Tales from the Stinky Dragon - Between The Tales: The Infinight Campaign

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

The cast and crew talk through their thoughts and feelings on the Infinight Campaign,answer questions from YOU the audience, and talk a little about what is coming next!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a Rooster Teeth production. Alright players, it's over. What did y'all think? Are you apparently aged 20 years? What's wrong with you? I have a cold. I've lost my voice. I can't talk, but I'm still here. I'm still with it. So what did you think?

Are you speaking Draconic? Yes. I was going to say that Gus was so emotional over the end of this campaign that he was crying all night and lost his voice from crying, as we've all experienced once in life. Am I right, fellas? Yeah. He was full was screaming into the pillow weeping as hard as he could how can i go on actually like i've seen a lot of people and they're like oh but you know goodbye it's infinites and just like oh how heartbreaking and stuff like

that like this is gonna be good i'm trying to be optimistic about it like as much as we love these characters it's gonna be fun exploring new characters. And if we fail there, there's nothing saying we can't come back to the infinites, you know? I'm looking at Micah's face right now being like, I've actually instructed Ben to delete all of our character sheets once this recording is over. I ask again, what did you all think?

It was a blast. I think we all agree that like this was one of our most favorite things that we've ever worked on. The characters, the story, the the way the podcast all came together and like just the community that we've grown around the stinky dragon little stinkers. I think it's been like just like one of I think my favorite experiences to date being part of this podcast. This is probably the most invested I've been in a Rooster Teeth production. And like I was talking to John just how crazy it was, just like even something like his mom making us puppets and and just like how everything fit together perfectly and like just made the last couple of years so much fun. And I don't know. I really like Sticky Dragon.

It's been, it's been a good ride. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's just, it's been such a blessing to be able to like come every week and make something with friends and really just have fun. And then no matter what happens, it always be better than we record it after Micah's done editing it and adding, you know,

music and Ben's gotten NPCs and everything. It's always better than when we record it. And so it's just like, it's like a double blessing where it's one, I get to do it in the first place, which is fun. And then the second time when I get to listen to it, when it's released, I'm like, wow, Chris, you need to pray. I was going to say that was the alternative title to Stinky Dragon. It was Double Blessing. Well, what a great segue because we are joined

by both Ben and Micah who work tirelessly behind the scenes. Micah, of course, is our writer, editor, composer, and Ben is our producer. They do so much to help make the show what it is. So Micah,

what is the overall name of this campaign? That's the next puzzle. You have to solve it. Go. No, the name of this one, I think we've kind of settled on the Infinite campaign, just because that's kind of the running theme from the beginning to the end, is that they

start off as interns, Infinites, and then they actually eventually become the Infinites and kind of come full circle. It's true. other than kyborg none of us stayed infinites yeah yeah it's on the mantle i want to also point out quickly i filled in for gus to do like the little outro read for one of the podcasts i think it was a part one of the finale and it said in finale but i wrote it as infineal at first and i was like is it like infinite tale like i don't understand what this is and i was like oh in finale now you know how we end up with an n tornado instead of an n tornado so i was thinking about it this morning i was out mowing my lawn and just

thinking about oh okay yeah i got another dragon sticky dragon recording stuff like that and i was thinking about it and it was like some of my favorite moments and one of them was when we could not get through diureans did you change that to paladins or was diureans a separate thing like it's a separate thing okay i remember the diureans coming up and gus was a 10 year old boy who couldn't get through it you're surrounded by 10 year old boys yeah yeah yeah so what you just asked right there blaine about the diarrhea and send the paladins that's actually a really good question i mean speaking to the broader world and everything that you went through do the players do you guys have any questions about the world the campaign things that were maybe left question marks in your head so i had a big

question and it was something that we touched on towards the end it was like well past all of kyborg's arc but like i feel like you guys were trying to like dip into each person's like personal investment into the ongoing narrative so when dr him passed away he apologized to kyborg for creating quadrant and i was curious like what was the intent with that was quadrant like atten and dan were they like uh not robots but you know whatever atten and dan were like an automaton of some kind automaton yeah or was he like a person that came to like what did you guys have in mind for quadrant and what did you expect for kyborg to do with quadrant once you found out i wrote acutarius and quadarius as brothers that grew up in tetora and tetorans were notorious for like not wanting

anybody else but dragonborns right because there's different draconic people i forget what the term is there's a term in like dnd lore of like all draconic type people but they were basically outcast i think he kind of mentions that that they were cast aside by their parents because dr hem is a kobold which is a type of dragon type person. And then Quadrin or Quadarius was similar. Like he was basically the first Tabulian in our minds. And so they were cast out of society. And so when...

Raw. Yeah, exactly. When Hem and him were alone, basically on their own, he built Quadrin, his arms, to basically fit into society again and like give him a chance to be something different and I kind of I kind of grew out of Quadrant's wanting for more and wanting to pay back people and so to answer your question about the latter part like it was really up to you like I think I mentioned that in the recording like I didn't have anything particular in mind

with what uh with what Kyra excuse me would do with all that information but it's more just that there's a connection that like you were saying with each of the characters that Dr. Ham kind of had. Yeah. So Dr. Ham is brothers with quadrant then. Does that, wow.

Okay. I just now realize that there was a moment there where like, I mean, you probably cut it from the finale finale, but you were like, what did you, did you want to leave him in the briar orb and stuff like that? And I was like thinking about it and was like, I don't know what I want to like rehabilitate quadrant, but there was no like mystic thing that changed him. He was just a jerk that got arms and then like killed a bunch of people. And I was like,

no, there's no redemption for that trash. So I was like, he can stay in the briar orb. I'll go stomp on it with a smart. Something that, uh, I was also wondering about specifically with gum gum

uh obviously we get the reveal that dia is his mother and then entropa aka galindor no is it garador yeah garador are his parents and so i'm just like wondering how that conception happened i guess like how they physically you mean yeah when a mommy god and a daddy god fall in love i guess it's different because like in this universe the goddess andi uh sorry dia is like a physical being not like a like what i would picture a god to be of like this mystical non-physical being you read any mythological stories with pantheons those gods constantly had kids with mortals. That's true.

That's where demigods, that's where we get Hercules. That's where we get Achilles, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There is a little bit of lore like related to that. Not anatomically, but like Dia had a mortal body, I guess you'd say like a vessel. And when she entered the material plane. Gotcha.

And Gerador was already, you know, like we mentioned, like he's an orc at that time. So yeah, when they fought, like that whole blowout where Entropa has Galindor at that point, like hostage, and they have a big fight, that's when Dia uses the last bit of her power to kind of basically leave,

to save Gum-Gum and gum and you know as much as she can and then she has to return to mount celestia gotcha as kind of a more deity spiritual kind of thing which i think what you're describing your mind works in mysterious ways micah i don't know how anybody does these types of things where they create such a layered world and characters and you know different civilizations and stuff like that it's just like insane to me it's very very cool a lot of work yeah but thank you so i have a question about caridor what form was he initially and then how did he because i believe he was from phaser like the world like what was he i guess in terms of like being maybe at least where he started and where he ended i don't have his whole backstory written out, but basically in my mind, it was he was an orc,

which is where you get your half orc from your half orc, half deity, basically. And yeah, I kind of grew up as as a wise person. I think I mentioned that in the last arc that he's the wise Ard, Gerador Ard. And where he became Entropa, I think, is that what you're kind of asking? Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I didn't flesh out all that backstory because I didn't think it was as relevant as his connection to Gum-Gum.

But my internal lore is that he was kind of the head wizard and kind of started teaching people magic. I think I mentioned that in The Last Ark as well. And when he discovered in himself that people weren't ready for magic in his mind, his rage started to boil, which is kind of where Gum-Gum gets it. I think his rage. And eventually to the point where he started pursuing other things to try and figure out a way to stop magic from happening when Dia wasn't agreeing with him.

That like magic was the curse of the world kind of thing. And I think part of that is him exploring the different planes. And one of those planes being, I think I said it on like Anarchs is the name, which is where Anarchs come from. And it's kind of like a chaos belt that loops around the different planes of the world, like Ethereal Plane and Shadow Mane and all these things. And it's kind of the elemental border, I guess, of all the planes. And he gets kind of wrapped up in that and ends up being cursed by

this red mist you know we are anarchs yeah exactly every single time i do have a question for you guys i guess what was the most unexpected decision that our group made that took like what you had in mind for the storyline that took it like completely off track or like went in completely different direction than you anticipated or planned for if there was any big forks in the road i think the biggest one for me it's like it wasn't a big story departure or anything it was you guys were always like starting to go down paths that maybe we we didn't fully flesh out like normally we would have a document we talk about what the plan is or what the goal is for an episode or if there's any questions and inevitably you all would turn left at a juncture we didn't see or just be like get hung up on a door or someone's in a well right still don't

know why no regrets no regrets no regrets on the well fixation can we come back to the well is that an answer we'll come back to the well but I think the biggest departure was the naval battle that you circumvented by having mud turn into a plesiosaur and then just swimming under the naval blockade at the port. And just like, well, that was going to be 45 minutes of that episode. Yeah. Guess we need a van now. That's so funny. Yeah. Guess we need a ramp now.

That's so funny. Yeah, I think the other famous one, which I think happened even before that, was in the second arc, which was the door fiasco at the Glockentower. Oh, God. We cut like two entire encounters because you guys just spent so much time on that door and we didn't know how to get you to just open it.

So for the rest of the campaign, for me anyways, it felt like anytime we hit a door, it was like, okay, this is either going to be five minutes or it's going to take the rest of the episode for them to figure out how to get past this. Apparently it's a common thing in D&D. It is. We posted a couple of D&D sketches and we did one about opening a door and like people doing everything but trying to open it. And a lot of people could relate. So I don't feel like we're too silly.

We have trust issues collectively, all of us. I did research. I went back and I was like, what's the first door that they had trouble with? And it was the Infinite HQ. Yeah. Yep. I remember that one. It was the puzzle one with there's like three things above it or something.

Well, yeah, there was even getting into the Infinite HQ. It was like booby trapped and like it would shock you. And there's three doors you guys go in. And I don't think anybody ever knew this, but there was an armory. There was the stables, which eventually you found the stables later in a different arc. And then there was the main door to the lobby.

And I think someone went to the side. I forget which side, but they'd never go in. I think it was like locked or something. And like, if you had gone in, you would have found the stables, like all the animals that the infinites had that you eventually find out if you got on the armor, you would have had all these different armor things

and like weapons and stuff. So, yeah. We even had, jokingly, in the very last battle in the Intronado was a door that was kind of floating around. And I just jokingly thrown to Gus, be like, you could make that door a mimic and have it attack one of the party members

for like in the very final encounter, the door comes alive and finally gets its revenge. These are from my door brethren. Is there some connection or is it just wonderful circumstance that the big villain of the whole campaign has door in his name? Garador. Door you mean? Garador.

Oh. I was like Entropa. Yeah I was talking about Entropa too. He's right there in front of us the whole time. Entrance Entropa. Yeah. Endorpa. So what was the thing? Why were you being so weird with the lady in the well? Wait, I actually want to defend them, I think, really quick.

I don't think they were being weird about the lady in the well. I think we hyper fixated on the lady in the well. She had no explanation for why she was down there. But like imagine like a video game and you have entered a part of the video game that just hadn't been developed yet. You've phased through a wall. And so like that's what can happen constantly in D&D creation is that, you know, we kind of like what we see is what is ready for us to like deal with. But like if it's something that wasn't like fully fleshed out but we can hyper fixate on it we can force here's the thing i think it started tell me if i'm wrong guys it started as a joke when i threw a coin in and

you're like someone's down there ow and then you just didn't have a story like ready to fire from the hip no there was a story that's entirely false. You all just never figured it out. Then what was it? Why were you being so weird? Because you didn't figure it out. We couldn't tell you. Like, I can't just spell it out.

Like, there was stuff there. You just didn't get to it. And that's fine. That happens a lot. Well, do it now. Do it now.

You found the end result without finding the explanation for it. And I was like, I couldn't just say it. If the character doesn't know, they can't explain it to you. It's how gus's voice just makes him sound more emotional calm down i can't talk that's fine i pulled out the module so this is the sunan province that you

guys are in so you went all the different provinces you know they didn't have different problems and you're trying to find the elders and stuff uh so the sunan province had people that were being tortured in different ways so the the first one was the ink well, which is where Magon, the person you're talking about, is trapped. This is what it reads. Trapped at the bottom of a well is an elderly female silver dragonborn named Magon, but the well isn't full of water. It's a reservoir of ink for the calligraphers of the town. Near the well is a Shadrow taunting the poor dragonborn. So the Shadrow had thrown Magon down there. It was like torturing the person.

You didn't see the shadow person because you weren't looking for them, I guess. And then chaos ensued from there. If I remember right, there was also some kind of attack that messed with their memories or something of the sort. That's why I figured in my mind that she couldn't remember or she was having trouble remembering. There was, I think, yeah, there was another person and that might have been a similar thing like shizu there was a nightmare that they were having in a different home and so like all these people had like being tortured in different ways yeah i have a question and it's okay if we don't have an exact answer this is another one that was kind of like what do you think gum gum with the diagems and

the crown at the end what power they still have and what they're capable of and like what the right thing to do with them was i don't like classifying something it's like the right thing to do or i guess i think gum gum would have wanted to do whatever was best but i didn't know the potential and the power of them so i didn't know you know like or who might be trying to get them or the danger of them so i was maybe like the know like or who might be trying to get them or the danger of them so i was maybe like the expected outcome or yeah did y'all have any idea for what might be done with them you're talking about like the wish no the die just talking about the epilogue the epilogue the die gems oh what would happen to them after yeah yeah no i don't think we had anything in

particular in mind yeah i think the idea was just that like we hoped magic would come back to phaser and then it did and then really yeah like the ending was really up to you guys i think the idea was just that like we hoped magic would come back to phaser and then it did and then really yeah like the ending was really up to you guys i think we kind of pushed that direction when we were asking you guys those questions yeah i think blaine was also under the same feeling during that that there was like things that you guys had written out that we could do but you were kind of like just searching for us but you guys didn't have an ending as far as like the epilogue of our characters.

And it was up to us just to say whatever we wanted. Yeah. I had questions I'd written down for each of the characters, things that came to my mind of like, what have we explored? What have we learned about the characters? What things would fans be interested in? And I just kind of wrote those down and like,

if we covered them, we covered them. Yeah. I have a question kind of going back to, I guess it was like the flats of Tabool. Did you guys look into each of our character sheets to see what languages we knew and just like knew that since I knew Draconic, I would have a means of communicating? Like, did you expect dragons to be as big of a role in this campaign as it turned out to be? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

We knew. Okay. Yeah. It was all those sneaky times where I'm asking guys like, hey, can you see what's on the character sheet? Like what's their alignment? What's their common languages here?

Yeah. I wanted that to be a thing. It's the same reason that like when we get to Tetra and Bart is half draconic and he's not being affected by certain things, you know? Which at the time I didn't know, right? Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, absolutely. I think for me, I wanted to save dragons as much as possible. I had hints of it throughout, like the Tabulians, kobolds, you know, that sort of thing. I even had like makeshift kind of appearances of dragons and even Duncan, you know, as a pseudo dragon. But yeah, I wanted to save that for like Bard as half dragon. Like that's the kind of thing. So you knew all along that that was going to be the case. Like how, how soon did you know what you were going to do with all of us or was it just like now that we're on to the next arc i'm going to figure out this person in particular like what was the process behind that yeah it was different for each character i think

because i was writing notes for myself to remember things for this episode but one of the things i wrote down was like the character's songs played basically every arc, even down to like certain lines, like lyrics in the songs. And so like, I kind of based my arcs on those things, but then like things would come up eventually. Like I didn't, I couldn't know everything about your characters until you guys told me things as well. But yeah, I think that was my process is like, I wrote down as much as I could in notes over time and then kind of collated those things when I got closer to your particular arc, you know. And there were some times when Micah would have to have me ask sneaky questions or try to get information out of the party without raising any suspicions. Like, hey, can we find out a way to ask so and so this question?

Be like, OK, we'll see if we work that into the episode somehow. Yeah. I think one was like, how old is Bart? Because Bart doesn't have an age written on their character sheet. We've never mentioned Bart's age. I think. Bart's timeless. Yeah.

Bart only mentions that he never reveals his age. And so I was like, how old is he? Kind of need to know for the backstory. Like how, what's the timeline? Like when is he born? I think at one point Bart makes a reference to having a birthday or their birthday having passed. And I tried to like very casually ask like, oh, yeah, how many years old did Bart turn that year? And I think Barbara was very evasive even at answering that.

She's like, oh, Bart doesn't tell or something like that. Yeah, he doesn't kiss and tell. That also is associated with his age. He never tells or his weight. Actually, no, he did tell his weight. Chunky boy. But I will say like in the latter arcs, like recent arcs like i had a lore document of like how things happened way back in the day but i didn't have a timeline per se so eventually i took like a whole not a

whole day but a day an evening to like write down this is the year this happened this is the year this happened you know just kept going down the timeline and took a lot of work and it's not completely accurate but it helped me to be like that's when this person was born this is when this person met that kind of thing was there an alt version of our different arcs where it's like you know oh kyborg's mom lived or you know bart and gum gum switched and bart's parents is dia and that stuff. Like were there any alternate universe outcomes and stuff? Did Mud have a different story that you guys had in mind? It just didn't pan out. Well, John, how much backstory did you give me?

Too much. Baloney. Is that sarcasmized? I overwhelmed you with the information. It was just an overwhelming blink page. The possibilities are endless. The writer's conundrum. It's exactly right.

So for John, no, it was I think I wrote down like a page for each of y'all's arcs when I was playing them out. And the first question was like, what if Mud doesn't remember his backstory because he doesn't have a memory? And that was the kind of initial thing. So that's you writing into like a reason for the fact that i didn't provide anything that's it

that's so funny i like that that's fine what you got yeah i like that because that takes the no-no off of me it's like oh no i i gifted you an opportunity to uh that's it we have such a connection as brothers that you knew what i needed and i knew what you needed. Yeah. What I needed was to not spend time on my backstory. But like, as far as alternate stuff, I think we kind of settled on like, yeah, Kyberg's family was, that's always been like your canon. Like his family's been gone.

They were killed by Quadrant. We didn't know a whole lot about Bart's backstory. I don't think. Not too much. Yeah. Yeah. You laid in some few things here and there. Barbara, you're the one who provided the pirate upbringing or was that written by y'all?

No, I think I, yeah, I specified that he was raised by pirates, but didn't say anything about like a captain's name or, you know, what happened afterwards or anything like that. What the audience doesn't know is that Barbara's actually a huge fan of Pirates of Penzance. Pirates of the Caribbean, my friend. Let's get the pirates right drink up me idies yo ho i'll tell you the story of pirates of penzance later you understand how closely it relates to bart's story oh really okay i was like i don't know what that is did you have archie planned to be the big bad and also gum gum's dad like at what point did that come to you know like did you have a plan for archie whenever we initially met him back in like the third arc you know and then how

did that evolve to what it was yeah so arc one you guys go to pious pass gum gum walks up to the chapel and starts wanting to commune with his dad, right? Yeah. And Bart starts like faking his dad's voice and like, Gum Gum. And I was editing that episode, that very scene. And I found some music. I didn't write the music for that particular scene, but I found some music that fit really well with it. It was really spiritual and stuff. And that the whole ending of the show came to me. And it was one of those moments where like, you can't write it down fast enough. Yeah. i just kept writing writing writing that's that was the beginning of that like lore document i was kind of mentioning earlier and yeah i came up with dia came up with

the dia gems came up with entropa came up with the connection to gum gum and what the whole like quest was going to be for the rest of the campaign so basically you're saying it was me doing gum gum's dad that inspired the entire campaign. Even to the detail of like, I think you mentioned you had a dog later on, but it was funny that I had written a dog to bite you. And that was like, that's how Intrabug lures you out.

Lures you out of the house and stuff. I didn't even think about it. We didn't even think about the dog bite that you got. Yeah. What's funny is before the finale, we had a meeting about possible questions Gum Gum could have for Daya or possible wishes he could make. And we started trying to plan for worst case scenarios. Like what's the thing Gum Gum could wish for that could throw us most off

the rails? And I think my thought was Gum Gum's going to wish to have his dog back. He's going to remember the dog and it's like, what's going to happen to have his dog back. He's going to remember the dog. And it's like, what's going to happen? I took a picture of Chris the moment you guys were like, you get to make one wish, Gum Gum, but be very careful with how you like say it and all this stuff. And Chris is just like, uh, I took a picture of him. That'll make sure that we post on social.

But it was just a very funny moment. I just, I love when we put the pressure on Chris for something like that. That's great. Here's the ending of the show. Go. Yeah. It's all on you. No pressure.

Yeah. Howdy, my unhygienic hearers. We hope you're enjoying a behind the tails. Look at the entire infinite campaign. Big thanks to everyone that supports us. Post on social media using hashtags. Tinky dragon pod. If you're enjoying a behind the tails look at the entire infinite campaign big thanks to everyone that supports us uh post on social media using hashtag stinky dragon pod if you're not already make sure you follow us at stinky dragon pod on twitter instagram tiktok you can stay up to date with the next adventure because this is not the end of the show next week we're going to be

releasing a mini adventure dm'd by krista maris that will continue for five episodes and then we're going to be diving right into our next full length campaign with the original cast and crew. So I think that this is all of you guys' first D&D campaign for the players. How do you feel about finishing what I presume is your first campaign? Did we not finish the RT D&D? Not really. It was kind of up in the air. Gotcha.

Okay, then yeah. I don't even remember a conclusion to that. So yeah. The question stands then um for me personally i think we really lucked out in finding characters and like chemistry that worked really well together and i think like this group is great at working together from an improv standpoint and stuff like that but there's so much of dnd that a lot of us didn't know about i know like this is my real first time playing D&D and like learning how to, you know, do spells and attacks and roll for certain things and like what needs to be done when and in what order and like all that stuff that's the nitty gritty of D&D. And so it really helped me, I think, like become more comfortable with that stuff. But also,

I don't know, like I felt like we did it in a really nice way where it didn't feel so much pressure. Like you had to know everything about D&D right off the bat. Like we were a lot more lax with the rules and like the more specifics of D&D, like even like carrying capacity as an example. And I felt like that laxness helped us be more creative and like kind of fall into the comedy a little more of the podcast. And so I love how it all played out in that sense. But it's made me a lot more comfortable and excited to try new D&D classes and characters for different campaigns and stuff like that to explore those. Well, there's a thing they teach you when you like do an improv class where it's like,

don't focus on the things you don't know. Just lean into the things you do know. And I think that by trying to abstract a lot of the nitty gritty and trying to remove the worry about the rules and how specifically it all works, it's like we were trying to give you that space and more comfort about things that you do know and things you can lean into to try to make it more fun, hopefully. Yeah, definitely. One thing I felt really helped that was removing visuals, you know, where we were just talking.

And so it was all in our head. So it was easier to not get caught up on like, oh, well, I want to move this many feet. Oh, wait, I can't move that, you know, like not having a diagram is just like, I don't know, I felt like it was like telling a story and living it out. I feel like not being so caught up on like graphs and visuals helped that at least for me. That was like one of the biggest conversations I think we really had had was how do we transition this from what really was born out of the pandemic and trying to figure out how we could do D and D content online streaming using roll 20 and turned it into an audio podcast format.

And I guess really teaching you all how to shift away from like needing a map or anything and just like describing what you want to want to do and play in that space while still having the framework of like dungeons and dragons you know yeah yeah i'll admit even myself as a player like it's easy when you have that battle map in front of you it's easy to get fixated counting squares when other people are taking their turns and being like where am i going to move and thinking about what you're going to do and you kind of miss what everyone else is doing you know not having that map in front of you kind of removes that distraction or you can engage more and think about how what other people are doing plays into what you want to do going off what Barbara said I really enjoyed our group's chemistry and like the relationships

that each of our characters developed with one another yeah and like I think we all experienced a little bit of anxiety when we're presented with making new characters for our next campaign but i feel like going forward knowing what i do now i'm not going to try to recapture that lightning in the bottle with the infinites i'm going to like where kyborg would have made this decision i'm going to try to make that decision with this other guy it's like when you're playing uh like doom and you notice that you're using the i don't know just like the the dmr the rifle way too often and you're like well i'm not exploring the full breadth of gameplay in this you know so it's like let's like try out other things so i'm like i'm excited to to do that i'm not gonna try to like you know min max distance uh archery kind of attacks like Like I'm going to explore different combat and different like social gameplay.

And I'm excited at that prospect, but I'm also like nervous. I just, I just want it to be good. And I want our listeners to be as invested with the new guys as they are with the infinites. Well, I think that when we started the infinite campaign, we came up with these characters, not thinking too deeply on it or not thinking like what this could become or the relationships we could develop and the characters that like the way we could flush them out until it actually was happening and so i feel like we'll be able to come up with like a whole new story and a whole new like slate of characters that have brand new interactions and chemistry together just like naturally because we're all friends right guys yeah yeah that's something

like i really kind of want to hit on is this isn't changing it's still going to be you know the five of you in a room around podcasts playing dungeons and dragons which i know is what our audience really really loves and when you think about it from like even a player's standpoint of dungeons and dragons people play for like 5 10 20 years in the same story but eventually that story has to end and you move on to something new but it years in the same story, but eventually that story has to end and you move on to something new, but it's still the same fun spirit of Dungeons & Dragons. And I know that's exactly what this is going to be.

And I'm really excited to see like what you bring to the table now that you have some experience under your belt for Dungeons & Dragons and can play with something new. One thing I thought was really interesting is we recorded a test for this show before the pandemic and it was really just us playing dnd for like the first or second time this is before rt dnd even before we did our live stream yeah we did a live stream during a pandemic of rt dnd on russi.com but this was just us like an unreleased thing and it had kyborg gum gum and mud in it barb you're a rogue a different character but we

didn't really go into like as much character stuff is really just more kind of just us learning combat and stuff but i went back and listened to it because i was just curious after having finished and what we did is way better than that like the dynamic and the chemistry and the characters are just way better you know because we had more experience and we were also not learning how to play dnd at the same time but it was interesting yeah the voices also even from episode one can i make a quick admission before you get into what you're talking about gus uh the reason i'm excited for the next campaign is because i have full faith in this team in our dynamic and ben and micah and gus to lead the ship and stuff like that when we did episode one and then maybe into episode two,

I was like, this is, this is, this is bad. I'm not having like, I'm bad. I'm bad at D and D. I don't have faith in this character. This isn't going to be a fun time. And then like what? 90 episodes later, like. It's like you find them, right?

Yeah. You find the character with anything you do. You found your footing. I'm so happy with how it turned out. And I'm glad that I just like trusted you guys. And we got to where we did. Cause like time of my footing. I'm so happy with how it turned out. And I'm glad that I just like trusted you guys. And we got to where we did because like time of my life. I loved this. I think even like we originally had started, I think Blaine, you and one of the other producers who we've been spinning up like Dungeons and Dragons ideas together had come forward to me to be like, I don't know if using voices for NPCs is going to work.

Like they're going to have to match like Gus's tone. Oh, it's great and how it works. And then we just did a test. That's why Christian is the voice of Bezler and Spectral, who was the other producer who's like working with me to create Dungeons and Dragons content, is the voice of Bezler. As we just like, hey, can you just throw in like a grimy goblin voice so we can see how this sounds? And it was so good from the outset that we just kept him as Bezler. I was so worried with how the audience

is going to perceive it because I was just thinking of all the mental gymnastics of like, okay, well, there's the dungeon guy. Are these other people in the room with them? Is this them making the decisions or is this the dungeon master? So it was like, where does this fall into the canon?

And I was overthinking everything. And I'm so glad that I was proven wrong because like the sound design, the story, like the character voices with all of our like guest stars, like it all came together perfectly. How many people are in this room? I got way too caught up on the details. Like I should have just had fun. I think one of the things I think Barbie mentioned it earlier that gets people hung up on playing D&D is the rules. Yeah. I know for me, when I first DM'd, I was scared to death because like, how am I going to know

all these books memorized? And it's the varsity of it all, right? Like you're never going to know all the rules and they keep evolving. And so I think Gus has done a really good job of allowing you guys to do what you want to do and here are the mechanics that we can put in place to implement those things. Speaking of which, like oftentimes I needed to vamp for whatever reason, like I needed to look something up or, or figure out a rule. So I would ask you guys a question. I already knew the answer to just to make you all look something up and make you think you were the bottleneck while I was looking something else up.

And then I would read up what I needed to know. Then I could ignore your answer because I already knew the answer. The king of multitask. No, you're the drama. I can't count how many times I would like slap Gus like, Gus, you know the answer to this. What are you doing? Yeah, and I'd be like, it's fine.

I'm just making them waste some time. I need to look something else up. It's some classic Gus gaslighting. There's some Gus lighting right there. Remind me what Cloud of Daggers does again. Right. How many D4 does that do or i'm sure the listeners are like oh my god why is he asking that again or for what it's worth i never realized that like to me you were just trying to be specific and like make sure that we knew what we were doing it didn't come across as like you asking something

that you knew the answer to at any point in time so that's a fun peek behind the curtain that's incredible i have a question gus actually what was your favorite npc or favorite npcs to play because i know we oftentimes would get other people to voice them and sometimes it would just be modifications of your original recordings but just when we were recording did you have any favorites oh man i think there's a fan favorite, of course, Little Jimmy. It's not just a fan favorite. It was just like one of those characters where I think in the module, I don't remember, he might have had like a sentence or two written about him. I don't even know if he had a name in the module.

I think it was just like whatever the NPC. And then you all kept talking to him. And it was one of those things where it's like, okay, this is going to become a character with dialogue now. I't i need to find that module actually go back and see what was actually written about him because i don't think it was much it wasn't much but it was named after a fan yeah and i think it was just how you played him gus and it just came across to the party like this like oh sorry guys i just i don't really know where i am or what i'm doing i'm just here to help i'm like you guys you're giving you're giving gus way too much credit it was the thinnest character down to the voice jimmy it's literally gus smiling saying i'm

little jimmy and just keep referring you guys little jimmy latched onto that for some reason he became your like party favorite well i i do think it was interesting because i feel like that was like with the evergards we were like bad guys it kind of like humanized in a weird way like that we hadn't explored so it was very interesting actually from even from a story mask off yeah being like oh yeah they're people it's funny i i was not even kidding in the end like the finale episode where i was like what happened to little jimmy like i do want to know do you guys have like a, a favorite NPC then? Like, for the players?

For me, I felt like Hannah McCarthy did such a phenomenal job as Paralyte. Oh, man. She did so good. Such an amazing performance. Everyone did an incredible job. But, like, she just moved me in a new way. And also Raquel Lilly as Inkyu was so scary and so evil. It was great.

When Dr. Ahim dies and she's crying, she did like, I think three takes of that line. And I was like, oh my God, how do I choose? Like, what is this acting? I know, she was so good. Speaking of NPCs, you know, when we were meeting about the finale and everything, I gave a suggestion and a contribution

to the finale lore that Micah actually used and I was very happy with. We're trying to figure out what's going to happen to all of these NPCs. And I suggested, I said, wouldn't it be funny if Brink franchised and opened magic schools everywhere in every town of Phasa

so that Kyborg could never escape him? Like no matter what town Kyborg went to, there was Brink's face huge on top of a building advertising this franchise magic school. And when Micah ended up writing that and using that for the epilogue there so good my partner came up with the tagline of learn magic in the brink of time I was like that's good I gotta use that that's really good I think for me my favorite like I guess a little bit of BTS for NPC casting was originally when we had the Woonicorn come in and we suddenly realized

in the middle of our session that John could talk to the Woonicorn. Oh no this is going to be a voice we have to cast. And I was thinking and had originally pitched Ify Wadiwe as the voice of the Woonicorn. I just wanted this like jacked deep voice dude of like the Woonicorn.

Yo what's up? But then when Gus broke out his like impression i was like no this is absolutely what we're going with so good i love that yeah do you guys have favorite ones blame john chris if you had favorite npcs smarsh smarsh yeah i was thinking back and i need to listen to that again but just like again a very thin character he had three lines that he kept repeating and i was like this is awesome like he's just declaring himself the king and he's fighting this other spider creature i have zero investment in either of these two like i

think we're supposed to be teaming up with the spider but like everyone's already loving that guy so like let's give this guy some love yeah i'm a I'm a King Obi stan myself. That was the spider. I like Sleek a lot, Ben. I thought you did a really good job with Sleek. Oh, yeah. Thank you. The hi, Kyborg!

And you coming in on Smarsh. And I say this partly because we did the puppet videos with the NPC prisoners when we were escaping. But I like Hairless Hutch and sour amy a whole lot like they were just really funny to me both of them like all the characters in the prison escape was really fun and i thought you did a really good job with those little like side characters there's something about like putting us in like a little hub where there's like several characters for us to interact with like it was the prison the deck of the ship i think like maybe infinite hq like like you guys can go around like what do you guys want to do i just love like socially you know like like interacting with those other weird people and just hopping from person to person it's funny you say that

because lots of times we had scenarios where there were plenty of npcs for you to interact with because it's an opportunity to, you know, use the names from people who interact with us on social media. And most of the time you guys did that. But specifically on the deck of the Bramble boat, you guys were like all business that episode. And you're like, we're not going to talk to anybody. We're going straight to the bottom of this boat.

And I kept getting slacks from Mike and Ben, like make them talk to someone, make them talk to people. So it's just funny how wide the dynamic can be in the party. But I did want to circle back and ask Micah a question. Someone was talking about origins and beginnings earlier. And I was curious, like where did you get the original idea for like the Infinite campaign? Like what was the genesis for the very beginning of it?

Because you talked about getting inspired, you know, later and how it's going to end. But what was like, where did you start? Yeah, I started with this idea that the characters would be sidekicks. And I wanted to introduce like these mighty heroes of the realm that would like, they would learn from and like gather from. And over like talks with you and Ben, I eventually came up with like what if they're

interns instead because i think originally i even wrote like you guys would go to school i have an npc that i fleshed out of like i'd be a teacher that would teach you things that we never learned the name of and then yes so the interns and then so the infinites i was trying to come up with a name that encapsulated you know like always and then like a guard so like that's where you get the everguards as well. It's like the antithesis, of course, but you have infinite and then knights and then infinites. And I didn't like how K looked with infinites, so I dropped the K.

So that's where that came from. It would have been like infink knights. Infant knights. Yeah. La la la. La la la. Babies. Yeah, we'll do a spinoff where we're just babies.

I want to get to some listener questions here. People who consume our podcast. We have one here from Sands Jr. on Twitter asking, what is something you're missing from this campaign that you would like to have in the next one? Blaine doing a voice. Oh, yeah. I started out with one, but I lost it really quick. I just couldn't be bothered.

You have a voice for your next one, though. Yeah, I'm working on it. I hope it's okay. It's just one of those things where I know by episode 10, it's going to be completely different than episode one. So, like, I'm trying to go into it as prepped as possible. I just want it to be like after doing Good Morning from Hell, which is another show

that we did at roosterteeth where i did clayton and it was just a demon voice i just don't want to do something that's like horribly obnoxious to listen to like i feel like clayton might have been i think the voices that are hard to do and even have that potential of being a little obnoxious can turn out really well because they can become beloved in their certain way. And it also, I like when there is a definite change from you, Blaine talking and your character talking. And I just mean that like in the person and character in general,

like not just necessarily just you Blaine, but when I'm listening to other D and D stuff, I like that because there's it's kind of a fun little like the distinction. So, yeah, it's a shift in personality that happens. And I like that because it's like it's kind of part of the fun of like when we watch the puppet videos. I like those little moments where you can hear like this is Barbara talking and then this is Bart talking. And it's really funny to me when there's that distinction.

Yeah. It's funny because we almost have the opposite problem with Chris where Chris sits down and start speaking like gum bum before we've even started recording. So I can never tell when Chris is asking a question or gum gums asking a question in character. Yeah. Something I, I'm looking forward to like carrying over to the next campaign from this one is I think we we strike the perfect balance of like really interesting, deep storyline, but having like a lot of levity and comedic beats.

it's going to be maybe a little darker but i really like having the comedic relief to go along with those more serious intense moments i think it provides for like a really fun show for us all to make i agree and maybe gumbo i did i did like the subreddit post i think people were saying like which npc are you sad to see go away and i think gumbo was at the top oh i want to shout out to everyone on social media and reddit and discord and tiktok and everyone anyone who's made posts like that really does help the show absolutely and especially now is a really good time to tell people about the show and get new people on board and we'd really appreciate it and it's like seeing it like people post on other subreddits we really appreciate that. And it's like seeing it like people post on other subreddits. We really appreciate that.

And now it's a great time if you want to help spread the word. Well, speaking of online interactions and posts, I have a question here from Reddit. For you players, what is something you wish you'd explored more of in your character or the world? I wouldn't change a thing. That's a hard question. I think for

Bart, I think like I would have loved to maybe known more about him and Gum Gum's past. Like we touched on it a few times and we kind of like allude to the fact that they, you know, met in the orphanage and like knew each other growing up. But I wish like maybe we had been able to do like a time jump

back in time to like maybe play through some of their adventures together or like some moments with them together um just because I think the dynamic between those two characters was really fun to explore yeah there'd be an urgency sometimes to the story where we'd be moving moving moving which is great because it keeps you know like that means things are happening but like just little weird npc like hanging out making like third party npc relationships that weren't part of the main storyline i guess there's also some like items and stuff i wanted to use and like but i was always like waiting for the right time yes like i had that item that was like would reverse my traits like my highest would become my lowest

and my lowest would become my highest i was holding on to it for like a really good moment i thought maybe it would be like gum gum met his dad where he could get like not gum gum's heart but like the intelligent perspective on it which i thought might be a fun way to use it i don't know little things like that but i don't have any real regrets or things i'm not happy with. I think I did figure out something that would have changed because Kyborg goes on his own as a kid after he loses his family and is just like in the woods and training and all that stuff. And I did this, I built this into his character that he had like very low charisma and I think very low wisdom because he's just kind of an idiot that's out in the woods on his own. And I wish I had explored that more from a character perspective, because I feel like he was too still very socially adept.

So I feel like I could have dumbed him down a bit and made him a little bit more like man out of time, like dummy, but I don't know. Well, this party definitely had no problems dumbing things down. Speak for yourselves. A collective intelligence and wisdom modifier

bonus of probably plus two between all four players and two different stats. There was a follow-up question to that one as well for the DMs. What's something you wish the cast had explored more of? Maybe naval battles? This was all submitted by

HSD on Reddit. Do you have anything, anything Gus something they'd explored more of there's just every now and then like I kind of alluded to earlier there's just like small moments where sometimes for whatever reason you know the players are in a different mood and they don't explore as much I wish that they had mingled a little more on the bramble boat I thought there were some really interesting characters there and I think they ended up meeting most of them, if I remember right. But it could have also been very useful because I think having met them, they would have had more knowledge about where they were going and been able to connect things a little more quickly. Yeah. And they meet them later and all

that stuff. Right. Yeah. I was thinking about in like White Winter, like that arc, I started to experiment with a few different mechanics and one of them was like downtime so downtime activities happen typically between sessions in dnd but you can also do them like while you're traveling or something like that so you did a lot of traveling in white winter throughout kaltberg and i was like i'm gonna make like a hunting mechanic we're like kyle we can go hunt or like they can gather stuff and they can find you know woodland creatures and stuff and like i think one of you was about to go out there and then you got distracted by something and then it never happened i was like okay that works but like just things like that or i started developing loot during that arc as well like if you killed a character killed an npc then they would have this kind of loot on them and

occasionally you guys would find stuff and like other times they'd just be like okay i guess i guess we'll save that for later yeah we didn't really loot anybody that we killed or got rid of typically it would just be like they're down and then we'll move on to the next thing and then that's over i think gum gum did but that was like a carryover from his previous character who was like a loot addict lunko yeah after that we just stopped i think a lot of that is born of just you know transitioning from like playing dungeons and dragons as a game to keeping the pacing in an audio podcast. Yeah. Because if you stop to loot everything, there's a lot of like rolling.

What do you find? Gussie there needs like a table with gold in it. We didn't really track gold closely in this campaign. And that's kind of where Bezler came from was because we wanted to give you guys like a moment to buy things after each arc and then kind of like use those going forward. Which could i just say i love the fact that you had christian young voicing besler but always made him have like a different disguise or accent every time so you'd have to do like something different every single time i would have to go to him to get lines and every time i'd go i am so sorry how can you do

a french accent did anyone in the party ever pick up on the fact that his name was M. Besler? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, no one ever made a joke about it or a comment on it. So I was always like,

they know his name's M. Besler, right? It established the distrust towards him like immediately. And then every time we met someone who was like, I can't remember some of his other names, but like Mr. Thief or whatever.

I was like, Oh, it's in Besler in disguise. And I felt bad because like Mr. Thief or whatever. I was like, oh, it's Embezzler in disguise. I felt bad because I completely cut the joke off at the legs sometimes. But I was like, oh, what's up, Embezzler? Oh, I remember another one. Like when you guys were in also in White Winter, a lot of things happen in White Winter.

You're playing as Spectral and his memories, like each of you take a turn. And I don't remember how it happened, but like you could have used his like Aether ether blades or his like boots that turn him invisible or he can go through like walls and stuff. And like, no, they're just on the floor. It's fine. I was like, okay, that's cool. We'll look for that later. Mr. LeBamf on Reddit asks, are there any Easter eggs and episodes that the fans haven't caught yet? I'm sure they've caught a lot. I liked the, there's a lot of Brink Tusser lines,

like throwaway lines that Eric would do or I would write for him. And like, we just never hear those. Cause he did so many funny lines of like just improv stuff. But I think one of my favorites was when I made Deja Urbloom and it was originally going to be like a few episodes and each was going to be named after a part of a symphony. So like Overture is the first one allegro and each town district was going to be that movement of the symphony so like allegro everything speeds up in time so that's why everything's growing so fast you have like these

giant plants that are attacking you have gumbo that's huge and the pet apothecary and then like adagio you guys go back in time to dinosaurs decapo is the ironhoff district with chanel though when elemental you keep repeating times so things like that that i would write into it or people's names they would be of course puns or different things that would clue into their lives every time yeah there's a lot of really clever things that micah does both with wordplay and music in the show anytime there's a new arc i'm always looking forward to see like how he's going to reprise the theme song for the show

into like fit that arc or the character. But even the little things like with Wilhelm, you would throw like the Wilhelm scream in like the background for like most of the scenes that Wilhelm was in. I also love the Gum Gum's Wake-A-Bye song kind of playing throughout like really touching moments with Gum Gum.

And I'm like, it's just making me more emotional in this moment i think like character themes and motifs and things are really powerful in media and i think you did a great job of building them and then like expanding upon and just like making them matter yeah well thank you we have a question here from american wastelander asking if there's any chance of getting an occasional first members only video component. Maybe say the first or last episode of an arc, maybe cameras in the room during an episode recording. Big ask, I know, but didn't hurt to ask. Actually, something Micah just brought up almost made me interject with this, but I'm glad it was organically brought up by a community member question.

organically brought up by a community member question, something that we're looking to do thanks to the overwhelming support we've gotten from the audience so far, which I don't want to shy away from constantly pointing out. We were in fact challenged early on in the show to kind of grow this community as best as we can, kind of on our own. And you guys have knocked all the metrics out of the park of what we were trying to achieve with this show. And that has gotten so much interest because we are part of a company that they want to do more with this show, with the next campaign. And part of that is building out some ideas for some more video components for the show so that we can create even more content for what we're colloquially referring to as the Stinkyverse.

And we don't have exact answers for that, but you've gotten a taste for it so far with the Stinky Dragon puppet videos that we've been releasing on social, which those aren't stopping anytime soon. Even though this campaign's finale is done and gone at this point, we still not only have more filmed from this campaign to put out, but we have plans to do more from this campaign for those puppets because we've got the puppets, which we might as well keep making these cool little videos. And there's so many good moments too.

Yeah, there's so many good moments. And then on top of that, we are solving for the question of like, well, for this community, if we were to provide both like more free content for you guys to enjoy, as well as like a premium level for you guys to be able to participate in, to continue to support the show, we are like figuring out what that looks like. And even like what Mike had just said a second ago, like my brain went to, like, if we're like referring to this almost like to a Patreon model, if our Patreon members got to listen to the Brink Tussler cut of just, of just all, all the different takes that our good friend Eric Badour has done for that character. I'd love to put that up somewhere for people to be able to like kind of participate in a little more of that behind the scenes stuff that we just hadn't until now really taken as much time to release out there. So the answer is we want to do more video work. We want to do more supplemental kind of extra content to support this show and it's coming.

And so it's going to be a part of this next campaign. So if you thought like things were going to just be as they were for the next campaign, they're not, or they're actually just going to get bigger and bigger. And it is 100% because of your guys' support. And your guys is like spreading the word of this show. Because I know plenty of you have said you've shared it with friends. I know plenty of you have shared it with family or listened to it with family. So yeah. Which is so cute.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Can I shout out to someone? Yeah. Please. So there's two people that have really helped with the Reddit and the discord, the fan discords and stuff. And that's falsely named and Julia Darkrest. Yes. Both of them have been named after people on the show, but I've talked

with them consistently since falsely named built the Reddit. And then Julia came on to help with the other stuff as well. And other people are involved too. I'm not discounting them. They've built a wiki page that has lore about the whole show. There's people still writing on that stuff. I've seen messages with people being like, who knows CSS that can edit the wiki page so that it matches the colors of the campaign. But they've been incredibly helpful.

Julia Darkrest is actually who, I believe, organized a document with all of the magic items you guys had purchased and was the main reason I was able to create like the little item cards I gave you all. And then also the other day when D&D Beyond was down, we were like, wait, let's, we pulled up those documents too. Cause we didn't have any. Yeah, no, those two in particular, I've seen them being very active within the Stinky community, Discord, Reddit, all of the things. But just like everyone who's been on there and like as part of the discussion, people who post on our subreddit

for the first time, I seen a lot of people like waiting for them to catch up before they went on our subreddit because they didn't want to get spoiled. But it's just been so cool to see like a bunch of people starting to listen to the podcast, whether it be from the very beginning, or if they found like a puppet video on TikTok, they came over to the Discord and are watching, you know, other Rooster Teeth stuff or, you know, other stuff that we make. So it's just like such an honor to be able to make a show that so many people love this much that they want to be involved in talking about it too, not just consuming it. I think that's like such a humbling and amazing experience as a creator to see. It's a huge community effort.

And I love talking with everybody in the Discord and the Reddit, everything just to get like information or even look at speculation on how the story's going. Yeah. And maybe the scariest part about making a show like this or before we started the show

is the fact that making serialized content, you typically have a drop off in people's attention over time. Because it's like, even if you start with a big pool at the beginning, that pool gets smaller and smaller as time goes on, as you add more episodes, because people view it as an obstacle into jumping in and getting caught up to where you are in the story. But we've been very fortunate to see over time, the numbers actually go up as the audience grows and the podcast gotten more attention, which we're eternally grateful for. But you mentioned puppets a couple of times there.

And Kimball Bobimble on the subreddit asked, did you imagine your characters looking different than what we all think they look like now, thanks to the puppets? And as a follow up, since the puppet videos become so popular for Micah do you think you'll write more encounters that can be easily acted via the puppet media funny as far as the characters and what they looked like i don't really know what i envisioned and then when we saw the puppets and like and the puppets were based off of the art that andrew douglas who's a friend of the of the company made and like when i saw that like actually no we all set a poster right that was the original thing is that poster that we had come out of the store stinky dragon posters already came out first though oh okay yeah he does the thumbnails on the reach your teeth website yeah

yes we all had input in like when i saw what his version of my guy looked like and i'd never i guess i didn't imagine a bronze arm but outside of that like i was like yeah no this is perfect this is what i imagine cyborg looking like well there's been instances where the communities kind of decided what they look like to a degree brink's a good example of that where brink appeared in i maybe thumbnails but someone's fan art god i'd be a better person if i could recall who it was specifically my mom made the brink toy like there is a Brink doll now that will probably appear in some upcoming videos and for reference we used fan art because it was just like Brink wasn't a character we had fully fleshed out because it's it's an NPC he's got blue hair I think was like all we really spiky blue hair careful what your

fan art looks like we might draw inspiration from it it was funny though when we did get the puppet for him I think all of us were like he's a lot taller than i imagine and i think it's because we all know eric badour who voiced who's like just a little guy you know as he is self-proclaimed so it's just funny seeing like the character that eric voices be essentially the tallest out of all of us yeah and then am i gonna write stuff for puppets? Yeah, more puppet content. Puppet friendly encounters. To interject, Micah doesn't exactly write these encounters, how they turn out. So like he makes the play setting, but it's Blaine who decides to do a backflip.

I'm surrounded by a bunch of amnesias that we then have to figure out how that works out. Not to like lessen Micah's impact. That we then have to figure out how that works out. Not to like lessen Micah's impact. Micah creates all the skeleton or skellingtons that we are attached onto. But yeah, I don't think anybody would have thought like a zip line cord across two cliffs would make for puppet content. But we still have a video. I think if anything, we as the cast are more mindful of like, let's really play into this moment and make it really descriptive and visual while we're explaining what we're doing or what we're seeing so that we could help turn that into a really funny moment if we

do decide to use that as a puppet moment. So like now doing these puppet videos, we're not changing the way we do the show or the way we act as our character, but it's more like let's lean into this comedic moment a little more and be visual about the way we're describing it in case we do want to turn it into a moment. But also, that's just a good way to do a audio only podcast is to try to be descriptive and try to lean into those moments as much as possible. So team effort. I did think about it when looking at new characters to make. I had some ideas like that.

I don't know if that'd be as easy to puppet. some ideas like that i don't know if that'd be as easy to puppet and having spent so much time like trying to get shots and tight little maneuver of arms and things i'm like no no i can't do that type of character it would drive me crazy yeah i think we all like that was something when we're doing character creation for the next campaign one of the things that i wanted to make sure is i didn't like repeat another species just because like I like how diverse the infinites look like we all have our distinct sizes, silhouettes, color of skin, hair, all that stuff. And I want the same. There's just something about a ragtag band of people that's like much more fascinating than just a bunch of clones. Just the Power Rangers standing next to each other. than just a bunch of clones.

Just the Power Rangers standing next to each other. Yeah. Does anyone have any favorite moments that stand out from the entire campaign? Or maybe something that gameplay-wise

maybe you had done a little differently and that's submitted by Volantis from Reddit. Yeah, these are all so good. There was like small moments here and there that I really loved.

Anytime that I used my suspenders of haggling and you guys would cringe at me snapping my actual bra straps was like, it's always really funny to me. I just like, my favorite moments was when I could make you guys would cringe at me snapping my actual bra straps was like always really funny to me i just like my favorite moments was when i could make you guys laugh so i'll think on that

more but yeah there's just so hard to pick one favorite unfortunately some of my favorite moments were when i was the only one that was like on board for it and everyone was like oh like head and hands but gus was still allowing me, like, jumping out of the window naked and, like, having a fight. I feel like everyone was like, what are you doing? I thought that was awesome. Actually, Chris, you did jump on board. You did.

And, like, there's just moments like that. Like, genuinely combat was, I think, my favorite stuff. And then, again, my favorite social interaction was little Jimmy. Jimmy. My favorites were always, like, NPCs and, like, making friends with them, which I feel like was little Jimmy. Jimmy. My favorites were always like NPCs and like making friends with them, which I feel like was just very much what Gum Gum does, you know? And so it was very much fun to just like approach things from his perspective,

either incredibly stupid or just incredibly like kindhearted where he would be friends with anyone to any degree. That was just really fun to play. Like the jail breakout, I feel like that section of the show is whenever i feel like we really started like finding our footing and really getting into the show like y'all embracing and going along with gum gum's idea to like we need an inside man you know like i have to get arrested so they will know what the jail is like you know it's like just like playing into that kind of stuff was just so much fun to me.

I also I know we weren't always the best at it, but I actually really liked the episodes where we had puzzles and things to like figure out in that way or like things that were wordplay or like whatever it was. I will say it was always a very interesting challenge to try to take notes with the way Micah writes with alliteration and like all these fancy words where I was like, could you say that a fourth time? I got like two out of the 18 words in that sentence. But I always appreciated those because it's something where you got to think a little deeper on something sometimes rather than just like a combat scene necessarily. For the flip from what Chris said, where he liked becoming friends with all the characters, my favorite moments were anytime Kyborg and Sleek interacted. Of course.

Anytime. Best friends. My favorite moment with Sleek, I think, is when he's eating popcorn and watching you all battle the Snowbice in the arena. And recording those lines, I literally went and got popcorn and just was shoveling popcorn in my mouth.

Oh yeah, they're doing great. I love love this a lot of that white winter stuff was fun too i like the muds and bart's performance for v king i think that was like a fun little moment yeah yeah that was a fun arc yeah yeah i liked hundred fest that was fun to make and fun to do just because it's all these little mini games and it's a carnival basically i'm like just go play yeah is there anything in your minds that made your character truly become who they were in the end like any big turning points and that's sent from heatful healer on reddit i knew what i wanted to do with gum gum like going in but I think what really solidified who he was was the way you guys accepted him and made him feel like part of the group there's a version where Gum Gum was dumb and you know would do dumb things and it would be like oh no it would be a burden but I feel like

y'all did a really like accepting him for who he was and loving him for who he was. And I really enjoyed that. I think that made his character like more loving and a better character. Yeah, I agree. The relationship between all the characters I think was really heartwarming and like really unique in each of their own relationships. For Bart though, I would have to say, I think when he found out he was the quarterling and that whole moment, though I would have to say I think when he found out he was the quarterling and that whole moment I thought that was really fun and like I think really solidified like his confidence in himself he's already a very confident character but I think it was that moment of just like you are way more powerful than you think you are and you already think it's quite a bit

yeah I think for kyborg with acting like an idiot and just like a show off, there's often times where there's just dismissal and eye rolling and stuff like that. And I thrive off of that energy. And I loved that. But every now and then when a dice roll would hit and I was actually able to back stuff up with like performance and athleticism and stuff like that, like it's those moments of like going against the odds and just like proving some people wrong.

And they're just like, oh, this idiot, this, I hate this guy. Like I love those moments. And those happened early on where I was just like constantly doing backflips. And that's like, that was just the basis of Kyborg's personality. It's just like against all odds, this idiot survives. For me, the pinnacle Kyborg, the best summary of Kyborg I can think of is the fact that cyborg i don't think ever used the word somersault it was always barrel rolls it took me a long time like what are you talking about i think it's starfox that did that to me do a barrel roll so what are like important

takeaways you've learned about playing dnd And is there anything that you learned about the mechanics of the game that you'll incorporate into the next arc? That's from DanielKS25 on Twitter. Something that I think I want to do more of is playing D&D like the character I'm playing. So a little bit more heavily in the role play. I think especially with Chris and GumGum, he had a lot of moments of like, well, GumGum would do this. And I think oftentimes I go, well, I feel like I wouldn't do this in this situation, but maybe Bart would. I didn't play into that as much as I think I could have. So I'm hoping with like any future campaigns we do, I could like really dive into thinking in the mindset of that character, even if it's not something me personally, Barbara would do or agree with or think

is like the right move here. this character would i want to do more of that i agree and i think that this is a lesson that we learned from rt dnd to stinky dragon that i think we're going to continue to perfect into the next campaign is that it's way more fun when the team gets along and we yes and each other and we support each other and i hope we continue to do that because it just makes our friendship and our character dynamics work that much better. And Gus, Ben and Micah, you guys just letting us play and just doing stupid stuff like that makes this, I think, a much more enjoyable playing and listening experience. Well, hey, I love it because if you guys are talking and doing things and I don't have to talk. I mean, I've learned a lot about D&D from just writing because like I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the podcast, but I only learned D&D during the pandemic.

Oh, really? Yeah. Holy hell. I never knew anybody. And so I finally met people that I was living with in Australia and they taught me. And then I eventually like I was in a campaign that I started teaming my own campaign with them. But like, that's the best, you know, way to learn something is to teach it. But like, that's the best, you know, way to learn something is to teach it.

And so like when you start, like, that's how I found out about skill challenges from like fourth edition. I use that in this campaign. I found out about the maze mechanic that you can use for labyrinths with the cards and stuff. There's all kinds of things. Oh, action oriented monsters, which is a thing from Matt Colville, who's a former writer of Critical Role, I think. So there's all kinds of things you can learn on the internet. Yeah, I think similarly to Micah, I don't really, I played a few sessions of D&D in college,

but I didn't really get into it until like a year before we really started diving into RTD&D and stuff like that. And it was mostly from listening to like audio podcasts and like live shows that other people played into. And this campaign has really taught me a lot about playing D&D for an audio podcast series and how it's very different from just like sitting down to play at a table at home. Cause there's a lot of pacing issues and just making sure like how things work when you're sitting in like a recording studio with everybody and just have to take time to, you know, we only have two hours, so we can't spend four hours doing combat, you know? So like, I feel like we're really getting a good like foundation under ourselves

going into this next campaign to like you know do some more fun storytelling that was one of the first things our research was like how to do dnd in 90 minutes like 90 minute sessions like lunch time dnd okay here we go yeah because in the past like when i've played campaigns it's like all right we're gonna get together and we're going to play D and D all weekend, like 10 hours a day for, you know, Saturday and Sunday. Like we just spent 20 hours this week of playing D and D.

And it's like trying to distill that down to like a 90 to 120 minute session weekly is just like, that's a lot. That's a, that's kind of crazy to distill it down like that. I don't know if we've ever mentioned like that, like when I send Gus modules, we don't stick to this by any means,

but it has a timeline of like, here's when this generic thing will happen. Like it'll take probably 15 minutes. Well, a lot for that. And then this, and then this, and this, and it's all like broken down so that we know,

like we probably have enough time, but maybe not. But then the party finds a door. The party finds a door. I have a question. What would you have done if in combat, one of our characters had died? Probably the show yeah like you're like what do you mean like fail to zero hit points or failed all three death saves like actually all three death saves like

just really bad luck rolling yeah show would have just been over we would just called it there and gone home no um i mean i've talked with micahah and Gus about this before where death in D&D doesn't necessarily have to be the end of a character, right? That might have meant a drastic shift in what Micah had planned for the campaign where now suddenly you guys are going to whatever the equivalent of phase of hell is to bring Gum-Gum back from like, you know, the seventh circle of that area. But it's just like a change in story as far as i'm concerned yeah we wanted to lean into that if that happened so if someone like rolled you know death saves and just got a one and like immediately died let that be the dramatic moment and plan out the next thing what's the next thing like what would what would the rest of the

characters how would they react to that and kind of anticipate what the story takes from there because that is a moment and we don't want to just wash over that, you know, and say, well, I died. Let's move on. Roll another character. You know, my first D&D character ever, we were playing a D&D, which is first edition. And it was a rogue who fell into a pit with an ice worm. The party refused to go in and save me me the ice worm ate me and the party just left whoa wow i was like wow what a great thanks guys like i got my my stuff together and left the session like oh i'm dead oh they're not coming back oh okay um wow that's it okay um bye you know we would never leave you how long had you been playing that character?

Oh, it wasn't very long. It was a couple of months, but it was like my first campaign. And it was like, oh, D&D is kind of tough. D&D kind of sucks sometimes. Dang. I'm glad Gus had to go through these like experiences so that we didn't have to. You know, he's taking all this trauma from past D&D campaigns. I don't want that life for my kids. Gus, did you ever win D&D though? Have you ever done that yet? All your experience? Win D&D? Yeah, have you won D&D campaigns. I don't want that live for my kids. Gus, did you ever win D&D though? Have you ever done that yet?

Follow your experience? Win D&D? Yeah, have you won D&D? I've definitely had a character I took from like level 1 to level 25 over the course of like a decade of playing, you know, and that I consider is probably the closest to winning D&D. You know, where it's just like I started with, you know,

a D6 hit die and then by the end it's like hundreds of hit points and, know interestingly enough that character was an arcane archer so i was kind of familiar with what you were doing with kyborg and i had like the seeking arrow and all of that stuff and like after a while you get to the point where it's like it becomes not fun uh it's like everything i shoot is gonna hit like unless at this point the escalation has become we are fighting literal gods in the deities and demigods book.

It's like, there's nothing that's a challenge anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why Kyborg was Gus's favorite. When we finally

franchised this show decades down the line and we finally decided to spin down like the stories, the final campaign is going to be Gus's level 25 character

against the four of you. It's going to be Gus versus actually you guys. Yeah, that character would have had like one turn and everyone would have been dead and there still would have been actions left over. Like it's just ridiculous at that point. I want to start trying to pivot some of these questions and segue them into talking about next steps and where we're going to be going to with Tales from the Stinky Dragon.

So from Twitter, Chronomag51 asks, does this mean all new characters and a new storyline? If it's a new start, will we have the same people playing their characters or will anyone be leaving or joining? Same cast, same dungeon master.

No one's leaving. Same dungeon time. Same dungeon time. Well, we should also specify that's for the next big campaign we're doing. But in between the end of this one, the Infinite campaign specify that's for the next big campaign we're doing but in between the end of this one the infinite campaign and the start of the next campaign we have a mini campaign which chris damaris will be dming and gus will be playing a character with us for those

few episodes so that's going to be a mini thing that happens in between that we're also really excited to do and nervous to see how that plays out yeah and we just made characters for that this morning we did yes so that should be really fun but yeah same same cast doing the next campaign gusty emming mike and ben working their magic behind the scenes how much of that do you guys want to reveal about the new campaign nothing right now how come no no nothing yet there's a new campaign. Yeah. Oh, no. Wait, Mike just left a Discord call.

I just did find and replace on this campaign and just changed names. I don't know. As far as teasing, I would say, yeah, like it's kind of what Duncan mentions at the end of the finale, that this new story, this new tale that he tells, is going to be a bit darker and a bit focused on creatures and dare I say monsters. And I don't think it's a mystery to say that it will be mysterious.

Yeah, there's not a lot I want to tell, but I do want to say like there will be some fun new things that we're trying with this campaign that we didn't do with the last one that I think will be fun to explore as characters, fun to explore different lands. This won't be Phaser. This will be somewhere different.

And yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'm excited to do different music for it as well. Oh, yeah. Ooh, I didn't consider that. New music. Just as many puns. Someone posted on Reddit. I won't name names.

I don't remember their name even. It was like, is there going to be an ungodly amount of puns in the next one? Or is it just going to be bearable? Only one way to find out. It'll be pun bearable. We'll see. I'm really excited to see what Micah does with music in the next campaign, especially

because with this one, in the nature of how the show spun up, the theme song for the Infinite campaign was done by someone else that we had hired, Cole McGinnis, who he's done stuff with like Critical Role. He's done stuff with like Riot Games and League of Legends and created the whole champion themes now. Very incredible, very talented. I think Micah took that first like intro theme that we had done for Stinky Dragon and you ran with it as far as you could and knocked it out of the park. So I'm very excited to see like what the next campaign theme is going to sound like and what you do with music going forward. Oh,

so like the intro song is going to be different. We're thinking, Oh gosh. Yeah. I'm also excited for John and Mike, his mom to inevitably make us new little puppet characters of our new characters. Cause until then,

I guess like, this is the only thing I can update on. Cause I mean, Chris work on the puppets, but like, we're going to continue to make infinite puppet videos with like, you know, our original crew up until like we have enough stuff and into the new

campaign accrued and new puppets to make those guys simultaneously. Yeah. Maybe we'll do some weeks with the old campaign, some weeks with the new campaign. If, if things pop up, what if she makes puppets of you guys in real life and you play out you playing dnd as you i was literally just thinking about how i wanted to include miniatures to the scale of the miniature puppets so like

like maybe one of them is making puppets in a shot and then we have even tinier felt puppets it's puppets all the way down isn't there a south park episode about them doing paper animation funny is there yeah they're like doing the same animation of the original style of that show before it became digital and they in and they in the episode like express their exacerbation at how difficult and dumb that style of animation is. So you mentioned about at the end of the Infinite campaign, how Duncan kind of teases what's up next. And there's actually a question from Brisby on Reddit asking, have you considered a new voice for the bartender for the next campaign? Like there was a shift change for the bartenders.

And I think that's a funny question because we talked about that for a long time because Tales from the Stinky Dragon is supposed to be multiple different stories, like stories told at a bar called the Stinky Dragon. A tavern. Right. And, you know, it's been one of the things that we've wanted to do for a long time

because we weren't sure, like, are we going to actually do it? Are we not? You know, does that need to carry through or can you swap it out at any given point? Is there anything you want to say about that, Micah? Yeah, we can say like Duncan's going to probably tell the next one and he's going to use his like spooky voice that he's going to he's been working on behind the scenes. And I think it'll be it'll fit the tone of this next story.

Can I ask like canonically? You're not going to be able to tell me because if it's a different land and it's not phaser is that like different planet or a different continent is a different timeline different universe i'm so like or am i just gonna have to find out you have to find out my friend okay all right fine fine fine that's called not wanting to write yourself into a corner true subscribe plane okay yeah i'm noticing you're doing a lot of the things where it's like, Oh, what's next for this? And be like, it's in development. And that was always my way of saying, I have no clue. Well,

as far as the players, is there anything we can talk about? Like new characters, races, classes, personalities. I'll teach some things that I'm doing for my character. That's okay.

No bleep all this out. Bleep it all out. Barb, you keep talking, right? You don't Mike. I just bleep everything that happens bleep it all out barb you keep talking right because you're micah just bleep everything that happens here i'll do it for you in my there you go i think it's safe to say that a lot of people have been saying that i should play a barbarian so i'm going to be playing a barbarian character to continue with the theme of my name

and different classes like barb barbara and bard and barbarian and i'm going to be playing a female character too which i'm excited about and i am going to be trying an accent as well so it should be a very fun little experience for me and i'm not going to embarrass myself whatsoever trying to do it i embarrassed myself for 80 plus episodes with the bad scottish you did a No, you did a great job. You did a great job. I'm doing accents for the first time, so I'm nervous as heck. My guy, the only

tease I'll give is if John Candy was John Wick. That's good. That's a good one. I went very different from Gum Gum, but also not that different in some ways. Gum Gum was like a kid. I'm playing like an old man.

An old man. But I feel like in a lot of ways, like kids and senior citizens can be child hearted, if that makes sense. Like have a child at heart. Young at heart. That's the word. You know. Child hearted.

Child hearted. Child hearted. Oh, my heart is too small for my body. John. What do I want to tease about mine? I will be doing a different voice. They will have a different accent that I'm going to try to challenge myself to do. And something that I tried to bring with have a little bit of a backstory for this person, but I'm supposed to have written it down and given it to Micah.

Still haven't done it yet. Still the last person. Yep. And we got time. So, no, with Mudd, I kind of made a choice early on. I don't want to be explicit about it, but I found that growing up being a little nerd, there wasn't enough like overtly queer representation. It was always queer coded. And so I wanted Mud to play that.

And so I noticed that there's never, there's never any ace representation that I could find enough in stuff. And I have several ace friends that mean a lot to me. And so, and I've always had a connection with them. And so I wanted to play mud as ace, which is why you listen to the whole campaign. Mud doesn't really, he, mud plays almost a romantic basically, uh, because I, I liked playing that way. I like to explore that. And so my next character, I wanted to include that as well. So, and I also wanted to mix up our groups since it was a boys club last time. Um, so my

character is going to be playing non-binary. So I'll say that. Nice. And I can wanted to mix up our groups since it was a boys club last time. So my character is going to be playing non-binary. So I'll say that. Nice. And I can't wait to hear everyone try to pronounce their name as well. I did. Yes, you are correct. Yeah, we got a little taste of John's next accent and character name. And you're going to knock it out of the park.

But it is very funny to see people react to it. Yeah. And the last question I have here, I think everyone wants to know, how long do we have to wait for the next campaign to start? I think it's 37 years. Is that right? All right. All right.

You can only do one campaign every 37 years. Currently right now, as of today, the day we're recording, the year of our Lord 2023, the plan is that the new campaign after the mini arc will premiere on April 25thth i made sure to say currently that's the plan you know things can happen texas could shut down again because of a nice storm for two weeks or something who knows but yes if you want to put on your calendars april 25th but also the next episode of a story is next week yeah nothing there will be no blank yeah so

the new mini story will be just next week. It'll start next week. It'll run for five weeks. Yeah. Is there anything you want to tee up about that story, Chris? Yeah. It takes place in Phasa. I wanted to like kind of bridge the campaigns or the story, you know, so the new characters, different time period, but still in the same world. So there'll be some things that might be familiar but also you know entirely new to kind of transition into the new campaign and we have you know four characters Gus being one of them the main thing I told them when making their characters I was like pick characters who aren't your traditional adventurers and I think they came up with some really fun characters and backstories that are going to be fun to throw into an adventure.

So we'll have this intermediate campaign run by Chris, which will go for five weeks to kind of bridge the gap between major campaigns. And we'll be back late April slash early May for the new campaign with the regular players in the new setting from Micah. So now's a great time to get your friends to listen to the podcast. It's a great starting point for anybody new. Thank you all so much for taking a chance on our show. I know it's a lot to be part of like a long narrative podcast and kind of be with us for the entire story, but we really appreciate everyone's love and enthusiasm for the show because we love making it. So it's, it's been an honor. Yeah. You guys are our bra. You support us no matter what. It's been an honor.

Yeah, you guys are our bra. You support us no matter what. You're all a bunch of bras. Oh, third blessing was seeing everyone react to it and seeing people online respond to it. That's the third blessing I didn't mention earlier. Three blessing shows. Hashtag blessed. Blessing sandwich.

Yeah. If anybody listening to the show happens to have, like, a super famous celebrity parent that wants to do voice acting for our show, you let us know. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for listening,

everybody. We'll see you guys here real soon. Next week. See you in 37 years. No. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to our behind the tails episode.

Next week, we're going to be starting our five episode mini adventure DM by Chris Damaris. And after that, we'll be diving right into our next full length campaign with the original cast and crew. So thanks again for listening and remember stay stinky Thank you.