Hello, Adventurers! Meet Your DMs!

0:20 Hello Adventurers, a podcast where we talked about dm D topics, near in theater, role player's hearts. I'm Jason Portiso, I am Jim Crocker, and I'm Joe McCall and this is episode one. Thanks for tuning in. So what are we doing today? So today the first episode, Like any good podcast, we're going to answer two questions for you. Who are we and why should you care? That's something about fair Yeah, yeah, it's a little info dump to get started. Yes, so this is gonna be a Dungeon and Dragons show or a role playing show where we talk about role playing topics. This is going to be mostly Dungeon and Dragon's focus, but not entirely. So if you're a path Finder player or any number of other games that I know Jim has played, yes we'll get to that in a minute too. But you're you're welcome out our table as well. So let's get into like what is the show? Why are we even here? Why are why are we all here? So we're gonna be talking about things about the game. We have both players and DMS in mind, and we want to make sure that you guys have the best game possible. I think that's a good mission statement, right, Yeah, that's an excellent mission statement.

1:17 Let's meet the hosts. So let's talk about our background in podcasting or in audio in general, Like, well, that would really just be me, but so let's I've been talking since an early age audible. That's what radio is, man now down we're just recording it showing it to people, which I'm glad most of what I say is not recorded, So I'll start here. So my background is specifically in audio. I am an audio engineer. We can bring this back to twenty eleven where I owned and operated a music studio called Ugley Door, and was there where we started getting into podcasting. This was in twenty thirteen where I had a show interviewing local bands and having them play live on and that shows a lot of fun. We did that in two seasons, got about fifteen or twenty local bands on there, some that were very new and something that already had some sort of buzz around them.

2:09 The studio closed in twenty fifteen, and this is when I got into live audio production, which I still do pretty much as a full time job ever since twenty sixteen. The front of house engineer for a mid size venue here in New Jersey. Then pandemic hits. I can't do live music anymore. For about what we thought was going to be a nice little two week vacation wompom. Two years later I got back to work. But during those two years, in twenty twenty, I got back into podcasting. We just kind of bought some gear and made a silly little comedy show with some friends. That kind of got me into podcast editing that I now do professionally, and it led me do some shows that I wanted to make. So the silly little comedy show, it was a fun one. We don't have to talk about that. It's not even out there anymore. But this got us into a show called Curmudgeons and Dragons. And if you're listening to this, there's a good chance you probably know Jim and myself from that show that lasted for one hundred and thirteen episodes, which is a milestone for most podcasts.

3:09 Yeah. Yeah, I was there for like the back third or so of those. Right, so you started a lot earlier than you think you did. I must have, yes, So I went back and checked. I don't have it in front of me. I forget when you actually started. It was something like episode like thirty. Oh my god, No, I thought you guys had been going for quite a bit more before that. Oh we did. It was time that we have on the show. Time does not equal episode, right or else. We abound this episode two thousand by now. But so Curmudgeons. We stopped making Curmudgeons and Dragons in May of twenty twenty three, mostly schedule conflicts and things like that. But there's a couple of things that I wanted to improve on the show. And as much as proud as I was of that show, it was a bit, you know, flying by the seat of our pants and not very planned out.

3:51 And while we have some great discussions, I really think we can do this better. So this is what led us to the show you're listening to you right now, Hollow Adventures, where we're going to be covering a lot of the same things that we covered our Commerciences and Dragons, but I want to come in more research, better content, and give more value to the players and dms are listening to us, and that's where we are today. Yay brought us here. Channon, tell me about your background in the podcasting. Background in podcasting so this kind of ties a little bit into my professional background, which we'll I mean, we're going to get into our gaming background. But I managed and or owned comic and game stores for a little over twenty years. So yeah, there was a couple of shops in ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was a manager and buyer for those shops for three four years something like that. And then when my wife graduated from grad school and we moved back to New England, I opened my own shop, which was called Modern Myths, and I had that for about sixteen years, and somewhere I don't like about like like six seven years into that, we started doing our own podcast. And this was one of these kind of pop culture round table kind of things where we had three of us. We had me, we had someone who was much younger than me, and then we had a third person, you know, was kind of a rotating third person, and we'd talk about comics, role playing games, board games, whatever it was that was kind of interesting to us that week because the store was kind of a you know, one of these sort of catch all pop culture stores.

5:19 And so we did that like off and on probably for like a good ten years something like that. In different iterations, and you know, it would you know, there'd be times where we'd stop doing it for six weeks for the holidays because it got too busy, and then we'd go back to doing it and stuff like that and so and that was a lot of fun. Eventually, that kind of you know, that faded as the business got more challenging and eventually, well you talk about the pandemic. I closed down my store in twenty eighteen and just made it, Yes, just made it. Yeah, it look like a genius in hindsight. Yeah, insider trading, except for the fact that what I decided to do after that was convert my business entirely to selling games at conventions. Yeah, which that that lasted, you know, a nice year and a half, Yes, and yeah, while the conventions were going exactly, yeah and so, and I did some I had a kind of a one man podcast that I did when I had that convention business. There was sort of short episodes where I talked about games that I had played. It was called just Played, and you're familiar with that. We we had talked about maybe trying to get something going with that again, but that kind of proved to be like if I'm not selling those games anymore than the incentive to go and play a ton of games. I don't necessarily want to. I don't have to do that anymore. So it feels great. And Just Play show is what got you onto Commentions and Dragons.

6:43 Yes, because you posted something to one of the Facebook groups saying, hey, looking for somebody else who might be interested in talking about D and D And I said, hey, that sounds like fun. Here's my podcast I've done. You went and listened to that, You're like, Okay, it doesn't sound like a complete idiot. So but yeah, and so you know, I got onto that show. It was a blast. It was so much fun to do that. You know, I was along for the ride on whatever it is you wanted to do newt So here we are. Actually some of those one hundred and thirteen episodes from Commanders and Dragons were actually Just Played episodes. Yeah, I guess that's true. There was a couple of months where we were producing new episodes of Just Played and releasing them under Communchals and Dragon and that was on Monday Show or for a bit until, like you know, it's just sometimes you just don't want to do it.

7:25 Anymore. Yes, when we change formats and we move on. Joe, this is your first podcast at a host. As a host, as was a guest on not yet famous Good One Keith podcast, the comedy podcast that I mentioned earlier. Joe's a long time friend and we known each other fourteen fifteen years. Sound something along those lines, but it's something close to that. So so as a podcaster and audio guy, Joe's knew to being a host. Super happy to have them. But most importantly, Joe is my DM for hour and I'm gonna I'm gonna use the term monthly game loosely. Yeah, I try to kill you. Monthly. Sometimes we miss entire months because as we were all at our thirties and forties, monthly ish, yes, monthly if were lucky. We did play last night though, and that was awesome. But it is good to have my old podcasting buddy and my DM on this show with me. So that's us for podcasting. Who are we as gamers? So I'll start again. This is my background in gaming now. I played Magic the Gathering in middle school and high school on a very casual level, stopped for a while all through college, and I picked Magic back up again in two thousand and four quickly became a judge, and I, like most judges, most magic judges either played super casual formats before Commander was a quote unquote real format. We had Elder Dragon Highlander, and tons of judges were super into EDH or if you were not an EDH judge, you were a competitive vintage judge Marxes and Lotuses and stuff, and that was me. So I and a couple of the judge friends we had some competitive teams and I played magic until I sold off my gear in twenty eleven,

8:56 which actually, if you remember from earlier, I in my recording studio in twenty eleven. That's how I bankrolled in sure, sold off my collection and bought an entire career. Sometimes it works out so that that was my magic career. And every now and again, probably once a year, the itch to play magic sparks up again, and I think about just ruining my life. It's like a Magic the Gathering Cinderella story. Yeah, this is now like a Magic the Gathering, like crack Addict story, where it's like every year it's like, oh, man, do I want to ruin my life again? Because it was fun? Do I want to keep my partner. Well, that's okay, we'll get into personal side a little bit later. But like my partner is entirely way too supportive of all the stupid crap I do. She does not say you shouldn't do that nearly as often as she should, because there's a lot of things I do that I shouldn't do.

9:54 So anyway, back to podcasting, one thing that she is actually articipates with me on is our boarding play Shame, which you were just perusing and we're recording for a recording from my house right now, and I haven't counted in a while. It's definitely over one hundred and fifty games. I might have cracked two hundred recently, Like you're a serious board gamer. When I look at the shelf and at least a third of them haven't had the shrink wrap taken off, Yeah, which tells me that you're exactly that you're lose their buying games just in case, so they lose their value if you. If there's at least there's at least one over there where I see multiple copies where one's the Kickstarter edition and one's the regular edition. Yeah, there's a lot of games in cell a fank because again, all my friends are in the thirties and forties and it is difficult to get people to the table to play new games now. But I still collect them, I still love them.

10:35 I play them as often as I can, and it is my goal to at least crack the shrink wrap on with some, if not all of those this year twenty twenty four goals. I'll totally play Sentinels in the Multiverse with you anytime. Oh, absolutely love that a great game. I absolutely love that game. But that's for a board game. Podcast is the D and D Show, which coincidentally is next to my list of things to talk about, So my D and D background, This is where things start to get funny. So again, just imagine the gathering I played in middle school. But I played it super wrong and super bad, and it was really just like a bunch of middle schoolers sitting around the lunch table telling each other riddles. And that's kind of all it was. Yeah, that's kind of all it was. We didn't have character sheets, we didn't have to do any of that. We had the books, we didn't read them, got books in the library barely. I think the only book I ever actually like read from the library for D and D was the This must have been second edition, I guess, with those big brown handbooks. Yeah, like the complete hand Complete Fighter. I remember, the only one in the library was the Complete Psionicists. They probably had all of them at one time, but Complete Psionicist was the only one nobody wanted to steal, so so it was still in the library. So as far as I was concerned, that was my favorite class. It's all I knew. And yeah, I was a sist apparently in middles so I didn't really playing amuch. I was way more into magic and at some of the other card shops and Jim maybe you can attest to this, there was kind of a like an unspoken not like a war, but just like a misunderstanding between the dice truckers and the car floppers.

11:58 Yep, yeah, for sure. And that's where we called ourselves at dice chuckers and the card floppers. I was a card flopper and I had a lot of friends who were dice chuckers, and we kind of got along mostly a little bit. So most shops have them playing on different nights, so you like you got the D and D players on Wednesday, and the Magic guys on Friday, h F and M. But it's the you know, the aggressive D and D people that want to come in on the night that's not the regular D and D night that mix it up with the card players or the magic guys that want to well, can we just take a table in the back to play dy H or whatever? And we did, and we did, and then I made friends a lot of those guys, even though I didn't play with them. Yeah, but I mean a lot of great friends. So through D and D before I even played, Yeah, they kind of worked pretty well. Yeah. So when the radnick of books came out, now we're bringing D and D into the Magic universe, and that that's what kind of pete lanterns. A little bit, not enough to actually start playing again. None of my friends were playing, and I was like, really, just started my audio career, so I just had no time to play something that takes up all of your time. And then once again, twenty twenty hit. Now there's time, nothing but time.

13:00 Yeah, and this is when Joe calls me up and were starting up an online game with his son and wanted dust to all play together. So did you guys, know each other from before the gaming or was that just like, oh no, I think you said you've known each other for a while. Yeah, Joe and I met each other through a general like music scene, poetry scene. Friend. We had a lot of okay, yeah, people that I've met through like the open MIC's scene and stuff like that. Yeah. I moved down to this area right after high school. Okays, you only go three ish, oh three ish? Yeah, oh three, And then I met everybody through the diner because I had nowhere else to go. So going out at the local diner. Yeah, that's a scene thing, totally. Yeah, I missed my diner man. Yeah. But yeah, So in twenty twenty, Joe got me, got me actually playing.

13:43 I rolled up my first Cleric and the game itself didn't last very long because the problem with this game was that it was everybody, and that included like wives and kids that didn't really want to play the guinea. Wives and kids involved awesome making people who don't want to play D, and D game involved not awesome for anyone. Yeah, so that game kind of fizzled out pretty quick, but but it did get me thinking, Okay, this is now what I got to be doing. That's why I started listening to actual play podcasts, and NAT pod was the first one I listened to, and I still listened to pretty much daily. Dimension twenty was fantastic. Bombarded was one that I like a lot, and actually, if you listened to Bombarded, Nick Spurrier from that show is the one who composed the theme music for this show. Oh sweet, So big shout out to Nick Spurrier and DNB four or four. That's a show that I'm going to say local. Really, just one of the four guys is local. I think all four of them were at different time zones from each other. That's local enough you've met face to face. So yeah, one of them and I was after listening to their show, and we'll meet meeting the DM through our local shop. He and I both run games at our local game store, and so for meeting him there checking out the show sounds fantastic, The story is great, and they brought me in as a guest now twice. And so yeah, so DNB four or four, I'm I'm going to shut them out too. I think that's a good rule that if the DM is local, it counts as a local show. Yeah, it's just a player perfect and then that's maybe not. But if it's the DM, then it's the local. Yeah.

15:01 Absolutely. And then for round table shows like this one, some of my favorites have been A three Black Half Links is one of the best round table shows. How they do actual play also, but I first heard of them as a round table show. Of course, there's Dungeon Dudes on YouTube, and then Dungeon Cast is the biggest non actual play show for podcasts. That's my background on gaming. Jim, So you mentioned only the game stores were about actually as a player, as a player or a DM. I know you got a long history of the DM as a player. I've been playing D and D since before both of you were born. As they say, Yeah seriously though, Like my first D and D was the like late nineteen seventies basic homes blue box D and D. But you know that came in the you know, in the cardboard box with the dragon on the front and like the fighter on one side and the Wizard on the other. You popped it open and it had the like the blue rule book where you know, Elf and Dwarf for classes, and it was like I think it was I think the one I got was the very first edition that had B two that had to keep on the borderlands in it, as opposed to the Into the Unknown, the B one that they used to pack in there with it.

16:14 But so like, I found that in like a little like one of these kind of local toy and bike shops of a kind that don't really exist anymore, you know, post Toys, r US and Target and stuff like that. But and it just completely blew my mind. And like I started playing with my little brother, and then I brought it to summer camp and you know, got some of my boy scout friends playing it and stuff like that, and have been playing ever since, except for like a brief stopover in high school where I thought I was too cool for it, And then I went to college and immediately discovered no, in fact, all of the other drama nerds that I was hanging out with, ye well, like I used to play D and D I could play again if you wanted to, and it was just like bohm, we were right back into it. So yeah, but been playing continually pretty much since then, and because of the whole game store thing, I've played every edition and run weekly or weekly ish games of every edition since second because the when I had my game store in an arbor was the tail end of second and the biggest day that we had in the history of that store was when Third Edition came out and we did a midnight release of it. Oh wow, so that people could buy it the second that they were allowed to, and we sold you know, we did, like, you know, just massive numbers what we would normally do, and close to a month just of the you know, the third edition rulebooks because everyone was just so so excited by it. Wow. Yeah, So let's get a hot take. So you've run weekly games for every edition, hm, you got to pick one to stick around forever. Fourth hands down,

17:47 absolutely fourth Edition. Which is not to say it's the best edition of D and D. It's my favorite edition of D and D. It's the one I had the most fun with running second campaigns up because it's like, like, I played D and D for a certain thing and the thing I want out of D and D fourth Edition did the best, Like was the best version of that. But yeah, so, like I ran those weekly games up through when I shut the store down, and so I have not been involved in a regular D and D game since then. I mean I've been following a lot of the discourse. I've been enjoying these conversations that we have, and I kind of keep track of stuff, and I think about, well, if I ran a game, I would do it this way and stuff like that. But you know, the principal way I'm involved in D and D currently is doing this, sure, but you run a lot of other games. I do so as a result of my convention gaming and what I did with the store. I got involved very early on, like late two thousands in the kind of indie game scene, the sort of small press greater owned game scene, a lot of the powered by the Apocalypse is a thing that forged in the dark. Those are names that people who follow this stuff may recognize, and so I am very involved in that scene.

19:03 And like this week, I played in six online games over the course of the week. So like I work part time in the library and the rest of the time, I'm a house husband. I you know, do all of our domestic stuff and everything. Well, my wife makes all of our money, so I have some time to do a lot of internet gaming. And this is the thing I picked up over the pandemic, and so I'm playing a whole lot of indie games. You know, during the week, I do a little bit of writing and design and stuff in that indie game space, but it's kind of all over the place. Yeah, a lot of indie gaming for sure. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that why I love having you on the show, that like you're able to pull from other games what you like from those and like whether it applies to D and D or not, or if it's something that maybe a quick home brew rule could be improved by borrowering from other systems, and or if D and DSH is not your right system you are to run a very specific game, there might be a different system for it. Yeah, And I just want to, you know, stay up front. I have no interest in the like indie games versus D and D kind of discourse. It's there's everybody can have fun. And you know, I loved running D and D when I was running it, and I think, you know a lot of that indie game stuff can make your D and D games better by importing it where it makes sense to do that, sure, Joe T. I'm your background in gaming gaming, so I'm a lifelong gamer, I think, but first played Dungeons and Dragons. Actually, in high school, I had some friends that were seniors when I was a freshman and we played Dungeons and Dragons one night, and I'm sure we played it wrong. But other than that been into

20:36 board gaming. Do you have fun? I think I did, from what I remember I did. I think you played it right. Yeah, then you didn't play it wrong. That's good. There you go. There's a thesis statement for this show. Yeah. I would agree with that too. And like we were saying, with borrowing from other editions and other role playing games and other tabletop games, I like in my games to use, you know, rules that just work for our table So I even now don't probably play D and D correctly. But yeah, into board gaming for a long time. Was part of the Ugly Doors Studios gaming group that happened probably after some of those podcasts. That's right. We did werewolves that so it was nicer how my board game collection started. I this that we were a bit younger and there was less kids in our group, and I think you were one of the few that actually had kids at the time. Yes, And he was pretty young then. And when I had my recording studio sometimes we would like wrap up for the day, close the doors and in fight everyone over. We got like fifteen people over playing playing Werewolves of Another Hollow.

21:36 And this is what I didn't think you guys would be into it. My god, these guys were all like, you know, they're poets and musicians. Is real cool guys. We loved it. Was right up. I listen. I learned a lot about you guys that with those sessions. And you know, a couple of years later, I've got a board game. Sheol, that looks like the one behind me. Yeah, that's probably really how like we had known each other, we had been acquaintances, I would say, But that's probably our friendship began was it was probably around and then that also morphed into we would go out for karaoke on Tuesday nights, and then after karaoke sometimes we would go back to my house and play board games, or we would have board game nights if if for whatever reason, board games did a lot for our group. Yeah, and it's cheaper than going out to the bar, because we were all in our twenties set at that point, so way cheaper to buy a six pack and play some board games then to go out to a bar and I'm going to replay the part where you say it's cheaper to play board games and go to bar. I'm just gonna have that audio sample ready to go every time I buy a new game, get another game. But yeah, we should, we can put that out as a single on Spotify people. But again, she's always just like, oh, you bought another game, let's play. Yeah. She does not discourage me. You can, they don't need it. Yeah. And more recently, one of the things we've been doing, because it is really hard to get any number of adults together on a schedule, is probably most recently was you guys coming over to play board games with me in My wife so still into board games, but got into Dungeons and Dragons in just looked it up February of twenty nineteen, So coming up on five years, my

23:10 then thirteen year old son, my oldest son, wanted to you know, Dungeon Dragons became you know, the fires were lit by strangers. Yeah, yeah, And he was part of that wave of like, hey, I've heard about this game, I want to know more. And I don't even think he had watched Stranger Things at that point. Maybe he did at his mother's house probably not out of my house. I probab wouldn't let my thirteen year old watch Stranger Things at that time. But yeah, so he got into it. Had nobody to play with, so that meant Dad had to you know, figure it out. And lucky enough, had a couple of mutual friends of ours that were Walter and Nathan that were into Dungeon's Dragons, So we started a game with our families and Walter and so got into it.

23:52 There played fan Delver the starter set for the five y far starter set YEP. That was one of the few games I've played in as a player, and then quickly became a DM because my thirteen year old was not going to do the work is designed to trap new players. Yeah, and it gotcha, it really did. Yeah, And I quickly got into the hobby. That's how I got into listening to actual Plaque podcasts because I was like, well, like I couldn't before I played, I couldn't really get a handle on like how exactly it worked. And I'm one of those people that when I start something, I like research it a lot, and so that was part of my research was like, well, let me like I need to hear like how it works, like what the DM saying, what the player's doing, how they're rolling dice, stuff like that. So I started listening to this one really small Dungeon and Dragon's actual play podcast. It's like a bunch of voice actors that play it's really yeah, I don't think it's not real big. Nobody on the show is afterwards very long episode, but in very long the arcs, the campaigns last hundreds of episodes. But SO got into that, and I was also listening to Curmudgeons and Dragons. I actually really loved Budget and Dragons. That was my favorite not actual play show.

25:14 What a very few of that very few because they said there was going to be a new Curmudgeons and Dragtions episode. Wh Joe was a legit fan of that show and that we always appreciated that, especially because I was the one time that I knew that you weren't just blown a smoke of my asspelt about like in the show. We had an episode we talked about how much I hate shopping episodes, and I said that, like, I really just wish someone just like set up a drive through, let me just pull up say the things I want, throw gold and walk out my plus one weapon, and then the next session he had a walk up window at one of the shops really kind of just for me. Oh that was great. One of my favorite things to do was to surprise and delight Jason and I things that's fun And there was a menu and a little like door with a slid out there. I was like, which want like a better act gold if I threw gold at him? And I walked that with a with my plus one shopping. I do agree with you to a degree that shopping can be a chore, especially because players want to shop and then they're like, well what do you have and it's like, what do you need? It?

26:14 Like, they all have the same thing, right, you don't need a menu. On my list of episodes that I want to do for this show, how to make better shopping episodes? Is I on the list? So so let's save it for I think we did it though. Yeah that's all episode, Okay, wrap it up. Anything else to the specific show, no, just gaming specific lines of fan over. I would say that really got me to fall in love with the hobby, and then I kind of quick trip down the rabbit hole. Before that, I just beer, but that's harder to bring into apartments and stuff. So it's exclusively five E. Right, it's your whole D D thing, right, that's my whole thing. Okay, yeah, yeah, so I think that I like to think that's what I'm going to bring this podcast. This is my only experience being five oh. No, it's good they have for players, longtime players, you know, a mix is a good thing. And like I guess I technically played Twoey a little bit, but like I'm not going to count my middle school lunch table as playing two E oh, you absolutely should count that.

27:11 I don't think I should. I think you should because it's wide, like that was your initial contact with the hobby. Yes, it's my initial contact, and it means something, it's meaningful. We played D and D at the lunch sadle. I did not play to E. We did not play it that was supposed to. But that's your introduction to the role playing games. And absolutely I don't think that probably and I would definitely take that as I start to D and D. But like, as far as like counting editions that I played, I can't count to never read a book, never read really anything. So as far as I like knowing the actual mechanics of the game. By these all I really have experience with and I've read other things I own. I just like collecting previous editions books, so I have the course set for I think every edition now. So like if I asked you about the Facco you wouldn't. That was the one thing I do remember. Actually a second edition, my friend, you know what that I know Baco though from OSR because I have PLATOSR. There you go, yes, yeah, so I'm sorry, so earlydiship that I actually do remember.

28:07 That's then you know second edition. If you know that you need the Faco table, that you know second Okay, so we got the whole thing. That's the whole thing. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets recorded every month. Send us your burning D and D questions the Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting Hello Adventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions and talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com poorly the voice going at Hello Adventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now let's get back to the show. So that's our that's our podcasting background, that is our gaming background. I got the section titled as fun fact, this is just anything you want people to know about you. So for example, we'll just we'll just get the quick overview. I am, I have a I got two brothers. I've my partner Kara of seventeen years. We are engaged. We were supposed to get married or we were gimming for last year. I spent some time pretty sick, so what we kind of backburned all that but planning the wedding again. And if you hear any barking in the background, that is Davy Jones. He is the resident dragon slayer. His favorite toy was a dragon. It is now a dragon skin carcass that he does wear on his face like leather face, and it disturbs me. He's he's small and adorabone for any of my favorite uh being called Emerson Wolf in the Wishbones.

29:41 By the time this episode comes out, the EP called not a Good Woman will be available on Spotify. Would love it if you give that a listening, if you like modern Americana music. Otherwise, I'm a sagittarius and I can't stand the beach, so don't go. Don't take me on a long I don't like long walks or the beach, despite living literally five minutes away from the beach. I just it's just not my I like couches, comfortable couches, right, nice, Yeah, I love short walks to the couch. Joe, what do you want people to know about you? I am a father of three. I mentioned my oldest, who if you're doing math, just turned eighteen this past year, so and we still we That's like what has kept us bonded too. I will just mention to my other Dungeon daddies out there, oh yeah that you know, that's a great kept me And yeah, I've never had that typical Like my teenager won't talk to me because the one thing that he would always and will always talk to me about is Dungeon Dragons and the game that he's playing. And at like thirteen to seventeen age, like you, No, I don't have kids out but like as a former thirteen to seventeen year old boy. The only thing that happened was that we place ever games now sure, which is in some ways is probably a good thing. I would have moved heaven on earth to have my dad give even a single ship about D n D. Yeah. It was not just yeah, yeah, that's that's that's what You're incredibly lucky. Yeah, my dad was full satanic panic in the eighties. So D and D D and D was blocked in my house. I woke up one day to

31:11 the my board game Sholf was missing the Ouiji board. Yeah, it was. He was full satanic panic, and I'm pretty sure he still is. But uh, he's supportive and everything else I do. He's got some he's got some ideas that got it that needs rewiring. No, there was none of that. It's just not like just he just had no idea what the deal with it was. It was you know, it wasn't sports or woodworking or anything like that. So right, not only is it like not even seen as nerdy now, but even if it is nerdy's fine now yeah it's nerdy's hot, it's just another yeah, like it's just another interest. Yeah. Yeah. And on the on the grand scheme, of things that teenage boys are into, as far as as far as my TikTok feed look looks like tame. Yeah, yeah, thank god. That was part of it too, is like, Dad, I want the new Dungeons and Dragons, you know starter set, And I was like god, like thank god and no offense, Jason. I was just really happy it wasn't Pokemon. It's just never. I've never That's the thing that I don't understand, is like Pokemon, and now my eight year old loves Pokemon, so it's not.

32:15 But he also really likes Dungeons Dragons. He begs me story. He has come up with monsters, he made his own monster manual with pictures, he's made maps, and he's like, can you use this in your next Dungeons and Dragons game? And we play a loose version of Dungeons and Dragons where I'm the DM, but really he's the DM and the player and the main character and all the villains. So I'll be like, oh, the dragon does this, and he's like, no, that's not what happens, and then he tells me what happened, so it's yeah, it's a good it's a good time playing his game. I love to play with him. He rolls awesome. My favorite kids. So if you meet someone teaching me about Pokemon so you don't have to hear about it for just to fight you over. Yeah. Yeah, so that and then a two year old who's just a terror. I base a lot of home brewed monsters on there. There's this particular ooze monster that I haven't revealed yet. Is that why the screaming banter last week? But yeah, I mean that's it. I worked for an internet car company. It's not really anything to write home about, or would I want to. It pays the bills and pays for Dungeon Dragons, books and other things. Uh. We are a Disney family, I will throw that out there. We are likes to We did get married in Disney World. I tried very hard to go and I feel awful that we like to live in a fantasy world sometimes. Yeah, as adults. Nothing wrong with that, no's do anything. Yeah. So let's see, I am

33:46 left handed. I just noticed that for the first time. Yes, yeah, oh yeah, because I guess you don't normally see me writing, so yes, yeah, okay, next to you and I have that thing where I do one handed things. Left handed, but two handed things right handed. It's like bat right handed and stuff like that. So you know, I don't know a few people like that. My father does that, yeah, because and that's why I do it, is because that's how my dad did it too, So but left handed. I've been a vegetarian since the age of twenty one, so that's thirty something years, and I've been married to my wife, Shannon for twenty five ish years. We're we are we are happily child free. People that want kids, they should have any shuive as many as they want. That's not us. And she does a lot of traveling with the kind of international education job that she has, and I have to keep insisting to people that she's not an international superspy why she is the one ways tell people that's not true always, you know, can't jet setting all around the world and stuff like that. So if you're required to tell people that, Germans just wink at me once it's a podcast. They can't see you doing, okay, yeah, all right, okay, all right, and yeah, and I mean, and you know, like if I were to self identify, it would be as a gamer, as a role playing gamer. That's the main hobby that I do. And you know, like I said, I love D and D. I love all those other games that I play. Lifelong interest in comics as well as you know, role playing games. That's the other thing that kind of is my you know, my main thing. But I guess pop culture wise, like if I went to the Desert Island and I could take one thing with me,

35:19 Star Trek, that's what it would be. So yeah, you and my wife. My wife really loves Start Father was a big trick, yet I never got into it. Shannon. Shannon and I just started to rewatch the original series, so we're going, you know, working our way through the Kirk's Bach McCloy nice episodes right now. Very cool, and last section I have here is just our favorite D and D stuff we did. We talked a lot about our D and D backgrounds and our D and D preferences. So just give you an example. I'll read off my little notes here. While I absolutely love dming and I will do it any chance that somebody asked me to do it. I do DM for our friendly local game store. I do one shots at home. We're recording this early in January twenty twenty four on New Year's Day. So I mentioned I a concert already engineer.

36:00 I have the entire production team over here at this table we're sitting at right now playing a one shot that I wrote. A lot of them as her first time playing. Half of them is their second time playing. Their first time was playing with me last year. And so I do love DM. I love getting new players into the hobby. I if I'm going to DM, I want to give someone their first experience and make sure that it's a positive one and that they will continue. This is something I just see too often when they have bad experiences the first time, and you know, someone expects them already know all the rules and they won't hold their hand at all, and or worse, holds her hand too much and doesn't let them feel consequences. I love killing one experienced player her one shot just to teach the new players what's up. Sometimes I'll have a ringer, like a reverse ringer, sit in the game, someone who knows the rules just enough to just instill a little bit of chaos, just to let the new players know, Oh, we don't have to like be on the rails. We can be a little we can be a little silly in this game. Yeah, and then I will kill that player. Oh, we shouldn't be too silly.

36:59 He just too silly. He died of he came down the bad case of silly goose. But while I absolutely loved them, I do prefer to play if there's something cool about like there's it might be fifty to fifty for me at this point, because like there's something about like being in control of the world and again giving players that experience, and like I love hosting. I love having people over to the house. We were recording this podcast in my house. We had D and D night at my house last night. When we were looking for a new places to live. Can I host people here? Was a huge factor, and so I like giving people an experience. This is why I'm the one that owns all the board games, because I want to be like, hey, guys, I've got stuff to do. Come over. Make me feel like I have friends, and but being allowed to not worry about that and like react to the world and part of the story being a player is awesome. And I have listed here that I prefer to play. I kind of I'm more fifty to fifty to these points these days, And as long as we're playing. As long as we're all together and as long as we are creating stories together, this is what I want to be doing with my time. As far as like favorite stuff to play, this is you can tell a lot about a person by what they prefer to play as I've played a couple of dragon Barns now and they're just fun.

38:12 Between the breath weapon and like depending on how the DM spins the story, maybe the maybe the common folk are definitely afraid of you and like you start, like you know, you don't even get to try to make charisma checks and stuff because they're just going to run away. I've had a blast playing some playing some dragon borns. I had a dragon Born Blade Singer that I played in a friends actually on D and D four or four when I guessed it. As a player, still to this day my favorite character. And as a player, I am way more story driven than Luke driven. And this is something that I just from the shows that I've been listening to, stuff like that pod and and shows like that. We're like like, yeah, the game magic, I will get stuff, but like it's not like Okay, kill kill a bad guy, lout his body, kill a bad guy. Glut his body, check every corner of the room. That stuff bores me to the point where, like, you've had a point a couple points in the game that we're playing, Joe, Oh you guys miss this. I'm like, I wasn't even looking for stuff. I just want to I want to move the story forward yet, And I will say that our game isn't real. It's not loot heavy, yeah, as much, but also yeah, our players don't look for it like they're not like immediately they're looking for hidden doors a lot, like a lot. I didn't I haven't had that many hidden doors, but yeah, he gave us one, and that's just that was your mistaken Yeah, that's where I went. But I'd much rather move the story forward and find a cool plot. Yeah, if we are going to find a magic item, I'd rather be organic and not because we look behind a desk. And that's in my one shots in Linelane longer stories too. But but dming for the game store, I realize just how loot hungry new players are, Like they're they're in it for the

39:45 goal. I'm like, you know, you know you don't get to take it home right right, Like it's not real Gold. So so that's that's who I am as a player, as a DM, the types of players and the types of characters that I love to invite to the table. Bards obviously, I will have an oops all Bard's campaign, Apoly and every player because I've not had the the quintessential horny Bard at my table yet, and like dreading someone like ruins bars for me by doing that. But I've had some really fun Bards at the table. And Druids are so fun to DM for it, they have a thousand options. Yeah, new players probably just notapy druids. There's just so many things to keep track of. Now do you have yes, I'll put them on the same tier. But like, not only do you have like a full ass spell as, you have a full ass wild shape list, And there's just so many things to keep track of. And as a DM, I love keeping track of stuff. I'm good at it. So yeah, bring your Bards, bring your Druids.

40:36 I will happily DM you. I know we covered a lot of that in our Gamon backgrounds, but anything when it adds to D and D specific I mean for me. Yeah, So, like I said before, my favorite edition of D and D was sport. That was the one I had the most fun playing. I think the best D indie book WATSI has ever published was the fourth edition under Dark Book, which is amazing, just the campaign stuff that they have in there and the like bonkers ideas they have for crazy stuff that can happen in the underdark. That is an amazing book. That's like my favorite, just like I'll just mind that book for ideas for whatever kind of fantasy game I'm going to be running. My favorite setting for D and D is Ebron. Ebron's the you know, most interesting to me.

41:20 I would totally be down for playing in a game of you know, any Ebron game. A lot of steampunk in that, yes, Yeah. One of the things I like about it is that magic is a little more like day to day in that like the obvious things that people would use magic as a substitute for technology, they go ahead and do it in that game, which is one of the things I really like about it. And like, I guess one of the things I maybe should have mentioned in our talking about our lives thing was that my degree is in theater and specifically directing, So I would much rather DM than play because then I get to do all the voices and all the NPCs and all that kind of stuff. And I'm pretty fast and loose with the numbers and the hit points and stuff like that.

42:06 But I love populating it with interesting characters. And that's just one of the things I have a lot of fun with is embodying all those NPCs and you know, you're right down two or three things that's unique teach of them. And that's kind of my favorite part of it. And you know why I love running D and you know, all those indie games I play. I get a certain thing out of that. And it's funny because you were talking about the like the loot thing. I'm not loot driven, but I have to say, like I played in a store game, like after I had, you know, kind of closed my store in house, like I want to just play some D and D you know, week two week and see how this goes. And I got into a store game. It was not a very good game, and in particular, one of the things was that the DM gave out nothing like no loot. Like we went like three games and we got like, you know, like twenty silver pieces or something like that. And at the end of that third game. I'm talking to Shannon and I'm like, I can't believe I'm pissed that I'm not getting gold in this game. But like, if I'm playing D and D, like it's not the most important thing. But at the end of three games, my dragon born palette and better be able to buy plate mail and oh yeah, yeah, I need to get something. But like which one sounds sounds like a better way to spend your night, Like you you stab a guy in the face and you seal the one hundred gold off of them where you steal like a dagger off them, or you didn't stab that guy in the face, and now the entire kingdom's in danger, right, Like it's just so much like give me something more interesting than money, oh, or you know, or you save that guy and his family is so grateful they pay you

43:38 the hundred goal, Like that's the other way to do it. But just you know that the goal does help you keep track of what's going on. It's you know, it's kind of the score. It's how many points you're getting and stuff. And so if you're gonna play D and D instead of something more narrative or like one of those you know, OSR games that you were talking about. I want the scorekeeper there. I want to know how I'm doing it, so, you know, And that's one of the like, like if I feel like that, if I want that, then I want that out of D and D and I want to make sure that my players are doing that. But I also definitely concur with the thing that you said where it's the most fun to run for new players and give them expectations about like what they should demand out of a D and D game that they get in the future, Like if it's not this good, walk away and I try to set that bar, you know, reasonably, so that's realistic, but I want to set it. I want to set it fairly high, you know, when we get started. I'm finally giving people seven out of tests. They can go find a better deal, are there? Yeah, and like, and there are so many others that just do it bad than I do, even within the game store that I run that I run stuff at because I play in some of their games too. And there's one actually, and it's actually Tony from D and D four four. I play in a bunch of his games, and every time I finish up, my god so much better at this than I am. Why am I doing this with it? That's how you learn is if you're playing games with dms that are better than you, you pick up their tips and stuff like that, and it's note, I picked up a lot of tricks, and it's not even necessarily that they're better, it's just they're more experienced. Whatever I'm going to I'm gonna have an easier time running fifth edition game because for three years I ran them every week in the store, so you know, and that's

45:13 a certain amount of it is just experienced, and that's totally fine. Best classic D and D module s four Lost Caverns of Sage Cans that's my favorite. And the best die is the D twelve, so that what there we most delicious? Yeah, never had a bad D twelve Joe. I think the D D specific one and other people know, sure, So I think that I like. I love playing the game, I really do. And if I had to pick a class, it's probably a tie between a rogue because rogues are just fun and sneaky and great, or a really dumb Barbarian's probably one of my favorite things, especially from a role playing perspective. I pretty much play the same dumb barbarian every time I play who one you always told me about? Oh man, now I'm blameless? Yeah, cor and Gar corn Guard, which is just the Ragnarok letters of course, Coryngard the Blameless and I played him, I think in the os R game that I played the first time, and that one there was a dragon across like a lake and everybody was really nervous and corn Gar just threw an axe at it and they were like no, and I was like, drag just threw And I really kind of just modeled him after tracks from the Guardians of the Yeah.

46:30 So yeah, actually the perfect a lot of fun to play, but I think I do prefer dming And basically one of the things that you said, Jim, I get to fill this world. One. I get to have control and power over that world, which who doesn't love that? But also I get to fill this world with really interesting people. I get to do all the voices, and so I get to play corn Gar and a rogue and all these other people. I get to give these people backstories that you'll never know about because you'll never ask. Probably the shopkeeper, you know, something's happening with him. And I love the fact that oh, somebody just I just sold it this other guy and the players could ask, like, which way did he go? I love the improv nature of this.

47:16 I don't have the time to prepare every scenario, so we do end up improving quite a bit, which is fun for me. I like that amount of nervousness improv and I know which which way I wanted to swim? Yeah, and my mood changes game to game. It does same. But I like to examine tropes. I like when our games examined tropes, and you know, I like giving everybody a Scottish accent. Apparently you do Scottish accent. Well, not a lot of other actions, well, but just that. Yeah. The other part that I really like about DMING is the ability. And something I mentioned earlier was that surprise and delight like when and it happened not last night, the previous session that we played though, and like talking a little bit about the lore, and like people's eyes were like lighting up. They're like, oh my God, like they were so excited.

48:08 I forget exactly what it was, but there was a surprise and delight moment that occurred, and people are so excited to have discovered you know this secret passageway that you know, brought them to this huge kind of arena that we found ourselves in. I remember from last night's session, once we got to I don't know, I doubt that's a big bad, but once we like found the small bad and like started like uncovering the next major part of the plot point. Yeah, and like you know, discussing it would not do us any good on the show, but like you know what I'm talking about, But anytime you have the players like just like uncover something and like you know it's big and they don't know what it is. Oh and the excitement though, that was like so that was the payoff for me, Like that was the moment for me. How excited you guys got about it. And it was like an even out of context, like oh, he has the what appears to be a broken spirit and I'm just like, oh what And he mentions the omega likes the omega. Oh, We've got we got to figure this out. This sound this sounds bigger than my characters' personal goals are going home, But I think we've been doing this long enough. That's who we are. Hopefully that's enough for you to kind of like, get an idea of who we are as players and dms and D and D content creators and podcasters, and if you like the kind of things that we like, but we hope you stick around for the ride. And that's that's kind of my goal. For today's episode. We're going to record a whole lot more right now. We're going to get into it now, and actually this is being released. We have the schedule for middle of February twenty twenty four.

49:31 Hopefully we stayed on schedule, and we are releasing a couple episodes right on day one. So if you like what you hear so far, stick around, get a couple more episodes. And if you're listening, whether it's you're catching us on launch day or if you've heard about us down the line and you're listening to us years down the road. But we told you who we are, I want to know who you are. You can send us an email to Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Let us know who you are as a player, what kind of things do you like, and how do you like the show? Is there something you want us to talk about. We want to make a show that you want to listen to your open to ideas. This is a roundtable show and you are absolutely invited to sit down with us, so get an idea. What kind of stuff would we talk about and if you have anything any feedback, Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com and we what up you hear from you. Also, our voicemail is wide open. We're gonna be doing some episodes where we tackle some of the issues that you guys want us to tackle, so you can send a voicemail over. You can go to Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice and that'll bring you to our voicemail page. We are excited to get to the rest of this show, so we're going to pack in here. So thanks so much for listening. But we are your host, Jason Portiso, Joe McCall and Jim Crocker, Producer, engineer and editor Jason Portiso. Music is by Nick Spurrier, artwork by Kristin Roderick. You sent questions and comments to Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Hello Adventures, It's a JTP Audio production.

50:49 Goodbye Adventures. Four