Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - The Rudest TTRPG Actual Play Ever?! (w/ Christopher Hastings & Joe Lepore)

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Something rude this ways comes! This week on Quests N' Answers, Dan Casey sits down with Christopher Hastings and Joe Lepore of the Rude Tales of Magic podcast to talk about weird little dudes, their approach to worldbuilding, and much more. Listen to Rude Tales of Magic wherever fine podcasts are served: https://www.rudetalesofmagic.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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guaranteed on soil and mulch. Dig into spring garden deals for four days at the Home Depot. Now through May 10th. Exclusion supply, see Home Depot.com slash price match for details. Greetings, adventures, and welcome back to Question Answers, the show where we talk to all manner of awesome people from around the gaming world. I'm Dan Casey, and today we have not one, but two very special guests joining me right here in the Conversation Dungeon. You may have heard their dulcet tone spinning yards about unruly college students at Polaris University, or monstrous creatures lurking in the depths of the Nethermerk, or all manner

of other weird little freaks on the Rude Tales of Magic podcast. Folks, please welcome Joe Lepore and Christopher Hastings. Thank you, Joe. Guys, Chris, Joe, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Oh, my goodness. Thank you for acknowledging our little freaks. That's one of the things I love about the show.

I'm a big fan of weird little guys, and you folks have them in spades. Talk about Chris's goodness. What about my goodness? Thank you so much, Dan. We're thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled to have you here. You know, this show, we talk to people about all sorts of things, but given that you folks are firmly entrenched in that world of tabletop role-playing games and

storytelling, I want to start talking to both of you as your experience as players. And I want to take it back to the very beginning. what was your earliest experience playing a TTRPG? Chris, I think you should start because chronologically is your first. We want to do a chronological. I think we should start from the very beginning. It's a very good place to start, my friend. Yeah, we need this to be an accurate timeline or else our audience will revolt.

Okay. Because my story doesn't happen without Chris, actually. Oh, wow. So it only makes sense to do Chris first, and then he can sort of weave me in. So mine starts in like, I want to say 1997 or 1998. I forget exactly the year, but late 90s. Do you remember if Princess Diana was alive? She was definitely in our hearts and minds.

Okay, so probably 98. In Beanie Baby form. I don't know. I don't remember. But I worked at a Boy Scout camp. At the Boy Scout camp, the kids, we would have different age groups that would, depending on the week, the age group would go home at like 2 p.m. maybe some days or like 5 p.m. and like it was only the teenagers who would like stay like overnight.

But we had, that is to say, we had a lot of free time in the evening as we had to stay on site at the camp. And as I think, you know, prisoners will tell you free time. It's great for Dungeons and Dragon. I had never heard of this thing before. And, you know, I was like, you know, going around like draining. the um you know some ditch or something you know with one of my co-workers oh oh and he's been banished to the nether realm i'll feel it i will mark this so he can edit around it he was draining a ditch

and he he he was using a shovel uh to clear away and and he hit he hit something hard and he opened it he opened it up and it was like it was a sort of a cask and he he released it and inside were advanced Dungeons and Dragons source books. Who could have buried these in this ditch? It's a good thing I was tasked with exhuming it. He will be back shortly. Yes, after these messages. Oh, oh.

So I was, you know, cleaning out some ditch or something and talking to a fellow staff member, and he was telling me about this game that he was playing where, like, he got to be like this dude who, like, dual-wielded shotguns. and he was fighting vampires and demons. And like, oh, but because he was dual wielding, he was like, oh, yeah, I have to rest the butts against my hips.

And that, like, causes damage to, like, how quickly I can move. And I was like, what, what is this game? I don't know. Like, I'm excited about, like, Ocarina of Time at this point. And Ocarina of Time does not have, you know, as a game, does not have dual wielding shotguns that, you know, have a penalty to your hips. And eventually I discovered that, like, yeah, they were playing this. They were playing Dungeons and Dragons.

But specifically, my fellow staff members were playing Ravenloft Mask of the Red Death, which is sort of a Lovecraftian, 1800s, I think, version of the game where magic is rare and dangerous. And I was like, I got to play this game with you guys. and so, like, I read all their little books, and I was like, so, I'm like, ooh, I'm going to be, like, a Van Helsing character and, like, join them, and I joined the game and discover, like, they've already gone so off the rails from, like, the original books. Like, they, they have met up with, like, space cats that drive a flying convertible, and it just, I was, but I was hooked to that point,

and then eventually got into a more normal, uh, advanced Dungeons and Dragons, game at that same Boy Scout camp and and then got like more and more into it then and like you know subscribe to Dragon and dungeon magazine and like have you know been into it ever since I love that you got

the the truest possible D&D intro experience of just finding something that is so far removed from what the source book actually contains that it really is the anything game so that's what I love about it but it is the anything game yeah Joe

what about about you? You said that your, your tails intersect. I want you to fast forward about 17 years. Okay? I will. Princess Diana, regrettably long dead. And, R-I-B queen. Hey, she's a queen to me. You know what? I was rounding up. She didn't make it there in life, but God damn it, she's one in heaven. Chris and I have known each other for like five years at this point. It's 2015. I'm glad you're giving it track.

He's right, by the way. Yeah. Yep. His years are correct. And I had never, it's hard to explain. I don't know if, Dan, I don't know, I don't know how you grew up. I don't know how you lived your life. But where I was, I grew up in this, like, in this tiny New England beach town where you like.

What town? I also grew up in New England. I grew up in Hull, Massachusetts. Okay, I grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Okay, gotcha. Yes. Well, Hull is not a place where you're really. like supposed to raise children.

It's like, it's like too small and is like there for drinking. So like for the people that like happened to have children and live there, there was a school. But, you know, there wasn't like a critical mass of nerds.

My, my public high school graduating class was 75. Oh wow. So there just there were like two guys that liked Dana Mae and I wasn't really friends with them. Um, and there was like, one of my friends had read some hellboy, but nobody else read comic

books. And so there just wasn't like four or five people that could have been wrangled to play D&D if you wanted to. Right. Um, and somebody had a monster manual. I remember somebody had a third edition monster manual and it got passed around as like, a good resource for drawing dragons. Uh, but no one.

was like, oh, this is a game that we could play and do it together. So that never happened in high school. And then fast forward to 2015, Chris and I have been doing improv and sketch comedy in New York City at the Magnet Theater for several years at that point. And I don't know whose idea it was in the first place, but somebody said, we should play D&D. And as something I had always been like, oh, I wish I could have. have done this had I known enough people interested, I jumped at the chance. And it was 10 years ago last month, April 2015. I played in my first D&D game with Chris Hastings, Carly Minardo, and

Ali Fisher, who would all go on to Rood Tales with me and our friend Justin. And that was my first taste 5E, that was my first taste of playing D&D. I was instantly hooked, baby. I couldn't get enough. I started, we were meeting like, we were meeting biweekly and everyone... At best.

At best. But then if one of those sessions didn't happen, then it would mean we were going like a month between games, which wasn't working for Joey. Joey needed more of that good stuff. Joe needed more dice, baby. So I started running my own game. I started DMing for the first time, and I ran a home game with a bunch of friends,

several of whom I still play D&D for free and for pleasure with, and Branson, Reese, who is also on Root Tales. And that was just recreational for 2015 through, 2019 when we all fell in together along with Tim Platt and Rootales was born. That's very cool. I love the journey from that like proto home game just like getting D&D filled super hard and then getting to make something cool with your friends. That's always the, that's always the dream there. Do you remember your earliest characters? Oh, hell yeah. Oh my gosh. Of course I do.

Who is your first character? Oh man. I mean, I have a lot of first characters, but I think the one that really went the distance for me when I was a teenager was a human cleric of Mistra, goddess of magic, named Brother Sebastian. And Brother Sebastian was a real min-maxed son of a bitch from all of those dragon magazines that I collected, plus other weird supplements. and so I was able to patch together this priest character that because he was a priest of the goddess of magic, he was able to cast wizard spells like one level later than a wizard would have been able to. So like, what is it?

When do you get the good, like, third level spells? I think you're at a... I feel like level four-ish, five, maybe. It's later than you expect. Yeah, and I am speaking. specifically of second edition. This is when this happened. Okay, okay.

And then I was able to, so, like, that was an ability I grabbed from one source, and then there was a, another official source had, like, a ridiculously overpowered teleportation spell that, like, should not have been available to such a low-level character, that he just used to, like,

like, open up a gateway and, like, and then slice bad guys in half ways. with it. Oh, that's really smart. Well, thank you. Well, I was metagaming, Joe. Can I get that spell? No, no, it's outlawed. Haven't you heard of the sundering? No.

The second sundering? All of these things happened in the forgotten realms that made these magic spells not work anymore. Yeah, but what if I live in, what if I operate in like a proprietary fictional world? I don't know. Without any sundering. What if he finds an issue of Dragon magazine in another ditch? Yeah. But yeah, that was brother Sebastian.

Love that guy. Are you still, are you still a min-maxer? No, no, no, no, I don't play that way at all. Having played a lot with Chris in various campaigns and games, both on and off, Mike, I would say Chris is, like, extremely the opposite. Yeah, Chris will play a character who is, like, allergic to combat or, like, cannot, you know, one of our campaigns on Rood Tales

Chris was a centaur who was originally a horse right? Yeah. And so possessed... He was a horse

that was blessed with half the goodness of man. And had like all of the knowledge you would expect a horse to have couldn't couldn't like

couldn't do like addition you know so it was not not a great help in like puzzles or riddles. I got a shout out Dragon Magazine for that though because I do distinctly remember

there was an article in like, what do you do with a character when you've got one stat that's really, really low? And like a beautiful little one-page article and like, this is a role-playing gift for you to have like one really crummy stat. And I have taken it to heart ever since. I agree. It makes for more interesting storytelling,

especially for you as the player as well, it's just something like a unique challenge to incorporate or overcome. But like they're superheroes otherwise, so like whatever. Yes. They'll become superheroes eventually. Yeah, that's the, I do generally when I make a character, I do have like one purposely, like low stat, like a sub nine. But one of those stats is always an 18.

I don't care. One of them has to be, one of them has to give me that plus four. You got to, you got to have to excel sometimes. You got to get those sweet, sweet crits. But, Jill, what about you? What was your earliest character? In our first game, stretching all those 10 years ago, which was a campaign that ran for like four years, three years, four years. That's pretty impressive.

I was, in creating my first character, I was definitely a little intimidated of being the only newbie. Ali had, Ali Fisher, who's also on Root Tales, had played a lot of role-playing games herself, had been in, like, a huge, like, Vampire the Masquerade campaign at some, you know, was like, knew what she was doing. Chris, obviously, and Carly had had done D&D before. So I was very much like, I don't actually know how this works. And it was still like kind of early days of like D&D streaming. There wasn't a ton of like videos for me to watch. I think, I want to say back then, it was just acquisitions incorporated.

Like maybe Critical Role started that year or maybe critical role started in 2015. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, well, the magic seems cool. It seems obviously all the magic stuff is cool. But I was literally like, it feels like too much to bite off. So my first character was a dwarf fighter named Flint Frostbeard. He was an academic. He was a scholar and had like all the trappings of like a prestige elite professor, but was dumb as rocks.

so like his university basically like sent him off on fieldwork to like get rid of him and he was and he was none the wiser really but with after that first session I was like and seeing Chris's you know Chris played a was a warlock and I immediately like as soon five minutes into the first came it clicked and I was like oh I could have been a fucking wizard yeah so and so I mean makes it very easy too. Yeah. So, so I picked, I forget what it's called, like the Arcane Knight or whatever. When it was time to subclass at level three, I like picked the, um, I picked the fighter subclass that allows you to access spells. Um, uh, but yeah, he was a fun, he was a fun guy. I feel like Dwarven Fighter is such a classic archetype for people to, uh, enter the game with. And I, I love that story as well. Just, it can feel really intimidating at first when you're looking at the rule book and feeling like, I don't want to beef it in front of everyone else. or this feels like too much to digest, but, you know, it really is just a choose your own adventure book with some light math to determine what happens. I think to this day, having played, you know, hundreds of on-mic, you know, for content D&D sections and, and, and, you know, just as many off-mic. If I, like, when sometimes looking at a source book or a module, I'm like, how does this, how are you expecting to work at a table?

Yes. I feel like I find so many gaps of like understanding what the writer is trying to get across in a game that feels like it won't translate to me at a table. And I mean, I haven't looked that much into the new additions. Oh, they're fun. There's fun stuff in there, Joe. Yeah?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I started this new home game last year, and it was like it was in the fall, and we were basically like the new stuff's not ready, so we're just sticking with 5E. They make it pretty easy to upgrade, especially if you're using sub platform like D&D beyond.

It's mostly compatible. One of my favorite changes in the new version is like the Abilith. Sorry, just quick. Just I don't know, just like we're talking about like, because it's like largely like it's pretty much just like a couple of tweaks to 5E and you can still use the 5B rules. but like a couple of changes I know is like the abeleth is like a very scary thing

terrified. Terrified. Like what if you have a god from another dimension lurking in the lake by your town? Like I love that so much. And I really like the changes to the death night. I like the like, oh, this is a commander of an army of undead. Like I think it's really... Greetings adventurers. Spring has sprung here in Los Angeles and that means it's a brief period where it's only 75 degrees instead

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Basically, it just gives you formalized systems for building, like, a headquarters for your group, which they always had a little bit of that in there. I remember especially, like, pouring over the DM's guide with third edition, like, just reading it over and over. Be like, someday I'll figure this out. I never did. But now they have easier to use systems in place, so. I think that's smart.

I remember in that game that I played one of the teenager with my, you know, priest of mistra, like, we all got to a point where we were just kicking so much ass. we were just like, well, we just defeated a guy who has a castle. We should take it. It's ours now. And now we will set up an entire city around it. And like, oh, no, suddenly we're lords. Yes.

Well, he didn't really follow the main quest. We just became landlords and then taxed the people. Yeah. Oh, feudal society. What an interesting history lesson. That's how it always goes. Well, speaking of kicking ass, I do want to shift the conversation a little bit to talk about. Rude Tales of Magic. I think it's a phenomenal show. And I want to, for those people in our

audience who have not yet taken the journey into the beating heart of Cordelia, can you describe what Rude Tales of Magic is? Chris, what's our log line? We have a log line? I don't know. Rude Tales of Magic is we take the, we take the lore and the worlds and the mythology of fantasy games and fantasy settings, and we drop a little bit of tart acid into it from our buttholes. And then we mix it up, and you discover that actually there's quite a bit of sweet heart to it as well. Oh. God, I've never said that.

And that's how sweet tarts are made? That's how sweet tarts are made. Yeah. It's like we goof around. We goof around in, you know, in like pretty typical fantasy stuff. And we very much make a point of there being something that you give a shit about in there in terms of the people and the characters. And we find out to be the sweet spot of what entertains us. One thing I love about the show is there's a very clear cut, like kind of chaotic comedies.

aesthetic to it obviously. Like you're just meeting some incredibly strange people, but there is that heart running through it that makes you care about what's going on, the stories you're telling. So I think it's great for people that want to meet some genuine weirdos and make people you wouldn't expect to be at the hero of this center of this story and just see the adventures they go on. So I would highly recommend it to anyone who's listening or watching out there.

Yeah, we've got it. We've got a, I would say, a healthy and loving disrespect of, um, Dungeons and Dragons, uh, fantasy, each other. And somewhere in there, we also find a lot of comedy and a lot of art. I know you mentioned this is like the genesis of it was like dating back to that home game in 2015. Um, do you find that that real, that sort of adversarial relationship comes from being friends and comedians for so long? I feel like a lot of improvisers after a certain point performing together go from yes and to no but like throwing each other under the bus in fun and interesting ways

i think we definitely have a that kind of yeah then the evolution to the no but is not just like you know disrespect is the wrong word but it is in its own way like if you really want to like be honest about it there's a lot of trust oh yeah um you know we have like i i have known chris uh i've known Chris and Carly and Branson and Alley since 2015, 2011, 2012. I've known Tim a little less, not quite as long as that, but... Branson vouched for Tim. Yeah, and I've still known Tim for over a decade at this point. And so we've all done both so much D&D with each other and so much improv that we know really well how to play with each other and how to sort of navigate different scenes and different emotional energies.

It's just really easy to be in tune with each other for that kind of thing. Yeah. And what Joe is speaking to is not necessarily like our time playing Dungeons and Dragons together, but we've spent a lot more time doing improv together. We are all performers in the New York improv scene. You've got to put a lot of trust in Mr. Joe Lepore when you walk out on stage in front of some 50 people and say some line like, well, I guess the Mets went to hell the other day. And then you just say like, Joe, Joe's going to need to know.

And he's going to trust me to say like, that won't help us put out this burning building. George Washington. You see, you did the 30 Rock versus. Yeah, yeah. You did the, they're like, I know you are. Yeah. Well, is it a good artist borrow? great artist steal.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, you're wearing your inspirations on your sleeve. Now, I have an important question

is who of, who among you is the rudest? And conversely, who is the most polite? It's got to be Branson, rudest, right? Yeah,

Branson's the rudest. Branson's definitely the rudest. I feel like, I feel like Tim and Carly are in competition for the most polite. Yeah. That's that.

I will say, whenever my mother was pregnant with the fetus that would become, me. Whenever. Who could say? I mean, I know exactly.

I'm impossible to carbon date. I think I've got to decide to do that. She wanted to be me, she wanted me to be named Christopher after several men named Chris that she knew who were very polite and she wanted a polite man. She wanted a polite son.

Oh. Wow. Yeah. That is interesting. And here I am doing a podcast. that makes a cry every other week. He's so rude. But I am very nice where it counts.

I am polite where it counts. Good. I say so far I'll put you both in the middle of the spectrum, but that's important to be able to speak to both polls. What's the rudest thing you've ever done in a game of D&D? Ooh. Oh, man. There is an early episode of Rout Tales of Magic.

And again, this speaks to my... my trust in the other players, but it turns out that maybe some of them freaked out and didn't trust me as much. But there is a moment where, when I'm playing Frederick de Bonesby, the fancy man, failed litch, dandy skeleton, and they're just, the rest of the group is in the middle of some baloney, and he's just like, this doesn't interest me. This does not further my goals. I'm out of here. And I just had my guy, like, leave. I just had him walk out of the game.

And you can hear this in the episode as Branson tries to send NPCs to come get me. He's like, why are you doing? What's going on? And I was just like, I'm like, I believe in your world, man. Like, to me, I'm like, I know that this will work out, however. But he thinks Chris is quitting the show. Oh, no. That was probably the rudest thing I did.

I will say it let the episode so things went bananas by the end of the episode and the next one I think had like such crucial character building stuff for that character and then like also like set off some really cool stuff for everybody I think it was a pivotal moment in the show yeah it gives them some interesting stuff to uh bounce off of because like how do you react to that is yeah yeah exactly well already just piecing out well what happened was that branson eventually had the cops of the town try to like stop us and we just lit them all on fire which then led to us being arrested and and then like things and it became a long running plot line in the show that you know yeah you were cop killers yeah but like that was a very rude thing i did in a game of dungeons on dragons

joe what about you have you done anything as rude as uh leaving a room to go on a killing spree i've never done anything rude i'm actually saintly and perfect um no further questions i was thinking of a kind of similar move that I made in our in the most, you know, as of this recording, the most recent episode of the podcast that's come out in our Nethermer campaign, Tim and Carly play brothers,

who one is, Tim is 18 and Carly's character is an 11 year old or a 10 and a half year old. And at the end of the, at the end, at the end of the episode, spoilers, um, Tim's character teleports away. to receive some like

some Luke going to Dagobah training because in real life he had a baby Yeah in real life Tim had to go on paternity leave We needed a way to get him away from the party for a couple of episodes And then his brother

Played by Carly Flies off in sort of a In sort of an intense You know emotional Quest to find His missing parents And my character, a street smart Cobalt, says, oh, great, I have no more responsibilities with these children. I have to deal.

I don't have to deal with their bullshit anymore. I'm free. And other characters felt differently. But it was pretty rude to me to be like, ah, these kids, I'm done. I'm free, goodbye. I don't need any more of this bullshit. I can do my own thing now. I get back to my journey.

Yes. Finally, the spotlight can go back to you. That's funny that both of us have the answer that, like, oh, the rudest thing we did was like try to have our characters exit the game. Yeah. You mentioned the Nethermerk. For those who don't know, can you set the stage for what this current campaign is? I was very excited, as I mentioned, a fan of a weird little guys, and this is deep, dark, underground from what we know.

Plenty of them. So the basic idea for Nethermerk was that I wanted to do our goof on the Forgotten Realms Under Dark. I grew up reading the Drist books. And I was like, let's really, let's play around with this 90s fantasy thing. And then that expanded into kind of not just doing under dark stuff, but like a little bit of like, say, fragile rock. You know, talking about those weird little guys in the caves that like we have this sort of like Muppet thing happening with some of them versus like awful slimes. and, and then also... We have a very Saturday morning cartoon theme song.

Yeah, a little bit. And that's where we are with Nethermark. That's the basic gist of it is like navigating the awful caves of a fantasy world where every single monster on the world has been driven underground and trying to escape that. This is also taking place in Cordelia. How interconnected are the various campaigns? We have not said. That another mark takes place in Cordelia.

Then I apologize for making that assumption. Uh-uh-uh. But we haven't said it isn't. Okay, well, then I apologize for nothing. There's a lot of... Save your apologies. You are catching what we are laying down, which is that there is a tie to Cordelia

that we are purposefully keeping a little bit... I don't know, hazy? until we want to reveal what exactly it is. Okay. Well, fantastic. I will be watching with an eagle eye for any and all details in the future. Yeah, there's a lot of like rumor and hearsay that characters discuss about what the surface is like. It is unreachable.

And sort of like one of the big mysteries of the campaign is sort of like, can they get to the surface? What really is going on on the surface? What is its connection to how things got the way they are in the end of the end of the world? Merck, et cetera. I'm always a fan of people escaping from Plato's Cave Allegory and figuring out what's actually going on. You mentioned some of the influences you have with this. You know, you all know each other very well.

When you're approaching, like, creating a new campaign, like, when you're approaching creating something like Nethermerk, how much of it do you tend to construct in advance versus how much do you prefer to sort of fly by the seat of your pants and conversational free fall and knowing that your castmates will be able to gird you up and like pick it pick up what you're putting down what a swell question um so i i spent a good like couple of weeks um kind of forming a basic idea of what i wanted out of this campaign and or at least the world i did a little world building. And then I said, hi everybody to our players. Here is the basic gist of the world. It's like the idea of like this underground being this awful, very unfriendly place and kind of

just giving what that looked like and being like, who do you want to play in this world? And then I had conversations with everybody once they kind of had their basic ideas of their characters. And they told me their deals. And they told me their deals. And then, then I said, okay, I'm going to take this bit from their deal, this bit from there, deal, all these little pieces, and then I'm going to actually build the rest of it. So it's all connected to them. I had like one big thing that I wanted to accomplish in my vision of it. And the rest of it is all then.

Like, for example, Ali, Ali Fisher plays a glow pixie. She wanted to be like a little tinkerbell like figure who's also a little bit, is Laura Dern from Jurassic Park? Yeah, Jurassic Park. Yeah. Dr. Raleigh Sattler. Yeah, exactly. I had a little questionnaire for everybody. And then one of my questions on the questionnaire was like, what is your greatest fear? And I had a phone call with her and she said, the light eater. I was like, oh, well, what is that?

She didn't know because she's a glow picture. She gives off light. Her greatest fear is the light eater. I'm like, oh. So I got to like create this whole giant, mythological creature of the light eater who has become like the massive force of nature that is like this horrible monster that is like on their tails the whole time just because Ali said it on a phone call. I love that because I mean that to me is what is special about tabletop role playing games is it's not it's it's not like a passive experience. It's a collaborative game that you're playing together and creating a story together in real time. Like Who knows what shape it would have taken if she had not mentioned the light eater offhand.

Yeah, I wouldn't have had one. That's it. I wouldn't have thought of that. Also, I think something that's important to, like, the construction of Nethermerk is we did not intend for it to be an ongoing campaign. Right. It was, we originally planned it as a six-part mini-series while Ali Fisher had a baby. Yeah. And so we recorded before she had.

the baby. We yeah. And it was we were going to do six and be out and we were going to tell a complete story within that. And so I think Chris did a lot of the prep geared towards a six episode campaign. And then we got in the room and recorded it and we're like, oh, this has a lot of momentum. There's a lot of cool energy here. These episodes are like really fast-paced and fun. And we're also, we also only accomplished like a third of what Chris is. intended to the classic DMs dilemma. We accomplished like a third of what you know Chris set out to in the first

episode. So it quickly became it quickly became clear that there was a lot more we wanted to do in the setting. And so there was I'm sure Chris you can speak to this. There's a lot that's been like there's been a lot

of fleshed out discovered along the way that wasn't necessarily needed in the original genesis of Nethermerk. Yeah, yeah. I listen to everything you guys say along the way. And as it happens, I say, well, it's the old improvised trick where it's just like, if this is true, what else is true? And so every time anybody gives some bit of something that hints at world building,

they say, well, let's see where that goes. And then we keep going from there. We're always stopping recordings because Chris pulls out like a big quill and says, well, let's see where this goes and starts writing and won't show us what he's doing. Say that again. I usually manage to keep the quill from hitting the microphone, but, yeah. The ostrich that I plucked them from does get a fresh one each time. I did notice that. Well, of course, I'm not an amateur.

Yes. Of course. What a rookie mistake that would be. But I do love that piece of advice. And I think that's something you can really translate for people as sort of more active listening, sort of listening to your players, incorporating details of something that might seem innocuous to them that can come back and be something fun and meaningful and unexpected ways. Are there any other pieces of advice that you would give to someone who's maybe trying to start up, maybe developing a new campaign or wants to spice up an existing campaign that they have? If you are working with your friends and just like talk to them about what they are excited about in the game. And that doesn't need to be like their backstories or whatever because that is a specific type of player who is into their backstories and into their role playing.

And again, like in a home game, like they're, you've got your, you know, your dungeon raiders and you've got your role players and you've got your, you know, whatever, everything in between. but like just like talk to them and see like what they want out of the game and we are in a wonderful time period where you have so many tools at your disposal for taking care of whatever that thing is that they want and then you get to have the fun of taking those four or five players and what they want out of the game and like figuring out how to make that all weave together so I just like yeah talk to your players beforehand like see what they want to do you don't need to you know, come up with some massive story that they just get plunk down into. You don't need to

create insane, you know, hyper-strategy, you know, hexagon tables or whatever, unless that's what they want. You've got time to get there, but, like, you can talk to them and see what they want out of it. Yeah. I mean, I do love a good table, but your point is well taken. I mean, me too, but, like, find out if that's what they're into first. Exactly. So, so, So many tables I'll never roll on, but I'm glad they exist. Joe, what about you? I know you mentioned you've run some games before. Do you have any a piece of advisor or something that you would impart to someone if they were embarking on a campaign for the first time?

Or maybe I wanted to think about how they approach the game differently? Similar to what we were saying in the like in the Genesis of Nethermerk that, you know, we were able to get through like a third of what Chris planned. my go-to piece of advice is like if you're the DM, prepare less. A, because you'll like, if you over-prepare, you're going to feel frustrated because you spent all that time beforehand that went to waste. And you're not going to allow discovery at the table. You're not going to allow, you know, finding what, finding that fun thing that maybe, you know, to Chris's point, which I agree with, but like, maybe they can't all, maybe your players can't

always articulate what they want. But if you, if you allow yourself the freedom to. discover that together. That's so much fun for everyone. There's the like, I think of the Hokie DM meme about like, oh, I plan this big, huge dungeon and they just want to talk to the dumb NPC I didn't even name.

And it's like, well, your players are excited about that thing. That's a happy problem. Yeah, that's good for you. They found a guy that maybe you didn't put a lot of time into beforehand, but something clicked with them. So you got your players excited. That's great. Yeah, turns out you discovered a hidden talent

for playing like a charming NPC. Like, great. Enjoy it. That's good. Yeah, that's what I would say. No, I definitely, I can appreciate that. I think, like, thinking about it is like scaffolding rather than an entire building, I think is definitely useful framework because I feel a lot of people

that they're sitting down to write something or write their notes for a campaign can feel a bit daunting if you feel like you have to be a perfectionist. Everything has to be just right. But if you just start with an idea and just some loose plot points or just some ideas of where you want to go and have that conversation, I think it can open up a lot of possibilities. Yeah, yeah. I DM our sister show. Oh, these, these stars. Oh, I can't even say the title.

Oh, these, those stars of space. And when we started that show, my show notes for prep would be 1,500 to 2,000 words. and now that we're like, we've done 90 plus episodes, my prep show notes is like 400 to 500? Because, A, I trust everyone, you know, and I know that we're going to fill in the details, and it's more fun that way. If you give yourself those gaps,

if you allow yourself to not know where you're going to end up, there's no chance of railroading, which can get frustrating for everyone to. I think if we're giving tips to new DMs, I think it is very easy for them to hear us right now and say like, oh, okay, like you are all trained improvisers. I'm not. So to them, I would say,

think about creating a scenario that will make a specific character in the party. Like, it's a problem for them. Whatever it is at their deal is, something that creates a conflict for one specific person in that group. That's enough. That will blossom so much. You have no idea. And then number two, go ahead and just use the stats in the Monster Manual.

And when you get stuck, just have them get ambushed by some random bad guys. Combat takes forever. And it's fun. You get to roll the dice and get to fight. That's all they want. That's why they built these characters with their superpowers anyway. They just want to fight something. Like give them something to fight.

And there's a whole giant book about how powerful they are. Like, go ahead and use that. You don't have to invent everything. There's a lot of tools. A lot of tools to use. And also just the thing that always gets me is combat taking forever, but only taking six seconds per round. The time dilation is impressive. As you mentioned that, you know, there are prospective listeners saying, hey, you guys are professional improvisers.

Well, you're also telling a story for a public audience. And I'm curious as storytellers, as comedians, what do you find most gratifying or exciting about the medium of actual play? I appreciate the amount of freedom we have. I appreciate the ways we are able to study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need, to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

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Jump around from tone and energy and emotion and comedy. sometimes within a scene. I appreciate doing cool spells. I like that the medium of actual play comes with expectations from the listeners in the way that any genre does. If someone goes into a horror movie or an action movie or a romance or whatever, they have kind of an idea

what they're getting into. And so we have that expectation built into the format thanks to our forebears. And so that, is great for comedy because they know what to expect and so when we subvert it makes the comedy a lot more easy to pull off and then in terms of just like working in audio it's it's gosh it's lovely how inexpensive it is to make a picture in someone's mind uh versus having to go out there and get a film crew and actors and so and so on and so forth

I love formats that call upon the audience's imagination to fill in the blanks. I have a long career in comic books, which is the exact same thing. Yes, we draw these pictures, but there's a lot that happens in between them that you might not realize is happening in your imagination. Yeah, and so I like that very much. I like that how inexpensive it is leads to a lot of freedom, and I like that we have this sort of built-in genre expectation that we can play with. Fantastic. I love all those answers.

I love everything that you said, and I agree it's that the freedom inherent to this specific mode of storytelling. You know, it does feel like this infinite story engine, especially with multiple people, taking narration, giving and taking, sharing this experience together. It's just always a lot of fun. I think the other thing I like, too, just before we, before we. we move on. The one thing I really appreciate is, uh, is the collaborative energy. Mm-hmm. Is the like, is the, you know, the shared world building. It's, it's, it, you know, that, that, you know, there's so much, you know, there's so much as an improviser, uh, uh, are built around discovery and connecting to that discovery and listening to each other

and experiencing that. You never have to worry about what happened the last time he, you did an improv show. You know, you don't have to worry. about the continuity, but that's so interesting to be able to like, just live in the moment with, with, you know, your talented friends, discover the world and change the world and grow the world together. That's so exciting. When everyone taps into that same wavelength, it creates something that's really special in a way that I don't always find in other mediums. So when you can tap into that, it's always really enjoyable. And I think that's something you folks have definitely tapped into with rude tales.

So, yeah, I really appreciate it. So I want to ask you first, you know, we're talking about RPGs. What is your favorite TTRPG that you think is maybe slept on or underrated or should get some more shine? And Chris, we'll start with you. Okay, mine is Merckborg or Merk Bure, depending on how sweetest you want to get about it. It's from Free League Publishing by Pelot-Nielsen and Johanur. Merckborg is just so metal

it's so dark but it's also just it's so gleeful in how like nihilistic it is just like every single way that the dice roll can go wrong is fun there are so many specifics

the rule book is just it's a gorgeous work of art It's beautiful. It is rules light. It is heavy on atmosphere. And just like, it's a fun thing just to read on its own. As were all those Dragon magazines I read when I was a kid, when I mostly didn't have people to play with.

But yeah, I love Mirkborg. Here's my hard sell. And good news, it's free. When you're starting, if you're going away from Dungeons and Dragons, which, you know, I would argue has a commanding market position with a lot of support with apps, with many supplemental

materials, with bountiful Google hits for any question you may have. Getting your part, getting your group to play a thoughtfully written and lovingly crafted, you know, any, any, almost any other, uh, TTRPG that gets published is a true labor of love from someone. But like getting the buy-in from your table, yeah. I'm building up to something.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for my collaborator. I love this collaboration. It's hard. If you're saying, oh, we're going to play a new game, you got to learn all these new rules. You got to, you know, learn all these new mechanics. It actually uses a different kind of dice.

You know, it's like there's a lot of like built-in roadblocks to like getting people to a table to play. So my rec is, which we use on O'Dees, Those Stars of Space, Lasers and Feelings by John Harper. If you ever want to like, I think it's a great gateway drug. It's so easy to pick up. It's so easy to learn the mechanics. It's a one-pager. It's a free PDF. And you can hack it into anything.

There are lots of hacks available online, but, like, you know, if you're like, if you want to get away from D&D, if you want to try something else, it's a great way to say like, oh, I'm going to hack lasers and feelings into a fast and the furious campaign or a fast and the furious game. And then if everyone has fun, if everyone's excited about what you do there, you say, great, let's use this other, we're going to make this a longer running thing. We're going to make, you know, a longer campaign, a longer story. Let's use this other game. And now everyone at your table is already excited about the thing they already did that was super easy to pick up. They're invested to like try something a little more niche. That's a fantastic point. It's a phenomenal gateway because it is so simple.

You just need basically a D6. And it's just very easy to wrap your head around. In our previous campaign that we did on Geek and Sundry, we did that for episode zero just to get everyone on board and start playing together. And it's just a really great way to get people to just start playing and just, relax and have fun with it. So great, great pick. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Dan, I will mention,

had no little asides while I was talking, Chris. And I, on my Merkborg, I have to thank one Mr. Joe Lepore for getting me a copy of that book for my birthday several years ago.

You're fucking welcome, bro. It's a hell of a birthday, I got it for my birthday one year, too and it's such an incredibly designed book. Definitely looks amazing on a shelf and also great to play. Yeah, that's a great book if you just want a cool book to look at. It's so pretty and badass. So final recommendation, it's Game Night. You've been tasked with bringing any game you want. People read the rules even if they're really complicated. What are you bringing and why? I'm bringing mythic mischief. And do we know mythic mischief?

everybody? No. I do not. I got it for Christmas this year. It is a one-on-one strategy board game where each player controls a faction of students at a school for the vampires

and wizards and Frankenstein monsters and all of you are, you're entering a forbidden library and messing with the head librarian and trying to see who can steal books from the library while also trying to force the other team to be caught by the librarian. And the way that the game works is, like, each faction has different abilities

on how they can sort of manipulate the other players on the board and also sort of shift the bookshelves into different configurations to try to strategically force your opponent into the path of the librarian and get yourself into the path of snagging

all the goodies you want and moving around. That sounds delightful. It's so fun. Yeah. Better than chess. Chess fans. You heard it here.

You're game trash. Chess on blast. I don't know if it's going to make the next thousand. years after this attack. Chess. Chess dog's falling. Chess mortally wounded by Chris.

Time of death. Sorry, Chats. Have more vampires. I guess would say checkmate. The true answer is probably like code names, right? Yeah, but I think if it's a hypothetical world where like everyone has to

play the game that I want to play and everyone's excited about it is a game I own. and may never play in my lifetime because I may never find you know like I was talking about before as a boy the critical mass of people that would be willing to do this with me is the game diplomacy

yeah oh man I would love to play diplomacy but it could take 12 hours so you really gotta like you really got to be broken in the right way to want to to want to dive in for those that don't know it's a it's like a World War I

war game where all of the turns happen blind. You all like put your turn, you put your like action in a box and they all get red simultaneously. And so the turns take very little time as the actions are read out. And then everyone leaves the board, leaves the table and goes off and argues in other rooms and discusses in other rooms and tries to convince everyone to work together to win. Joe, I think I think this sounds like an excuse for you to like, book a weekend thing to make this happen. Yeah, just get a cabin and some fellow board gaming sickos and, uh, or diplomacy solve, solve the crisis in Europe. One day, one day it'll happen. I don't know. We'll see. I think you really, I mean, I think you really have to be the kind of person that's like, sort of awed by the idea of a game, maybe taking, you know, from sunup to sundown. You know, you can't be like most normal humans that would be like, oh, that's going to get boring an hour in.

I think you know enough. We know the same. I think you could do it. I don't know who you know, but I believe in you and I think you could. I mean, I know people that play Twilight Imperium, and that just requires a level of iron will and fortitude and 12 unbroken hours that are hard to come by, but I commend them for finding that time and making that time to come together and play. because what else you're going to do? God bless them. Yeah, everyone.

They could volunteer, I suppose, but yeah, that's great. I would, but I'm busy for 12 hours playing Twilight Imperium or diplomacy. The Imperium isn't going to fight itself. Come on. I have to leave the room and argue about what just happened. Chris and Joe, thank you again for joining us today. I really appreciate you both taking the time. Where can people find you both and Rude Tales of Magic online?

if in fact you want to be found. Head to root talesofmagic.com. Head to your favorite podcatcher. We're on all of the social medias at rude tales, at of rude, roottales dot blue sky. social. We got a bucket full of episodes. You know,

we've got campaigns of many different lengths for you to sample. And, yeah, find us on the internet, baby. Yeah. Fantastic. what Joe said. There was no rude tales of magic before us. There's no brand confusion. You Google that. You duck, duck go it.

You'll bang it. You'll find us. Bing us. Bing us, people. Look on Lycos. Ask Chief. He died, unfortunately. I think he died shortly after Princess Diana to bring things back around. Yeah. Oh, geez. I know. He couldn't bear to go on.

Ask me no further questions. It's actually, you know, there's a sort of like, you know, like Egyptian pharaohs, you know, burying their servants in the pyramid with them. Barry me with my AOL 1,000 hour CDs. I need those minutes. I need all those minutes. My JPEG has not yet downloaded. All right, folks.

Thank you all for tuning in. You can find me here each and every week with another question and answers talking to cool people from around the gaming world on Geekincentra's YouTube channel or wherever find podcast or served. and thank you again for listening. But for now, folks, tell us what games are you playing this week? What are you most excited to introduce to your table? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you folks next time. Bye bye. Two good and co-cophy creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk,

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