Dungeons and Daddies - Talking Dad (Season 1 After Show)

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

In this special post-season after show, we go over the finale and give some insight into our thoughts and feelings about Season 1, our show, our characters, and D&D itself! We talk about the differences between being a player and being a characters, our individual approaches to the show, stinger endings, intros, our favorite bits, and the wild realization of how much of the DNA of this show is pure happenstance.Thanks so much for listening and supporting us for Season 1! We'll see you all for Fetch Quest and Season 2!Support the show on Patreon!Get merch and more at our website!Follow us on Twitter @dungeonsanddads!Check out the subreddit!DM is Anthony BurchDarryl Wilson is Matt Arnold (@mattlarnold)Henry Oak is Will Campos (@willbcampos)Ron Stampler is Beth May (@heybethmay)Glenn Close is Freddie Wong (@fwong) Theme song by Maxton WallerCourtney Thérond is our Content ProducerAshley Nicollette is our Community ManagerChad Ellis provides additional editingRobin Rapp is our transcriber Cover art by Alex Moore (@notanotheralex) Send us stuff and get in contact: https://www.dungeonsanddaddies.com/contact Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're about to hear, for the very first time on the main feed, an episode of Talking Dad, which is our Patreon after show where we discuss each episode a week after they air. On this episode, we go over the entire season one of Dungeons and Daddies, talk about the process behind our characters and the story, the challenges and joys of using D&D as a storytelling system, and offer some tantalizing glimpses into what might have been and what's to come with Fetch Quest and Season 2 of the show. We've been doing this for just about the entire season, so if you like what you hear,

head on over to patreon.com slash dungeonsanddads to subscribe to our Patreon, where you'll also be able to get an extended edition of this episode where we answer listener questions and you can hear exclusive, never-before-heard audio of Beth dunking on my grandma. That's just one of the many Patreon perks available. So take a look at patreon.com slash dungeons and dads and consider supporting this show directly. Thanks so much for listening. And without further ado,

talking dad. Welcome to talking dad, a podcast about a podcast that if you're hearing this, you probably just listened to the season one finale of Skylark. I just listened to it again. A podcast about a podcast that was. So that's it. Housekeeping, first of all, we're going to continue doing the show. That was season one finale that you heard, and we're going to do a season two.

Actually, Freddie, do you want to go through the whole schedule of what the next few months is going to be? Yeah, here's what's going on. Yes, please, Freddie. Will is going to be taking on DM duties for a three episode miniseries called Fetch Quest. About three dogs and one cat from our world flung into the Forgotten Realms. We heard your requests and we are going to start trying to make Fetch Quest happen. Wow. While Will does that, Anthony is putting final touches and prepping for season two of Dungeons and Daddies.

Same universe. Same universe. Continuation of the story. I like to imagine that Anthony has like a beta testing group of like his and Daddies. Same universe, same universe, continuation of the story. I like to imagine that Anthony has, like, a beta testing group of, like, his, like, other improv comics.

People I respect exactly, like, 14% less than I respect you. And that you're trying it out with them to, like, see how the system works before you, you know, upgrade to the major leagues.

If this is your first time listening to Talking Dad, like, you're not subscribed to our Patreon or whatever, this is basically just a show where we talk about the episode that we just did, the episode at large, and honestly

about 70% of it is just us bullshitting about movies and stuff that we like. Yeah. Oh, and it's after, like, The Talking Dead. Like, get it? Like, from The Walking Dead, they have The Talking Dead on AMC. Yeah, it's that. It's funny like three years ago when we started this podcast. It was like really funny when we started it. It was a little bit more relevant. Very hip, very cool. I guess we'll get to change the name

for season two. That's true. If we want to. Ooh, people still, because people don't know who we're playing for season two. They don't. In the Discord, I did let loose that we're not playing the same characters. I did not give any spoilers about who we're playing or anything like that, but I thought it was fair

because a lot of people got really, I saw in the Discord, quite a few people got excited. Oh, cool. I can't wait to see the dads fight the doodler. The dads are coming back. We should definitely be clear. The dads.

Because the continuation of the story element seems like we're playing the same. I don't know if we can say the dads aren't going to come back because actually I don't even think we know if our specific dads are coming back continuation of the story element seems like we're playing the same thing. I don't know why we say the dads aren't going to come back because actually I don't even think we know if our specific dads are coming back. But the story is continuing

but we will be playing different characters. I would like to ask this question to the group because I don't actually think it's a spoil to say basically genuinely speaking

what kind of people you are in the next season and what the concept is. I think it would be fun to say. I'd kind of be excited. I don't want to go into details about

who our characters are because I'm still working on mine. We'll say it in the version that gets released on the page now. I think it'd be fun to say. I'd kind of be excited. I don't want to go into details about who our characters are, because I'm still working on mine. We'll say it in the version that gets released on the page now. No, no. I think we can say what the... Yeah, go for it. Let's count on one, two, three.

Wait, what are we going to do? We're going to do simultaneous? Yeah. Actually, let's try this. Let's see how close. Let's see how we all describe the group that we're playing, and then Anthony will describe it for real. Freddy, he's editing this, goes, no.

But we're doing it, right? Okay. Three. One, two, three. We're playing our parents' grandkids. We're skipping one this, goes, no. But we're doing it, right? Okay. Three. One, two, three. We're playing our parents' grandkids. Teen grandkids. We're skipping one generation. God, boy.

We're skipping one generation, and we're going to be playing the kids of the kids in the show. Yeah. So Lark and Sparrow and Grant and Terry and little Nikki, their kids are going to be the player characters for next season. They're the dads. Now, those characters are precious to Anthony. He refused to let us play them. He said, he said,

my IP, Terry, they're mine. Yeah. But that's in the future. Let's talk. And best play a daughter. I am. I'm playing a left-handed woman now. Very brave.

Which is great because we get to blame the second season being bad just on that. Yeah. But yeah, this is an episode that's about not just the finale, but sort of the series as a whole and something that we do on each episode of talking dad is like hey what was your favorite moment of the episode which i want to do but i think also we can open it up to like do you have like a favorite moment or maybe a least favorite moment of the series or maybe so just some little things i want to just lay out just because this is something I was thinking about today. We started this podcast in 2019. Yes. We were talking about it in 2018, the end of 2018.

We did a test for this show about three years ago. After Trump's election, we said we need to do some brave political art. So we need to do something about escaping to another world. And then what was crazy to me is half of this show was recorded during the pandemic remotely and apart from each other, which is, boy, oh boy, what a journey this has been.

And then half of that time, Glenn was in a prison cell separated from all the other characters. It's been a wild ride. So I just want to throw that out there in terms of like, I mean, you know, we've all taken on various creative projects of various sizes and scales. This is definitely one of like

the larger single contiguous ones, right? This is the first one we've done people gave a fuck about. People cared about Borderlands. And Borderlands. People cared so much about it, they hate you. Yeah, we never got that good. That's not why they hate me. Yeah, we're not even there yet on this podcast. You don't make it big hate you yeah we don't even got that that's not why they hate me yeah we're

not even there yet on this podcast you don't make it big till you got a real hate group i mean i'll just start with the i don't want to think about the specifics of the show or my brain hasn't figured that out yet my brain hasn't figured that out yet i don't have a least or most favorite moment but my least favorite moment in terms of like the process was definitely like the first time we had to record remotely yeah for a whole as anybody could probably understand for a whole variety of reasons like that was just a tough time of the year and i definitely remember simultaneously being relieved that we had something that we could still do remotely but just like it really felt like the world was ending yeah i saw in the discord

and then on the twitter people like wow you know this show has helped me through something i was like you know what this show helped us through some stuff too because this was like our creative rock through the pandemic that was like the old reliable thing and i i i really didn't like it during pandemic yeah it was especially being able to just see you guys and have a way to make myself laugh like just to have a group of people that i loved hanging out with and just that we could go have fun uh and then talk to the talking dads but also just like the live listens and like feeling plugged into the community was like a big part of that. Like, again, we dropped Rocks Rock during. Oh, my God.

We recorded and dropped Rocks Rock. Yeah, that was a little. I remember thinking right at the beginning of the pandemic. I read that thing that was that people like, well, you know, Shakespeare wrote King Lear during quarantine. You're like, I could do better than that. And then I literally like I had the two weeks of feeling, like, completely miserable and freaked out. And then I was like, fucking rocks, rocks, she'll be my king lear.

Like, I had that thought to myself. I was like, I'm going to throw myself at this because if I don't, I'm going to go crazy. And then Taylor Swift had to drop two albums. Yeah, that's pretty fucked up. All right, come on. Did she drop 30 episodes of a Dodgers and Dragons podcast? No, but if she had.

I would fucking love to. She's been just holding on to that. Did she drop 30 episodes of a Douglas Attractions podcast though? No, but if she had. She's been just holding on to that. Taylor, if you're listening, we want you on this show. Taylor, we know you're listening. You should name your character Taylor Swift next. Holy shit. Yes, she's your name. That's really good. Taylor Swift is so good.

Fucking manifest that shit. Olivia Munn manifest that shit. I'm going to just... You're my best friend now on the show oh that's for sure my character's just gonna love you i can't because i won't be able to say taylor swift without like smiling and wanting to be your friend so until you meet your anemesis katie perry also a man letter k yeah kd kyle terry perry it's been really wild to like enjoy something consistently over three years yeah this has always been a thing where whatever else was going on like the end of democracy slash the world knowing they're like

hey once every two weeks i get to like do this very weird thing with my friends and beth like that's like invaluable. So if we could, if we could have like, if we could give you a little bit of that, like, Hey, every two weeks we get to listen to four funny people and Anthony do some shit.

Then I, I hope, I hope we could do that for you. Cause I got a lot of mess. I like my Instagram started being like, Hey, this person put you in a real, this person puts you in.

I think it's just them thanking all of us for like the show or whatever. Don't thank us. Thank you for listening and being kind about that stuff. I mean, you should thank us because we put on a pretty good show. You don't have to ever thank us for anything by listening or patron. Actually, if you really want to thank us,

Patreon is a fantastic way to do that. I always felt from episode one that we like had something. I didn't, I don't know if it was ain't good, but I remember the twist that you threw in there where it's like, okay, Grant's skin is going to be eaten, which is like so violent and like, so like over the top, like a grotesque even. But I was like, ooh, real consequences for us fucking around. Like, I just felt like so happy with that.

I remember just being on cloud nine now we recorded episode one we had you know we did the intro a couple of times to try and like settle into it a little bit to try and find a good way of just very concisely and quickly getting into everybody's character stories and getting into the sort of interpersonal relationships within the characters but i remember very much being like oh yeah there's something here i felt very satisfied with that i was very uh happy that you were involved in this from the get-go because at no point during the beginning of this process was I like, this is actually a good idea. Like, Freddy and I were just hanging out one time, and we were talking about, ha, ha, ha,

what if D&D archetypes were dad archetypes? And Freddy was like, that's a good idea. I'm like, is it? And then we started doing the thing, and he's like, we have something here. I was like, I don't think we do. I remember the first six times Freddy explained the concept to me, I was like, so they're dads, and they play Dungeons play dungeons and dragons like we're like well how do they have magic their

dads like it is a testament to freddie's ability to pick one because i was like what the fuck are you talking about yeah because i mean freddie's isn't about a lot of ideas hold on no no no no that's hold on hold on everything i think is a good idea is a good idea it's the world that's wrong if they don't go but here's the thing i'm ready to back off from it if think is a good idea is a good idea it's a world that's wrong if they don't go but here's the thing i'm ready to back off from it if it was a bad idea then it was his good idea to call it a bad idea exactly here's a good idea knowing when to stop that's true honestly out of all the things in the episode getting a little tiny stud stampler cameo was my favorite man on the main so actually just like backtracking

a little bit just because you guys are all saying important stuff about the show as a whole. I feel like, I don't know, I've had a lot of jobs and I've had a lot of stuff that I've worked on and compared to every other thing that I've worked on and gotten money for, I'll make that

caveat, is that even when this was hard or frustrating or even if I felt shitty about myself or something or whatever, the job never sucked. And that's like way more than I can say about anything else that I've ever been a part of. This episode was interesting because it's, you know, our first two-parter and we got him, got him with the...

That was a Beth special, right? That was Beth's both parts of that because it was also bad how the dad joke was your idea yeah so all the stuff that got guessed but you know i feel like it's an honor to get guessed by if something gets guessed that just means that like it made sense and therefore was good that's what i take it as i thought it was a good cross section of like i think all the little bits and bobs that i like about the show it's combat that gets kind of you know undercut by something clever it's weird character things that kind of go off to the side you know and i thought it was you know just sort of a fun entertaining sort of way to to get everyone back together i remember the record for this one was

the longest record we ever did this was one of the funniest things ever because i was like oh boy this record took six hours and then we hear from our friends who are like uh yeah that's a typical dnd session how but you know it's a little bit different obviously if you have like miniatures and you're not trying also because i was thinking about that but i thought the feeling of it was weird it's fun listening back to one it's been so long since we recorded it and then two i do think this is one where not to say it wasn't fun to record but but it was definitely. It was not fun to record. Because it wasn't just six hours. Because that's like one thing.

It's like, oh, six hours. No, no, no. It was three days with a lot of recording. Like, like many hours each day. And in between that time, it was also like, it reminded me of like a film shoot. Where like, we're just so exhausted that it didn't feel like the end. Like, you'd be like, oh, it's fun. Like, we had like Beth posted those nice pictures of us.

But like. You can see how wiped we are. It was like one o'clock like there was no like real it was like hey good job everybody like we we did it and then like go home it's just exotic like it was honestly like listening back to this time that's like when i finally was like oh shit it's over yeah it really kind of hit me like not till now that like it was actually like yeah and to talk a little bit just very briefly for those of you who don't know, for the recording process, we basically, it was everything from-

Five episodes were all- Did we do five episodes? I thought we did four. Including this two-parter, so four, but yes, five complete episodes were done in a batch. Five episodes. So basically we'd rented an Airbnb to do basically a ginormous batch record.

Normally we record once every two weeks, but we were like, we're going to do a big run of these because we thought this ending's going to be gigantic be gigantic we're gonna want to kind of have the momentum of it also like three of us are disappearing on a film shoot for like two months so it was like yeah we wanted to get a lot of that stuff in the can so to speak so you guys can have the bandwidth to do that so we just go to the end this is a little scattershot but yes you know how so i in contrast to what freddie was saying i fucking hate this episode generally speaking oh i did i did until I don't say I

was talked down from the ledge but basically my experience having finished DMing you know all the stuff that we did that weekend I was like I fucked that up so bad oh that makes me so sad to hear no no it's not like it made me upset I was just like oh well you know it's the next thing to try to fix in going forward for me like the ideal finale in terms of a big fight, like what you want out of a big fight, at least what I want out of a big fight is people you care about getting really, really close to death or dying and like really big dramatic moments. I'm like, oh shit, you know, it's Independence Day does a great job of this, where it's like, cool. All we got to do is get the shields down. Oh fuck, why aren't the shields

down? Okay, cool. They're down. Now we just got to fire missiles at it until it goes down. Oh fuck, it's not going down. And we're out of missiles. Oh missiles oh well one guy has a missile thank god wait it's the drunk guy oh okay well he's not drunk right now oh shit wait but he won't fire from his thing like there's all these and then he says i'll be yours and it's fun we didn't have any of that everything you did worked the first time and everything was great and everything was totally smooth and like just purely from a game designy dnd session like setting up the downs that there's no ups and downs. It's all ups. Everything goes perfectly according to plan,

which to me makes it dramatically inert and kind of suck. The thing that makes the episodes a whole work for me though, which I think will maybe more aware of in our discord chats afterward was like the fact that everything being sunshine and roses during the fight contrasts really well against like the literal end of the world in the epilogue and so i'm like i have come to peace with the finale itself as an episode but i still think like if we ever do do a big fight at the end again i want it to be you know serenity there's a sense of anxiety that i knew i went into this like bachelor core

with that i i think you actually scared me too good. I think, I think that like, I scared you into learning D and D. I mean, in narrative storytelling that you're like controlling, you have some sort of sense of like how close to the sun you can get. But like with this,

it's like really good metaphor. Okay. Actually the only time I've ever cheated on a roll, and this wasn't even cheating. Go on. I'll want to admit it once. We were all knocked prone that one time, and I knew that I could do Uncanny Dodge to half the damage,

but I had no damage by that point. So I was like, yeah, no, I'm knocked prone, and I get 17 damage or something. Well, you lied. You cheated to do more damage. You lied to make it worse. To juice it. Oh, that's better.

That's awesome. That's great. Because you wanted to use a D&Dnd ability that's how you know we weren't in real danger yeah yeah so it's like i think we're all being so careful to just get out alive and to make things like yeah well yeah i think that we've kind of let some of the other larger suspense maybe i honestly thought like just as an episode like i thought pretty much in between mommy's arriving and us having our scene with our wives like that part kind of drags versus us trying to pierce yeah because there's a bunch of people trying to put a bracelet on a dragon oh my god that was so frustrating if the fucking if the climax of star wars was just luke trying to like do the same thing a bunch of times. Imagine Luke shoots 20 torpedoes

and the first 18 miss. And then you're just listening and be like, damn it. This will sound weird for a second, but it's like the same problem I think that rom-coms or comedies have in general, which is like the third acts often suck

or they just feel so different because like once you get close to the end, like the demands of the ending of a satisfying narrative often are like counter to like what you're there for in the first place especially like straightforward goofy comedies it's like you're watching like pineapple express like yeah this is funny and then it's like well then it's gotta be dramatic and then it's like ignores everything that was fun about beforehand so like dnd is fun because you don't know what's gonna happen but then like endings have this finality so like your disappointment is still

just down to like the dice rolls. Like, yeah, I could have gone better. And like, if it wasn't the ending, you wouldn't think anything of it. That combat could have gone better. It could have been more interesting or whatever it is. But like what you set up in terms of like the conflict, in terms of like the three dads are there. We got to get our kids out. There's like the portal.

Like all that stuff was like really exciting. And then like, you know, how much specific narrative elements it's up to the dice roll or you make them not up to the dice roll and then it doesn't feel like dnd anymore there's a middle space though which is like yeah there's die rolls but it's like i also could have just not let you roll the die to try to throw the grenade out of the van type stuff like there's a lot of stuff i was doing by just dm fiat that somebody in the discord put it pretty well where they're like anthony is the dad who's like hey guys guys, I'm serious this time. Everybody goes to bed early and in 30 minutes

they're all eating pizza and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Like, I couldn't be as mean as I wanted to be. It could be just as redundant because like, me getting blown up

or whatever could have turned into just another gameplay loop of us trying to get something pierced through the ear. Like, you never know what's going to happen.

I also think it's weird. I don't know why this has kind of just hit me, but in fiction, we love watching our favorite characters like fuck up. They make the wrong choices and stuff like that. But then I think that there's this element of listening to people play D&D

or you want them as players, you want us as players to do a good job at it. It's like a sport at that point, right? Like in a weird way, D&D has this almost sport element because you're rooting for characters in a way knowing that there's an element of this that's not written, knowing that there's an element out of control. There's rooting for what happens to the character, but there's also like rooting for the player to play the game well. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's this weird kind of sport elements so that the characters are beyond just fictional characters. They are players in this framework. And in that context, you want them to do well. But then the problem is that they just continually do well. There's actually nothing interesting about that. I mean, I think one of the biggest takeaways for me from just the show as a whole is how interesting a storytelling medium D&D is.

It is kind of a way of exploring a narrative space, exploring a character space in a way that generally writing fiction just doesn't touch because all of you folks are in the room, right? Like we've talked about this a little bit in the past, but you know, one of the people in the room is working against you. Yeah, exactly. It's actively antagonistic and what you want and you might have in your head, this really perfect narrative of like, oh, this is like, I want to talk a little bit about this, which was what were my thoughts for Glenn at different stages throughout this show, you know? So like what was cool was just

having that shift all the time like i had had thoughts prior to glenn's courtroom arc and by the way someone had done the math on that it's staggering to consider how many different directions this show could have gone like if i could have a like a reality bending time machine thing one thing that i would love to see just out of selfish curiosity is where would this show have gone if the pandemic didn't happen like what would have happened if we were still recording in person through that pivotal middle part and then very specifically someone had done the math on this on the subreddit glenn based on the roles there for his trial was more likely to have been getting a not guilty verdict based on

that right so there was a bad role yeah there's a bad rule there so it's like it was a lot of bad rules i think when you rolled for your defense you never got a number that was above a 10 yeah could you imagine like marvel's what if but not if the pandemic didn't happen but what if the pandemic didn't happen for this one podcast so like i had had plans for glenn in terms of just like oh here's how i might want to explore this like i think for i'm trying to think of the specifics so like to me i think one of the endings that i had had in my head early on which of course did not come to pass because you know the narrative shifted underneath my feet but i was like oh i think that glenn's ending is confronting the death of morgan his kid, with Nick.

And like the end scene in my head was them going to like visit her grave. I want to set up that he had not gone back to it or like was avoiding it, visiting it with Nick. And then the end of that was him being like, you know what? Let's go. Let's go to Universal. Like that would be like the dumb character. Like my of the little cute character growth, which was playing the idea that it's like,

oh yeah, he's come to meet Nick halfway and has come to, you know, sort of confront some of the parts about him and, you know, Hey, the dice do what the dice does. And we got what we got.

And I'm very happy with the way that Glenn's arc went. I think it's really satisfying. I'm very happy with the, the Christianity joke, which, you know, I just crack up every single time I think about it. Cause I was fucking stupid.

I'm also very happy with the Christianity joke. There's the a thing you hit on a good not paradox i don't know what to say but like the conflict of playing and doing storytelling is like for daryl is very much like coming into this like more like an actor being like it's not in my control like it's anthony like i don't want to think ahead of time because i think as a storyteller you're thinking about what's most interesting for the story so your motivation often should be running counter to what a character motivation is like the person who's writing frodo has a different want for frodo than frodo and i want to only think about what daryl wants like daryl that's one of the things you're really good at like daryl wants something whereas like the more accurate thing as a story would be like well i as a writer want daryl to

like you know have a bittersweet thing and like suffer and like do this. But like in the moment, like I want to be like Daryl. So it's like, I never quite really thought of it until you're saying it like that. But it's like, as a writer, you, your motivation is one thing as a character, your motivation is the other. So like, I feel like a lot of this is just like a balance. So you didn't have the same kind of experience Freddie had of like, I have a long-term ending. No, I never like thought about what like. Matt was really interesting because I remember talking to him about some of the stuff and you know just sort of like kicking some ideas around

and like i was asking him about sort of his prep and he was like i do not want to be thinking about this show until we are i'm sitting in front of the microphone and we're starting the intro and then i'm in the show and that's where i'm going to react to which i thought was again totally works i mean that's why darryl doesn't do as much like i think it's actually i think we have a good balance of different approaches because i think like like we'll send me anxious text on the weekend. What about this? Yeah, like I backseat DM fucking Anthony all the time. Like I remember doing like the most stressful part of the campaign for me was during what like the Glenn stuff.

We broke the pattern completely where every other dad had like three or four episodes to get your little time. And then, you know, we're going to move. And it was like we had the trial and then the trial turned into the Jody thing which was still kind of the glenn thing and then we had to go get glenn and then it was like this whole and i was like how the fuck are we gonna write jimmy off of the show glenn hogged the arc for sure so i was like he was just keeping me up at night i'm anxious i'm a i can't help but try to break the story so i was sending anthony fucking texts all the time he was very patient about putting up with me being like what about this that or the other a little sneak peek of fetch quest for a second because this is what it made me think of like playing with which we've already

recorded which we've already recorded because it was interesting being on the other side of the table and seeing how you guys are as players in terms of like how you're feeling out your character what you're doing and one thing that i like anthony had this moment where like i was laying out a plot thread and then like you were in your doggo mode like you were like you but it's like i could see another writer brain at work being like oh yeah i'm gonna pick this thing up and play with it as my character to help will move the story along it was like oh thank thank you so fucking much oh my god if we because it's like you want that yeah i don't know i just think to me the classic moment of this is um when we go back to neverwinter with the pyramid anthony has set up the pyramid is where like the fucking mommy twist happens.

There's like the whole, like, you got to go back and face what you did. And we get to the gate and it's like this very hard moment. Cause it's like David Boreanaz wants the dads to come in and face their crimes or whatever. And then Daryl's reaction is very much like, fuck no. Like I'm not doing that. Like I'm out of here. Absolutely not. We have to save our kids, which is totally natural. And then like for me as Henry, there was a bit in my head where i was like i could totally justify henry being like no i'm not gonna like i'm gonna agree with daryl and just

leave but like i was thinking like i really want to see what's in that fucking pyramid like as a player wanted to go there so i made this move with henry to make it about something else where it's like he feels guilty that's interesting feels like it felt very of his character didn't feel like you were like meta gaming i was walking into that and actually that's the reason i set up i think i have the dad fact about the parrot at the beginning and the parrot getting killed and like his sort of guilt over that happening and it was like even then i was thinking like oh maybe this will be something that can come back when they talk about the pyramid there was kind of a positional move and then it leads to this ginormous blow up between henry and daryl

like it was this big irresistible force meets a movable object moment which was really intense but i think it was good drama like i texted matt afterwards i felt really bad yelling at him wow really yeah i was like i felt awful afterwards because it was like it was one of those things where it was like 90 henry and daryl but it was 10 will Will and Matt. He genuinely trusted me. So I was like, are we okay? Which I think a lot of the listeners picked up. They're like, ooh, this is a little real. I remember that episode too because I think that was the episode where I had Ron

just like walk away from the group. Yes, exactly. Which is my favorite thing that you do. Well, and yeah, again, like that was, I don't even know when we recorded that, but I would say that my approach has changed a lot. And I'm actually trying to get back to maybe my original approach, thinking about season two, where it's like, yeah, like Matt,

I came in and I'm just like, I am not going to think ahead of myself. I'm not going to interrogate like the character. I'm just going to fucking feel it out and then see what the room needs at the time or whatever. And then I feel like as I became a little more confident you know just as a as a performer and then as a writer especially just like doing this with you guys for a couple of years I think I was able to see the machinery working in a way that I wasn't able to before and prepare more of the writing elements of Ron's sort of arc although I never really thought about like what the end of it would look like for him.

But I definitely felt that during like the last chunk, I found myself thinking way more in writer brain in terms of like in satisfaction of the arc and stuff like that. And there's a part of me that's chill with that, proud of like how it all ended up. But there's like a part of me that kind of really wants to prioritize being a little bit more, more in the moment about stuff like that. Because I, you know, again, thinking about that conversation with the pyramid and stuff like that, I was really bored. And I think that I think that Ron would be bored too. And so it was just like, I've, I don't know. You definitely 100% made the right call for the finale though.

Cause it's like, we know we're wrapping up. And so you going into writer mode so just like, I don't know. You definitely 100% made the right call for the finale, though, because it's like, we know we're wrapping up, and so you're going into writer mode so that you know the cool thing that Ron is going to say to his father when he gets rid of his father. I think it elevates, doesn't hurt the moment, because you feel not only yourself, but Ron, the character, getting confident in a way that feels like a really satisfying culmination.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even in a meta sense, I think my favorite part of this episode is, so if you've seen Edge of Tomorrow and or Live, or live die repeat it's a groundhog day movie and every loop uh the first thing that happens is tom cruise wakes up with a guy kicking him going get up maggot and like looking at him like he's a piece of shit and then like 90 of the way through the movie he's been through so much shit and he's feeling existentially like completely changed he's a different person on the inside that the guy kicks me goes get up and then like tom cruise just gives him this fucking look

and he silences him. And it's like, oh my god, this guy has changed. That exact moment was Beth saying, I'm going to use my uncanny dodge. There's something in the confidence that the way that Beth says it, I'm like, this is a different person. I've never felt a

character arc in my soul in the same way that I did when Beth has that confidence for playing dnd and there's a part of my there's a part of my innocence that i crave and i want back honestly i think one of the things that's great about this just as a creative thing for me is just like you get into cycles and this was something different like i haven't done like a podcast i haven't like done acting before and like when you get struggle over something over and over again it's nice to break free of it i think it's natural like as we get farther along and we're approaching the ending obviously there's more of our character that we've already developed

so we kind of know you know essentially when it got to my arc like i more or less would think about it i probably texted anthe like once per arc i was like hey i know i'm gonna be talking to grant soon like what do you need to know about frank you know it's like i know we're approaching this like obviously like as i got to like something i knew was gonna be about daryl there'd be like things i just wanted to make sure i internalized and knew but like i know it's like i know we're approaching this like obviously like as i got to like something i knew was gonna be about daryl there'd be like things that i just wanted to make sure i internalized and knew but like i think it's good as we start season two to like not be in like that rider mindset as much because i think that the magic of it is that we had no idea what the fuck we were doing and you let the game create it and most of it's just like i feel like i'm often

like overbearing so like i was just telling myself to like trust anthony like this is anthony's story i will be the character in anthony's story and do like the thing and not like try to it's tactics versus strategy and it's natural too because right it's the arc of a narrative when something starts the possibilities are infinite right and i remember very much feeling like that sometimes where there's so many iconic aspects of the show that were just digressions right payden andullywugs was... Oh my God, yeah. Right? Like, the joke of there is like,

what if there's like an Applebee's or a Chili's in this world? Which is a total fucking ridiculous, stupid lark, right? And as you approach an ending, it's not that you don't still have possibilities, but the feeling is that, okay, doors are closing. Possibilities are closing, right? You're approaching an endpoint,

so naturally you're starting the realm, the web of possibilities gets narrowed down. You're heading towards an endpoint. So I think that is something to keep in mind, which is just when we start again, we will once again are in a world of whatever the fuck interests us or that we find funny.

In that case, we're in a good situation because we already recorded a test for the next season to see like, you know, do these characters work? Do they bounce off each other? And they were like, ah! So the fact that season to see like, you know, do these characters work? Do they bounce off each other? And it was fine. So the fact that we're already like feeling a little bit uncomfortable is I think probably it's a good place to be, honestly.

I know. Yeah, because I was doing all this work and all this stuff trying to do prep for season two. And then I went back in the process of coming up on the big anniversary of like the three years we've been doing the show or whatever. I went back and saw like, what was the prep I did for season one? And it was like not a lot very little and most of it was playing off of like riffs that you guys did again bully logs payton the blood pact was just like in the moment

daryl being so confident the way he could lie about this and be like okay well it's fun to just say fuck you and then make it a thing that you have to deal with yeah so my hope is that we can be a lot more on our toes and a lot funnier and getting back to that honestly i think I think that was one of the things I learned not to bring it back to Fetch Quest again. I'll stop doing this. But as a fellow DM, I've done three episodes of this show because it was a one shot. I was like, I pretty much baked the whole thing going in. Like I had a plan for every basically everything you guys did. And I would love to do even a

one shot where that wasn't the start like it was like i'm gonna have one thing planned and fucking figure it out from there like it's like i think the it's a rookie dm thing to want to really over prepare that's you told me that after the first day it's like you're gonna do this for the first one and then like you're gonna want to never do this again i was like that's very true but um i agree with you i think actually like having the core concept figuring out what the core concept is figuring out everyone again i think it's basically just coming up with a character that you feel like you can have fun playing with for you know a good run and then go from there and just keep it loose i think is a great idea as i say you don't want to do the dc mistake but almost everybody's mistake since avengers which is like everybody's like i

want to do the avengers and they forget like it took a lot of smaller movies to get to the avengers so like i think you get this high like honestly we all love like fucking going through like ron's you know past memories these are all these like high moments so then the instinct is like season two's like oh all right get to that high moment like no that high moment takes 50 episodes of fucking around and like building the characters and doing all the fun stuff like i feel like once you get that high you try to start that high again it's like everybody after the aven is like, great, we're just going to do the mummy. It's going to be the universal.

It's like, no, you got to start over, which is hard. You got to start over. The Avengers parallel is even wilder because where did that come from? It came from Iron Man, a movie that was like 45% improvised on the day

and was all pretty much just a comedy. And whoops, turns out that's really charming and fun if you do it correctly. Yeah, and one at a time. And it's also like, this is probably some scientific principle or something but like by observing something you

change it and i think by knowing that you're observed as a performer you accidentally that's true that's crazy that's like a totally new scientific i don't like you at all so the may uncertainty principle is i think what we're talking about. It may be there. It may not be there. It may be there. Basically, once we all sold out and I got a bunch of followers on Twitter, then I lost all the magic that made me special in the first place. And that's my arc. That's your arc. It's your cross to bear. That's my devastating cross to bear.

I think that's what's going to be fun about playing like teens. It's already nerve wracking because you're like holding. Yeah, there's just I can't really rest on a lot. It's funny because I'm not a dad. I was like, I'm playing dad. No problem. He's a teenager. But I'm like, how am I going to be a teen?

I'm a 35 year old man. What am I doing? The trick is we all were teens once. I know. I went back and I was like, I'm going to read my old high school journal. Did you? Oh, my God. I booted it up and I got a page and I was like, I can't. I'm going to read my old high school journal. Did you? Oh my God. I booted it up and I got a page in. I was like, I can't.

I'm going to. I'm going to read some of it. Because I was like, I journaled pretty much every day. Whoa. That's so cool. Junior year, senior year. And then I started petering out during college. But I'm so glad I did.

Because it was like this fascinating document to look at. Like, I was so horny and so frustrated. Yeah. And I was like angry that I didn't have a girlfriend. And it was either that or me talking about video games. So it's like, you know. Holy shit. But anyway.

Man, I got to go find some of my old fanfic. Yeah. You know. I've shown mine. You need to show yours. Yeah, I do. Even recording Fetch Quest and then these other mini series and stuff like that. I think that I come to expect a certain amount of quality or whatever

from whatever we do with Dungeons and Daddies to transfer over. And I forget that, you know, like it does, but it takes a second. It takes a second to find it. So I think what we have is really special. It's just we just naturally have a very good chemistry. Like Matt, Will and Freddie have worked together for a really, really long time. I knew you guys for a couple of years. We're going to rocket up the show. Did you know any of these folks before we started doing stuff. I went to a bunch of parties over at your sister's house and Freddie was there a few times. Right. Yeah. Like I am constantly flabbergasted by how much we lucked out at the fact that you and I have melded with these three that have melded with each other and like all of our guest stars and all that kind of

stuff. You know, it's funny. I'll let you guys in on something behind the scenes right now. All of us have great chemistry together. Anthony and I have zero chemistry one-on-one. It's only like Anthony will go and open the door and you'll be like, Hey, and then it'll come in. And then we walk up the stairs to Freddie's door in silence. That's not true.

This time I said, this time I said everybody. Yeah. It's hard to complimented. I complimented his pants because I didn't even know what to talk about the last time he let me. I was like,

I love your pants, Andy. The last time he did that, I was like, oh, so Will doesn't like my pants. I'm sorry. Oh, no. No, but it's fine. Literally, it's just a function

of that stairwell because when we bring people up into Freddy's room, there's a small stairwell that's not long enough to have an actual conversation about. And there was a real conversation going on in Freddy's apartment

next to the stairwell. So like, I can't start a proper conversation because then we're going to have to stop and wait. Freddie's apartment next to the stairwell. So like, I can't start a proper conversation because then we're going to have to stop and we, it's a function of the stairwell. I'm just going to leave Will fucking hanging for 15 excuses.

Yeah, dude. I literally, I answered the door and I was like, hey, Freddie's playing piano in there and Will went, oh. Yeah, so you got to talk about someone else.

Real world chemistry doesn't matter though. It's just about the chemistry here. It's fine. We've done ad reads that were fine. I mean, I knew we were. Just Will and I did them.

They were okay. They were all right. I knew we were going to be fine because Anthony was a fellow guardian for a while, so I knew our chemistry was going to be fine. Beth I wasn't sure about, but then, like, you know, pretty much after the first pilot,

I was like, oh, great. Like, that's awesome. Beth was on Story Break a couple of times before we did Dungeons & Daddies. It's like, oh, she's fantastic. I didn't know you were on before Dungeons & Daddies. I was. Oh, that's where I was like,

she's a fan of our stuff. So that's how I know we'll work well together. She worships the Grand Diwokon. Yes. Yeah, I was on an episode of Story Break that I am more proud of than anything else. And you read, you were like at our agency.

Yeah. Like she read the first VGHS. Do you guys know about the VGHS connection? No. Okay, so I was interning at your guys's agency used to be called the collective company right when they were first like introducing me to their clients or whatever it was just a bunch of like cool bros it was a bunch of cool bros and then i read a few scripts for vgs and i loved it and then one of my last weekends in la before I went back to college I was like

on some sort of like promo shoot or something in Burbank and you guys were there. Wait really? Yeah. I didn't know this I just know that you read the scripts so we like were in the same room at some point. Yeah I didn't think about it again until I met Freddie like later and I was like

oh dang I was there. That guy was an asshole when I met him no can we talk about our favorite bits from the season please do yes

so for me let me start it's Beth's double throat singing silent night good choice so here's a couple things that happened

there that I realized one the Christmas music zag because originally Glenn wasn't a Christmas music cover band

is that where it happened yeah around there I forgot about that. I thought it was forever a thing. No, because that was the only thing that I could sing with my dumb voice. And then after that, I was like,

oh, it'd be funny if Glenn gets showed up. That was why you got upset. Yeah, it was like, oh, that's much funnier. Fuck, that's crazy. So that's special, because originally it was that, as far as Glenn was concerned, he's in a cover band. If I could change one thing about this show, I would have gone back and done dumb dad jokes

and puns that we eventually landed on for every title like i think we started off our titles like a little too serious and then there was a moment where i was like is there a world where every title is like the title of a dad rock song which is obviously very very restricting but like i was like okay i was like looking around that like dad rock playlist on spotify see if there's like any titles of songs that match so that was as far as glenn went it was cover band rock and roll guy and then after that particular episode i was like this specific specificity which was like i think really cool and also it's just something i think to even keep in mind which is these big character details you don't have to have it baked that's true that's until the moment you're right like it was one of those ones where

like even the flip of oh glenn secretly djs right is another one that was not part of it from the beginning which then in retrospect makes certain things really weird and funny like the idea then that he would like is so against that yeah that he would you know let the jewels go because he doesn't want to be the lincoln park cover man dj during the whole scam likely bit. So that particular episode was probably the first one where there was like a real significant amount of time spent in the sound design and music side of it to land that beat specifically to, you know, to have that. And I remember Beth, right?

You came over. It's actually one of our first Patreon video bonuses. I think it's like the first video bonus, which was the video recording of Beth coming over to do just for that little blip of a track on there. And, you know, I think that prior I'd done like some music stuff here and there for, you know, like the YouTube videos or friends movies and stuff like that. And I always, I've liked doing it. Like I have all the software for it. It's just not something that, you know, like I have, you know, it's not like my full on career. I don't know. I'm not focused on music composition. So was like oh cool every time i get a chance to flex those muscles i really enjoy

and i remember putting it all together and like timing it out and that was a really weird specific one because like we're going off a recording and we're going to use a song that we record and the tempo needs to fit that's just sound good enough that you buy that the crowd is blown away by it yeah because we're playing a game so it's not like an audio drama where it's like anthony's a narrator of a book reading a thing it's one of those things where it's like we're playing a game. So it's not like an audio drama where it's like Anthony's a narrator of a book reading a thing. It's one of those things where it's like we're laughing at jokes and stuff. And so those got really detailed in terms of like, oh, what am I cutting out of the jokes so that the timing fits all this stuff? I remember having that hit and then playing for it and just like cracking up by myself in my place just because I was like,

it's such a weird zag that this Natural 20, maybe the most consequential Natural 20 for the show. And at that moment in time. It was electrifying in the room when you got the natural 20. I remember screaming. You were like, I got natural 20. I was like, oh! It was also one of those ones

where it was like, it's fucking Glenn's arc. And then the whole scene is being set up for Glenn to play a song with his fucking son. And then Rod would come up with this stupid plan with two bands

and this whole fucking thing and we're like, we're gonna go be bad so that you guys look good. Look good, yeah. And then Ron fucking did this. Up stages, Glenn.

And then, yeah, so it becoming one of the iconic Ron moments and then you guys run away and go to Bullywugs. Yeah. And that's where we find Peyton. Oh, man.

Oh, wow, yeah, and it led to Peyton. Yeah. And that also has Willsworth's check, please, that fucking spot. Oh, shit. Yeah, Melinda Payne. Yeah. And that also has Will's first check, please. That fucking... Oh, shit. Yeah, I think actually

that's my favorite stinger ending out of all the endings is check, please. That was such a hacky joke. No, but I feel like that's when we knew we were allowed to.

Yeah. It was also literally like, how often do you actually get the opportunity to do the check, please joke at a restaurant when they're all sitting down? I was like, oh like oh my god i have to say it before someone else does i will say that without check please there would have never been a who's your dad yeah yeah there

started to be a bit of it was like oh the stinger joke is like a thing and it felt like there's definitely like a bit of who's gonna get the last joke now yeah i felt like it was like what's like really good and then like every movie tries to copy it there's like a moment where it felt like every episode like should have ended but then like we movie tries to copy it. There's like a moment where it felt like every episode like should have ended. But then like, we were all kind of like, can we just have like a serious ending?

I think it's fine to just like end on a cliffhanger. And then it would be like, just me being the most toxic person ever. Like, well, my stinger was funnier. I don't know why I got cut. It looks like I'm not in the Easter egg either.

It's just some dumb conversation. The number of times during that era of episodes 10 to 40 where people would all make end jokes and be like, do we have an ending? I'd be like, yeah, those were all very funny. What put a stop to the Zinger era was the episode that ends with Ron asking Willie, do you love me? And then Anthony would just be like, you wake up.

And I was like, shit, that's even better. And that's when the sad boy series of Dungeons daddy's ending started yeah that's when you know the show stops being fun the funniest i've ever felt was being like oh my god i've set up a disney joke that's why i avoid non-disney oh yeah that was also that was like it was maybe the highest two minutes of my life being like i have the strongest joke it's ready to go which joke is this where the moms die and we're reading all the notes and crying oh yeah he's like that's why i don't go to universal yeah it was just like and the sadder it got the funnier i felt it was like you had the grenade cooked in your hand you could feel ticking away in there

as you guys were fucking bawling in the room I'm going to release this. More troops are lining up in front of you. More and more troops. Yeah. As you guys were fucking bawling in the room, I was sitting in the corner just like, this is going to kill. Whenever I'm even remotely close to that situation, Freddie, I always like barf it in the worst way. I'm always like, that's what she said.

And everybody's like, what the fuck? Why would you say that? Why would you even say that? Oh my God. what the fuck why would you say that why would you even say that oh my god my favorite joke overall is the intro where where will where will is like i bet you're wondering how i got in this crazy situation i don't remember that was the second intro yeah i don't remember that one. That was the second intro. That was the second intro. I don't remember that. I just thought that was so funny. And then the howl after one-on-one time with my son, or should I say one-on-wolf time in the back? Yes.

I fucking died. Yeah, the intros. The intros is a very strange thing. So here was the original idea with the intros, which was, you know, having had friends and promo cutting and stuff like that. It's like, it's an art form to be like, what is a quick summary of the previous episode adventure zone does a great job of this you know with the previously on and they're doing like a little clip thing 24 does that too i was like i

don't like the 24 style previously on because it spoils what's coming it has to right the needs of that is to be like oh this is going to happen so here's a quick scene of this so you know that oh this is gonna be a story that touches on so it's one of those scenarios where i was like okay the goal is a little reminder for everyone coming in you know after every two weeks which is enough time to forget about what happened previously just a reminder of like okay what happened how can you do that as entertainingly as possible so the first one that i did was hotel california parodies and that was an in-universe one foolishly opened the door to all of us to pitch you song parodies for the next three years song ones took so much fucking time and by the way evidence that glenn

was not a christmas guy right because i'm like oh yeah it's a dad rock song hotel california so that was where it started and then it just fucking like every fucking dumb thing i've ever done on youtube it just spirals out of control and becomes these crazy huge ass things which yeah i think it probably was there ever a week where it was more work on the intro than the episode itself no the episodes are long enough for it but like definitely some of the music ones were like incredibly joeline cover is the one that fucking melts my brain still where i was like i was like oh we should do a heavy metal joeline i banged out some lyrics and then it's like just with the fucking drum kick and the

harmonized vocals and the show i was like with the fucking drum kick and the harmonized vocals and the show I was like what the fuck happened the Jolene one probably was the most work in terms of time I think I very distinctly remember that which was like I woke up on a Sunday and I sat at my computer on the patreon there's a video of this where I just I had the feeling I'm like okay I know how to approach this so I'm like I think I should record it just because I think it's gonna be really fun to watch I remember looking up and be like oh it's nighttime now like it was basically an all-day affair for that one I think where the intros really took off is once we actually weirdly enough stopped worrying about them recapping because I think yeah I think the whole recap they still all do

kind of which I mean it's like it turned into like us doing like audio fan art of the previous episode like a celebration and a reminder like a nostalgic oh that was fun like remember that episode without trying to explain it it was just like a cold open for the show basically yeah making fun of what you did the yeah it's just like this is really it's fun because it's like this weird because it kind of became that became like oh what happened previous episode oh what'd be fun making fun of that it was like yeah it's just like how do we parody what we did yeah which is like it just became really fun. This might be recency bias. It might not.

When NotB is talking to Ron and it's like, so why do you feel so anxious about your father? And he's like, I don't know, that's kind of personal. I don't know if I want to talk

about my father right now. And he's like, okay, that's fine. Well, how are you feeling right now? And he goes, scared about my father. Like, scared about my dad. Scared about my dad.

It's just like such a, I felt like I was the backboard in a game of one-on-one where there was no other player. And it was just Beth passing and assisting to herself and then slam fucking dunking. She alley-ooped to herself. It was fucking so good. I'll talk about two things. One is like a group thing.

And one is just my favorite thing I got to do as Henry. So for the group thing, the deck of many things episode. Yeah, that was fucking tight was really yeah it was yeah i think that to the glenn stuff that was the turn from like okay now the doors are closing on the show like because that was like to me like almost like the midpoint of the show it probably is it yeah because it was so fucking wild and it's uh 44 i think a little bit over past the midpoint but like it was such a daredevil move and it was like i remember being terrified like what are we gonna pull how's it gonna go the fact that we got well actually out of it like and like

that that insane turn of like scam likely showing up and then doing the thing and then him drawing the card that makes him go away right away everyone getting fucked over and then glenn getting more and more powerful until in his fucking hubris he trots over starting with him killing the squirrel. Yeah, and immediately leveling out. And then getting a tank. Whenever Freddy says his human gun, I just fucking love it.

And then all of that building up to him fucking yeeting himself, like he's going to square down with death. And then, yeah, so they're like, oh shit, he drew death. It cannot get worse than this. And then he draws the one that throws him into a quest. So then Doug starts running after him. It was just crazy. I loved it. People may or may not believe that. get worse than this and then he draws the one that throws him into a quest so then doug starts

running after him it was just crazy i loved it people may or may not believe that like we did not script that if we had tried to script it and that's a perfect example like yeah to your cousin but for now like that episode could have been fine yeah could have very easily could just been whatever i just had to go all the way back to the finale i think the finale was six bad dice rolls away from being a barn burner of suspense and that is out of your control it's like the end of mountains of dadness i think we all want the finale to always be as good as the mountains of dad where it came down to the most clutch thing of all time but you can't ask for that every time that's fair so my favorite thing i got to do is henry i mean i love doing all the emotional stuff like it was really empowering and

exciting to do that as an actor like his run and oakvale like i'm really really proud of that work i think my favorite thing to do is the courthouse i am a law and order boy through and through i grew up watching court stuff i never did mock trial as a kid but i always daydreamed about it and so to get to do like the objections and the cross exactly getting to do like are you winning son have you ever been winning like to get to do like the all that's like bring in air force one and all that like the like yeah that's right i mean like it was a literal dream come true to get to do a closing argument like i was so you were super exceptional at that yeah you're really really shown you could feel the electricity that will's like i get to do defender stuff it was like you are all incredibly generous to let me do that like it was also one of those ones where i think like i must have just

been vibrating with excitement and getting to do court it was all remote that's what's wild but that was a total delight and i also love that the punchline to all of that is you did an amazing job and then the verdict was the exact opposite of what you were doing. That's the justice system, baby. I did not kill my friend. I did dismember him. My favorite episode to record, I think, in the room was the House of Riddles episode. I just had a blast with that. The House of Riddles? The Scam Likely one.

The Scam Likely one. Oh, where he gave you all the options to lose your soul or whatever? Yeah, or like... Scam Likely's House of Riddles or something? The Scam Likely one or do you mean the book one? The book castle. No, it was when we were in person. The book castle one, I was too stupid for. Okay, that's the one where Ron can't wear pants anymore. Yes.

Holy shit, yeah. Yes, yeah. That was another saving grace because that pants meme was going to take over. It was like, okay, let's get Ron a new thing. Because again, the I hide in my pants was another such a fucking out there, crazy good joke from the beginning of the season.

You know, it just seemed like what to do at the time. So that was funny because not only did that, I hide in my pants. Right. And also one of the best, like Beth moments in the show, which is, you know,

hi, hungry. I'm dad figuring that out. That episode is fucking full of really good. I love that episode. Not only that, but there's a great thing. The pyramid that you confronting Sparrow and turning him into a love

wolf. The frogs. Yeah. The frogs. frog yeah you want to talk about clutch dnd things affecting the story that literally is because i ran after sparrow to jump on the thing and lark was downstairs which is how lark and sparrow essentially became different characters which was then led to what we wound up setting up season two with yeah holy shit also turns out i switched those names at some point on accident, but who cares? But that's funny. That whole episode,

I think, is everybody firing on all cylinders. Like, even Matt being like... Even Matt. I mean, because it's not Daryl's episode. Daryl has nothing to do in that episode.

He's the least relevant character. Because, like, at least Freddy is like, I'm going to try to get this out and he fucks up and it's, like, funny. But Daryl's like, I'm going to grab

both of these kids and I'm going to fucking mama bear and, like, dissolve this shit. And it's just like, you understand Daryl a lot better after that episode especially because it's also right after he sees all the people having sex he's like I don't know what to do with it like he walks into the pit yeah yeah it's just like everybody's characterizations

really solidify at this point is that episode three yeah why might as well then I was just gonna say my favorite moment which is the pyramid on other talking dads I don't think I've ever done favorite moment as like myself because like when I don't even usually remember what i do or care what i do it's just like i think specifically i'm so humble you know it's just otherwise i'd go crazy you would you'd be like me and beth i don't know what you're talking about no i think about myself all the time but it was the pyramid because it was um two things the pyramid and then the because i don't care about compliments the only compliments i care about from anthony because he doesn't give compliments when anthony said matt i know they're working yeah when Anthony said Matt knows what an

episode needs so I think the pyramid to me that's essentially became the moment where I understood like how I could play the game because it became oh interesting honestly like I want to try to be funny I want to like move the game forward but like me like being like a fucking comedy fanatic and loving chaplain and like character driven stuff and like a writer like it was the thing Daryl would do would be throw like a million things dnd would have been like i jumped down and like i'm a barbarian so i use the axe my double attack to yeah yeah something within character that i think will change the way things are going but make sense for the character and work for the gameplay thing and like the moment the pyramid and that whole episode was just like

already fun in the first place your decision to throw the bag yeah i decided to throw the bag down i was like i think that when we all heard about the bag it was like we gotta dump that fucking back out but it was the moment that happened and then everything spiraled and then it just all became really funny and then like everybody got like the frogs and like the crazy stuff with the the kids are trapped underneath almost dies yeah and i was like oh like i shouldn't be concerned about like like, winning D&D. I should be concerned about, like, playing the game in a fun way that worked for my character. Playing in a fun way that worked for the character specifically.

So, like, I try to, because it's not about not being aware of the game. It's about, like, thinking about, like, what would be fun and also what would Daryl do. And then, like, from that moment on, I was like, I know what I'm supposed to do or I know what I'm in for the pants thing out of that episode came out of like I was talking to somebody about like playing D&D and they're like well what kind of character I'm like I'm a rogue and they're like well that doesn't sound like a rogue you sound like a stepdad I'm like well like yeah I mean you never talked to that friend great job friend I'm just like well I don't know like what is a rogue supposed to do? Just be like, cool.

And they're like, no, they're supposed to be like sneaky. And so I'm like, well, I got to do something sneaky this episode. And so that's where I hide in my pants came from. I just thought it would be a sneaky thing to do. I think one of the fun things about the premise in terms of how it lets us interact with D&D, because they're dads, they're not from this world they have a plausible deniability about their actions as players that you wouldn't if you were in like if you were playing an actual barbarian who like was in the forgotten realms and knew what a bag of beans was like you wouldn't be able to convincingly role play that he dumps

the bag of beans oh yeah like so i throw it to freddie i don't dump it on purpose yeah but it's like being like four dads who aren't from the world and not really understanding what's going on like i think especially in the early episodes that fish out of water element like had big dividends on a comedy level because it let us do things that felt authentic to the characters that wouldn't necessarily be things that like a normal dnd character would do matt when you settle into i think some of the hardest times that i've laughed because like you come up with some of these jokes that are like so from the perspective of the character that it shocks

you. It's like, yeah, it's like the stinger of like, oh, do you think they need DJs in the forgotten realm? Yeah, that's what Daryl would say. Uh-huh. That's 100% what Daryl would say. Just snapping the neck of Glenn's dreams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I'm gonna stay and then it's like, do they need DJs?

DJs here? What's great about that, you can Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think I'm going to stay. And then it's like, do I need DJs? DJs here. We're just like, leave the job. What's great about that, you can, after the fact, map the thought process. And it's so obvious in retrospect. He's looking out for Glenn. He wants to make sure Glenn can have a fucking job. But he's not emotionally present enough to realize what that will do to him in the moment.

He is so fucking good. The stuff with the World War I pee garments, too. Oh, my God. Which is what my favorite help explained in a hardcore history. The hardcore history. Oh, my God. In Freddie's intro, he quotes directly from the transcript what he actually said. That's right.

As I recall, he said, I think I read that. Shit. Did he react to that online? Or or no it was the history of rome guy yeah the history of rome guy which was really very similar he was like yeah because we blew up his twitter basically because people were like oh there's a shout out to you on the show he's like oh dope he's too big now now he's got two new york times bestsellers so he wouldn't do that again we did the inverse with you're wrong about where we got that you're wrong about bump before the show went away so yeah we have to treasure that for the rest of our days yeah just because we're on the topic of intros on that i think that like one of the things that gives me the most joy is taking the artistic and formalistic framework of something and trying to match it as

close as humanly possible and then doing something absolutely absurd in it's like one of my favorite videos that we ever did on youtube was pimp my horse oh my god which was like pimp my ride with a horse but like i remember digging through like sound libraries online and i bought a pack of like production ready non-scripted music because it was really important for me i was like it has to be this kind of music so anytime we did a podcast parody, like I think the radio lab parody, I had so much fucking fun with in terms of just like the way that they talk about things and they like intro and, and they like,

I don't know. It's just like to me, the formalist Robert, which is very, very good, but playing with the formalistic elements of something is like so fucking fun to me. The fucking part in the radio lab.

One that specifically takes me out is when it fades down on Jimmy'smy's voice like it's like he runs a shop i don't know why that got me just kill and then you hear someone break something in the background it's so fucking chaotic no because that's the best part of that radio lab one too it's just like really you have to paraphrase like what were they saying that yeah they gotta come in on shop it's like they do that all the time it's like yeah i do it's like he does this like why the fuck did he cut out in that moment freddie is extremely detail-oriented when it comes to editing and specifically when it comes to hitting like aesthetics like that and i was like man this seems like a lot of effort for blah blah blah and then afterward a friend of mine who i worked with who listened to the show was like dude that radio

lab intro the part where you say ang instead of and like at the beginning of radio lab where she says ang i fucking died. I was like, okay, Freddie's right. Dungeons, Ange daddies. Dungeons, Ange daddies. And it's like, that fucking kills. This is more recent, but the audio design of Glenn having sex with that woman and him going up and getting some water and being like,

like him scratching his belly while you hear the audio going on in the background where I think Beth's doing Sarah Koenig or something. Yes. Beth's doing the Spotify lady. The Spotify lady. Fuck you. Just listen to us. I promise you Talking Dads is not just us laughing at our own jokes.

It's a lot of that. It's a lot of that. The only thing we haven't done is talk about other movies and stuff. You haven't bullshitted about movies yet. That's true. The fucking Payton See You Again rap. Yeah. Very good. i think maybe the

biggest reaction we've gotten to an intro because of that intro i think it was like we can do rocks yeah i remember you came over unlike matt you got it in one take matt got it in the course of about four hours it's punching down when i openly admit i'm terrible at something yeah but my point is i'm trying to elevate horrible at music i'm elevating will by saying i was like oh shit will hey we could do a rap album here okay max i'm elevating will i'm not hating on my dad i'm elevating my mom that was so fun putting that together and again like I love everybody's verses on it. I recorded mine in a closet with no metronome

and only me thinking about what my verse would be in my head. And so the fact that- Yeah, that was a little harder to edit. The fact that Freddie was able to edit it, I was young then, I didn't know. I'm trying to think of the comparison, but that was like, I remember coming over here

and Freddie being like, and not to tell- It was like the whiplash scene. I remember you telling me that at one point. Well, yeah, but no, it was specifically because I was like, remember coming over here and freddie being like and not to tell the whip scene i remember you telling me that at one point yeah but no it's specifically because i was like i had my verses like i practice i i can't rap freddie's gonna find out like i literally cannot hold a beat whatsoever and then he's like oh man this rap's pretty tough but you know i mean you could tell best a poet because she wrote something that's like really clever but like it doesn't fit the tone of the rap at all and i'm like yeah yeah that sounds tough he's like i don't know i'm gonna edit it sounds really tough i'm like oh that sounds tough. He's like, I don't know how I'm going to edit it. It sounds really tough.

I'm like, oh, that sounds really hard. He's like, anyways, Matt, let's do you. I'm sure you'll be easy. The whole time he was complaining about Beth, I was nodding along, being like, oh, shit. Oh, shit. He was just trying to build you up. I'm just building you up by putting her down, Matt. I was like, he's about to kill me.

That'd be wild if you really leaned into it. Like, yeah, that fucking sucks. That's fucking terrible. Let me hear it. Oh my god, you call those bars? Alright, alright, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going. Hold me, put me in my headphones. It's okay because you've written yours to the beat. I'm like, yeah, the beat. Let's do this.

And I just remember distinctly Freddie's face when I first saw it. That intro is such a relic of my previous life because I remember I wrote my verse like at work at my job between phone calls

and then recorded it in a closet my two personal favorites would probably be when it was like my dumb idea that I was able to bully everyone that's letting me do it was the Aaron Mankey

lore intro oh god yes there were people complaining where they were like I switched podcasts like three times because I kept thinking it was lore. And that made me very happy.

And then at the end when you're like, this is Will Campos impersonating Aaron Mayke. That's my favorite Futurama joke that Rich Little does during his Howard Cosell impersonation. Like he just introduces himself like, I'm Rich Little impersonating Howard Cosell. And then the other one that is like, it was such a, because I've been listening to so many audio books.

Like I got into this whole thing about audio books. Oh my God. The Tantor audio one. So we did the Tantor audio book for the snake party. That one was so funny. I fucking love it. It's so fucking stupid. But I was like,

because again, it's like my favorite little bit that you never think about is like that little Tantor audio presents Pride and Prejudice. And there's always the phrase like holds the copyright there too so i was like we gotta do and it was just like the fucking guy we got was so good that was a fiver special yeah that was uh me going on fiver being like i need a british

gentleman to read an audio book and i remember saying bennett's yeah i remember being like the message on fiver i was like okay so this was a little weird here's the text and then i need you to just hiss like a snake for like 30 seconds he's like oh i got this and then he it was like literally just perfect i was like this guy rules i was watching taken a couple months ago and i remember our taken intro i really liked doing our taken intro because of anthony just like, good luck. Oh, and can we talk really quick about how blessed we are

to have such fantastic guest stars? Oh my God. Yes. Holy shit. I constantly think about how good Radicus made that entire trial thing

because how good Jenna was at being a genuinely intimidating foil just from her confidence and competence. Jenna comes in and Radicus is like very intimidating

but also you're like, Radicus is better, a better person than any of you guys. You feel like you're double screwed because this is a really good prosecutor, but also like a much better human being than the dad. Jenna does what every good guest star does, which is she made me feel like a guest star on my own show. I came in, I was like, oh shit,

this is Jenna's like law show and I'm here, uh-oh. She understood the tone going in like instantly she knew how to be antagonistic in a way that was playful and still made her likable but also made it very clear that you were not on the same level as her yeah you have to act really fucking smart to get on to radicus yeah her performance alluded like uh confidence and professionalism both as like a performer and as a human being that I will never have. I just really respect her. And then, of course, Ashley Burch.

Yes. I feel like all three guest stars, we gave them the hardest possible curve to come in with. This is like the dark souls of being a guest star because you have Ashley

coming in and she's just like, I've been here the entire time and then Dennis fit like a fucking glove. Yeah. I felt so bad about it in the moment. It's like,

she rolled that natural 20. I was just like, hey, give us that classic Dennis catchphrase. Yeah. And then she she's like just happy to be here i was like god damn it she did it she fucking somehow pulled it out of nothing came up with dilf on the spot yeah oh was that a her special i forgot about that what do you mean what do you mean dedicated involved loving father oh yeah that was her that was her oh my god she should get a cut i was gonna say we owe her some merch money but yeah no she was absolutely fantastic in that episode and then james fucking jimmy james wong

probably the most pumped i've been on this podcast was the moment that you revealed that you had been talking to jimmy oh that was incredible that's true i was so happy with that i was beyond chuffed this is what i think is probably the funniest moment of the entire series is versus Jimmy trying to, I don't remember the context surrounding it, but you were one word at a time trying to like cast this like spell or whatever. And you won't let each other have the fucking last word. And you're getting angrier and angrier at each other.

Somebody who's probably been with Jimmy and Freddie more than almost anybody other than like your family. I love Jimmy anddie's special relationship there's no way you two should have fucked that up like it's the easiest thing ever you guys didn't finish it it was so easy not to fuck up that you actually knew what they were doing no no no no no no no no no no i disagree because they had it and freddie gets annoyed for no fucking reason and he doubles down and then jimmy yeah i disagree jimmy got annoyed and then this is like they literally didn't like the idea that freddy was implying jody should do something

so hard it was great because it's one of those things where the performer's problem mirrored perfectly the character's problem yes jimmy and freddy sabotage each other in the same exact way that glenn and jody would have it was so funny the sense just becoming prepositions just so furious that they won't let it fucking end yeah i remember jimmy kept throwing these like trailing purses like what the fuck are you doing it's that thing matt does where like matt knows how to make bad improv funny like you're incredible good improv but you also not have really upset people with intentionally bad improv funny. Like, you're an incredibly good improv, but then you also now really upset people

with intentionally bad improv. You're not my girlfriend. Henry, what are you doing in that tree? It's just like antagonistic energy. I was going to say, the other sibling rivalry moment is Mark Light, the fan fiction duel. Oh, my God. She was screaming.

That's basically us doing a vaudeville, like, let's take the show on the road, because we already did that kind of gag in Rocket Jump, the show, and we're like, well, nobody sawville, like, let's take the show on the road, because we already did that kind of gag in Rocket Jump the show, and we're like, well, nobody saw that, so we can just do

the same thing where we hecked each other about fan fiction in this context. Did you guys have that prep beforehand? Did you talk about it? No, no, no,

it was just a moment we realized that in the moment I was like, oh, I could just do the fan fiction thing again, and it'll fucking kill in this context. There's even a line

where she's like, this was in Rocket Jump the show. I'm like, nobody fucking listens to the Rocket Jump the show, just keep going. Yeah, it's very aggressive. I didn't realize in the moment,

but like, oh, if I have my sister on and the end boss is me in high school this is gonna get very you walked into the wrong room i built the room for myself and then walked in and went oh my god who put all these traps here we should talk very quickly about the body swap episode because again a lot of people listening haven't heard talking dads that was i don't know that was fun i loved playing henry it was a brain Yeah, I was like, you being infuriatingly good at Henry gave me an existential crisis. I was like, what the fuck is happening?

And then you were great as Daryl, too. I've evolved enough that comments don't normally get to me on Reddit anymore, but there was one where it's like, I could tell Beth has no respect for Matt because it fucking crushed me. I was like, oh, fuck. Matt wrote that comment. I probably listened back on it. I was like, oh, fuck. Matt wrote that comment.

I probably. That's the fucked up part. But I listened back on it. I wasn't super happy with how I had diminished Daryl to his least desire. It's fine. It's fine. It's just a fucking, I want to do a barbecue with cops. That made me laugh very hard.

Every once in a while, I'm like, I don't ever need to get Beth a birthday present because Will and I doing a conversation between Ron and Beth May is probably yeah present enough for a few years

oh my god you're right oh my god can we talk about the Maxson's acoustic version of Alright yes absolutely you cried right I did fucking cry

I didn't cry like listening to it in the context of the episode but like I I want more of that which is things I didn't know were happening, and then they're suddenly done and available for me. Oh, a little treat.

Yeah, it was in the Discord like, oh, all right, acoustic version, okay. So Max is such a fucking secret weapon. He's incredible. We've worked with him for years with a bunch of Rocket Jump stuff. He did a ton of the music on Dimension 404. He's just a machine.

You can throw anything at him, like, and he will fucking knock it out of the park. Again, he did all of the backing tracks on Rock's Rock, which were just absolute bangers. It made it so, it was like, good. The swing version of All Right is such a fucking. Very cool. I love that. I remember when Freddie first played All Right to me. It was like, I've been talking to Max.

This is what I'm thinking about for the theme of the show. I was like, it took me by surprise because i very stupidly was like oh when we do the theme it should be like a kitschy lord of the rings thing like that's what i assumed the theme was going to be and then he was like no i want to do like this rock thing with and i was like oh i don't know about that and i listened to the song and i listened to it i'm like this is fucking great like this is really really good and yeah the acoustic version just broke my heart i love that the acoustic version is probably going to be the last time you hear like because i think for season two you should have a different song

yeah so the idea that it's like playing itself out in this very personal acoustic way that's tough it's weird because unlike vghs or like ending a show it's like we're still continuing yeah no no but like this song hit me in terms of like on our live listen which is the first time i listened to the full episode like i scanned through it to see if there's any pickups i wanted or whatever but like the live listen to the acoustic and then I was like oh this is the acoustic and then I was like oh shit I was like yeah this show's really over I was like damn like I didn't choke up at the song in the live listen but hearing the curtain call got me yes that's actually the closest I got to watery eyes I think that if the curtain call had happened over like

where Freddie normally talks over the song like I I would have lost my life. I would have died. It was the weirdest part, but when I heard Jenna's voice, because like Freddie reached out to everybody just separately. So for me, it was the same thing of like, oh, I didn't have anything to do with him to just show up. I was like, oh my God, they even got Jenna. I was like, hey, that's us.

What am I talking about? They even got Jenna. It was the same as hearing the other people's voices. You know what is the closest I'll ever feel to what Frodo felt when he was sitting in the bed and then everyone kept coming to the door. Gandalf. Gandalf. Gandalf.

I literally cannot see that scene now and not think of him not knowing Legolas' name. Because he says everybody's name and then he looks at Legolas. He's like, ah. Legolas is like, that's right. And you're like, you buy it. They weren't in the adventure.

No, they weren't close at all. You can imagine him like he's almost going to say the elf. He's like, no, no, no. That's not what it was. I shouldn't say that. That'd be bad. You have a friend group of eight friends that you just met. You're going to forget one.

Yeah. So thank you for listening to this retrospective on season one of Dungeons and Daddies. We really hope you stick around for not only Fetch Quest, which again, we've already recorded. It was a lot of fun to record and I'm sure it's going to be even better once it's all edited together. And I hope you stick around for season two

and that you enjoy it. And even if you don't do any of those things and you just listen this far, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. It's been wild to have something that had this degree of positive feedback and that people actually seem to give a shit about.

Like, generally, you know, you get to choose, does it do well? Is it actually good? Do people like it? Two out of three, right? Fuck, marry, kill. Yeah, we get to fuck, marry,

and kill this podcast because of you. So thank you so, so, so much for listening. It truly means the world to us. And at least for me personally, this is the most creatively satisfying thing I've ever worked on in my life.

So thank you again. Thanks very much, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. See you in season two.