon Master to banish someone? Absolutely. Have you banished people? I've asked people not to come back to the table. Yes, I absolutely have. Turner, I give you the authority during our conversation to banish Matt Gurley if you find his quips to be too inane.

Like this boon, the Turner. I do not give you that authority. Boon, rescind it. Boon, rescind it. Noted. Noted. Thank you. David, I give you the power to throw a magic bag over Matt Gurley and convert him back

into the toad from which he once sprang. Wow. What? David, I give you the power to just slap Conan right now. This is great. Did you see me? Just hit him. No.

Did you see Dungeons and Dragons yourself recreationally with your family at all? I do. We play every Saturday night when we come together for a family game and I actually use that as play test material for the encounters that I run for it. Well, generally, if my kids can beat it and the adults that I do the podcast with can't beat it, that just makes them look even stupider, so it's mission accomplished. Very good. I'm like, well, my nominee role beat this in three minutes, gentlemen.

So what are your, can you tell me anything about, you have a son, a daughter, a wife, what are their characters, what are their powers? So my wife plays a bard, a lower master bard, so she is a traveling minstrel and has spells to basically befuddle the mind and damage people, but they also, she also has an ability called cutting words where she can insult you and make you roll lower on your ability checks, so which isn't that far from, we're not going too far into fantasy. She's an insult comic. She has an insult comic, yes, very much.

She's basically traveling around like a triumph the insult comic dog or a Don Rickles and just ripping into people and lowering their self-esteem. That's her power. That is her power. Indeed it is. That's cool. And then my daughter plays a tiefling monk, which is a half devil. Her father is literally Satan in the campaign.

Wait a minute, your father, your daughter's imagination has her playing a character whose father's the devil, which means you're the devil. Is it because you make her play Dungeons and Dragons every Saturday? Yeah, I was going to say. She wants to go out with her friends and you're like, no, no, you're going to play Dungeons and Dragons in the basement with me, now tell me about your character. Well, I don't know. My dad's the devil.

Does that tell you anything, Turner? That's not too far off. It's not too far off. When the devil does, they say when the devil does turn up, he will make us all play Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday nights. It is Satan's game. So that's your daughter is a tiefling monk? A tiefling monk.

Well, my son plays a dragon born trickster cleric of the god, Aladamara, who is is Amnesiac. And he's actually the reason why we started playing together as a family. He came to me and said, hey, you know, I want to I've heard about Dungeons and Dragons. Have you ever heard about it? Would you could we play it? And I was like, oh, the chosen one has finally risen. This is I've never been more proud of you, my son. And he he decided he's like, well, I want to play a dragon born, which I like these dragon

people. And I want him to be an Amnesiac, cleric, trickster cleric and can develop this whole backstory. And I'm like, you've never been more proud of you than just right just right now. And and then my daughter was like, yeah, I just I want my dad's the devil and I want to punch thing. So yeah, exactly. Backstory thought was completely different.

Yeah. Yeah. Once she knew her dad was the devil, she had it. She's all in. She's all in. She's all in. So how long do these games take? Because I mean, Dungeons and Dragons games can go on for days, right?

Months. Years. Yeah. We the the family game we limit to about an hour, hour and a half. The typical play session in an average in an average scenario is about three to four hours. And then you can do a single one off what's called a one shot. Those tend to be very compressed.

I'm not a huge fan of running those. But a larger campaign can last years. The you know, I played one in high school and college that lasted probably about three four years to get from from start to finish and a lot of them don't finish. They kind of start and then we'll Peter out as a question. If you're playing a game that lasts four years and it ends, is there a period of almost morning and loss afterwards? There is a little bit.

It's like it's like a TV series that got canceled without ever really having the finale. You know, if if you. Oh, I've done that. That's fun. Yeah. Wow. So a lot of times if if you can see that a group running its natural course as a dungeon master, you can plan a narrative for that to tie it up because the important thing to

remember is yes, you're putting all this work in, you're building this world, you're constructing around these characters. But ultimately, you're the least important person in that equation. Your players and the characters that they create and they bring to the table really need to be the focus and it's their stories that you're really there to tell within the context of the game. But I'm a bigger fan of the kind of the longer form campaigns. Wow.

You've given this a ton of thought and clearly you you bring a lot of yourself to this game and I think that's to be admired. I just I never grew up out of playing pretend. I mean, that's that's that's what I ultimately. Well, I can actually I can I don't play Dungeons and Dragons and I don't know. I know that I'm built for games so much, but I never grew up and to this day, I'm constantly playing what if in my head and very much my children have spent most of their lives telling me to grow up and stop behaving foolishly.

And I think that's the way to go, you know, and I only say that because I know no other way. Yeah. Explored another possibility. It gives me an excuse to have a reason for to wander on the house going, yes, I think we should be going this direction or to have the Oh, you do the voice. Oh, I do.

I do the voices. Yeah. Well, let's hear some of that. Oh, OK. So, well, there's LaCroix Waterloo, who is my Goliath. LaCroix Waterloo, the Goliath Barbarian, who, yes, is named after the seltzers that were on the desk at the time of his name. Yes, named after the seltzers, lemon lime, of course, not included.

And that is what I'm terrible at name. I'm terrible at maps and I'm terrible at naming stuff, which you would think as a dungeon master would be. But I just, you know, look at my desk, flip it. I have a major character named Ognum the Sage, who's named after a mango bubbly water and his partner, Tied Echo, is the diet coke that was next to it. So, I mean, as long as you put it. Let's hear those voices.

Well, Ognum is very thready and breathy. Now, Conan, you've got to understand, Ognum is a little bit of a mad scientist, almost like a contemporary character who you would catch. He likes to bring the characters forward and then cut them down and insult them because they are quite incompetent. And then Tied is, Tied's a little bit more of a gruffer, gruffer, kind of lumberjack kind of character. Yeah.

So, and then you've got... He's Nick Offerman, basically. Exactly. So, I actually have a Nick Offerman character in my main campaign, Ronson Swan. There's Bird People. They're called Erichokras, and he's a gleaming white Erichokra that works for the Taliesin Parks and Rec department, managing the gates to the field of madness. Yeah, I spend way too much time thinking about flying.

So what... Do you have a question for me? How can I help you? You seem to be the knower of all things. I feel like there's nothing I can tell you. Yeah. I would like to know, Conan. So, obviously, you're familiar with Stephen Colbert and his love of fantasy and all things

token. Oh, yeah. So, well, Stephen's thing is, yeah, is token. So. And his knowledge of those books is astounding. I mean, literally, I think he can tell you page numbers that things occur on. And he memorized some of the long poems and incantations. And so, he's being hospitalized.

My real question for you is, in a LARP fight, in a live-action role-play fight, who do you think could take who? Could you take Colbert and his boundless Tolkien knowledge? Or could Colbert take you, and what I imagine is your substantial reach in a fight? I've got the reach on Stephen. Stephen knows so much more about fantasy fiction than I do. In fact, that's not even a fair fight. He just would destroy me in a second.

I know that, basically, there's a ring, there's Gollum, I think there's Mordar. And I just, I remember Mordar because he's referenced. It's Mordor. I think it's Mordor. No, no. You know what it is? It's Mordor, and he shops at Mordar. It's a large package store.

Same bit. Yeah. I can always remember his name because it's one of the most ridiculous vocal performances in Led Zeppelin. Robert Plant gives his vocal performance, and it's in the song Ramblin' On. And he goes, and from the darkest steps of Mordar, and oh, he's talking about Mordar. And then he says, and Gollum, the evil one, crept up and slipped away with her. And I find it to be completely absurd, but I love it.

That's my knowledge. That's the extent of my knowledge of that world. So Stephen would totally, he would totally defeat me in that department. But I have the reach, and what I would do is before we started, I'd say Stephen, I can't fight a guy with glasses, and as he was putting his glasses away, I'd hit him with a two by four, and I think I would win because I'm above nothing. Put a little decorative scroll work on that two by four, and you've got an improvised D&D weapon.

You're good to go. Thank you. I have your permission now to attack Stephen Colbert with a two by four. I legally absolve you of any liability. Thank you. That'll be my defense. I was told by Turner Coates III that I could attack talk show host Stephen Colbert with it.

That's not a real name. What was his real name? I'll tell you. He was here, and then we go to Austin. No one's ever heard of you. We go to your basement. There is no basement. It's the Spanish prisoner.

Turner Coates III, you're a gentleman, and you are a scholar, and you're doing, I'm not going to say you're doing God's work because that's just not true, but I appreciate you. I appreciate you. I appreciate your humor and your depth of commitment to this fantasy world, because let's face it, these days, I'll take any world over the one we're currently in. Exactly. I will join you. If I can escape some of the harsh realities of 2021 and join you guys in a basement, I

will do it. Thank you very much, sir. An honor and a pleasure. Well, thank you for having me, Conan. It was a real treat. And Turner, seriously, very cool. I love how much you're putting into this. I am a believer that God is in the details, and you reap what you sow, and I think what

you're doing is really lovely. Continue. Go and be healthy and be well. Be wary in your travels of various creatures, small and large. And you as well, Lord Conan. And you as well. That character's been drinking. Conan O'Brien needs a fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorely.

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