The Adventure Zone - Ep. 1: Here There Be Gerblins - Chapter One

Episode Date: December 3, 2014

In this, the pilot episode of The Adventure Zone, the McElroys create the characters with which they'll build a new -- and hopefuly very, very lucrative -- fantasy fiction franchise. Join in the campaign as Justin (Taako), Travis (Magnus) and Clint (Merle), led by Dungeon Master Griffin, take their first steps into the unknown. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

Hey everybody, this is Griffin Macroy, your dungeon master and sweet babyist brother. And thank you very much for tuning into the Adventure Zone. What you were about to hear is the pilot episode for the show. If you listen to My Brother, My Brother, and Me, you may have already heard it. It was our experimental D&D episode, an experiment that a lot of you really loved and told us that you wanted more of. So thank you so much for that outpouring of support. We really wanted to do more of this and release it as a show, and you guys definitely made it known that you wanted that too. So that is the plan. We are going to do this as a regular thing. The plan now is to do them biweekly.

I think that's right. Every other week, every other Thursday, here on maximum fun.org and on iTunes, you will be able to find new episodes of the show, and we're going to keep it going. So if you could do us a favor and tell any nerd friends that you might have that you think, might enjoy the show about it and spread the word, leave a review on iTunes just to help us sort of get it going. We would, of course, really, really appreciate it. I've talked enough. It's time for the campaign to begin.

So, strap on your fantasy seat belts and brace your asses for the adventures out. So you guys ready to make some dudes? Yeah. So I guess we should make the, use the pre-ruled. dudes or else they're going to be here all day. Like, I can tell you guys about, like, statistical ranges that you're going to be using for your strength and your dexterity. I can talk to you all about vocations.

I can talk to you about evocations, all kinds of shit. What about sponsors? I can talk about sponsorships. Basically, if you and a handsome teenager fall in love and played up, then you get, you'll get potions that'll help you out. I should mention just off the bat that we are playing a Hunger Games role-playing game. And it's not an officially licensed product, but it's in my own division. I call the Catanice.

Okay. That seems obvious. Oh, is that like playing odd job? Yeah, she has a, she's very tiny. She's very hard to hit. Let's, uh, I mean, let's talk about our D&D experience because I think we're all pretty uncomfortable right now. And it seems like a pretty good icebreaker.

I'm, um, I'm trying to. You played some fourth edition, right? Yes, I've played fourth edition and only fourth edition, but I've played it. I don't know. I didn't have a regular game. Like, I haven't played a lot, but I've played, I don't know, six or seven times. Jesus. What?

We just, I, maybe you're not ready for this. Maybe you're not ready for the D&D acumen that I've played one time twice. Okay. So this is two times then. I've never played in my entire life. You're the biggest goddamn nerd I've ever met. I know. And how did this happen? I don't know. Was it something you actively avoided?

Because that's what I did for a while where I just wasn't willing to take that step. I just never had anybody who was interested in it besides me. But you like came up in the Gygax era. Oh, yeah. You were in the... I've actually met Gygax. Did you really? Yeah.

I mean, I was a con. Fucking awkward conversation. So what's your thing again? Dungeons and Dragons? That sounds really good. Can't wait to play it, Gary. I know of those ideas as separate entities. Keep plugging at it, Gare.

You'll get there. You'll get there. Keep it up. Keep it up with your role-playing, James. I think for a lot of people, Dungeons & Dragons was the last bastion of nerd-dom, the nerdiest thing you could do. Yeah, yeah.

And it was sort of like the fail-safe, like, emergency. Well, at least I don't play Dungeons and Dragons. But the good thing is now LARPing's a thing. So that's there. We can say, like, someday, there will be like live action slash fiction. and then LARPING will be like Pass A. And then we can finally, finally, finally indulge in it. We're getting there with the quest on ABC, so I...

Yeah, it's true. Travis, I need you to make that dog. Is your dog playing? Is your dog playing? Yes, she is part of the adventure? She is Princess Buttercup. She's playing as my dire hound lady. Okay.

You will have a dire hound in and if and when I decide that you've earned one. Do you remember how when you got Nessie, you had to, like, do chores and stuff to show you're responsible enough? I will give you a fake in-game dog, but you have to show me that you can take care of it. And you can feed it and take it. I rolled my own character and I wrote him a backstory. That's your, that's a step from the right direction, man. I named, I have a name. So, well, let's talk about the classes we're playing.

Because we're only playing with three people, which is tiny. It's pitiful. We're going to get demolished. Yeah, you're, you're going to get wrecked. I'll be dungeon mastering, which I've never done. I actually did it once for a pickup game. What am I telling to Nirvana? Three people, it's tiny. Sure.

But you guys will be facing the horrors that I throw at you, and you'll be playing, I think we're keeping a pretty traditional, yeah? Yep. We got a, Travis, you're going to be a fighter. I'm playing a human fighter named Magnus Burnsides. I love that. Magnus Burnsides? Correct.

Is he, is he, I mean, Magnus is that, is that Greco-Roman in nature? Is he, is he real historical fantasy? What's the deal? Yes, Magnus Burns-Eyes is a real person that I base this on. Okay. I'm playing a wizard. Okay. His name is spelled T-A-A-A-K-O. So like take a-T-O.

So like, take it. Well, I mean, that, it's two-A. wizard named, are you naming your goddamn wizard taco? It's a family name. It's not pronounced. Is it short for something? Taco Bell. He's actually Taco the lesser.

My father, Taco the great, Taco Supreme. Please. Please, can it be Tacoble. I live in a cabana. I guess it's okay, Justin, because, like, in the, in the infinite world of fantasy I'm about to craft for you, maybe tacos don't exist already. And it's just in the tradition, traditional. Oh my God.

The taco is not realized. My goal for this adventure is to invent the taco. It's sure. Roll for salsa. You might unite you to roll for salsa. I don't know you can take any number of checks. It can take a peppers check, a sauce check, a consistency check. A zesty check.

A freshness check? A soft or hard shell check. I love it. I'm going to be so deep in game. Your name's not even going to be ridiculous. What is a taco? Roll for zestiness. Roll for going and thinking.

sitting outside the bun. Daddy, what are you, uh, you're a clerk, right? I'm a dwarf cleric. Okay. named Merle High Church. Merle? And that's M-E-R-L-E. See, that's a goddamn name. Yeah. I'm sorry. Magnus Burns thought. Magnus is a great name. I'm saying all three, I'm saying we're batting a thousand here with three great names. Justin, what was your race? Including taco. Uh, white. Why does it matter? No, it does actually matter. It for. they're a statistical implication.

High elf. I'm a high elf. Okay. Terrific. Do you have a last name, Taco? Supreme? The Wizard. No. I'll give you Taco.

It's actually Taco again, but spelled differently. Taco, TAC. I do have a last name, but it's a secret that will only be refilled later in the adventure. That's power. I love it. So Merle, Taco, and Magnus. Sounds like the League on FX. No, it's fantastic.

So thank you for plugging our FX sponsorship down. I was surprised that they would step into support us to give us that trust before I even started. But cool. So these three sheets here, Travis, I know you went off book to do your own thing. It's why I love the game, Griffin. I guess I'll be checking your math as we play. He is invincible and I rolled 20 somehow. Okay.

So he's. Level 20? Everything's 20s across the board. Oh, I see. He can't roll below a 20. He can't roll below it. It's just a plus 20s on all of his skill checks. Interesting.

And he has a magic sword that kills people in one hit. Okay. But the only thing is that he's got a disease that will kill him in 15 minutes. That is right. He's too beautiful. He's too perfect to live. His face is just one more hand. They can't see anything.

He can't smell anything. You would think that would factor into his name, but No. No. Well, his parents didn't know he was going to have one more hand for a face when he was born. It was suddenly going to develop. I wrote a whole back story, but why he has a face for a hand. Or a hand for a face?

Does he have sideburns? No, full beard. But burn sideburns are twice as bushy as the rest of the beer. That's a weird look. Well, he started to have sideburns, and then he just stopped. Okay. You know what I mean? But he didn't trim him down.

He let it grow out. I understand. But he does carry, he carries a vanity mirror with him because Sunday he will decide to just take it back to the sideburns, and he wants to be ready. I understand. So Magnus, I assume, is, like, ready to roll. I assume I'll be checking your math as we go along for any... Yes.

I believe I have caught everything, and I'm ready to go. Okay. You want to give us, like, a brief overview of what he's all about? So he's a protection-style fighter. Okay. Which means that he gets plus two while carrying a shield. Okay. Now I have to double-check my thing.

Hold me. 2 to AC? Which allows a fighter to... Oh, here it is. Protection style fighting allows the fighter to impose disadvantage on an enemy attacking you or a target within 5 feet. Okay.

If you are using a melee weapon and a shield. Okay. I can explain what all those words meant, Dad. And Justin, probably. And Travis, okay, I should point out that we're playing fifth edition, which the Starter Kid is out for the player's handbook isn't out.

So we're all kind of learning this together all at the same time. So I can explain some of those concepts to you as you go along, but that's basically you stand in the way of shit and you help people not get hit. I also come, my background is that of a carpenter who has become a folk hero. And one of my special abilities is called rustic. You built a tight chair once. You built a chair once and the whole village came around. I built an army out of wood.

I have a special skill called rustic hospitality. Which means I make really great gravy. Come on in, sugar. Come on. Come on into the burn side of state. And the rustic hospitality means that because I come from the ranks of common folk, you fit among them with ease.

You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they are unwilling to rest. risk their lives for you. So poor people love Magnus is what you're saying. That is correct. He is the...

He's the Larry the cable guy of our team. He's the Cheetos of people. Listen, I reach out to real America. Yeah, yeah. And real America loves Magnus. They don't get talk of... Real Fayrune or forgotten realms or wherever the hell we are. You know, like the real down-home Fay-Rune.

They love me. A couple other special things. My flaw is that the tyrant that I stopped will stop at nothing to see my end. Oh, shit. I believe in fairness. No one is above the law. Yeah, yeah. And if someone is in trouble, I will stop at nothing to help them.

And thinking is for other people, I'm all about action. Okay, you're lawful, I'm assuming? Lawful good. Lawful good. Okay, sounds good. Cool. Yeah, you sound pretty set up. So let's move on to Justin because you, I think, have the next in order of experience.

Because you played once. Because you played once, which is infinity times more than dad. Zero. Actually, mathematically speaking, that would still be zero. Hey, hey, shut up, old man. We're playing games. I'm sorry about that. I love you.

We're playing games, not maths. I got Tacos, Wizard. Yeah. And I got spellcasting abilities. You didn't even, I mean, that was redundant to, I assume that your wizard was capable of. I have a book that I can look at to get to just relax a little bit and just get back. in my zone. What is the book?

What? What's, is it the secret? What? No, it's a book that I carry around with me. It's the seven habits of highly effective people. Fantastic. It's a family. Titoa needs a minute.

It's a record of my life's work so far, the seven habits of highly effective elves. And I carried around with me and it helps me. Can I ask one or two of the habits? I imagine looking at trees as well. one of them. Yeah. Long hair. Managing your flaxen do, okay. Hackie sack. Don't forget Hackie sack. Is that flavor or does that have, does that have a mechanical context? It does have a mechanical effect. I can, I can rest once per day and recover

expended spell slots. Okay. So, with a combined level equal to or less than half of my level. So spell slots is sort of a new concept. Well, I mean, it's a, it's, it's, an ancient old concept that they've sort of brought back for fifth edition. And dad, it applies to you to you, too, as a cleric. Both of you have a type of spell called cantrip. And you can basically use those whenever. Some of them may carry a resource or component cost, but I'm not really concerned with maintaining that element of the role playing, because I don't want to give you guys, like, in-game fake shopping lists for batwings and shit. So these cantrip, you can do whenever you want, as many times as you want, per day.

So Justin, tacos should have a few written down there. I don't know if you want to go shopping around in the guide to switch those out, do some comparison shopping to find the spells that are right for you. There's some solid ones in there already. Mage hand. It's basically telekinesis, essentially. You can pick shit up and move it around from a distance. Pressing Digitation is sort of distracting spells, minor allusions and stuff.

So how many do I start with? You have four cantribes, and they're listed in that box sort of in the middle there of your character sheet. Oh, okay. You've also got Ray of Frost, which is the one you'll most commonly use in combat probably. It's a damaging ray of Frost that you use to hurt and slow amaze. I have two first-level spell slots that I can use to cast my prepared spells. Right. So aside from your cantribes, if you're going to use at will at any time, you have this concept of spell slots.

So of your list of spells that you have memorized, which if you look down at the spell book part of that box, juice, they actually have picked some out for you already. Perfect. Which again, if, okay, yeah, no, they're good. They're, they're, they're really excited. You got magic missile. You got magic missile. You got a shield, which can protect you in a pinch.

You got each armor. You got sleep if you're having a hard time catching some disease. You got sleep if you, uh, if your doctor refuses to. to refill your Ambien prescription. Hey, that's not funny. I suppose it's not. You got burning hands. You got the hits, right?

But to use those, you'll have to expend a first-level spell slot because they are first-level spells. So you can only use them once? Well, no. You can use each individual spell as many times as you want, but each time you do, you burn one of those spell slots. So you have two first-level spell slots,

And when you use one of those spell slots, you burn one of those up, and then you can use one other thing from that first level list. And then that will use another spell slot. And with your recovery, you can recover those on a short rest, which is any rest that takes like an hour. Basically, you can do that between fights. You drink a Capri Sun and just like... Eat a power bar. Eat a power bar. Eat a Luna bar.

Get your electrolytes so right. And then you want a short rest. you can do whatever. On a long rest, you basically start back from zero. You get all your spell slots back. So I also can see in the dark. Oh, you have dark vision. Yeah. I can see in the dark, just like it's bright light. I can only see shades of gray, though.

Oh, wow, 50 of them. Ain't that the way. I can have an advantage of saving throws against being charmed. Okay. And magic can't put me to sleep. Except, oh, that's what a curse. You can't use your own sleeping spell on yourself. I take it those goodiesies.

Maybe you're taking a trip tomorrow. Actually, elves don't sleep, Griffin. You should know that. They meditate deeply. Fantastic. Yeah. And I got a shelter of the fateful. So I'm a servant of Omec.

Nope. Not all. I command the respect of those who share my faith, and I can perform the rights of Omec. And you and your companions, that's you guys, can expect to receive free healing and care at a temple shrine or other establishment.

presence of Omec's faith. I like the way that they phrase that, like, you can expect to get, like, roll him like, heal. I'm really dying to, like, actually play. So, can Dago? I should point out that your divine patron is called Ogma, not Omec. He's like an actual guy. He's the god of knowledge.

Well, he's not an actual guy, Griffin. How deep in are you, buddy? I'm pretty... Made up for the game. I'm pretty deep in. But you're a wizard. I was confused by this at first. because you're a wizard, which you typically don't think of them as especially devout people,

but this is a god of wizardly shit. And so maybe that is what you're... It's also important to keep in mind that where my background is folk hero, his background is acolyte. So that's why he is a member of a temple. A temple dedicated to getting better at wizard shit, which makes sense. So what's all your shit? The personality traits and ideals and bonds and flaws are pre-written, and I don't want you to feel like you have to use the stuff that came at the box.

I figure a lot of that stuff is going to... We're going to figure that out as we go emerge. Yeah. All right, Dad, go. Merle is a... I'm sorry, I am a... No, Merle. Dwarf. Merle is a hill dwarf.

Neutral good. Used to be a soldier. He was a mercenary soldier. Okay. But the life was just too hard on him. Comes from a big family, all with names like Nundro Rock Seeker, Gundren, and Tharden. Sure.

He was not asked to go along with the dwarves in any of the Hobbit movies, and he's kind of pissed about that. Cleric, his domain is affiliated with Mart Hamor Dwin, the dwarf god of wanderers, travelers, and outcasts. Dad, the interesting stuff is on the front of the page. Oh, sorry. Let's see. He's a lot of fun of parties.

He's a good dancer. that smile makes you want to talk about yourself. What is his party skill? How hard does he party? He parties like it's 1999. Roll two. He has 1,99 party points?

What is a party point? What do we even need to play? Where is a party point? Dad already won Dungeons and Dragons with his pre-rolled broken character. I thought Travis is losing. Who is sorting coins in a jar? I'm sorting out my dice.

Oh, Jesus. didn't ahead of the game a little bit. So, so, Dad, as the cleric, you are, you are, um, healing. You are going to be healing. But if you look at stuff like, Travis, you, uh, do you need to be part of this time. It's like you've made a Maraca of them over there. I put them in a glass mug, which, in retrospect, um, that's bad podcaster. Yeah, it's just one-on-one bad sound. Um, oh, Jesus, put them down. Set them still. Um, dad, you have a pretty armor class, which makes you pretty hardy. You also have a warhammer that can deal a lot of damage, so you're not this frail,

um, weeping, weeping, uh, shrinking, what's the phrase? Shrinking violet. You're not that. You can get into the shit. Um, and, and I imagine that you will. Um, I was like when I was in nom. You also have cantrips like Justin that you can use at will without burning through anything. You have light, which casts a light on things.

You have sacred flame, which is, sort of arranged attack spell. You have thomiturgy. I think I'm saying that right. Which can be used to shut or open a door, for example. It has a lot of different implications. Here's what sucks is they have not picked out your spells for you like they did for Justin. I guess they knew that you hadn't played before and they wanted to make this as hard on us as is humanly-caused.

I actually have a couple in mind. Now, I pick two to pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-to-pre- So as a, I will say as a disciple of life, which is every cleric has like a specialization. Yours is the life tree, which is basically healing. It's about being hardy. That is why you have this heavy armor specialization is because you are a disciple of life. Basically a disciple of not dying. So as a disciple of life, you automatically have blasts and cure wounds. You already have those memorized.

You don't have to spend your time memorizing those. You've got those in the bag, basically. Okay. So do I need to tell you right now the two I do want to load up? You can have, you have four prepared, right? And then when you use one of them, it uses up one of your spell slots. But you don't have to pick the two way, way in advance. All right, okay.

That's good. So then I think we're more or less good to go. I guess as just sort of an overview of how, Dungeons and Dragons works because, Dad, you're literally starting from scratch here. You can see all over your sheet you have different modifiers, different numbers, different stats. The basic mechanic of Dungeons and Dragons is you say what you want to do.

If it's something like, I'm going to attack that person, that's pretty easy. You just roll your 20-sided die, and then you add a relevant modifier to it, and if it beats their armor, you hit them. that's sort of the basic idea of Dungeons of Dragons. If you want to get more creative with it, then there are rules in place that will help me sort of interpret your action

and make it something that happens in the game. But almost always, it's going to be roll a D20, you add a modifier to it, and then if it beats a target, then you can do it. And you did it, and I'm proud of you. Thank you. The only other big thing,

and it's new for fifth edition is the idea of advantage and disadvantage, which can be conferred in any number of situations. Maybe Justin helps Travis, or sorry, Taco helps Magnus. Travis, I almost feel like your name is going to be hard to remember next to Taco. It'll stick. Because I wasn't creative enough? That's calling Maggie. Maggie?

So Justin, you Taco could help Maggie with a shot. He could restrain an enemy. that would give Magnus an advantage on his attack. That means you roll 2D20 instead of 1, and you get to keep the higher result. Is that like a special power I'd use? I mean, no, it is a mechanic that can be used in any number of situations.

If you get a surprise attack on an enemy, maybe you jump out of the branches of a tree and attack them from above, I could choose if you're... Well, that I guess has gone by the way side. Oh, really? But yeah. If you do sweet shit,

And I feel like it. I'll give you advantage on the attack. Maybe you're bound. Maybe you can't see an enemy so good because you got mud in your eye. It doesn't all have to be about mud. That's just where I'm at right now. You will have disadvantage on the attack, which is the same idea. You roll two dice, but you have to take the lower result.

Interesting. Which is bad. You rarely want that. Ditto, I've got a question. Yeah, please. I don't have any spells. Do I have any special attacks? So let's talk about that, because you're kind of.

coming from fourth edition and in fourth edition, everybody had powers, right? The idea was powers. You had at-will powers. You could use it any time. You had encounter powers, which you could use once per fight. And daily powers you'd use once per day.

Everybody had that. And they were basically... Everybody was a wizard, right? Mm-hmm. Like, everybody had abilities that I can shout at you really loud from far away and it does 2D6 damage. So, like, that idea is gone. The rules, as they stand now,

are getting back more to the idea of playing your class. So as a fighter, you are going to get fucking super good at fighting. You are going to be able to fight in a melee contest a lot better than these other two chumps here. So that's why my attack bonus is so high. Like I have plus five to attack on all this shit. Griffin, one other question. There's a little box with this as equipment. Is that the stuff that I have have right now?

Yeah, you have those things. Okay. Did you not like your equipment? Do you need to go shopping? No, it's all fine. There's nothing about clothes in here, but I figure all I have them. No, you're actually... No, it says a set of common clothes at the bottom.

No, sorry. I'm taking that away from you now. A dragon comes and bites all your clothes off. Wait, I like where this game is going. And then what happens? Hi, my... Hello, my name is Taco, and this is my dick. Can I come in your town?

I can save it. I can save it from goblins and stuff. Yeah, no, you have that. So basically, if you look on the back of your sheet, it'll sort of tell you how your characters can develop through the first five levels, which is really all the starter kit covers. Fighter, for instance, is going to get healing surge,

which is something that everybody had in fourth edition, and this edition only fighters get it. Basically, it allows you to heal yourself in battle. That's in the broken sacrifice, or on the sheet? That's on the sheet. That's just what Travis gets. As a wizard, you're going to unlock more powerful spells. You're going to unlock more spell slots.

so you can use your stronger spells more frequently in combat. Okay. And everybody gets some cool stuff, but it's not regimented like powers. It's not like regimented. Here is a thing that you will be able to use once in a battle, and it's going to create like a square of fire or something. It's the rules of Fifth Edition are a lot more about improvising. They're all about, like, letting you guys roll.

play and come up with clever solutions to challenging situations because where fourth edition was more like a war game, like a tactics game, right? Fifth Edition is very old school in the sense that if you just tackle problems by attacking them, by getting in fights every time you see enemies and just like rushing head in, you're going to die. Because like you think about it realistically, if you fight everything you see, then you're going to get this shit kicked out of you. You're going to be fighting against things that are going to be stronger than you. One of you will probably die at some point.

Wait, wait, wait, what? I'm saying this is very old-school D&D where your character is very vulnerable. And there's a lot of things. I'm not going to like pull any punches because frankly I think it's more entertaining when bad things do happen to you. So you have to be smart and you have to come up with clever stuff. There's a resource called inspiration that is not actually on your character sheet. They may phase that out of the game, but it's an interesting. the basic rules online that basically if any of you role play good or comes up with a clever

solution to a situation that works for you, I can give you inspiration, which you can then spend to give yourself advantage on any role. So if you do think outside the box, I will definitely reward that. But try to think outside the box within the context of what your character would do. Right. Which is a lot, you have a lot more freedom. And in fourth edition, what your character could do is basically what's printed on these cards that somebody printed out for you. That sounds more up my alley.

Now we've got to be creative and shit. Now you're going to love it. I bet. I don't know. I've never played this. I've never really DM before. I also forgot to mention that I ruled for a trinket when creating my character. Oh, boy. And so I have a knife that belonged to a relative. Like a butter knife?

It's like a pocket knife. It's like a Swiss Army knife. It's got a toothpick in it. Is it like a plus eight knife that you're not actually What? The only description is it says when you make your character You can roll once on the trinket's table to gain a trinket A simple item lightly touched by mystery No, it's not lightly touched by killer magic though

No, I don't think my thing has any magic in it Well, thanks for stopping the flow of the podcast So let us know that you have a shitty knife It's gonna come back into play I think as we build the story and the character My tiny knife will come back I'm gonna force him to sell it to pawn his Pee-Im's knife to buy me out of jail. If a fucking skeleton rips your arms off, you're not gonna be like,

but then a dragon comes out of my knife, and it was there the whole time, and he loves me. That's not how he shows my arms back on. Man, why didn't I name myself Pee-Pums? Oh, God. Oh, too late. All right. All right. Is this the game?

Are you guys ready? Yeah, this is the game. We won. I'm gonna take you all into the infinite fucking imagistphere here. Are you ready? I'm nervous. Like, I'm not psyched about, like, saying things like Neverwinter and Gundren Rock Seeker. Hold on one moment.

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. Hold on one moment. I'm going to grab a bag of chips. Oh, shit. Oh, that's shooting. And then months are on the microphone. And then play with your guy while you're going to. You're not going to eat chips while we, he's already gone.

He's. I'm going to get some chips, too. Oh, great. So Griffin, how are you? Pretty good. You nervous, Dad? You've never... No, I got nothing to lose here.

I mean, everybody knows that I have absolutely no skill in this game, and so I can come in, and everybody says, oh, poor old man. You know, we're playing with... We're in the demons domain right now, right? This is, this is Satan's territory, essentially. I will draw upon my years of reading doorstopper fantasy books and... Yeah.

I honestly believe that Dad is going to do the best one of this game. I mean, skill, you got to roll a dice and not blow it. It's really hard to, like, get skill at rolling a dice better. Travis, I've just realized I can't see what dice do roll. I assume that Dad and Justin are going to keep each other honest. Why would I lie? Because you're you? Don't lie, because honestly, it's so great when you guys fuck up.

I'm not going to lie. I don't know. I won't lie. I'm back, and I made no bakes. I just got to decide what dice to roll. I have, like, six different dice sets. Dad and I have no bakes. Do you want to give us a quick review?

They have a certain quality to them that makes you think of wintertime and hugs. God damn. Dad should be DM in this. I wish you knew anything about this so you could take this responsibility. I'm just saying I want to have fun. I'm not. I'm not. I'm just saying I'm not going to have fun playing D&D.

Well, that's all right. Sounds like a good way to start. Cool. So if you guys step in the Magistphere here. Okay. That's the sound... Yeah.

No, it's hovering. So our story actually starts with the three of you. And you guys can establish, if you want, how Magnus and Taco and Merle know each other.

Craigslist. Craigslist. Which is. Which is actually a list that a gnome named Craig puts up on a tree every day. At a tavern, perhaps. Want to make friends? Join my list. Pinned thy name here.

A huge, hungry butt. Hungry butt over here. Looking for a young stud. A young triad. Fantastic. Do you dryads down to clown? So you find each other on Craig's list. Maybe you've been doing some odd jobs around the,

economy's in a shatter and you have a hard time doing work that does not involve goblins and or skeletons uh Travis your carpentry is nobody wants chairs nowadays people are more into iron rot things you know iron's gonna go out yeah got out of fashion people will be back into wicker bronze age is got in sometime right and then it's going to get retro back into it um so the three of you have done a few jobs together probably, over drinks one night with Merle's cousin, whose name is shit. His name is Gunnjurn Rock Seeker, who I assumed is just named that so you know from the start here that we are now playing Dungeons and Drive. His name is Steve Smith.

His name, these names are out of control. I may eventually shed the booklet I'm going out of, which I'm really hoping you guys didn't read because I bought all of you starter kids. And you could have just cheated and read ahead in this adventure. Gungeon Rock Seeker comes to you guys in a bar. Maybe you've had a few drinks? Maybe not. I don't want to make assumptions. Maybe

you're all straight edge. Maybe you don't like to. Magnus has had about six ciders. Six But he can, no, he can hold his own. I mean, it's pretty weak as ciders go, like 3.2. We know that Merle possesses nearly 2,000 party points.

So he's... I imagine he's been crushing. He's the Andrew WK of D&D. You're right. Oversighter, he talks to you guys about an exciting opportunity. He seems pretty straight-laced. He seems like he's not giving you no bullshit. And he promises in a low, dwarven grumble, which I'm not going to do, that... Do it or I walk.

Griffin, it's not fun if you don't do the voice. He says... Seriously, I'm going to do a voice. There you go. He says... That's... What you call on? No, that's just...

That's how he sounds. You were interpreting these low grunts. Basically, sling blade... Rich rod taters. I'm glad we're going to go looking for rocks. You interpret from his slingblade-esque grunts that he has to offer you what he calls the last job you'll ever need to take, which you take at face value to mean riches and not that you'll die. Not that you'll be murdered on this journey.

But first he wants to know, maybe he's doing it as a favor to you, Merle. Maybe he knows that you've had some hard times lately. Yeah, the religion business is not good. No. People are not crazy about fantasy Jesus. I forget, who's your God? Oh, that would be Mardhammer Dwynd. I'm just going to go with Dwynd.

Which is Portuguese for Jesus. But before he will let you into this exciting opportunity that, you tried to press him on and he refused to tell you any more about. He basically wants to audition you to see if you are capable of handling. So is this like two contrasting monologues? Yeah, he wants one that shows excitement, one that shows impotent rage. No, he wants a... And a two-minute song.

He was thinking more along the lines of slaying, protecting, guidance, adventuring, essentially. So he has asked the three of you to escort a supply wagon from the town of Neverwinter, where the three of you are currently held up, to the town of Fandelion, which none of you have actually been to, but maybe you know a thing or two about it. If you want, you can make a history check to see if you know anything about it. And since this is your first check, I guess I'll explain how that works.

If you look on your sheet, you'll see history stat there in the scales. So you roll yourself a D20. Mine is plus zero because I'm not very intelligent. It's actually a wisdom-based roll. So what you basically, what basically all those, yeah, history is a wisdom. No, I'm sorry, that is intellect. You're right. Can I roll?

Everybody can roll, sure. I got a 12. I got an 18. 18 raw? Yeah. Dad, you want to... Merley, you want to give it a shot? I got a nine.

You rolled a nine or with your... Modifier zero. This is our first role in our fantasy world and we're basically using it to fucking MapQuest something. Basically using it to yelp this shitty town. It's Fandolin. Whatever. You guys might want to get some notebook paper out.

Oh, you did. Fantastic. So did dad. So, Travis, you know. given that you're pretty goddamn dumb. Thank you. You still know, which the other two should be a shame that they couldn't pull this out, that Fandolin is an old mining town.

That used to be very, very prosperous. They had a very productive motherload operation going on there. But the town was ransacked by... Do we know what they were mining? Actually, they were mining magical ores. They found a deep magical vein within the earth, sort of the creation of magical items and the mining of ores that could be used inside those items sort of turned it into an extremely profitable town very, very quickly.

But it was basically destroyed by a wave of orcs that swept over the land. It's on the up and up now. It's sort of being built. So the vein is still there, right? The vein of magic ore is still there. It has long since been lost. This was long ago. they don't have that

that economy anymore but the town is being rebuilt by enterprising individuals it's more rugged imagine like Deadwood but shittier shittier than Deadwood which already wasn't super great Got it

And uh Gondren And the name of that town one more time Fandolin Fandolin Fandolin Gondren seems to have a vested interest Him and his family His immediate family

Merle you aren't so involved in Fandilin's reconstruction but Gondren seems very invested in that town and it's gross. So he has asked you to basically bring a supply run from Neverwinter to Fandalen. It's about a two, three-day ride on a wagon. Is he expecting trouble? No, not really. Well, he's going to get it.

Well, you don't know. He's giving up the job. He's giving you a job right now. Listen up, Merle. He has asked you basically to transport a wagon full of goods, maybe if you have his personal effects, from Neverwinter to Fandolin. And it sounds like a pretty easy job, but you never know.

Can I ask a question? Yeah, please. Is this entire adventure dictated through exposition or playing now? No, no, we're going to get, this is stage setting. Is this a game, is Dungeon Dragons listening to you do exposition? No, not for the most part. Okay. I got a, this is me planting this seed.

I've actually already planted the seed, and now I have to cover it in soil and nurture it for a bit. And then it's going to, I'm just going to blow on it and that's it. Okay. I do know, Justin, for my limited amount, what always makes D&D better is questioning how long it's taken. Yeah. He has offered you a 10 gold pieces. A piece? Each?

Each. Yes. Nice. Which, I mean, I'm not your boss, but that's not a lot of money. But hey. Is he open and a go? Can I roll for intimidation to see? Or you could know.

The past, I thought. I thought we weren't playing yet. This actually did happen in the past. Yeah. Okay. Payment on arrival, maybe you can try and negotiate. But yeah, he has

offered you to do the supply run. The payment's not great, but the promise that the last job you'll ever need to do certainly did it for you. So, gotcha. You are now, you're all on the road.

This is where we've find our heroes right now. Am I driving the cart? Because I actually, I have a proficiency in vehicles. Do you really? I do. Okay. You can be driving the car. So you can say that it's basically like a covered Conistoga wagon covered by a canvas tarp over it and led by two oxen that, um, did, uh, did he give us a map? You have a map, yeah. Do we know how long of a ride it is? It'll be about two days. Okay. there's a lot of like game shit about about having to stop and forage and how much money are you spending on food but I hate all that stuff like I'm gonna leave it out is he is he along with us so Gundren is actually going up ahead of you guys with a fighter escort named Sildar Hallwinter whom you've never met he was not actually at the tavern last night He was not at the wine mixer for you guys

And his name one more time Cildar Hallwinter Yeah It sounds disgusting I'm just going to call him silly Barry blue jeans I can call it That's what I'm saying

This is our game We can do whatever we want I can start calling these creeps Barry blue jeans and You're good Okay Okay The Sildar Hall Winter does not stick in my head

But Barry blue jeans I'll never Okay Barry blue jeans That's his name now. So when you say they're up ahead, like a day ahead, 20 yards ahead. He left that night. You guys are taken off in the morning, about a half day ahead. He's very excited to get there, so he bounced.

He took off. Did I bring the ingredients to create what people of Argoe will refer to you as a taco? There's a problem. There's no cultured milk at this point in the world. You're going to have a hard time with a soured cream. All right. Once you can crack that fucking riddle, man, I'll give it to you. I will shower you with riches as the taco bag, Nate.

Okay, got it. Lactose intolerant. Did we bring food? Yeah, food. You have food. Don't worry about it. Okay. We eat the oxen.

You eat the oxen. No, don't do that. I mean, it's funny. You guys are traveling with a lot of general store goods, maybe a bunch of parcels of light leather armor. some tiny almost like blasting caps like powder kegs. Are they ours or are we just like hitching a ride? They are what you're taking to a storefront in Fandlin called Barthens Provisions.

And upon receipt, they will give you your payment. But you got those, um, we get some armor, some blasting caps, some food. Basically, is this the gig we're doing for 10 gold apiece? Just drop it off some supplies? Well, traveling with it. And we arrive safely. And we've got there. Sassville Adventure.

Everyone gets 2,000. Okay. There's a small leather chest that you're traveling with that belongs to Gondren. Also traveling with you is Gondren's pet dog. Who is... A dire hound? No, it's a bulldog, tiny bulldog. It doesn't look especially threatening.

Doesn't look scrappy. Sorry, Travis. It's the ugliest dog you've ever seen. It's basically two butts with some legs. in the middle there. It's basically butts all over. Like reverse cat dog. Yeah. It has been pretty tame on your journey, sleeping most of the time, among the provisions. But yeah.

If the bulldog have a name? The bulldog's name is Ruby. Just made that up. Got it. You're such a good DM. Thank you. The dog's name is Ruby. So you have a lot of stuff that you were traveling with. you, so much so that you couldn't really take it and get out and walk. But that doesn't matter because you have this oxen-led wagon.

You're going to establish where you guys are on this wagon. Maybe one of you is keeping a lookout from the rear. Maybe one of you is riding on top like Teen Wolf. I'm in the back with the goods. Okay. And I'm driving. Are you getting high in your own supplier? You may be eaten an apple.

Maybe eat an apple you shouldn't be eaten? Not yet. Okay. All right. Travis, you're driving the oxen, you said? With my vehicle proficiency. I'm driving quite well. I don't know how to interpret vehicle proficiency.

Everyone is very impressed. You're not going to hit a fucking ramp with your... Listen, if we got to get away from Boss Hogg. I'm the guy you want to the front of the wagon. He does. Merle, where are you... What are you doing? I am probably studying my cant trips.

Okay. Just preparing. You mean... Just say masturbating day. Keep in thought. Do come in, Mom. I'm still eating my cancer. Because something about this whole thing stinks to me.

I've never liked Gondren, and I think there's something up. I guess, I guess, like, why can't he do both? Why can't he masturbate and also cast a therial light? I don't see a role for that. Yeah. Roll to masturbate. I get a slice of a hand of me, yeah. Hey, listen.

Can I do things yet? Yeah, so you guys have just made the brunt of the journey, about a day and a half after leaving. never winters. You've basically turned off the high road that connects the major cities on the coast. You've taken the off-ramp that will lead you to Fandolin, and things definitely are not as

well-maintained. A lot of potholes. Don't worry. I got a lot of great infrastructure. So as you're traveling a few say about 30, 40 miles out from Fandolin, I want you all to make a perception check,

which you can see the modifier there. I will explain what this is. for people who aren't listening. Basically, all the skills have a defining... I roll the critical 20. Oh, shit. So you did very well.

Perception is a wisdom skill. So you roll your wisdom modifier, which is in that row on the left. And then if you are proficient in that skill, which is if it has a little circle next to it, that means you're just a little bit better at it. So you add your proficiency bonus, which is at the top of the page there.

And that factors into a lot of stuff. Spell casting, attacking. Your proficiency bonus plays a hand in a lot of roles. I've got a total. Yeah. And, Merle. Wow. Six.

And what did you get, Travis? 20 says 23. 23. Okay. You see the shit out of everything. Travis, you see about 200 feet up lying in the road two figures that, with your incredible perception check, you can actually tell with your eagle eyes

that they are two dead horses lying in the middle of the road. Seems fine. It seems strange at all. As the driver of the wagon, you can, I guess, decide. Yeah, I'm going to stop the wagon. Okay. Bring it to a stop. And I motion silently to get the attention of Merrill and Taco

and kind of pull them up towards the front of the wagon. Okay. You have a few moments there where you warn them that shit has gone south. I'll use that same perception check. You notice a few figures crouching in a part of a shaded wood. Do they seem to have noticed us?

Like, are we in bright sunlight? They have actually noticed you, and two of them are charging your wagon as you speak. So, because you noticed them they did not get a surprise round on you, which would have been very, very bad, but I do need all of you to roll initiative. Yay!

So initiative, father, is the thing that you roll before our fight starts, and it determines who goes when. Right. So you have... You just roll an eight. Give me a second. I got a five altogether.

You've... I rolled... I rolled a 14. So, Travis got a five. I actually have a 10. All day. And what did you get? 14.

Minus... Oh, I'm sorry. Minus one. 13. 13. Oh, so you have a minus... Okay. Then I will roll...

for the gorblins here that are storming you. I'm going to start you out with gorblins because it seems like comfortable territory. You guys are familiar with the concept of a goblin. So it's my first time ever doing this. Oh, they rolled a critical miss. So they are going to go last, I assume. So dad and Justin, so you guys know, because we mentioned crits now twice, if you roll a 20, a natural 20, it is the best you can do.

If you're doing... It's the best you can do if you do in a... If you do it in a fight, you get to deal bonus damage, essentially. And you automatically hit. And you automatically hit if you roll a 20. You don't have to add anything to it. If you roll a one, that's a critical miss or a critical shit. And that means you miss no matter what.

And usually you, like, fall in a cow pie or something. Yeah, there's always a cow pie. I summit up a cow pie in front of you for you to fall into, hysterically. How many are there? There are three. Two of them are rushing the group. One is pretty heavily obscured by the brush probably about 40 feet out, sort of between you and the horses laying in the middle of the road. So, yeah, the goblins are getting, they got pretty close before this fight started. Before they moved, before anybody moves or takes any actions, we will start at the top of the order, which is dad, Merle. So if you look inside of the rulebook that came with the starter kit. I don't know if you have that in front of you or anything. It has the list of actions you can do. What section under? Actions in combat page 10. Yep. Essentially, on your turn, the two basic things you can do are move, which you can do up to your

speed, which is on your sheet there. It typically, in in D&D 4th edition, you had a game board where you can track position. Here, it's not as important. I kind of function. I kind of function. fudge a lot of it. And I try to keep in mind who is where and who's fighting whom. So, yeah, you can take a movement up to your speed. Do I have to take a movement?

You do not, no. You can also take an action. Those actions might include attacking with one of the weapons you have, casting one of your spells, be it a cantrip or a first level spell. Maybe you want to drop a cigarette flame on one of these guys. you have a lot of other actions you can do

other than just fighting. You can try and grapple an enemy. You can aid one of your teammates. You can try and do another perception check to search the area for other dangers. You can basically do anything, and there will be a rule to interpret that idea. I know what I want to do.

Okay. I want to catch. So where were you? Can I ask one quick question? Yeah, yeah. Are we definitely sure that these are bad guys? They have weapons drawn and are rushing at your cart. And saying, welcome.

Would it spend, like, a turn if Dad was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, kimosabi. You cool? Hey, you cool? Most of the time, just kind of general rule of thumb, when your DM tells you to roll for initiative, you're in combat. You're in combat, but, but you can, as a free action, you can. speak, because speaking is not, does not take up action. There are a lot of things that can be considered free actions, be it drawing your sword. That doesn't take your action or else that would be shitty. Talking to somebody, not an action. Sometimes using an object, like maneuvering a complicated

device, that will take an action. It's kind of up to my discretion what does and doesn't take an action. So if you want to, if you want to, you can also make an insight check for free to see if these guys mean business or not. Or you can talk to them. They probably won't know the language you're speaking. Well, I think what I'm going to do is cast, I want to cast bless. Okay. On, uh, on the members of the party. Um, so as, uh, just to give you, uh, sort of explain what's going on. You only have, I think, two spell slots. So if you use Bless right now at the beginning of the first fight...

Well, I thought Bless was one of the ones that I have... That I don't have to use a slot for. No, no, no. Bless means... That just means that you have it memorized, you didn't have to learn it. But if you cast it, you are going to eat up... Unless it's a cantrip.

Cantrips don't use slots. Exactly. So you could cast Light or Sacred Flame or Thaumaturgy. Sacred Flame is really your combat cantrip. if you wanted to do that. It's not a buff. Or you could get... No, it is a debuff

in a sense that you set their asses on fire. All right. That is... Yeah. Or you could run up to them and smash them with your warhammer. And we're still above them, right? Because we're on the cart.

They're on the ground. Travis, you are sort of in the saddle driving the cart. All three of you are sort of towards the front of the cart where Magnus summoned you up to to warn you, hey, dead horses. So you are all basically... Towards the front of the cart, it can easily hop down. It's not especially high up.

Okay, so there is not really a buff at this level that I can throw on you guys to help you in combat. Not without burning through one of your spell slots, which I will, out of character, tell you, these goblins probably don't merit the caution that you're putting into it. What was the bolt thing you told me about? Sacred flame. You have Sacred flame. Sacred flame. All right, I will hit him with a sacred flame. A sacred flame.

Hopefully, dungeons and dragons will come up with an application that will keep you from having to look up your spells as you cast them. So, Sacred Flame, you cast upon one creature that you can see. It's got a range of 60 feet, which is, you got it. You're looking at the front of the wagon, so you can obviously see them. And they make a dexterity saving throw, or they take 1D8 radiant damage. So, on... So 8 plus 5. Okay, so I think the formula for saving throws is 8 plus whatever your spell casting modifiers, which is 5.

So they have to beat a 13 or else they're going to be set on fire. Okay. A 10 plus 2 is 12. So... Griffith, it says in the spell description here that the target has to succeed on a dexterity saving throw. Right, that is what they're attempting to do. Okay, all right, got it. They rolled a 12, so they barely missed it.

So you roll 1D8, you roll the 8-sided die, and that will establish how much damage they take. Is this? Yeah. It's the one that doesn't have any numbers higher than 8. I rolled a 6. That is pretty, that's very, very good. So you launched some fire onto the goblin closest to the wow. And with that, he looks like upon death's door.

And the other coblin that you can see, the one that's not in the brush somewhere, just sort of stops in his tracks and is like, oh, shit. And that is where he's at. Next in order is Justin. Blast that one in the brush. I'm going to... How far away is the one in the brush, Griffin? The one out in the brush is about 40 feet out.

Okay. Now, question. Yeah. Do I see the one of the brush? You actually do not. Travis is the one who spotted him. Oh, okay. You can search for the, you know sort of the general direction. If you try to cast a spell at him right now, you'd have disadvantage.

Because you don't exactly know where he is. If you wanted to do a perception check, it would take up your turn, but you could get a pretty good idea of where this person is. No, I'm going to blast the one that, uh, um, um, Merle hit with a ray of frost. A popular, popular skill. Thank you. Break off Ray of Frost for me. What's it do?

It's a frigid beam of blue-white light streaks towards a creature within range. You make a range spell attack against the target. Gotcha. Your attack bonus when you make an attack with a spells plus five. So you roll against A.C. All right, so they need a third. So when I did mine last time, I should have added five. No, that's what your 13 is.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. What did you roll, juice? What do I roll? A D20? You roll D20, and you add five. All right. So that's a 24. Holy shit, yeah, you blast that thing.

And you were attacking the one that Merrill just hit? Or the one Merle hasn't. The one Merle just hit, yes. Hey, at least you put him out. He was on fire. Okay. You got to roll your damage now, which is... It's a D8. D8.

Nice. You don't add anything to that. It's just, right? Okay. You freeze him instantly. You flash freeze him, and he sort of topples to the ground and shatters. Yeah. It's our first kill.

Yeah. So, why am I so horny? I'm broken inside. It's the horrible thing. If you had talked to them, you would have realized that they're part of a hug committee. They were running forward to hug you to give you a hug. Travis, you're up. So here's what I'm trying to decide other team members.

If you're talking to us, you need to talk in character, and it needs to be a free action. Okay. So, Taco, Murrow. Do a voice, son of a bitch. Taco, Merle. Oh, don't do it. Do I jump down? Do I jump down and smash the other one running towards us?

Or should I, well, I can't get to him if he's 60 feet away? Do they have charge in this game? So, uh, not as a. ability where you get to move double your movement and attack. You can dash as an action, which is basically you get to move again. You doubled your speed, essentially.

But no. You can move and do a range attack, and you have, you've spotted these guys, you know where the other one is in the brush. So you could ostensibly do that. Unless I can throw my battle axe, I do

not have a range of attack. You should, you should have... Oh, I guess you rolled your own guy, so I don't know. Yeah, I, I, I, I went for, um, a wooden shield instead of a buckler and didn't take a range. Okay. I mean, I could. You could throw your shield at him, Captain America.

Probably wouldn't go so great. Well, so then that's the question is I feel like I lose, I lose, should I take out the one closest to us? Yes. Okay, great. I'm going to jump off the cart and try to kind of, so I can swing my battle axe double-handed if I haven't drawn my shield yet off my back. Okay, but keep in mind that your armor is going to be lower as a result of that.

Yes, I have to do that. But for right now, I'm going to jump off the cart and try to come down on top of him swinging my battle axe two-handed. Okay. What does that mean? Which I assume grants me advantage. If you do a leaping strike from the wagon down onto the dome piece of this gourdlin is what you're telling me. That's what I'm trying to do. The Gourblin is probably about 15 to 20 feet away from you.

He's not right next to the wagon, so that's a... Well, Magnus has a vertical leap of 18 feet. I'm going to make you... I'll let you do it, but you have to make a very low athletics check. If you're just jumping, that's athletics. Terrific. A plus five athletes. All right.

We'll say you need to be a 16. Yeah, that'll do. That'll do pig. Great. So you are allowed to make this stupid attack that you're making. So doing the battle acts two-handed means my damage is one deep-hand instead of one. But you have to actually roll the attack. Yes.

Okay. And you have advantage so you can roll 2D20. Great. So I roll the 20 right there, so I'll roll again. You rolled a crit? No. Okay. It was a 15 plus 5, and then a 9.

So a 20 was my highest. Okay. Yeah, that'll do it. And I'm going to roll 1D10. Is that this one? Yeah. So that's 10 plus 3, 13. You rolled max damage.

Yes. You cut the thing in half, long ways. You got the thing in half The knave to the chops In like the direction that If you had your choice You would at least like to be cut in half How it said

You have the least survivable having That could possibly be conceived So you guys are moving through this Much faster than I thought you would Shit So the other goblin that's out in the brush Pops up almost like Yeah guys get him

Oh no no God no He sees He says, wait, I thought there were only two garblins out there. Why, they're three over there? Oh, Jesus, Jerry, no. He just had a kid. He is horrified. And draws a, what does he draw?

Draws a short bow and takes an arrow out of his quiver and seems to fidget with it for a bit. And then you see him light the. arrow on fire and launch it in the direction of, we'll say Magnus, since you are actually, actually, who's still on the wagon? Both of them are still on the wagon. Marl and Taco are still on. I fell off the wagon. Let's say he launches it at Taco.

So he makes a range attack. He rolls a 5 plus 5, which is, oh, sorry, plus 4. Five plus 4 is 9, which I assume is not going to do it. Doesn't do it. So, Justin, that would be against your armor class. That would be against your armor class. What is your AC, juice? 12.

Yeah. So when I doesn't cut it, it sort of twangs into the side of the canvas of the wagon instead. Oh, no. Is it setting our canvas on fire? It has actually begun to set the canvas on fire. And it almost seems like he's satisfied with that result. And as you guys, are distracted by the flames, he turns around and starts to hoof it. His speed is 30 feet,

so he gets a pretty good distance into the brush. So he's how far away from the wagon? He was 40 feet away when you started your turn, and then he moved in a little bit to see how terrible things were, and then ran off. So I'll say about 50 feet away and moving into the brush. Okay. How bad is the fire in the canvas? Not bad. Fire in the canvas. I mean, not bad yet. You know, historically, canvas is a very burnable material.

All right. So it could get relatively rough. I'll take care of because I got no distance. That was his turn, and we're back to the order, top of the order. I'm going to leave the fire up to somebody else and throw my hand axe. You need to, you're going to move in the direction of... Can I move before I throw? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

You can split your move up. You can move however you want. You can move 10 feet and do an attack. I have a maximum of 25 feet. Okay. So from the wagon, you get about half distance to where he is. You are throwing your hand axe into some brush. So he's going to have a partial cover, which basically means his AC is going to be improved.

His armor class is already pretty decent. So you need to roll real well. What am I rolling? So on your paper, in the little thing in the middle there, there should be a hand-ax thing, and it'll tell you what your mod is. So roll a D-20. Roll a D-20. You're going to add... Okay.

14, and I add four, so that's 18. 18? He would have had 17 with that cover, so yes, you just barely... You throw it into the woods you can't exactly see. You see, like, branches wrestling, and you... You throw your axe in that direction and you hear, ah! And so you know you probably connected and got some meat in there. So roll 1D6 plus 2, and that's your damage.

Yeah. It's a 6 plus 2 is 8. After you hear that, ah, you don't hear anything ever again from that guy. He never makes another sound ever again. At which one, we quickly put out the fire. Yeah, it is so small. Wait, I was going to use presidigitation on it. Okay.

Justin uses his presidigitation. Taco, maybe says a magic word. Maybe says... I have the ability to instantly light or snuff out a candle torch or a small campfire. So I think that'll work here. Yes, definitely. It's not bigger than a small campfire, so... Do you say some tight shit when you...

Yes. Yeah. Save the incantation. He certainly does. Yo, can't. You can't. That can't be his... She says, I want.

I want. I don't think, like, can you do me a favor and look at, I believe it's your other proficiencies and languages section? Okay. And what it says under there. I'm looking at his. It does, in fact, say, Yokea. You guys just won your first fight with fucking a plume. One kill each.

Yeah, you didn't take a lick of damage. Hey, let's search these fools. Yeah, I want to go search him. Oh, I don't know. how to do that. Is there anything on the goblins? You're not allowed to search. Let's search them.

Well, one broke into a thousand pieces. One's half, so he's covered with goo. The ice is probably the other one in the weeds. The ice one's probably a non-starter, but... Don't you think we ought to check on Gundron and silly... One of them... Oh, shit. One of them actually has a collection of small coins, copper, silvers.

They have a lot of them, though. Which equals out to about 20 gold pieces. Which you can split up however, however you want. Well, for right now, I'll just go ahead and hold on to it. Sure. I'll split it up once we get that. No, I should think. Trust the cleric.

I'm the religious. Okay, how about we each get, so I felt like the cleric and I did most of the work there. All right. Listen, let's, here's what I suggest. We each take six. We put the rest into a pool that we'll split later. Good idea. Every time one of us dies, we'll add five more into it.

Excellent. Last one alive gets it. So we'll just take... So it's a tauntine. Okay. Excellent. So, uh, yeah, that's what you find on them. Yeah, you guys are great.

Yeah, we did. Hold, wait, what, what are you doing? My dad was stuck to the chair. Oh, boy. Okay, he unplugged his headphones, too. What are you doing? Just getting up. Why are you getting up?

I was going to dance. Oh no Podcast is not an Celebrity on our podcast Murder dance Murder dance Okay

Oh now he's gonna eat my shrimp I'm in hell This is the worst game ever Alright All right now what do we do You tell me I'm done telling you what you did like I want to find out what's up of those horses

We gotta go check Can we please figure out some sort of order to this Because I feel Right now we're all just shouting So can we take turns I feel that Merle may be right, and we need to check on the horses and see if we can find any indication

that those were Gunnans and Barry Blue Jeans. The horses are covered in... Well, not covered. They have a few, obviously, mortal holes in them. Arrow holes, you recognize them as. But somebody's taking any arrows back from a very prudent... They're dead? They are dead.

They're not asleep? Oh, by the way, can I grab that short bow from that dude so I can actually have a range weapon? You can? It's not great. That's fine. It's better than what I got now, which is nothing. It's not a great short bow. If you want to look at the guide and see how short bows work, you can go for that. Travis is a good looter. You are. I'll also assume that there was a quiver of errors you can use. Make sure that you pay attention to whether or not you're proficient in bows.

I assume you are. I think fighters are typically pretty good at just weapons. Yeah, I'm proficient at all. and common weapons, simple weapons. These were, that was sort of of the crown jewel

of the weapons they were using. The other two didn't have lombos. They basically had shitty swords that aren't worth your time. Do I need to go

recover the hand axe? I will just assume that you did. Unless something happens to you where you are spirited away somehow before the end of the fight, you recover all of your arrows

and weapons and stuff like that. Again, that's like another D&D thing of like, I don't want you to have to go in town and be like, Welp, off to the Aero Store, because that sucks. Although some people that would, that's what some people play for. Some people do it that way. It's just not what I'm into.

Okay. So yeah, you got these two horses. They are dead as shit. There are a few empty bags and containers lying around. Are they cold? The horses. They are actually a little

bit warm. This was not a, um, this did not happen last night as soon as they left. You assume maybe they made camp after leaving the tavern last night, and this may have happened within a matter of hours. And in fact, why don't you guys make an investigation check if you want? And I can tell you what you can discern. So I'll explain the difference between investigation and perception. Perception is basically when you can't see something and you are trying to find out if something is there, that's perception. If you know something's there and you want to know more about it, that's investigation.

I rolled a two. I can't find my own bug. You're like, wow. You're like, look at these big dead dogs. I could see it from far away, and then I knew nothing about it. 17. 17. Investation? Okay. Merle. What do I add to it, Justin? The investigation number next to investigation. Okay, so I rolled an 11. Okay. Um, uh, Merle and Magnus, you are a sort of clue. You notice the horses.

Horses? Yes. Justin, among the containers, you notice an empty map container. Maybe a tube that a roll of parchment could be secured inside, what you might ship a poster in, but fantasy-like. Which you actually recognize from the tavern last night as something that Gundren did have on him at the tavern. It's been uncapped, uncorked, it is empty.

Okay. But you do take it to me in that. these two horses did belong to Gondren and Barry Blue. Now, I'm sorry, didn't Gungent give us his map? No, he didn't. He didn't give you his... This was a different map. This is not a map that...

It's a map that... It's not a map that gets you from Fandlin to Neverwinter. That map doesn't deserve a container. That's a shitty map. That's a dumb map of a route that anybody should know. So this may be the map to this lost or mine. Possibly. I think it's playing into my suspicions that he...

Yeah, I think he had a theory of... Yeah, he had something else going on. A map... So, cartographically based shenanigans is what you're saying. Do we see anything as far as, like, any other... Is there any indication that they were also killed here? Make a perception check. Looking for, I don't know, blood or viscera?

23. I need you guys... I rolled a one. Okay. Yeah, 8. 20... 23? 23. Justin rolled to 23.

Y'all got to make these checks so much faster. Dad and Justin are sharing a dice. Can we just assume that if I got 23, then like... Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Taco, you don't see any blood or anything on the ground. I mean, there is a lot of horse blood, and it's really hard to tell. I mean, obviously, it's more beautiful than human blood, more perfect.

Silvery. It's silvery. But you don't see a lot of, like, there's not a... a sildar shaped pool of blood on the ground. Got it. Where maybe he was dissolved. Can I make an observation? Yeah, yeah.

I think it's wonderful that you continue the Mbimban tradition of killing horses. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Gherblins did it. Okay. So the evil gervlins. You don't see any blood or anything, but you do notice, with your keen perception, you do notice a pattern in the dirt that suggests that they were perhaps drag.

into the brush around the area where the one goblin shot his fiery arrow at you and then Dad threw an axe into the darkness and snuck them out. Can we go back to the brush and explore that again? Yeah, sure.

Now, hold on. Hold on. If I may, Magnus raises his hand for a minute. I'm not an intelligent man, but we've got a cart packed to the brim with goods sitting here. Should we just be wandering off away from that cart.

Okay, well, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Magnus, you stay with the cart. Yeah, I'm the only one that can, like, deal damage. Superior perception, I'll investigate the brush. You could also hide your cart in the brush. Sounds like quite the production. No, I like my plan.

Now you're Andrew Lloyd-Weber. I will also say that splitting up the party is Okay, we'll cover it up with some branches. The leading cause. Wait, by splitting up the party is what? It's the leading cause of death in Dungeons and Dragons. It is a head of heart disease. I will say that I use my vehicle proficiency to hide.

Yeah, sure, I'll buy that. Yeah. Maybe you take it down the path a little bit. We bury the goods. You take it into the hole in the brush that you can see the drag marks in going through, and you sort of park it. in the brush in a way that... Oxen, keep an eye on the car.

It is fully, fully covered from the road. So you are... You have more or less secured the wagon. Let's head in the rush. Headlong. Oh, boy, how are we gonna get out of this one, Travis? Well, seems like them Macquarie boys

are ahead again. They're stuck in a real pickle trap. They're pigles, sure, is trapped. Um, hi, everybody. We're just gonna jump and real quick, just to interrupt the adventure super quick.

And then we'll get back to it. I don't know you're on the edge of your seats. You pay for the whole seat, but you'll only use the edge. You actually didn't pay for a seat at all, did you? Free letter. Did you not pay for this goddamn podcast? Again. We're going to just real quick throw a money zone at you,

and then we're going to get back into the adventure. You, uh, if after this podcast, you're feeling down because you just want to hear more, uh, nerd shit, of us like rolling dice and pretending to fight goblins and stuff and you're feeling sad, why don't you boost your spirits by listening to some good tunes?

Might I suggest downloading a new album called Sketches by the band Red Sky Phenomenon, which this is fun. It actually features a remix by the host of song exporter, Rich Kay Sherway,

a Max Fun podcast, for two American dollars. Just go to That's like a really good deal. Yeah, for some tunes, fuck it. Just go to red sky phenomenon. Dot bandcamp.com. You can sample the tunes.

It's an electronic album. I would like to read this info real quick. Yeah, please. Okay, go to red skyphenomenon. com to download the new electronic album sketches for only $2. I'm spending $200 for this message because I love MBMBM and I don't even have a job. So the least you can do is download the... the album featuring a remix by the host of Song Exploder and the and one a.m. radio.

So if you don't go check that out, then you have stolen this man's $200. Yeah. We need at least, we need at least 100 of you to do this, please. Also, I have a message for Heather from Mikey Person and Mikey Cat. Oh, I thought Mikey Person was like a name, but that's like a person named Mike. Oh, I see. There's Mikey Person and Mikey Cat, don't get it twisted. Don't get it twisted. Mikey says,

To Heather, to my beautiful wife, a message from our favorite brothers. Your beauty, humor, skyrim skills, and intelligence get better every year. Happy birthday, even though you will be on a plane to Thailand on your birthday from your husband, Mikey. I mean, you can wish somebody happy birthday, even if they intercontinental. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. That shit don't have to stay in the configuration. In this day and age, I'm sure they got Wi-Fi.

Yeah, sure. Probably have cable. Don't, listen, Mikey, you sound fucking stressed out, man. I don't want you to worry about this. We got this. And Heather got this. She received it. Everyone's got this.

You got my guarantee. So, happy birthday, Heather. So we're going to get back to the adventure and shit. We had a lot of fun recording this, I think it's safe to say. I did. I don't know if you did, Travis. Well, I mean, it was all right. I guess I had a pretty good time.

I would like to do it more. And the way, if you're in your, enjoying it the way to ensure that we do stuff like this more is to share this episode with all of your friends. Yeah, or just let us know what you thought of it. I've never really DM'd before. We're playing a new version of the game that nobody really knew how to play. My dad had never played it. Justin had also basically never played it.

So, like, I don't know, I feel like it was a bit, there's a bit of discomfort there for, like, the first 45 minutes or so that we kind of got over. So I don't know. I definitely want to do more of it probably as like a separate thing. Well, if you want to tell us more about what you thought about the show, you can follow us on Twitter. You can do the my brother, my brother, me, Facebook appreciation group. We'll probably make a, I'll also make a thread on the MaxFund forums, which you can find a maximum fund.org slash forums, I think. Which is home to all the other wonderful maximum fund.org podcast, which you should check out. We don't have time to go into now, but they're incredible.

They are really great. So, yeah, give us any feedback you may have on, like, how this could be, like, a better thing or, like, a thing that we could do more permanently or how I can up my DM game. We've gotten some suggestions from people even before we put this out, like, getting guest players and getting, like, I think this is, like, a cool idea, like, getting, like, Twitter submissions for things to actually put in the adventure, which I think. would actually be super sweet. Really, I think we just want an excuse to play more dungeons and dragons with each other because I like it a lot. So anyway, just give us whatever feedback you might have. Even if that feedback is, I didn't like it, please don't do any more of this.

It smells like butt. Please stop. Please stop. You're all very bad at Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, keep that shit to like a minimum if you can, just because I am pretty sensitive. but otherwise thank you all for listening next week I think we're going to put up the Los Angeles live show which was phenomenal I don't want to toot our own horns but it's like my favorite live show we've ever done the audio quality is very good which is going to be a refreshing

change of pace for everybody and then I don't know it depends on where Justin's at he's in paternity leave right now so hopefully we can get him back in here to record something but if not we'll get something up we will We're not going to interrupt the flow, as it were. So thank you all for listening, and now enjoy the rest of our maiden voyage. So you follow these drag marks down the trail, and they're pretty easily followed. Gundren's kind of a big guy for a dwarf. He's big in terms of diameter.

So his trail left a definite impression in the loam to the mouth of a cave that, sort of natural stream is flowing out of. Pretty wide stream, not especially deep. It's the most goddamn beautiful thing you've ever seen. Oh, that's nice. It is, all of you get 20 points of inspiration. Just from seeing it, you are deeply inspired. No, you don't get that.

Oh, crap. It's the mouth of a cave. Along sort of the stream, you can sort of see into the cave a little ways, and you can see basically, the cave is comprised. of a path along the right side of the mouth of the cave that leads in alongside of the stream. Basically running perpendicular to it. How far into the cave can we see? Maybe about 20 feet.

One of you will probably have to light a torch. This might actually be a good chance for maybe a light-causing spell. Yeah, Wizard, you got something? I have light. I mean, there it is. I mean, you got it. Now, two out of three of us can see in the dark, though, right? That is true.

I cannot, but I do have a candle. That's not going to be especially luminous. Okay. That's not going to do a great job. But, Dad, you can cast light for free, since it's a cantrip, onto maybe a nice stick that you found on the ground, and give that to a fighter who can't see super great in the under-earth. Is, Travis, your weapon one hand or two?

handed. It is either. It is versatile. Okay, so I could give you a torch and you'd still be able to use your weapon. You could also just cast light on my axe. That might look bitching. All right. Let's go with the bitching effect of casting light on your axe.

Okay. Travis now has this. No, that's fine. Oh, no. You're not attacking his axe. Take this, you bastard. I hate you axe. He's attacking the darkness.

He's attacking the darkness, essentially. Travis, you now have this axe that you can use to see by. Dad, at Will, Merle, you can turn it off just by clapping. Or by not believing anymore in your magic. If you stop giving it all up. It's very magic. Yeah. So keep that in mind.

Magnus can now see pretty easily, soak in the two of you. But Merle, you have Dark Vision as well? I have dark vision, 60 foot radius Okay, so you guys, you don't really need light. You can maybe see a little bit further if you had a torch, but 60 feet, this cave's not going to get much wider than 60 feet at any point. I'll leave the way with the light. Okay.

You are leading the way. Not too far into the cavern. You feel the path branch off to the right. I guess you see it because you have this beautiful light axe. And in fact, as you sort of get within, distance of that entrance that the light of your axe from your, the light from your bitching axe pours into it. You hear wrestling in there.

You hear the sound of metal sort of clinking together, almost like a chain being, being moved, lifted off the ground. Uh-huh. So. Does it sound like a happy chain or a scary chain? Chains aren't typically, these are not magic chains that are imbued with emotions. Okay. So it's up to you

How you want to handle this? I guess let me put it in the way. Does it sound like a big chain Or like just a regular human size chain? The passage goes on ahead of you But there's basically a natural subcavern Sort of splitting off to the right there That you have not really moved in front of

But you can hear the sounds of rustling and chains. Not like a lot of chains It's not like a It's not like there's a WWE back yard wrestling match happening there, but... Listen, like a Jake of Marley. Magnus believes the thing he is for other people, and I tend towards action. So I'm going down that chain hallway. I like that.

I am actually going to give you a point of inspiration for that. So I head down the hallway towards the chains. Okay. Did the two of you follow him? Or are you more just like... Taco chills. Taco just kind of chills. Because I think that there's a chance that maybe still darned are chained up down there.

Oh, listen that. Okay. So I'm going to help. head in. Merle, what's, what's your position on a V-Sive Chains?

I call out, you fool! Wait for us! You shout loudly down the cave it bounces down the halls of the cave. And you don't hear any response to that. Now they definitely... Now they definitely know we're here.

A wave of bats. Excerning out. A wave of gas? Bats. Bats. Baseball bats. Do the bats have gas? They definitely do.

Yeah. Roll a perception check to see if the bats look gassy. Okay, I guess I follow them. Okay. Well, I am chilling. There's no them to follow. Tocco's on team hangout. Um, well, I only go by 25 feet. Like, I'm not going to get too far away. Well, no, we're not, we're not in combat. So you, there's no order. So, okay, well, I don't want to get too far away from them. Okay. Listen, I'm foolhardy, but I'm not stupid. Yeah, you're not. I'm going to go down the hall, you know, the 60 feet that they can still see me and I can still see back. Okay. Um, you

space yourself out a little bit. and you just sort of turn the corner into this cavern and sort of wave your axe around, hoping to cast some light on the things that you see in there. Inside you see a decent-sized cavern. No furniture, no furnishings to speak of whatsoever. There are stalagite, which is the one that comes up out of the ground?

Stalagmites. Are you sure about that? Stalactite. It goes towards the middle. Stalactites are from the ceiling. You see some bitching... Bitching cones of rock. Pointy rock things.

Built into the earth. And coming out of them are these big metal rods connected to chains, connected to wolves. Three wolves. Kill the light. Kill the light. You can, but I mean... If the natural...

If the sounds you're making as you're moving down the cavern didn't disturb. them, the shout of, hey, you, be more careful, definitely, definitely woke them up. But they're not, they're not like growling. They're not, they don't seem especially violent right now. I actually have animal handling skill pretty good. Well, of course you do.

I do. My, my full-care own nature. I'm a farmer. Carpenter. What's your animal handling? What is your animal handling? Plus three. Okay.

So is mine. Okay, well, fuck you. Every father wants to hear that from his son. You're not his father right now, are you? You're his adventuring companion. Oh, that's right. I'm going to cautiously but confidently approach the wolves. If anything is more important, what you're dealing with wolves, you've got to be confident.

Exactly. I don't want to appear weak because the predator prey behavior is going to kick in. Okay. Listen, I know about animals. With every passing step that you draw closer to them, they seem more agitated. A couple of them are snarling at you now. But there's nothing else in the room other than these wolves. Make a perception check? 20.

You notice actually in the back of the room you see a crevice, almost perfectly in the back of the room, across from the entrance that leads upwards. It's almost like a natural chimney kind of built into the cave there that leads up to another chamber. It's very, very, very tight quarters. It's about 25 feet up. It's straight up, though, like we wouldn't be able to shimmy up it? It is straight up. I mean, you might be able to spider climb your way up there, but it would be very, very difficult.

But that's the only. So the wolves and this crevice are the things in this. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to back, back away from the wall. I must always go first. Because I rushed it in the room. He said he wanted to. All right, fine.

Listen, that's going to be great every time but once. And then you're going to need a new brother. I'm still chilling out here if anyone's curious. Okay. Magnus, so what's your... Wait, you've got... Do you have illusion? Hmm?

Do you have something that you can... You can't ask me that. I'm not in there with you. He's right. All right. You're correct. I'm tired of play... I want to play Dungeons and Dragons. I'm tired of asking questions about Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm trying to play Dungeons and Dragons. So there's some wolves down there. Doesn't seem like it's worth it. Let's keep going. Excellent. Well, I trust your judgment. Okay. I'm into that.

I'm into that. Yeah, sure. All right. So you can continue down the cave. It's getting very dark. Basically, the natural light that was coming in from the mouth of the cave is... is, it was providing quite a bit. So you can see until now, basically,

and now you need your light axe, your mag light to really get around. Merle and Taco, I almost forgot your name, impossibly. You are, you don't need it. You can see, basically just find out here. So as you are moving down the cave alongside this stream,

you notice across the stream to the left is another passageway, but this one is just like covered in rubble. It seems like it's collapsed down, down a ways. And make also a perception check looking down the length of the cavern, in the direction you're moving. You have nine for me?

12. 14. A 14? Okay. Mm-hmm. Merle, you actually see up ahead the outline of a overhead bridge, an overpass that is suspended in the air. It's connected to two entrances on the second story level. It looks like it's connecting two passageways higher up in the cave, a second story of this cave. Oh, you know, I bet that that shimmying up chimney thing would have really helped us here.

Probably put us on that second level. Maybe. You also see the outline of a figure sitting on top of the bridge. I'll call out to him. Hello, friend. You're using common, I'm assuming, to do that? No, elvish. Oh, Elvis.

Just in case there's some underground elves. You hear a questioning ground, like, huh? And then... I try getting... No, shh-shh-shh! Shut the fuck up. I try getting goblin. You try to get a goblin.

You don't know goblin, so you kind of yell. Yes, I do. It's one of my languages. Is it really? I know common Elvis draconic, dwarish, and goblin. Okay, what do you yell? Hello, friend. Who's there?

Hailing Wilmot. You don't sound like anybody I know. We're just exploring. We've taken a wrong turn. You certainly have. I would actually heartily recommend you turn around. This is not a great place for tourism. Where we found our...

He does not know how to handle that situation. Come a little bit closer. Show yourself to me. Come closer? Come closer to the overpass. This is a good time if you've got any illusion magic. I will warn you, we're very dangerous, though we mean you no harm. I would not suggest launching an attack on us.

How dangerous are you? How dangerous we're talking? Level one. Go ask the goblin cut in half, how dangerous. You cut a goblin in half? Yeah, but he was cool like you. Excellent. Well played.

I was just trying to establish a rapport. Now, to be fair, to be fair, Merle doesn't speak goblin and neither do I. Okay. Oh, that's right. He doesn't understand. Blah, blab, blah, blab. Do you have gold? Sorry?

In you? Bold. Sorry. Sorry. Where are we? You're in our hideout. You were making me extremely uncomfortable. I don't know who you are, what you're doing.

We sometimes take new recruits, but like I've seen you is certainly part of the interview process. My name is Taco. A friend of ours was taken and his horses were killed. We're searching for our friend. Oh shit. Yeah, we did that. Hey, guys, someone's here. Guys, it's the guys from the horse thing.

Use mage him. Use mage him. Push him off. I need the three of you. Wait, how close am I, Griffin? You are, you managed to get about 20 feet in there. But as he yells, he readies his weapons. So go ahead and roll initiative.

Push him off the thing with your mage hands. Oh, my God. How'd you get, four? Dad, you got a, Merle got a four? I got a ten. I got it. Merle got a 10 and Taco got a...

Four. Yikes. Is that with your modifiers? Yes. We're just going to give you the numbers with the modifiers from now on. Yeah, I got 17. Oh, Jesus.

Okay. That's very good. That's a two. Plus two equals four. Okay. So you have this one goblin on the overpass, and after his word of warning, nobody's really rushed to his aid, either by the two entrances the overpass connects or from the depths of the cave that you're

facing. You do hear, in the distance, down the length of the cave, an extremely loud racket. You hear voices saying something. Taco, you can understand, as one of them says, two voices, talking, you hear one say, really? And the other says, you heard him. And then you hear a banging, almost like somebody's hitting something against something

else. You can't exactly, unless you see it, you can't really tell what the noise is. But you hear a pretty terrible sound coming from down there. And top of the order is Magnus. So I am going to hole up in that.

They're coming from behind us. They are coming. from, nobody's coming. You can't really determine the voices you heard are actually coming from them in front of you behind the overpass. The overpasses in front of you. Behind that is deeper.

Okay, great. I'm going to post up and move to in front of that the entrance and the overpass, so I'm going to ready in action. Where are you moving underneath the bridge? I'm moving to the opening, wherever it is that the voices are coming from. I want to be ready for whoever's coming.

Okay, so you sort of position yourself in front of, you move under the underpass to the other side waiting for whatever's coming down. Yeah, and I'm going to ready an attack action. For what? The first person to come down that hallway. You're just going to melee attack him. Yeah. Okay.

And by the way, I've got my shield and my ass. Okay. So to explain, you can ready an action as an action. You basically have to say what you're going to do and what's going to trigger it. So maybe you're not in a good position to do something right now, but you will be if somebody moves closer. to you. You can ready that action and then use it basically as soon as the trigger pops. So,

you post up there. Next in the order is Merle. I'm going to cast shield of faith around Magnus. Okay. Can you explain what that does? Shield of faith.

Shimmering field appears and surrounds a creature of your choice within range, granting it a plus two bonus to AC for the duration. Okay. Baller. And are you going to move or do anything else? I guess that's your action. That was my action.

Okay, so Travis, you have plus two to AC? Yeah. And Dad, I think you just expended one of your spell slots. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Then the order moves to the goblin on the overpass. he sees you put a magic beautiful shield around this already heavily shielded fighter in the front.

So he sort of turns his attention off of Magnus. He's pretty sure he can't penetrate all that. And he's actually going to aim at Merle with a short bow. And he rolls a, ooh, Jesus, a 21 versus AC. What's your armor class? 18. 18. So 21 beats your 18, so he hits you. Four.

Okay. Four plus two, so six piercing damage. Okay. And what does that come off of? You have 11. You have hit points. Ah, all right. So I'm down to five. You are down to five. Okay.

Okay. That's it for him. Nobody else really shows up in that round. It's on to Taco. I'm going to cast Ray of Frost on that fool. The goblin on the bridge. The one that's on the overpass? The overpass goblin.

Okay. Ooh, 24. 24, that is a hit. Just to make sure, where am I getting... Yeah, okay. Now, I'm sorry to interrupt. Are you sure it's not just a saving throw just like it is when dad used one?

No. Some range attacks. Some range spells are range attacks Some are a saving throw Think of it like if it's coming down on like an area They make a saving throw to get out of the way of it If it's something that is firing sort of like a arrow Then it's a range attack

Gotcha So Justin hit him Yeah you gotta roll damage Coming up We got eight damage Nice eight damage He takes all of that It sort of knocks him back a little bit

But he maintains his footing on the overpass he looks like he's about to kick it. He looks real bad. So that is the end of the round. From the back of the hallway that Travis just ran up very valiantly to defend, you hear, almost like something has just fallen over. And then immediately after that, you hear the telltale sound of rushing water. It is back to me.

Magnus, the heavily shielded, very, very brave fighter. I'm suddenly very worried about the wolves in the bag. They're going to drown. That passageway actually goes up, so don't worry about those wolves. I would worry more about your self, your body. Gotcha. Well, it seems pretty limited in what I can do, so... The stream next to you has also, when that happened, just sort of picked up a little bit,

sort of got kind of fast. I'm going to step to the side. To what side? So what we're looking at here is kind of an opening underneath the bridge, and that's what I'm standing in front of, correct? You're basically a little bit in front of being under the overpass. It's about 10 feet up. Great. I'm going to head back to where my buddies is,

and then I'm going to shoot the little goblin with my short bow. Okay. Unless there's something else I can do No, you're just going to sort of stand there Yeah, um, 23. 23, that is a hit. Okay, great. And then D6 plus three, five. You hit him square in the chest and he says,

Wow, you guys weren't kidding. And then he falls off the bridge, uh, limply into the street. That's the same one that I had been attacking? Yep. Yes. Yeah. It was the, it was the only one. One.

Kudos all around. High five. So there are no more monsters, but we are still in initiative order. We will move on now to Merle. Do we have... Are you saying we no longer have access to the chamber that had the wolves in it? That chamber was backaways. You couldn't dash back there.

Then I say we need to cross the over. I'm going to cross the overpass. Okay. You aren't on level with it. It's about 10 feet up. Oh, I see. So it does not come to our level and then overpass. I got you.

Gotcha. Well, obviously, we need to move forward and get out of the way of the water. Forward is the direction the water's coming from. Does there seem to be any way to get up to the overpass level? I mean, you can climb. Oh, then let's climb. Well, you are already hacked. I'm not.

I will climb. I will climb. What do I need to do? You will make a... I'm going to try to climb up to the overpass. Okay. To climb, you make an athletics check to basically scale up the wall. You're not climbing that high, and there is like a rocky, craggy surface.

So it's not an especially difficult check, actually, to get up there. The bridge is relatively rickety. It's a goblin construction, so it's not amazing. But it looks like it'll hold your weight. Okay. So I roll a 20-sided die? You roll a 20-sided die? and you add your athletics.

All right. I rolled a three, so my athletics is four, that makes it seven. That is not sufficient. You start to climb up the rocks. They're a little bit wet from the moisture in here. You slip off, you don't take any damage because you're probably only a few feet up, and you're not a very tall person. So, I mean, that is a significant distance, but you do land on your ass.

And you're embarrassed. You take ten embarrassment points. And I peed a little. Okay, you peed a little bit. You might be advanced in years. Maybe you pee a little bit every time you take any damage. I don't remember saying anything about my age. All right, Taco.

Hurry, we got to do this. It's on to... Merrill. Yeah. Merrill, don't forget to... You look damaged. If you have some sort of way of healing yourself, be sure to explore that. You're injured.

I will attempt the same climb that felled my first. and mur. Okay. I have no athletics. Here we go. 14. What did you roll? 14.

14, that'll do it. You, uh, you, uh, look at it. A lucky, first time is, first time is luck, huh? You scurry up the, uh, up the rocks and, uh, you, you manage to climb on top of this bridge. If you feel it sway and shake a little bit underneath you as you get up there, but, uh, it holds fast. That is the end of the round. Suddenly, a horrifying wave of water, a wall of water comes hurtling down the cave and basically

blasts into our heroes that are on the ground level. First, it hits Magnus, and then shortly thereafter collides with Murrell, who is still on his ass. It starts to sweep you away. However, you both are sort of close to the craggy cave wall. So you can make a dexterity saving throw to try and not get flushed by this wall of water that's rushing at you. So basically you're going to roll a D20 and add your dexterity modifier to it. And you want to beat a target that I'm not going to tell you.

I got a 13. You got 13 total? Merle? Yep. I got a 16. Okay. So both of you managed to grab onto the wall just as this wave of water hits you and tries to pull you away unsuccessfully. There was a lot of water, though.

So you are sort of having to fight against the stream holding onto these rocks. So I need you both to also make a strength saving throw to make sure that you can hold onto this rock. The whole time, Taka, you're just sort of watching this charade take place for your... safe perch. You're not laughing, but you are amused to see how it goes. I got a 13. I got it. I got seven. Both of you get flushed in a torrent of water. You weren't really like hit by the wave of force that this thing brought with it at first, but you are dragged down the cave back into sort of the first antechamber. Go ahead and take 1D4, both of you. As you're sort of Pachinkoed around the rocks.

Wait, even with my special shield? I don't know. Well, the water wasn't attacking you as much as it was dragging you and breaking you against Rock. I got a three. You got a three. I got a three as well. Okay. So you both take three damage.

I'm down to two. And that is the end of combat. I'm fine. Don't worry about me. You're okay, Taco! I'm fine. Don't worry about Taco. But that was the end.

That was the end. You were out of combat. That's the end. You actually hear taco from down the cavern and Goblin. You are prying to hear this Taco. The other two are sort of too far away. And also they don't speak Goblin, so they wouldn't hear it. But you hear, do we get them?

Answering Goblin, Tago. No. No, no, yes. Tell me yes. Sorry, let me try again. Yes. Which one is it? Make up your mind.

No, we definitely got them. Oh, thank God. Should we come down there? Is it cool? No. Is it? No. Do their drowned bodies look kind of cool?

Tell them it's... Tell there's water everywhere. I got too horny from the killing, and I... I'm joking. Oh, Jesus, not again. We're actually going to stay up here. Thanks, though. Don't come in here.

It's private. You hear them shuffle off. You hear the sound of footsteps. moving away from you and you think that using your clever ruse you have scared them off. Yes, ruse.