Newcomers: Sports, with Nicole Byer and Lauren Lapkus - LOTR meets DnD (w/ Brennan Lee Mulligan)

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Lauren and Nicole go on their very first Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Lord of the Rings style!Joined by Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan (CollegeHumor’s Dimension 20 series), Darkwin the Elf and Samwise Parkington the Hobbit are on a quest to meet with their good friend Gandy, but not without running into some trouble along the way...Like the show? Rate Newcomers 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts and let us know what LOTR media you'd like the series to cover.Advertise on Newcomers via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Original. Ooh, wow. Okay. This is Newcomers. We are working our way through Lord of the Rings for the very first time. And we've got help from nerds, super fans, sometimes people who have contributed to the franchise. And Lauren, man, we've watched so much content. We have ingested more Lord of the Rings than any fan of Lord of the Rings I think ever has. I truly think we never thought it would be so intense.

I wondered how we'd get to 20 episodes when there weren't 20 movies and and here we are we're we're getting creative and we have a really exciting thing that we're doing today but well just to catch everyone up we've now watched both the peter jackson lord of the rings and the hobbit trilogies we've seen the tolkien biopic well we've we've seen the animation trilogy. Okay. We've seen the fan film. Okay. Made by fans. We have done two rounds of fan fiction. We've written our own and we've seen plenty of memes and parodies to help us understand the internet for the rest of our days. We spent last week with Middle Earth video game and now we're back for something really special. This week, we are going to be playing our very first Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Lord of the Rings style.

Now, I didn't even know it was called a campaign. I didn't know it was called a campaign either. Lauren, have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons? Absolutely not. But, and I assume you haven't either. I haven't, but I did date a, well, I was fucking this dude who played Lord of the Rings, D&D, or whatever you want to call it. And he had the strangest character. He played a little person who was also, who thought they were in Les Mis.

And he explained it to me and it made me laugh so hard. And then I was like, but why did you choose this? But I guess you could choose anything well that is something I like about this already and my husband Mike does play D&D with some other people we know like Zach Reno and Joey Greer there's a handful of guys that play together and they have a lot of fun and he has made it he has said to me that I will enjoy D&D and that it is like improv. That's what people say.

But I don't understand it. That's where I'm at. What I don't get is, and I can't wait to get into this, but what I don't get is like, how is anything, how is it a game if you could just make up the entire thing? Exactly. I don't understand. And then then also there's a dungeon master and i'll just introduce our dungeon master for today who's guiding us through dungeons and dragons it's brendan lee mulligan hey oh my gosh well brendan is an actor and writer known for college humor's dimension 20 series where he is the game master guiding fellow cast members through D&D campaign genres, ranging from a Lord of the Rings parody and workplace comedy, which

is funny, to one described as a John Hughes-esque high school coming of age story. That sounds fun. That does sound fun. Well, we can't wait to see what he has in store for our campaign today, now that we know what a campaign is, sort of. And Brennan, we're so excited to do some Dungeons & Dragons with you. Gang, I couldn't be happier to be here. I'm so delighted.

This podcast rules. You had a great friend of mine, Molly Ostertag, on here talking about fanfic not that long ago, Hobbit fanfic. And this is great. Lauren, this is my first time meeting you. Nicole was one of the nicest people to me in the world when I was an itty bitty little student at UCB in New York. Yes. Yep.

Nicole was so kind and welcoming to me as someone who was completely intimidated by everything having to do with the space. It's so funny. People say that a lot. They'll be like, man, you were so nice. My first memory of you is asking for a library book and you going, no, and then getting it for me. Wait, did you work at this training center where you had to lend out the library books? I worked the library of the training center. I rented out rooms. I would have to open up the training center in the mornings on Saturday and Sundays. And there was always a crowd of students waiting for me.

And I'd be like, guys, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. That feels like it would be a hard job for you slash me slash many people. Very hard. But yeah, Brennan, it's nice to see you. Quick question. So you're our dungeon master or are you a dungeon master? You're our dungeon master or are you a dungeon master? In this instance, both. So dungeon master is just the role of a person running a game of D&D.

The name is extremely arch. But it's just a person who's kind of like running the game. D&D is kind of a weird game in terms of having enough of a weight of rules behind it that there does need to be someone kind of leading the game. It's not that different from like a banker in Monopoly, which is also a game that makes someone have a job. Right. But in this case, the DM is basically the Dungeon Master or DM. Yeah.

I was like, hold on. Direct message. Direct message. There you go. Not making any assumptions about familiarity or touchstones with the game. So you're the person who's DMing is basically just actually taking a lot of the weight of responsibility off of players that are playing for the first time, like a direct message, just like a direct message, taking the weight off.

Exactly. Let's bring it off of, off of main, bring it off of the newsfeed. So I'll jump in and talk a little bit about the game and what to expect, because for a lot of reasons, this game is very, very daunting. Right. Number one, it's daunting because very few games come with multiple textbooks, which this game does come with. I didn't realize that. Horrifying, right? Yeah. But it's also interesting that you're doing this, especially in your Lord of the Rings season, because the game takes so much from Lord of the Rings, right?

It's depictions of elves and dwarves. In the first publishing of the game, they called halflings hobbits, which is of course the one name that like J.R.R. Tolkien actually came up with. And his estate was like, guys, you can't be doing that. That's straight up copyright infringement.

And D&D had to be like, chill, chill, chill. We're gonna change it to halflings for like trademark reasons. So the game is definitely has this sort of like, I'm so sorry. My wonderful partner Izzy just texted me from the other room. Is this newcomers?

Are you on newcomers right now? Hi Izzy. Hey Izzy. Hi. Nicole says hi. Lauren says hi. So love that. So I'll just jump into describing the game and how it works and why it's a lot less intimidating if you have an improv background, if you have a performance background, right?

Okay. The weirdest thing about D&D that newcomers will notice right away is that unlike a lot of board games, there's no like win condition for D&D. I've often argued that D&D really isn't. If I were to say that D&D is more like a game, like a board game, or more like an artistic exercise, like writing a script together or doing an improv show, it's way more like the latter. Because D&D doesn't have any rules for how the game ends. It doesn't have any rules for like how to win the game. It's basically like, did you tell a dope story and have fun with your friends? Cool. In that sense, you have won the game. Just like a good improv set, the winning is a lot of people laughed and we feel good about

ourselves. That's the win condition for D&D, right? So you might be asking, like, well, if it's just a collaborative story, what's with all these fucking numbers? What's with the dice? Why are we going to all this hassle? So the thing that makes D&D like a game is basically rules set up to make us the storytellers, right? You two, who are players, who are playing what we call player characters. We shorten that to PCs, right? So your job as improvisers in this game, basically, is unlike in a normal set where everyone's kind of responsible for everything, you're just responsible for what your character would do. You're responsible for what they're thinking. You're responsible for what they're feeling. You're responsible for the actions

they're taking, any ideas they come up with. But you have a nice limited sphere of the stuff you have to be in charge of, right? The dungeon master is in charge of literally everything else, all of your enemies, all of your allies, the weather, the environment, all that stuff, right? And what's interesting, though, is that even though the DM is in charge of all of that stuff, the DM is actually in a support role because the camera follows you guys. Like, we really only go where you go and pay attention to what you do. And we meet other characters played by the DM because you decide to interact with them. Right. I have a question.

Sure. with them right i have a question sure so like when the dm is determining the weather and all this stuff like are you improvising and making that up or is that based on rolling dice and there's sort of like a rule to how you get to that that's an awesome question uh it very much depends on like the style of the game i won't lie there are a huge amount of stylistic differences between different people that run this game if you have a super crunchy by the books very fastidious dm they might you know roll on a random weather table every day uh but and there are other dms i like that well that will just like hand wave a lot of that a weather table like a table that's like roll a 100 sidedsided die. And depending on where the die rolls, certain weather will come up.

Wow. So like some people have like multiple tables that they have different things going on. And they're like, like it's like a DJ. They decide when to scratch and when to let it play and when to fade into another song. Okay. This is. Yeah, we get music. Now that's an analogy we understand because we're a dj we're jam master nicole and funk master lauren

i love it uh yeah there's a bunch of those tables uh that the dm has random treasure generators random uh encounter tables where you might roll for a random encounter with wolves or monsters or beasts or whatever. Query. So these tables, is it in the game on the internet or is it like an expansion pack where you like buy a table? I was wondering the same thing. Is it a table literally?

So this is a great question. What's also fun here is we are deep diving into a section of the game that you guys absolutely don't need to worry about it's interesting but that rules i love it we're curious i love it that's the whole that's the whole conceit of course yeah yeah um so that's a great point it is an expansion packs but the funny thing about dnd is basically dnd is a publishing company that makes all these additional rule books. But the funny thing about D&D is that past the player's handbook, the good way to think about D&D, like how does a company make a playable game if there's 20 different books that you need,

is you don't really need the books. The way the game is structured is 90%, 95% of the rules are optional because the rules are things like, here's a new list of spells. Your character could cast these spells or they could cast from a shorter list of spells we gave you in the first book. You could get some treasure. This is some different treasure we made up. Here's the rules for how the treasure works. But if you don't find that treasure, it's also not really a deal breaker. So with all of this big, daunting amount of lore, there's really like four or five things you have to remember. And other than that,

everything else is just gravy, right? Great. So that's a nice thing about the game. To give it in a sort of analogy that I think really makes all of this gel together is D&D is a combination of three things. First one is just collaborative storytelling, right? Which is each of you are in charge of a character who gets to be fun for all the reasons that playing a character in an improv set is fun. And it's just us making up a story together where you guys are the heroes, you're

leading the way, and I'm kind of improvising with you and responding with the consequences of your actions in the world, right? Number two is what the dice are for, what all these rules are for. And basically, why introduce dice into the game, right? If you're looking at your character sheets right now, you'll see all of these little plus signs. Like, almost everything on here is like a plus sign, right? That's because the central mechanic of D&D, the one rule, the one rule to bind them all, the one rule to bring it all together is almost everything you're doing in D&D is rolling and adding one of these numbers for the appropriate thing you're trying to do. And there's a number you're trying to beat.

And if you beat the number with that roll and adding whatever that little number is, you succeed. You do the thing. And if you get below it, you fail. You get what you want. You get what you want. And both of them are interesting because failure and success are both interesting in a story, right?

So now, like, why do we have dice rolling? Why do we have these rules? Basically, the thing, the whole fucking point of all these dice and all these rules is in a collaborative story to get the feeling of dread, to get the feeling of I don't know if this is going to work or not. One of the issues you run into is we don't want things to be arbitrary. Let's say you guys are fighting a dragon and you guys go, you know, Nicole says, I'm gonna use this spell. And Lauren says, I take out my little halfling short sword

and I go to stab the dragon. If we aren't using dice, I am left with this kind of decision to make where I either go like, yeah, it works, you did it. Or I go like, no, I don't feel that right now. Fuck you guys, right? And we can feel that that loses a lot of like dramatic tension. So what the dice are meant to do is represent risk is represent. I'm going to try something with an

understanding that it's actually out of all of our hands, whether it succeeds or fails. So that's the whole point of dice rolling is we're basically gambling with storytelling. We're gambling with interesting It's very interesting. So rather than having a win condition at the end of the game, like chess or Monopoly or whatever, we are telling a story with all these little win conditions sprinkled throughout it

as we're trying to advance the story and succeeding or failing based on strategy and luck. And now I remember on Freaks and Geeks, they played D&D and it was like a board game. Now, so is this so right now what we're looking at is for the people out there, it's D&D, the letters D&D beyond dot com. And that's where we're getting all of these character traits and plus or minuses and whatever. And so typically now, would you say people tend to play on this website? There's a bunch of websites people use.

D&D Beyond is a great resource. Shout out to D&D Beyond. There's also a lot of virtual tabletops, like Roll20 and other services out there. For us, just to keep things super duper simple, we are going to be playing in the theater of the mind, which means that I'm just going to narrate kind of what you are seeing

rather than us having to interact with a whole finicky board top. So we're just going to hold the image of what's happening in our minds. But is there, there's a physical game, right? That you can still play? Well, here's the funny thing is that most Dungeons & Dragons games dip in and out of

theater of the mind and battle boards. Because, for example, yeah, if you jump into a big fight, like on Dimension 20, we have custom-made awesome battle sets where you can measure distance and figure out how big a fireball is and how many enemies it affects. And it's really sort of like to scale. But even with that, we will often go back into a role-playing episode where we are like doing cinematic edits

where like we cut through a section of time or we narrate through downtime. Like you spend a week in the grand library researching and kind of like montage through things. And in that we're often like cutting from location to location, just verbally, just sort of talking out the scenes in our mind to kind of like propel the story forward.

And in those instances, you wouldn't take the time to represent that on a board because it's not necessary. Like if you guys are just stopping at a roadside tavern and having an ale, you don't need to know physically. It's sort of like you get the vibe, right? Like we're having an ale in a tavern. We don't need to like spell out the distances.

I love that you just said ale. I didn't know we could have an ale in a tavern in this game. I guess, yeah. I want to ask you how you became a fan of Lord of the Rings and D&D and if that was kind of at the same time or what that was. Hell yeah. This was never going to miss me. My mom, Elaine Lee, is a comic book writer. Cool, cool. So, you know, I remember being five or six years old and being at, like, San Diego Comic-Con and comic book conventions. And this is way back.

This was, you know, nerd culture has kind of become like synonymous with pop culture. It's like Star Wars and all this, like big movies announced themselves at Comic-Con. I was a little kid in that world back in the days where nerds versus jocks was not like an anachronism.

It was like a real part of like lived life. That word is good. Anachronism. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

uh, I love that word. Um, uh, it's, uh, what is it? I think it's Greek for like to cut time.

Anna, Anna Kronos. Uh, uh, so anything that's anachronistic is like, they wouldn't have had those hats in that time period. That's an anachronism. That didn't,

didn't exist then. I'm looking at your mom right now, not to be a creep, but she's really cool. I was looking up anachronism. Wait, what is your mom's name? I want to look at her too. Elaine Lee. Her name's Elaine Lee.

She's incredible. She's very beautiful and she has really beautiful hair. You're not wrong. She was actually on a soap opera. Hell yeah. She is stunning. Yeah.

This all becomes all about your mom. Honestly, not wrong. Uh, she is a total polymath, multi-talented. She's great. Wait,

you've got all the words. What did you just say? I said, polymath. She's good at everything. She was an actress. She's a at everything. She was an actress. She's a playwright, comic book writer. But she, so I started homeschooling when I was 10 years old.

And my mom. Wow. That's why you have all the words. Yeah, you got like a good education. Homeschool people are either very smart or like wildly stupid. It goes both ways. i did what i'm watching welcome to plathville which by the way i really recommend nicole yes i gotta watch it oh my god it's crazy but these it's it's a family that's homeschooled the parents are extremely um over

bearing with these rules the kids are then now all you know rebelling against them because, you know, all this stuff. It's fascinating. But I would like to hear about your experience because it sounds like it went well. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. The, well, I think that's the thing is that like, she put up a notice in like a local gaming store

when I was a kid for like, hey, I have a young son who's looking to, you know, and she just thought the game would be like good for me. when I was a kid for like, hey, I have a young son who's looking to, you know, and she just thought the game would be like good for me. Because the funny thing about D&D is for how, you know, definitively nerdy it is, it's fundamentally social. Like you can't do it alone. So it's a great way to meet people. It's a great way to have friends.

And again, like it's the game is at its most fun when you're with people that you think are funny and cool, that you like the choices they're making. And, you know, so it's like an inherently social game, uh, uh, you know, so it was a huge boon to my life, you know, playing it since I was 10 years old, uh, you know, and it's absolutely, uh, a stroke of insane good fortune that i've been able to make a career out of playing it which is uh just so deeply bizarre that's so cool not to continue talking about your mom but i'm now on her website i'm pretty deep in it her comics are pretty fucking cool this one vamps looks really cool five vampire brides

divorce their master to hit the road on stolen harleys are they running from a lawman who's chasing them or just trying to escape their own past i have to get my hands on this that's incredible five divorce vampires i love it right vamps absolutely rules it's like it's what's like the long one is like vampire biker chicks. Yes. And it's like very, very fun. Holy shit. People should check out Vamps.

Starstruck is an incredible, groundbreaking science fiction comic book work. My mom is unchallenged world building sci-fi stuff. The world building in Starstruck, if people are into that kind of thing is incredible. She's a genius. Wow. I love this. Will your mother be my friend? You know what?

She's on Twitter. If you want to hit her up. Dude. Okay. Don't be shocked when that happens. Well, speaking of Twitter, actually, you posted a viral Twitter thread about how Lord of the Rings is simply a transcribed D&D campaign. So we're going to read a couple of points that you made here.

And OK, so you said the confusing parts of Lord of the Rings start to make a lot more sense when you realize it's actually just a transcribed D&D campaign. It starts with a long, low level adventure of just getting out of the Shire and getting the ring to Rivendell. DM originally prepped a low-level Hobbit campaign for their roommates who had never played before. DM lets their friend Steve play an OP wizard character from a previous campaign because Steve is super busy IRL and only found out he could play at the last minute, but everyone's into it because Steve rules. Steve is clearly a touring musician IRL because Gandalf is constantly dipping out obsessions for extremely weak in-game reasons. Steve also

keeps writing original songs for the campaign world, which is why there's a goddamn new elf song on every other page. Word gets out that a fun campaign is going on. DM agrees to let Rachel play a badass ranger. She's so amped that she immediately writes 40 pages of backstory. DM reads it and thinks, this is honestly more compelling than what i had planned is this the campaign now meanwhile three

other close friends find out rachel's joining and pressure dm to let them play too dm caves immediately dm responds to overwhelmingly large nine-person party by completely shifting the tone of the campaign and giving a wild over-the-top plot hook the only way to save the world is to take this specific ring to a specific volcano got it everyone very psyched boromir's player kevin tries to stir up trouble because that's what his character would do fucking kevin dm plans the most badass dungeon ends up railroading the party a bit to get there uh you can't go over to catarass it's an evil mountain what what the hell's an evil mountain look just go to moria okay dungeons awesome great encounters pip and rolls a nat one on stealth.

I don't know what that means. Drums in the deep. And right before the final boss battle, Steve books a gig in another city that's going to take him out of town indefinitely. Everyone's super bummed. DM and Steve work out an awesome death scene. Other PCs escape.

Very sad. Ends up making a great plot moment. Steve ceremonially burns Gandalf's character sheet. Lots of hugs and tears at the end of the session. I understand this description of lord of the rings better than any description we've done or any like watching the movie i actually agree i thought that would be the most inside baseball thing in the world at first i was i felt like i didn't know what was going on and by the end of it i was like oh yeah yeah Everyone coming in and changing it.

Because Gandhi does dip in and out and it does change to go to a different. Yeah, like I do get it. It's honestly kind of interesting that I get it. It's a bizarre meta narrative with like all these references to like Nat ones and shit like that. Well, that part I didn't get. But we do feel like we're following this. And this is, so then you updated this thread earlier this year

describing all of the two towers. And do you plan to do it again with Return of the King or are you kind of like tapped out at this point? That's coming up, right? I think, yeah, I gotta finish out the trilogy. It's like in January, right? So sometime in January, I'll go, I'll pen the next, the last bit of yes january 28th

is your deadline for that okay i gotta jump on that i gotta jump on that shit um no that's so but i think it's like it's it's such a funny thing so many creased people uh quote tweeted that being like this is obviously inaccurate. Lord of the Rings was published well before the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. And it's like, buddy, that's the, that's the joke.

That's the joke. That's what we're doing with the humor here is how we've, okay. Well, that's when you say, I think, I mean, I've said it in other episodes,

but Lord of the Rings fans have less of a sense of humor about the thing they love. Then we noticed with Star Wars fans. Star Wars fans are more willing to like poke fun. But I feel like Lord of the Rings people are like, well, no, actually, no. Yeah, it's very, it's very intense. Listen, I love Lord of the Rings to death. I cannot watch, you know, the ride of the Rohirrim without tearing up. It's like, you know, stories that have been in your brain since you were like a kid but the it the the degree of like pomp and circumstance around the lord like one must be a little self-effacing one must have a sense of humor

right and this is i'll say my hot take again is like everyone needs to calm down in terms of like attention to detail with the lore of a created universe because yes there's a lot of lord of the rings lore you are not doing something comparable by memorizing all the books that one guy wrote to what say a physicist is doing you know what i mean like it Like, it's just not comparable, either in terms of its, like, import to humankind, nor to, like, how challenging it is to do that kind of thing. So I think there's a lot of, like, nerd, nerd lore stuff, which is, like, people that get pushy

about the lore of a nerdy franchise should have some humility, because, like, you're big fishing in a very small pond. Like this is just a handful of books, handful of this other stuff. And yes, it's very crunchy. There's a lot of it to learn. And there's like there you can learn Elvish. It's a real like language you can go learn. But isn't sort of the I feel like sometimes there's a lot of these very mean gatekeeping nerds yeah that are like pushing people around but it's like if you wanted to do

something genuinely nerdy and hard i don't know go design a rocket that's like real that's like it's true i mean but i think with star wars it's interesting because people are so willing to hate on it even if they're fans they're like i hate the new movie and i hate every choice they made but then so then when we make fun of it i feel like there's like room for that whereas with lord of the rings it feels like people haven't they don't they don't really accept that it's things aren't perfect you know like there's not much acknowledging that yeah well i think also that it's very like within fandom spaces, it is okay to like,

to celebrate the joy that something gives you. I think when you are mad at other people for not sharing your same passion, just like interrogate that in yourself. Like why, why are you policing this? Like, does it really lessen your love for this thing that someone else doesn't get it?

The answer to that's almost always going to be no, it doesn't lessen it. Although I have gotten irrationally angry. I was on a podcast and someone said that Ghost was not a good movie. And I felt heat in my body. I don't know how you could say it's not a good movie. Yeah, this man, he just, he really didn't like it. And that was like the moment where I understood fandoms because I was like, this man is attacking my childhood,

all of my things that I hold near and dear, my values. And then after the podcast, I was like, no, he was not attacking your values. Everything is, oh, you're fine. But I get it now. It feels personal. Mm-hmm feels personal well why don't we take a quick break and we're gonna come back and we're gonna play this game or what i guess we're gonna do a campaign yeah i want to get it right and we're back let's get into the campaign um so i decided i would like to play darkwin from my uh my fanfic and this is darkwin's description uh darkwin is the daughter of

elrond she's an elf she's good at fighting and good at magic but not good at stealth because she's the only black person in middle earth she's married to orlando bloom and sometimes speaks like she's in frozen that disney movie and my character is samwise parkington um inspired by our conversation about american girl dolls on a previous episode because we got really into that and by the way we got a lot of positive feedback so i'm really happy about that yeah um so samwise parkington is a wealthy hobbit who has left the community but is returning for this mission and she's not good at fighting but she is good at hiding and she likes to help the less fortunate and she can speak several languages and she has a dog sidekick oh see that's nice i should have given myself an animal. Oh, also, Lauren, I bought my sister a vintage

Molly set to apologize for cutting her Molly doll's hair. It's like five outfits, the Molly doll, a stand, and a little desk. And it hasn't been delivered yet, but I'm really excited for her to get it. That's so exciting. That's such a good gift. Thank you.

Oh my god, she's gonna be so excited okay let's get it brennan do you have american girl dolls do you ever play with them i i actually uh had friends when i was in elementary school that were huge american girls dolls fans and there was some bonding over lord of the rings lore and american girls because i saw kindred spirits i was ooh, there's a tremendous amount of these young girls in my class mapping chronology and talking about what

American girl would have as an older woman been able to meet another girl in her childhood. Oh, I like this thought process. There's a lot of lore. There is some lore to American Girls. I have a question. You said elementary school. I thought you were homeschool lore. There is some lore to American Girls Doll. I have a question. You said elementary school. I thought you were homeschooled.

I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this. At 10, he was. Oh, okay. At 10. So at 10, I was homeschooled. I see. I was, you know, if we want to connect some dots for people here, I was so badly bullied during elementary school that I was taken out of school.

Oh, no. Poor thing. You know, the, hey hey i don't agree with the kids who bullied me but also if we're sort of putting together what kind of kid i was like in terms of reading lord of the rings under a tree during recess i would bring animal fact cards to school not saying what happened to me was right but you know we can follow cause and effect is in our adulthood it all worked out. Kids are so mean for no reason. They don't know why.

Yes. And it's not. It just sucks because like I definitely was mean sometimes and I was bullied sometimes. And I feel like you just never know why it's happening in either direction. And you're just doing it and it's bad. Oh, and I started bullying after I got bullied. You know what I mean? It's a cycle. You absolutely you lash out you feel unsafe yeah 100 and then sometimes i used to bully this one

girl and sometimes when you bully the other people like hype you up to bully more and then you're like yeah i guess i have to get meaner you fucking idiot you're like why did i say that i'm sorry i know it feels bad and there's also that attitude in your head where you're like why did i say that i'm sorry i know it feels bad and there's also that attitude in your head where you go like hey the one way i can make sure that i'm not a potential target is to be choosing the target and totally you know so uh it all makes sense now but you know at the time it's pain it's pain yes yeah yeah so dungeons and dragons basically um uh Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So Dungeons and Dragons, basically, we're going to look here real quick. This is going to take no more than five minutes. I'm going to do a little screen share just to help you guys out.

Again, remembering, D&D is collaborative storytelling, gambling with moments of high tension, and then just fucking around and doing bits. Those three things together is D&D. And then just fucking around and doing bits. Those three things together is D&D. So I want both of you now to picture in your mind's eye the inn of the Prancing Pony, a house of rest and a tavern of good cheer in the Shireside village of Bree. Shireside village of Bree. Cool mist creeps through the night as a swinging lantern at the gate flickers in the evening chill. It is a cold late autumn night here in Middle-earth, and pacing down the road together are three figures. The resplendent and regal daughter of Elrond Half-Elven, Darkwyn of Rivendell, who walks with her elven beauty hidden under a traveler's cloak,

for indeed these are dangerous times, and one must keep vigilant on the road while the enemy Sauron marshals his forces in Mordor. Beside Darkwyn are another two figures. We see our chipper friend Samwise Parkington, the Hobbit Rogue, a stealthy Hobbit of some noble background in the Shire, comes from some country squire folk, much like the renowned Bilbo Baggins, with her wonderful dog, Wolf.

Wolf the dog is a shaggy, gray, sort of long-legged, loping, and like a lot of very cute, good dogs, has a sort of sad, mopey, long dog, hound dog expression as he pads loyally beside Samwise. I now turn it over to each of you. Could you please give me a physical description of your character and how your character is feeling

as you end a long day's journey to meet up with Gandalf, your friend and companion who has a mission for you at the end of The Prancing Pine. Do you want to go first, Lauren? Sure. Samwise, I, okay, so I'm very short. I'm four feet tall. I have long brown hair and thick brown bangs. I am wearing a checkered dress and I

have on, I have no shoes on and I'm actually starting out at this point, even though we've been traveling for a moment, I am very pulled together. I tend to look very pulled together because of my family background. And I was raised to always respect your looks. So that's a focus for my person. I love that. I love that. I love it too. So, okay. Darkwyn is like 5'11", maybe six feet tall. She looks very much like Naomi Campbell. Very long hair. Very, very, very pretty in the face. Full lips.

She's like slender, but like rather curvy. She's Naomi Campbell. And she's wearing a like black, very, i guess it's like an elf outfit but like it's very like skin tight lycra like cat suit but she's also wearing like a a faux fur she doesn't want to kill any animals cloak with a hood and her makeup is done rather well uh Very like berry lips, a blue based red. And she's tired from the day. It has been a long travel here for sure. Darkwyn, you hear a whisper from the scabbard at your side, holding your sword, this bright silver whip thin fencing sword, Orenia.

Orenia is a magical elven blade enchanted in one of the great wars of ages long past that was gifted to you by your father Elrond, knowing you were going on this travel. The spirit of Orenia speaks warning in times of danger and speaks to you now, Mistress Darkwyn, we approach this village of men and hobbits.

Stinks like pipe weed and stale spirits here. We should be on the lookout for cutthroats, men at arms. I do not care for the folk of the village of Bree, mistress. I do not care for the folk of the village of Bree, mistress. And Darkwyn may respond to any of this time. And for both of you playing, the two sort of modes you guys are gonna play in is you can speak first person dialogue. So like if a character's talking to you,

I would say just respond in character like we were doing an improv set. But when your character is taking a physical action, you narrate that third person. And because there's sometimes dice rolling involved, most time you're narrating action, you'll want to narrate it as an attempt, if that makes sense. So rather than being like, I take out my sword and I cut off the guy's head, because that's going to require a dice roll to see if it works, you would say, I take out my sword and i cut off the guy's head because that's going to require a dice roll to see if it works you would say i take out my sword and swing like i attack and now we're going to see right okay um but yes you see that orenia speaks to you and says says mistress why have you left

the safe harbor of rivendell to come to this den of thieves and cutthroats. We should return to Rivendell at once, my mistress. Uh, no, sword. I don't want to. I want to see what's up here. Thank you. Very, very well, mistress. I suppose you know best. I'm sorry I spoke up.

I just, I really care about you, you know? And I just feel like I would hate if anything were to happen. I just, I feel a lot of pressure on myself just as a sword to protect you. Oh, no. I get it. I fully get it. But, like, I'm here with Sam Weiss. Hey. Wolf the dog is here.

I think maybe since it's, like, the end of the day, we should get an ale. Yes, of course. Yes, we should. Incredible. Samwise, you, as you can see that Darkwing is speaking to her sword, Irenia, you guys come up to the large wooden planks of the closed gate of Bree

and see a small door with a little shuttered window in it and a lantern hanging overhead. You would know that this is the guard post of the gate of Bree. What do you do as you approach? Okay. I actually have met this guard once before, and I want to just knock and see if we can talk to him because I mean I have a lot of charisma Dark One has a lot of charisma I feel like we're able we're going to be able to get something out of this guy um uh wonderful um uh Samwise as you go up uh uh and knock at the door um i would like you to go ahead and roll persuasion for me um so that's one of your skills i'm just gonna click that little plus seven next to persuasion for me it's plus seven and then i'm gonna hit the thing and i rolled a 12 so it's 19. oh 19 that's a nice high roll you knock on the door

your little hobbit knocking you hear a boot sort of tramping over to the door and you hear a voice through the woods say um who is it and do you need the hobbit door or the human door um well I guess

technically I need both um because I'm a hobbit and my friend is an elf. Ah, okay. Both a hobbit height window unlatches and a human one. For a brief moment, you see a kind of like acne marked face, sort of lank black hair. This is a snaggletooth human gate guard. This is the guy you know, this is Cliff.

Cliff is about like 19 years old. And you see, he looks and sees Darkwyn and then sees you and says, I have two different heights at the same time. Okay, I'm gonna to, uh, okay. Uh, and you see that he lowers his head to the, to be behind the wood in between both windows.

So he can see neither of you and goes, does this work? Can you both hear me? No. I mean, we can hear you, but we can't see you. And I feel like it's,

I mean, I don't honestly, Cliff, I don't know if we have to see you, but we can't see you and i feel like it's i mean i i don't honestly cliff i don't know if we have to see you but we can't oh okay well let me hold on it could could i impose on the elven maiden to lift her short friend up to to the higher window or for the, if you, the shorter friends could lower your other friend down to the Hobbit window. I think the easiest thing is for you to pick me up. I guess so. Okay.

I'm picking you up. You're strangely heavy. Just come on. You're strangely heavy. Just come on. Darkwing, you heft your friend up and you see Cliff goes, Oh my goodness, it be easy, Samwise Parkington. You look lovely.

Your checkered dress has nary a spot of ride dust on it. And the hair on top of your feet is as combed and lustrous as ever, Ms. Parkington. Thanks, Cliff. You look great too. I love your shirt. Ah, it's a jerkin'. I found it. Thank you for that.

Yeah, it's great. It's a great find. Yes. Oh, Will, what brings you to the village of Bree this late hour? Most have gone to bed, except for a few. Oh, you seem scared. Why? Darkwyn, go ahead and roll an insight check.

Uh, Darkwyn, go ahead and roll an insight check. Uh, and you actually may roll this with advantage, which is a, uh, a mechanic in D&D that means because you have spotted something or because you have some sort of end character advantage, you're going to roll twice and take the higher roll. Okay. So I just rolled and I got 13, 22. Nice. And then I get to roll again. And if it's higher, you can use this one.

I just rolled again and got 25. Ooh, Darkwyn, with a 25 insight, you peer into this human soul. Whoa. You, he is terrified. There is something very dangerous within the village. And you can tell that Cliff clearly has let some people into town that he should not have let in. And he looks up at you and sees your radiant elven eyes and quakes in his boots.

What do you mean? Tell me who you let into town. Tell me. I'm so sorry, mistress. I've done a bad thing. A group of raiders from the north came in. They bore the eye, the eye of Sauron. I saw one of them lifted a cape and there was a mark on the inside of his armor, but

I was already letting them in and it seemed rude somehow to bring it up. Like, I didn't want to... Wait, why did you let them in? Why didn't you tell them to leave after you saw the eye of Sauron? Oh, just, you know, they're already

walking in and they're so excited to go to the inn and it's just, you know, starting that already walking in and they're so excited to go to the inn. And it's just, you know, starting that conversation. Oh boy, Cliff. Dude. What do you mean? You've never been in a situation where you, it was bystander syndrome. What could I say?

Look, I've been in similar situations. I've had my whole hobbit hole taken over by other hobbits. And they did a whole thing where they washed dishes and it was like really stressful. And yeah, I get it. But I mean, I feel like I learned from that experience and I would never do that again. Maybe that was your first time having that happen and you can learn from it. But it's not ideal for us because now we have to deal with this. Yeah.

And I just really wanted a cocktail or something. But now I feel like we have to go fight these people. Well, good luck. It's lucky for you. You could probably do both. They've taken over the inn at the prancing, the inn of the prancing pony. You know, it was so I just was looking around when I was letting them in. And I was like, is anyone going to do something about this?

You know, like, I just didn't. Okay. Wait, are we at the Prancing Pony now? You're at the gate to breathe, but you look up past Cliff through the window and see the swinging sign of the end of the Prancing Pony. So we have to leave. We have to go to the Prancing Pony. Okay, let's say bye Cliff. We have to go.

Bye Cliff. I mean, it was nice seeing you, but. Well, wait a minute. You're telling me it was a mistake that I let people in too quickly before. Should I do that now? Should I be diligent now? No. Don't worry about us.

We're good. Oh, yeah. We're fine. I mean, can we give you a gift? Is that possible to give you a gift to bribe you? Are you explicitly asking me if I'm bribeable to my face? Yeah. Wait a minute.

Bribery is a sin, and it's exactly what a servant of the Dark Lord would do. No, no, no. We're not servants of the Dark Lord. We're trying to fight the Dark Lord and bribe you. And I have a lot of money, and so it's not a big deal to me to try to bribe you right now. So can I just give you a little bit or something, a gift of some sort? So I'm going to ask Samwise for a persuasion skill check with disadvantage. That means you're going to roll and take the worst of the two because Cliff's noble sensibilities are offended in this moment.

Okay. So my persuasion is plus seven. Yes, and I'm going to say the number we need to beat here, Cliff is pretty persuadable. You need a 10. I'm going to say you need a 10. So roll twice, and as long as both of them beat a 10, you will succeed. Okay, the first roll is five, so that's 12.

And then the second roll is two, so that's nine. So you see, Cliff says, Ms. Parkington, your spotless dress and your perfectly coiffed foot hair might make you think you're the gentry of the land. I might be a snagglet tooth gate guard but i have principles and and i shan't be bought off i've already let a bunch of raiders in like i have to you i'm gonna take your advice unless you can prove to me that you're not a servant of the dark lord i'm not gonna let you in okay um i'm gonna can i i would like to show you

that I'm not a servant of the Dark Lord by doing some white magic, some good magic. Incredible. Go ahead. And you have some spells you can cast here. Okay. You have Message, which is short-range telepathy. You also have the Friends spell,

which is a momentary charming. I'll use that. Incredible. Friends is gonna give you advantage on a persuasion check. Go ahead and roll persuasion twice, taking the higher of the two rolls. Okay, persuasion 17.

So that's 28. And then 15. So I get to keep the 28. You get to keep the 28. 28, just for the record, a DC 30 allows you to do things that are near impossible. So a 28 is like a super humanly good roll. Nicole, please describe for us what this bit of elven magic looks like

as you momentarily enchant Cliff, the gate guard. So I start glowing purple and then the purple kind of like radiates to like diamondy. And then I turn into diamond, like that lady in X- not who's played by january jones so like i'm all diamondy and i'm all shimmery and that like really enchants him he's like oh my god that's like so beautiful and then uh it like washes over kind of like in the x-men when magneto makes the thing and then that white stuff goes over the people and then uh it puts a smile on his face um cliff looks up at you and

says oh what a fool i have been clearly one who wields the magic of the elves mistress darkwind i would i would die for you i would die let me let me do that for you. Whatever you need. You may absolutely enter. And also anything forever. Wow. Please let me help you. Okay, great. Sam Weiss, what do we need? Oh, we need like a ton of unlimited snacks.

And we need really cool ribbons for our hair yes um you see cliff throws wide the gate to brie and says mistress darkwing most resplendent more glorious than the even star snacks and ribbons shall be yours and sprints into brie and you hear a crash as he leaps through the window of a general store that had all the lights turned off, just sprints inside. And the village is yours to walk through. You hear rowdy noises of guffawing, like a snap of like a chair leg breaking, loud music that sort of stops and starts coming from the end of the prancing pony. And then the rest of the village sort of creeps up the hillside into the mist

that clings to the edge of the forest. Where do you go? Dark wind and Sam wise. Sam wise. Should we go to, should we go get our cocktails? I think we should. I feel like that was a lot that was kind of draining.

I think we need to reset. We need drinks. Let's just catch up a little bit and chill. We haven't sat in a long time. We haven't. We've been walking for a very long time. And I'm in heels. Can you even? I don't even have shoes on. I've always wondered about that, Samwise. Do your feet hurt? They actually don't. I don't feel anything. They're just thick, thick, thick, thick, thick, thick soles. All right. Well, let's take them thick, thick, thick, thick souls. All right.

Well, let's take them thick old dogs and go get a drink. Amazing. The two of you walk up through here. You hear Orenia, your sword at your side, say, be alert, mistress. We enter into the heart of danger now. Okay. I pull out my sword and I kiss it and I say, I'll be careful and I put it back. You feel a strong vibe from your sword.

You hear kind of a like, Wow. Yes, of course, vigilance, my lady. And you, Samwise, you see that Wolf, your hound, even without sort of speaking the common tongue, sort of stays close to your side and looks up conspiratorially at you, narrowing his eyes as you both walk through the door.

The rich smell, the musty rich smell of shire longleaf of pipe weed fills the air, the smoke in the bar, there are many hanging candles from chandeliers, a roaring fire in the fireplace, but just the thickness of the pipe weed makes the visibility in here somewhat limited. So rich smell of smoke,

you smell ale covering the floor, there's straw. There are some like, a couple of pigs and goats off in a corner, very like country tavern. And the place is packed right now. But the vibe you immediately clock as the wrong kind of raucous, right? This is not the like, hey, we're having a party and we're throwing down and it's great. This is like some people having a dangerously good time and a little bit of simmering panic amongst like there is a young serving girl

bringing drinks who clearly looks a little bit panicked on her face. And the innkeeper, Barleyman Butterbur, looks over as you see a group of about six partially armored, fur caped wearing Northern raider types looking. You see they have axes and swords on their side. From the blades of the axes,

you see rust and wear, as in this is not the like never used sword of a 19-year-old town guardsman. This is the axe of someone who fights and fights a lot to survive. But you see that there are still some customers here. There is a band playing at a small table, like fiddle and pipe kind of band. And you see they sort of look and stop playing for a minute. And one of the raiders in the back turns around and says, keep playing. We like to have music

when we're having a good time. Barley Man turns to look at the two of you. His eyes go wide. Would you say that either of you have ever met the innkeeper of the Prancing Pony, or is this your first time coming to this establishment? I think I've met him before. There's a twinkle in his eye that makes me feel like that maybe we fucked.

Barley Man Butterbur, with a thick mustache and big mutton chops um has like the sort of apron of a barman looks over and goes oh them raider oh oh uh mistress starquin oh my god i can't believe i'm seeing you here um some many years it's been um it's been a while you look good oh that's very kind you look resplendent and glorious as the setting i mean i do look like naomi campbell so like thank you yes and obviously i am withered by the passing of years you You know, it's been some 20 years. I'm in a full different life stage. And you, of course, being immortal and unaging.

So that's, how's that going? Are you, is that good? It's going really well. I like really love that I don't age, that like my hair is endlessly shiny. So like for me, that's good. Oh, this is my friend, Sam Wine. Hey, sorry, I wasn't going to say anything. I'm down here. that's good. Oh, this is my friend Sam Wine. Hey, sorry.

I wasn't going to say anything. I'm down here. It's fine. Oh, of course. Sean Samwise, of the Hobbiton Parkingtons? Yes, that's my family. Yes, hi.

Well, you see, he taps one of the barrels of ale and says, well, we have here a barrel of your family's finest. I'd love a glass. Serve us up. He takes over.

There's some of the stools have little ladders built into the side of them because everything here is sized for humans. But you ascend a little ladder and he pours two big frothy wooden tankards of ale, puts them in front of you. And he says, are you hungry as well from a long day's journey? Oh my God, yes. Yeah, we need a snack. We need a meal. We need lots of snacks. Yeah.

He looks off and says, well, I am very sorry that the hospitality of my house has diminished. I can offer you some cheese and a crust of bread. The stew that we normally offer, and you see his eyes dart over to the raiders, goes, has woefully been depleted, I am afraid. Oh, wow. Well, that's okay. I'm now a vegetarian, but like, are those raiders giving you trouble? He looks around and he looks up and you see that there is a, what looks like one of the innkeeping staff, like the people that sort of like washes the sheets

and bedding the beds upstairs, is suspended from the wall with a dagger through the back of his- And he's dead? He's not dead. He's just hanging there in his shirt, unable to get out, sort of like a scarecrow. But you see, he looks over at Barleyman Butterbur,

who looks up at him, and he kind of like shrugs from where he's sort of stuck up on the wall like an ornament. Barleyman goes, aye, we're not keen on these guests. They came out of the woods earlier today and they accosted young Cliff, the Watcher, at the gate. Yeah.

But, he says, they appear to be celebrating. You see, he says, they came on a mission of some kind and I'm not sure what. Both of you can give me perception checks. Perception checks? It's one of your skills. Go ahead and give me a perception so roll it go ahead and roll it and add yeah uh go ahead and roll it and let me know what you get minus five and my plus seven so 12 12 minus 15 cool um uh so both of you notice over by the raiders for dangerous men these guys are cutting very loose and there is a

vibe i think out of 15 dark when that you kind of clock of celebration here you see an enormous burlap sack truly something that you would be like hard for one person to lift um uh rests underneath the legs uh the sort of what looks like the chief of the Raiders there. One of these like northern humans, like long droopy black mustaches, long sort of black hair. He's got his boots up and his chair tilted back onto just the back two legs of the chair. And underneath his legs that he's sort of forming a bridge over is this big, heavy sack that, again, looks like sort of the center of the celebration for these guys here.

I want to open that sack. Hell yeah. Now, you guys are enjoying your lovely ale here at the bar. Do you want to, in order to open that sack, how do you want to do it? Because approaching them is certainly going to get their attention. Mm-hmm. Okay, so I want to slam my ale and then approach. And I want to hide on the chandelier and be ready to attack if I need to.

Hell yes. This is incredible. to attack if I need to. Hell yes. This is incredible. So actually, some amazing teamwork happening here with Darkwyn

slamming the ale and drawing all the attention in the room to her resplendent self. That's going to give advantage for Samwise to make a stealth check.

Go ahead and make that stealth check. Okay. So my stealth points are 11. So let's see. 8. 19. 19. And you have advantage. So roll again. So let's see. Eight, 19. 19.

And you have advantage. So roll again. And if this one's higher, you get to keep it. Five, lower. Okay. So we're going to keep an eight, which is a 19. Now what we're going to, so you had a 19 on your stealth check. You cling to the shadows very, very easily.

19 is very good. You don't think that these guys have spotted you, but there are so many sort of moving bodies in here that a perfect hiding spot is not gonna really avail itself to you. Where would Samwise like to move in waiting? Do you wanna stay near the bar or move into this kind of back room that they've taken over?

The raiders are mostly in a back room that kind of like a back room in a lot of bars has like a big arched entrance. There's no door. The arch is probably about 15 feet wide. And there's two little steps going up to kind of the raised back room table area that they've take it over some

lanterns uh sort of like harlequin like red and white diamond patterned wall behind them um uh do you want to try to move into that back room yes i want to infiltrate amazing you tuck in uh and actually hide they uh one of the raiders has a massive circular wooden shield. The shield is about like almost three and a half feet wide and it's leaning against a wall and you crouch and tuck in behind that shield, able with your halfling body to hide behind that object. Darkwyn, as you slam your tank with an approach,

you immediately catch the attention of these raiders who turn up to look at you. One of them looks up and goes, Well, well, well, hello here. Don't see many elves traveling in this part of the world. Come to get the company of some real adventurers, eh? You trying to fuck me? What?

I don't want it. I want to know what's in your bag. You see? I'm going to say go ahead and give me an intimidate check here. Give me an intimidate check on your character. So that's 17 incredible um so you see this guy is stunned and just goes uh uh but i i didn't even make you uncomfortable at all it didn't my plan well i'm i wasn't uncomfortable i just like wasn't feeling what you were trying to serve

and i feel like you're like not nice and you're not up to any good things so i want to see what's in the bag yeah he goes oh you want to see what's in the bag do you well that's what i said you see this guy looks fucking you see his squad looks around and is like, man, we never seen the boss this rattled before. This fucking sucks. And you see he goes, none of your beeswax, darling. Why don't you take it, turn it back around and go talk to your friend, the barman. Because the only way you'll see in the inside of this bag is at the end of the sword, lovey. Oh, well, I have a sword.

And then I pull out my sword and I go, do you want to like do this? We're going to roll initiative. Battle commences. Okay, I'm rolling it. 26. Oh my God. That is very, very good.

Holy moly. And Samwise, would you go ahead and do the same thing? Yes. I want to jump down and get something. Okay. So I have a plus five. So I'm going to do my roll, which is 20, 25. Oh my God.

We're going to kick ass. You rolled a nat 20. Incredible. Oh, I rolled a nat 20. You rolled a nat 20! Hell yeah! Incredible. Oh, I rolled a nat 20! You rolled a nat 20! That's amazing. So you guys both, I'm going to say that because you both rolled so insanely high, and Sam got that nat 20. Wait, I think I got a nat 20 too.

Wait a minute! Because it's 20 plus six. Oh my God! Wow. Wow. So you guys have these dudes so goddamn stunned. Darkwyn, you are going to be first to act here. Okay.

With that 26. So go ahead and let me know what you would like to do. Probably your best options are going to be probably. I want to cut the head off the leader. Amazing. You rush the leader. Go ahead and give me an attack. You're going to push that little plus eight next to Orinia. Next to Orinia. So 12 plus eight, 20. Oh my God. That is a definite hit. Go ahead, if you would be so kind, and roll.

And now what you're gonna do is this. You're actually gonna roll damage for us. And I'm gonna also say that you can, if you would like, add a flourish here because you are technically a a college of swords bard okay uh the ones that i think make the most sense um are uh would probably be slashing flourish which lets you deal extra damage i want that one how do i do that one oh okay um you're gonna just

use a bardic inspiration which is for free um And now what I want you to do is, oh my God, Slashing Flourish also lets you deal that damage partially to another nearby person. Great. So go ahead first and next to that number plus eight, you're gonna see 1d8 plus seven. Go ahead and roll that. Okay.

Oh, that's four plus seven. That's and roll that. Okay. Oh, that's four plus seven. That's 11. That is 11. Um, now what I want you to do is on the lower, very lower left of your screen, you'll see a little red dice icon. Um,

if you click that, a bunch of little shapes should appear. Let me know if that works. A bunch. Yes. Um, go three up. So above the cube and just press that one the d8 okay and then roll and then roll it five incredible um so you dealt 11 and then five so that's 16

points of damage um and then you do another five to the God Exo. And then you actually have, you can do, I believe, a bonus action as well. So you can actually use another Bardic Inspiration. And you can give a D8, so you can bless Samwise

and give her a D8 to use on an attack. Okay, I'm gonna bless Samwise. Incredible. Samwise, you see Darkwyn just completely unimpressed with this oafish raider. Leap forward, draw a renya. The elven steel quivers in your outstretched hand, Darkwyn. Your sword goes, yes, I live for this!

And you reach forward. You slash across the bandit's leader's face, cut through his jaw. A bunch of teeth scatter on the ground. He falls out of his chair. You have badly hurt him

in your first attack of the combat such that you kick the chair over and even skewer one of his nearby allies through the arm who falls to the ground.

With enough time left to spin around and scintillating diamond energy flies from your non-sword hand as Samwise begins her turn, blessing her. Incredible. Samwise, that is your turn. Okay, so do I have to say what I want or do I roll something? You say what you want and then we'll go ahead.

Okay, so I wanna like go really low with my sword So do I have to say what I want or do I roll something? You say what you want and then we'll go ahead. Okay. So I want to like go really low with my sword and slice the ankles of everyone in the room. Hell yes. So you are only going to be making one attack per turn. So if you want to slash someone's ankles, you can absolutely slash whoever's ankles you want. There's only about five guys in this room right now, and one of them has just gotten, you know, badly hurt by Darkwing. But if you would like, you can make a sneak attack on one of the people standing near the shield, or you can make a run for the bandit captain at the end

of the table. Remember, you also have cunning action. So you could do stuff this turn and hide again at the end of your turn. Okay, what I want to do is slice the guy next to me at the ankles so that his feet fall off completely and he just falls onto like the stumps of his legs. And then I'm going to hide again

and he won't even know who did it. Incredible. Samwise, bear in mind, you also now can add a D8 to these rolls because you've been blessed by Darkwing with Elven magic. Okay. So go ahead and roll your attack roll. These guys are not as tough as the bandit captain.

So go ahead and make your attack roll. You're just attacking one of the one of the lower ranking bandits right now okay i got a six add your um attack modifier to that for your moon touched short sword so let's see okay so that's plus eight plus eight so six plus eight is 14 let me double check these guys armor class if it's 14 or Let me double check these guys' armor class. If it's 14 or lower, they're toast. These guys' armor class is 12. You absolutely hit. So here's what you're gonna do.

You're gonna roll the damage for your short sword. So go ahead and roll the 1d6, which is the normal cube die. That's a three. That's a three. Go ahead now and roll that three more times because you're going to add your sneak attack damage. Okay.

Four, one, two. You deal 10 damage plus your dexterity, which is 15. How many hit points do these guys have? These guys only have 11 hit points. Samwise, you, so Darkwyn is like in the middle of the room radiating light and all of these bandits go, wow!

And one dude is standing right next to that shield. You pop out, just clip through both ankles and he falls off his legs, screams. And both guys go, what's wrong, what's wrong?'s wrong he's like my feet oh no and you're you are immediately uh go ahead and give me a stealth check okay so my stealth is plus 11 so i'm going to so i had to roll the 20 sided. Roll the 20 side. Okay. Yeah. Five, 16. So that 16. Great.

Cool. Cool. Cool. Um, these guys pass perception. So, um, uh,

so Sam was, uh, the normal bandits are fooled, but on 16, you see that the bandit captain on the floor saw you swipe his dude's feet off, uh, uh, and can see where you're hiding. Um,

but, uh, that's going to be, um, feet off and can see where you're hiding. But that's going to be these bandits first. They're going to come and make their attacks. Four bandits are going to take swings at Darkwyn. Oh, sorry, only three now. One of them is done. So three, so AC 16. These guys each get a plus four.

They need a 12 or higher here. Miss, hit, miss. Darkwyn, these bandits descend on you. You easily parry two of the blows. One blow lands, lightly grazing your forearm for three points of damage. So Darkwing, on your character sheet, you can see that you have 38 hit points on the upper right.

You now have 35 hit points. So this is not anywhere close to a lethal blow, but instead a slight injury on your arm. Should I change it? Yes, the number on the left, you can double click and change that to 35. Okay. Incredible.

The bandit captain leaps to his feet, rushes across the room, kicks the shield off the top of Samwise, and is going to make an attack for Samwise. Samwise's armor class is a 16. This captain is going to hit on an 11 or higher. Let's make these roles. And this captain gets three attacks.

Oh no. Miss, miss, and miss. Oh my God. Samwise, you watch the shield fly off the top of you uh this captain takes this rusty axe out and you do that thing where you just tuck your arms and just keep rolling to the left as this axe comes down a stone glinting off the floor. Darkwing, that returns to the top of the order. It is your turn again. Okay, guys, show me what's in the bag.

Yes. Obsessed with the bag. I want to know what's in that bag. Darkwing, I love it. Would you say in this moment you are attempting to persuade or intimidate um i think i'm just like if you show me what's in the bag like all of this will be done i'm gonna say that's a pretty reasonable request right that's pretty reasonable request so i'm gonna say on on a d but they are also fighting

with you and these aren't reasonable guys okay we're gonna say that this is a DC 20. So go ahead and roll your persuasion die. You're trying to hit a DC 20. Yikes, 12. 12 is not super high. However, that's a free interaction. You see the raider goes, no, your life, we're gonna kill both of you. I don't like that. You could, if you want to,

attempt to open the bag right now because the bandit captain has abandoned the bag. Okay, I'm gonna open it. Yes. Incredible. This is a free object interaction. Darkwing, you lower the edge of Orenia and slit the side of the bag open with your elven

blade and tumbling out of the bag fully hogtied and gagged is Gandalf the Grey. Oh my god! What good thing I opened that bag! Oh my god. I undo his mouth.

Candy! I also want to be clear. We do want to probably wrap up for time reasons, right? Oh, sure, sure, sure. Cool, cool, cool, cool. So Gandalf, as you open his gag, goes, Wizard, you shall not pass! And all of the raiders are, boom, stunned in a blast of light.

All of them begin to run out, except for one of them who crawls out, um, uh, with, uh, his feet tucked into his bag. Um, wait, wait up for me. Um, you see Gandalf stands up and says, huh? Miss Parkington, Lady Darkwyn, thank you ever so much for rescuing me from those dratted raiders. I dare not think what might have happened if those servants of Sauron had managed to abscond with me. I owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude. Do you have snacks?

Yeah, what about ribbons? You guys see, thrashing through the window, covered in blood and just glass all stuck in his body is cliff holding a huge pile of like candied nuts and there looks like some different sweets and baked goods and just so many ribbons and he goes my lady dark i've robbed every general store in town looking for only the finest snacks. Do these, will these satisfy my lady? Yes, and now we need to go to sleep. Yes, we all need to go to sleep.

Let's all cuddle up by the fire, shall we? Yes, let's sleep in a pile. We'll sleep in a pile on the floor. And having ridden the town of these terrible raiders, Samwise, Darkwyn, Orinia, Wolf, Gandalf the Grey, and even sweet blood-covered Cliff, all snooze gently by a roaring fire. Yay! And that's where we'll end our tale. That was fun.

Honestly, I had a very nice time and it was very funny that Brennan was the one to be like we should wrap this up because I was like well I need to know how this is going to end I loved it that was awesome most D&D sessions

do go for like three or four hours so you know it's like not unheard of but I do have a question most D and D sessions do go for like three or four hours. So, you know, it's like not unheard of, but, um, uh, yeah, it's reasonable question.

Yeah. How did you, were you making up all of that stuff or did, or did you have things preplanned and how did you know what we needed to be rolling? Um, so those are great questions. Um,

all told, uh, uh, obviously most of this stuff is just from Lord of the Rings, like Inn of the Prancing Pony, Bree, Barley Man, Butterbur. That's all, you know, these are all characters you've seen in the movies. But the plot of it, like the raiders and the villains and stuff like that, that's all made up.

Yeah, so, you know, I'm like improvising through it, um, along with you guys. Um, so it's sort of a, it's being a DM is kind of a combination of having a loose script in your mind of like knowing kind of what's going on, but having the flexibility to improv your way through it. Um, and then, uh, for those numbers, yes, I am arbitrarily setting those, but there's a loose rubric for those kind of tasks, right? So like a DC 30 is like a near impossible task. You almost never have a task higher than 30. DC 20 is like very challenging.

15 is like intermediate. 10 is like, you know, a challenge, but pretty doable. And then five is like a trivial task. Five is like, man, you got to fuck it up to not be able to hit a DC five. Okay. Another question I have, do you enjoy playing or being a DM more? Well, I would say that I love them both. I definitely DM way more than I play. And I am constantly singing a sad little song about how no one will run games that I get to play in. But the truth is, it's kind of like, I don't know, being a DM is kind of like being the friend in the group

that like makes baked goods, where it's like, once you do it, you're gonna be the one doing it. You know what I mean? Like, so there's that element of like, um, and also because of the nature of the game, like there's only one DM and you can have multiple players. So like,

but once you, it's sort of like, yeah, once you start DMing, you kind of tend to become a perma DM. Um, uh, but I would love to play more.

Um, it's super, super fun, but it's right. It's very fun to be a DM as well. You were very fun. I really enjoyed everything you did. Honestly, I had a really great time.

Me too. I was kind of going, I could see myself doing this again. Yeah, I was like, who do I know that can play with me? Nicole, I know people who are, would be excited to have you in there. I think I might try to play again.

This could be fun. You really gave a great intro to this, Brennan, because I think both of us were like, what is going on? And that was really cool. I liked it. Oh my God. I'll be honest.

I thought it was going to be very boring and dumb. But then you get into it. And when Lauren was like, I would like to cut everyone's feet off i was like this is fun yeah it's really funny that's such a funny thing and like what a treat it is really fun oh i i can't tell you i didn't want to show it but i had nerves because you guys do this podcast oh i'm so glad because it so great. Oh, I'm so glad. Well, because it's like, you know, it is definite. It's a very daunting game.

But I think that at its core, like, I think what it is is that very quickly you osmos the central premise, which is like, oh, yeah, we're just rolling a die to see if a thing works or not. And it really quickly stops being intimidating as you're just like oh yeah like i don't i think it's similar to like driving where like a car seems really intimidating but it's a pretty quick curve to be like oh like i'm driving it's scary and then you're like oh it's it gets in your bones it's intuitive and then you're like got it cool i don't need any more explanation like let's play let yeah um i'm so glad you guys should play it's the most fun in the world this is my favorite game it was awesome well thank you for introducing it to us we are at the end of the episode do you have anything you want to plug uh hell yeah i mean you uh check out dimension 20 new episodes every wednesday uh if you dug this awesome episode

with Lauren and Nicole playing hilarious badass adventurers Dimension 20 has a bunch of your favorite comedians and college humor alumni

playing this playing D&D together in a bunch of wacky different settings not Middle Earth but in you know various fun

homebrew campaign settings and you can find me at BrennanLM on Twitter and at BrennanLeeMulligan on Instagram. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for doing it. Thank you for doing it. We have a little Battle of the Five Stars segment here

where we read a five-star review. So if you are out there and you want to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform for a chance to have it read on air, please do that. And this one is called American Girl by Leany726 on Apple Podcasts. I have loved both seasons so much and can't wait for season three.

After the latest memes episode, I have to ask, have you considered doing American Girl for season three? There's 15 movies plus the books, magazine, and trading cards. So much at the very least. Please consider this a vote against Marvel. Thank you, Leanie. We appreciate a vote against Marvel thank you leanie we appreciate a vote against marvel uh people are pretty against marvel people are either very for it or very i'm hearing a lot

of for it so i don't know but um do you have anything you want to plug nicole um yeah i have a patreon where i talk about 90 day fiance it's called Day Bay. It's me and Marcy Jarrow just gabbing about my favorite show on television. And then if you watch Nailed It, that's nice. Every stream counts. Yeah. Lauren, what do you want to promote? I have a Patreon as well. Patreon.com slash Lauren Lapkus.

I do improv and watch alongs with movies. I'm doing a lot of holiday stuff. And that's what's going on right now. And what else i oh i'm on the new season of animaniacs i was really excited to get to do that congrats that's fucking cool i love animaniacs so i'm in episode six of the new season on hulu and i play a cupcake and an alien so check that out and uh yeah that's it oh wait i have one more thing it's getting colder um so if you have unwanted coats and stuff there's a ton of coat drives in your area i promise it takes a very quick google um it's nice to take care of our unhoused friends

um also mitra joe harry on instagram and on her Twitter will announce when she's doing hygiene drives. If you live in LA or whatever, she makes hygiene kits for our unhoused friends, which is like tampons and stuff. And a box of tampons goes a long way for someone who doesn't have a box of tampons. So think about that, uh, as opposed to buying like a PS5. That's very smart and nice and thoughtful. Well, it's the holidays.

It's tough. We got to do everything we can. You know, it sucks, but yeah, that's it's the holidays. It's tough. We got to do everything we can. You know, it sucks. But yeah, that's it for us today. We'll be back next week for more Lord of the Rings goodness. So we'll see you then. Bye. Bye bye. That was a Hidgum Original.