May 2, 2013 • 45 mins
Despite what you've heard, Dungeons and Dragons isn't just for geeks, it isn't satanic and it's actually a pretty great way to exercise your imagination. Find out about the basics of D&D, its place in pop culture and the controversy the classic role playing game has stirred.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Truck Bryant. I'm just a I'm just
a simple cleric mind in my way. Are you down
the Primrose Path? I was gonna ask you what what
you were? Got my staff, got my sword? Yep, that
(00:23):
you would be well outfitted man, ready to battles some nerds?
So have you have you played before? Okay, this is
about dungeons and dragons, and I think that is a
good move. Is two things one caveat if you're a
big D and D person. We're not gonna get everything right.
(00:47):
We'll get what we what we can write, obviously, but
when it's not gonna be as comprehensive as you want,
I'm going to go over the basic indition and too,
I think we should both relate our own experience. So
people just knew I played a little little bit because
this is right in my wheelhouse. Dude, I was. I'm
really surprised that you're community. Let you play the Baptist community.
(01:08):
Uh yeah, I didn't hear it talked about much in church,
but um, in school, there were some of my friends
started to play, and I played. I started to a
little bit, but it was always way too complicated and
involved for me. Um I played a little Top Secret.
That's another role playing game that was like the espionage
(01:30):
James Bond, D and D. So I played a little
bit of that, but I never got into it man
like other people did. And I think it's because I
was so active, and I was I would always rather
be out riding my bikes, my bike and playing at
the creek near my house and building forts and zip
lines and setting things on fire and putting fireworks and
(01:54):
bottle rockets and model planes and flying them off my roof.
So I was doing stuff like that. I wasn't so
much inside playing D and D or I was early.
I was an early gamer, so I'd be like, screw
dn D. Let's play adventure on Mataria and be a
block with an arrow right exactly. That's the real cutting stuff. Yeah,
So that that was that was my deal. Mine was. UM.
(02:14):
I did all that stuff, like I had a four
in the woods and I had I could make a
pretty good machine gun sound, and um, I did all
that kind of stuff. But I also played D n
D fairly extensively. Several summers like that were just basically spent,
you know, in a friends basement playing Dungeon D. I
think it depends on who your friends, said is, unless
you're the initiator, like you'll just fall in and do
(02:37):
whatever your friends are doing. Um, and here's the deal.
I think this affected it too. I grew up on
a street in the woods with like six houses. I
didn't grow up in one of those big, sprawling neighborhoods
like all my other friends. So they would walk down
the street and play D and D. In the basement,
it was just me and my bro out. Like in
the woods. I would walk across the street for one
(02:57):
group and there was another one where I had arrived
I by distance I was. I was secluded. I was
sequestered out in the in the forest, and I got
made fun of because of that until later on when
all my friends were like, dude, you live on two
acres in the woods. That's rad. Let's have a bonfire exactly,
and we did so. So we both played D and D. Uh,
(03:18):
And we both are not experts in any way, shape
or form. Like from the time I last played D
and D until we started researching for this episode. I
forgot everything basically over those three months. So it was
like a pretty cool trip down memory lane, like going
back and researching that. Yeah, me too, some because I
didn't I don't think I remembered how much I had
(03:40):
played it, And it was a little bit more than
I had remembered because a lot of stuff was like
oh yeah, I remember that, Yeah, I remember that cover,
I remember that box. But there was, like I tell
you exactly, there was a ton of new stuff that
I didn't know that I learned in researching this, Like, um,
like Gary guyas gas oh Man, have a bunch of
people just put the ropes on, put the hoods on
(04:02):
their heads, like, um, Gary Guy GaX. Let's call him
Gary g from now on. He He is the co creator,
along with Dave Arnison, of Dungeons and Dragons UM. And
he started out as a war gaming fanatic, so much
so that he started gen Con at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin,
(04:23):
his hometown, UM, which is this huge gaming convention still um.
But he started out as a war gaming convention. And
that's basically where you rolled dice move little men. It's
like risk. Risk is a war game. It's like that
and Access and Allies are like quintessential war games. It's
(04:43):
a great game. But Guy GaX and and his buddies
were doing this before there was ever any risk, Like
they were making their own boards, they were reenacting battles
or doing alternate universe battles of them. Um. And then
along came Dave Arnison, who I kind of had this
idea for something a little less stilted, a little more
(05:04):
free form UM, and he didn't quite have a conception
of it yet, but Guy GaX did. He was working
on something called chain Mail, and they got together and
that ultimately became kind of the first dry run of
Dungeons and Dragons. Uh, And they liked what they were
doing and they kind of took it from there and
(05:25):
then ultimately made Dungeons and Dragons in nineteen seventy four. Yeah,
I didn't find out a whole lot about UM. About Arnisson,
it seems like Guy gas is always the I guess
because he was the original, like the originator of the idea.
He's always the one that's revered and like, you know, yes,
he was also I get the impression UM a lot
(05:47):
more of the self promoter than Arniston is UM. But yeah,
I mean they were both very much intimately involved in
the creation of this game, right um. Guy gags. Also,
by the way, slidebar says that he is a descendant
of Goliath. Is there a yeah? He well he he
didn't let me rephrase that the interview I saw. He
(06:08):
wasn't like, I'm a descendant of Goliath. Yeah, he wasn't
like that. He was a cool guy, Yeah, he said.
The guy GaX means giant and supposedly, like the family
law is that we are descendants of Goliath. So I
thought that was sort of interesting, more appropriate than descendant
of a biblical giant than to make this fantastical fantasy
game right exactly, you know. Um he And there's actually
(06:31):
like a really neat Wired article on him that includes
a pretty decent amount on artists and too, um called
The Dungeon Master. It's about Gary Guy GaX, who died
in two thousand and eight. Say um. But the two
of them get together, and this is when when things
are really good, and they set up something called TSR,
which is a company called Technical Studies Rules, which sounds
(06:53):
like the most boring company you could ever think of,
But this company is what produced the this what became
the role playing game. Like you said, um, top secret
was the James Bond D and D. Yeah, you didn't say,
top secret was the James Bond role playing game and
(07:13):
D was literally literally become synonymous with role playing games,
and for good reason. Like in nineteen seventy four when
Dungeons Dragons came out, there was nothing in the entire
world that even remotely resembled it. Yeah, it was super unique,
and that's one of the reasons why, you know, people
always say it's like a nerd game, and you know,
you sit in your basement by yourself, and they did
(07:35):
have adventures. You're going by yourself. But they pointed out
in this article it's a very social game because you
would get together with your friends and sit around the
table and you could play it straight and just sort
of play, or you could start acting things out and
doing funny voices and make it more like a dramatic
like portrayal of this game. It was really kind of
(07:55):
up to you. But it may have a nerdy h connotations,
but they're just punch nerds together playing right well. And
if you look at some of the recent ads for
Dungeons and Dragons, um in some of the gamers magazines.
They are still appealing to that, the fact that it's
(08:15):
a social game. They're trying to get people who play
World Warcraft like start playing D and D again. Um
and and they're they're using taglines like, if you're gonna
sit in your basement and pretend you're an elf for
hours on and you might as well do it with
a group of friends, that's a great so. Um. It
has been social from the beginning. And what what guy
(08:36):
GaX and Arniston came up with was essentially a book
of rules that used dice to advance imaginary characters along. So.
And then in seven they released the basic set. That's
the red box. That's that's the one that makes us nostalgic, right.
And then they also simultaneously released Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,
(08:57):
which kind of had stricter rules, it was more eeping
in scope. But they both came out in seventy seven,
that's right. Uh. And then in seventy nine, the the
d M Guide was introduced. And if you play Dungeons
and Dragons in a group, you got to have a
someone running the game, and that is the Dungeon Master.
That is a person that sits behind a little cardboard
(09:19):
screen and hides all of their stories, and they're the
ones who create these basically kind of right the game.
And like some people will spend hours in days and
weeks creating these campaigns in these games for their friends
to bring to life as characters. And it's it was
definitely unique at the time. So you've got all these additions, right,
(09:43):
there's I think ten now they're working on the tenth,
depending on who you ask, right, And with every edition
of Dungeons and Dragons, there was a m like there's
a change. Sometimes they are really big changes. Like they
released the second edition of Advance Dungeons and Dragons and
like it did away with a lot of like the
(10:03):
evil monsters because like d n D had gotten a
bad rap wh we'll talk about later um. And there's
like a kind of role that you had to figure
out how many hit points you lost or how many
hit points were UM inflicted. It was just different. And
so with every addition, it's been different and different and
(10:23):
different um and so you get adherence to different sets,
different versions, uh, which has kind of led to this
weird fracturing in the Dungeon's Dragons community. Apparently. And you
know the grabster at Grabowski, one of the writers of
many of the articles that we've talked about. He's a
bit of a D and D expert, it turns out, Yeah,
(10:45):
and you can go check his stuff out. Agreed. Uh.
He writes extensively on I O nine dot com about
D and D c check out his stuff. He's basically saying, like, Okay,
because a big fractured community of dn D players, everybody
has their own edition that's their favorite, but everybody still
wants to be able to play together. But it's just incompatible.
(11:07):
So what he's saying is Wizards of the Coast, to
people who made um Magic the Gathering and ultimately bought
dn D, they have said, Okay, this fifth edition is
going to bring everything together. We'll see about that. Well,
that's what Grabanowski says. He says, Um, there's no possible
way to literally unify the various editions under a single
(11:27):
rule set. It would be like trying to build a
car that uses parts from a two thousand ten Mustang,
a nineteen fifty packard, and a tractor. So he's incredulous.
But they have it in like open gaming testing right now.
The fifth edition. I don't see what the big deal is.
I think that's one of the cool things about D
and D is that depending on who you play with, uh, like,
find your people, you know, like they might want to
(11:50):
play a certain edition. I know that some players like
to play with the little figurines and some people think
that's an abomination. You should only use your imagination. Some
people go and make up their own campaigns. Some people
stick to campaigns that are in the books. So, like,
I think that's a cool thing about it is there's
something out there for everybody. Unless you're just not into it. Well, yeah,
(12:12):
then there's nothing for you, nothing for me. Um, So
let's talk about how to play. Like, we'll just give
a brief primer and we since we're nostalgic for the
Red Box, which is the basic set, basic rule book
that came out first and seventy um that we're just
gonna go with that. Don't yell at us, but it's
(12:33):
a very basic, good intro to D n D for
all the other people who are listening to this one
who don't know what is going on. This is a
single episode on D n D, and you could have
an entire podcast that's about d n D that you
did for five years. You know, I'll bet there are
and right in let us know, we'll tweet, we'll tweet
about it. Okay. So, like we said, it is a
(12:54):
role playing game. So the basic concept is by the way,
you can't win. There is know, like endpoint. It's all
just about the fun of continuing with these characters you create, right,
The only beginning and and really is the creation of
a new character and the death of that character. And
even still if like that character dies, it sucks depending
(13:15):
on how far along your character was, but you can
always create another one. So you bother me about it,
I think is I was too late, like I would
cheat it and just make up characters. Well that's why
I was never invited back, you know. And so you
were that guy? Huh No, I mean I don't remember
if I was. I just remember not getting it and
being like, well, my guy's good at all this stuff.
(13:36):
I'm gonna go sit someone on fire, all right. So
you create your character, and in the red box and
the basic set, you have these different attributes and abilities
that will come into play as you play the game,
and they are strength of course, it's pretty easy. How
much you can, how much damage you can inflict with
a weapon, Wisdom, how intuitive you are, dexterity, which is
(13:59):
good if you're nimb um. It could help you with
a weapon or getting in that high window on the
second floor, especially like a missile weapon like a bow
and arrow or something. If you have a high tex
you want to pair that with a bow and arrow.
For intelligence, um, how smart they are, how how much
they can learn things as a character, constitution which is
(14:20):
your stamina, and how much stuff you can carry, how
long you can fight. But if you have that bag
of holding, you're all set. Uh. And then charisma, which
is your likability. So uh, if you want to hook
up and make friends or get out of a fight
with some bad character, that's when that's going to come
into play. And all these are determined by rolls of
(14:40):
the diet. Yeah, Like everything we just talked about is
represented by a number UM. And then in addition to
the armored class of the character, which is a number
that represents ay, how easy it is to inflict damage
on that character. Uh. And then the number of hit points,
which is I guess the representation of um basically how
much life you have left to get your health right exactly.
(15:02):
In a video game, that would be your health par exactly. Um.
And you put all these together and you have a
character that, so long as it can stay alive, can
go out and go forth into the D and D
universe and in adventure indefinitely basically. Uh all right. So
there were seven playable characters in the Inn the basic set,
(15:22):
and I think I remember being a cleric, but the
first one is a fighter, and that's what you think
they're They're stronger, and they're better at fighting, and they're
probably not as smart or as uh charismatic as like
another character might be. It depends. You can have high
curuismen like in the D and D um the Basic
sets players Manual, the first character they hook you up
(15:45):
with has high curuisma and high strength. But strength is
the prime requisite for being a fighter. Yeah, okay, so cleric.
I think I was a cleric. Uh. That's sort of
a fighter in a in a wizard, so that they
have good fighting abilities. But they're all so very dexterous
and wise, and you can cast spells, which is very important.
(16:05):
Right with the difference between a cleric and a magic user,
which is the next one, is that a cleric received
spells through meditation, so they have to sit around and
rest sometimes before they can get a new spell. Um.
And they also can turn undead, which means literally turn
the undead the other way. So if you have a
zombie on your trail, you're it's good to have cleric
(16:27):
to say, hey, zombies, turn around zombies. Where they called
zombie zombies is one? Where is another? Undead skeletons. I
didn't play enough. I don't know any of this stuff.
I didn't either until I went back and read the
entire players manual again the other day. So magic user
can do cool things like their balls of lightning and um,
learn other spells, learn new spells without meditation. No, it's
(16:50):
learning from book learning, which means you have to have
the prime requis is a high intelligent score. It's not
a meditative thing, right, it's just from learning books. Uh.
You have the door worf. Of course, what fantasy game
would be complete without it? Four feet tall? Got that beard?
Males and females have a beard. Yeah, and uh, and
just like in like the Lord of the Rings, they're
they're kind of ornery and super strong and have great constitution.
(17:14):
And of course they're good fighters because they're a little short,
mean boogers. Um, you've got the thief, which you would think. Um,
and it took me a long time to figure this
one out. To the thief, why would you want to
have a thief around the person is going to steal
the thief, Well, a thief typically doesn't steal from people
they're adventuring with. Um, but they do know how to
(17:37):
find secret doors, traps, picklocks, picklocks. Uh. Yeah, and so
they have a very high dexterity score. Yeah, but they're
they're also going to turn their back on you in
a battle because it depends they're not great fighters. Okay, right,
you don't want them near the battle. You want them
like kind of off to the side, get out of
the way, and let's get the fighter in there. Maybe
a dwarf or two as well. But yeah, the thief
(17:58):
is just kind of meant to stand back and maybe
be like, yeah, get them over there a second to
them and just cheer along. Uh, you've got halflings. They
are even smaller than the dwarfs. They're only three feet tall,
about sixty pounds, and they're demi humans and um, they're
dexterous and they have a great constitution. They're tough to
hit because they're tiny, and so they're good fighters, the
(18:20):
very spry. Yeah. Um. They're also like dwarves and elves,
capable of sustaining magic attacks. Um, which leads us to elves.
It's another demi human character. And they're a cross between
fighters and magic users. So they have high strength and
high intelligence. And it's not you don't just say with
any of these like, oh I want an elf. So
(18:41):
you roll until you have something with high intelligence in
high strength. You can you're not supposed to when you're
supposed to roll, and come up with your ability scores
first and then figure out what you have based on
those scores. Yeah, And it is interesting. And one thing
I do remember is that it is about the imagination.
And even though these these characters exist as a series
(19:02):
of numbers on a chart, is all it is. Um,
you create them in your mind and that's the fun
part about it. And like, I never started acting things
out like I've seen other people do, which can go
overboard pretty easy. Um. And I guess that was sort
of the precursor to what ended up being LARP. Was
just sitting around the kitchen table doing accents and things,
(19:22):
and some people thought, hey, let's let's go outside and
take these broomsticks and actually do this fight. You got
you got some cardboard. I'm in the move from making
some sorts. Yeah, I'm really an active guy. I think
you know, sitting around this table is no good, right. Um.
So you said that everything is represented numerically, and that's
absolutely true. Um, except there's one thing that that kind
of lends itself to acting, uh or at the very least,
(19:45):
decision making of a character in this alignment. And there's
three kinds of alignment and basic D and D there's lawful,
which is what we would equate with good goods, where
if you have a lawful character, they're they're probably the
hero type. You're gonna put their own skin on the
line in order to save the group. They're certainly not
going to turn and run without the rest of the
(20:06):
group doing the same. Um. Chaotic is the opposite of that.
It's what we would equate with evil. Yeah, they just
sort of look out for themselves forget the group. And
you'd think that would be the worst one, but apparently
the worst is neutral because you can't tell they're just
gonna do whatever is best for them no matter what. Well,
that's neutral is very it's animalistic um where it's basically
(20:29):
just about the survival of of the the individual. And
if you have a neutral person, they might fight with
the group if they feel like the group's gonna win
and just will protect them, or they may just turn
and run with Hey, no hard feelings, they got nothing
against you, But I'm just very instinctual. That's what neutral is.
The alignments there are all manner of like shelter and
(20:51):
weapons and foods and all these different things you can
pick up along the way, uh, and even languages that
if you approach a character and they don't speak your language,
then you can't communicate and you have to take a
different path on your adventure. But everyone can speak at
least two uh universal And then alignment tongue. Alignment tongue
allows you to speak to other characters in that same
(21:13):
alignment without the other people knowing what's being said, and
it's your private little conversation exactly. So, if if both
of us were chaotic magic users, right Chuck, yes, and
there was a somebody playing and there was a fighter
who was lawful, we could say, hey, let's put a
charm spell um on this guy and make them do
our bidding. Um. And so the player is going to
(21:34):
know what we're doing, but the character wouldn't. Yeah, And
the person responsible for keeping all this separate you mentioned earlier,
the dungeon master, the head nerd Right, the dungeon master
is in charge of saying things like you wouldn't know
that when the fighter says, I want to kill um
the two magic users who are about to use a
(21:54):
charm on me, the dungeon master would say, your character
doesn't know that because they just spoke in their alignment
tongue and boy. Dungeon master is a specific kind of person.
It takes a lot of work, and you can get
as involved as you want to. But no matter which
way you slice it, if you're the d M, you're
gonna be putting in some time coming up with these things,
even stories, even before the beginning, even before you sit down,
(22:16):
and it's Uh. I'd be curious to find some correlation
between people that were dungeon masters when they were like
twelve in the late seventies and early eighties and what
they ended up doing with their life. Yeah, it would
be an interesting study because they I would say that
a lot of them are probably running companies and running
(22:37):
the show wherever they are, because it takes a great
deal of initiative and patience and like stamina and creativity
and all these things to be a great dungeon master,
plus the sense of justice as well. You have to
be fair. Oh yeah, I'm sure it doesn't always sit
well with the group. Um and yeah, like you were saying,
like they it does take creativity. It takes also a
total and utter awareness of the game. Like while everybody
(23:00):
just creating their players, the d M has to show
up to that very first game having read the player's manual,
having read the Dungeon Master's Guide, understanding all the rules,
and then if you're using a game module, which you
know TSR published tons of games um, which essentially are
maps of an area that the dungeon master has access to, uh,
(23:21):
and then running the whole game as a whole, like
understanding what players can do, what players can't do. Um,
you have to understand how much damage a monster can inflict.
Let's give an example, like the dungeons Masters's Guide is intimidating. Yeah,
so I don't know how these kids at twelve, we're
sitting down and figuring this stuff out well, so they
a lot of the appearance of omniscience, and any dungeon
(23:44):
master kind of cultivates this this idea that they are
all knowing. But like you said, they're hiding behind a
cardboard screen, and behind that screen is like the dungeon
Master's guy, the game module, which has everything clearly marked
and all that. They have everything at their disposal, but
there's still a revered person, typically the dungeon Master. They're omniscient.
(24:05):
Because I don't know how many twelve year olds have
the initiative to take this on. There was I think
it's about right. It's probably about one out of every
ten kids as the initiative to beat the dungeon Master,
and the rest just wanted to be characters. So that
was that was a big problem with the game, was
like sometimes you couldn't find somebody to the DM because
there was a lot of work. So let's give an
(24:25):
example of of play, if you'll indulge me. Okay, So, okay,
we got a group of characters around a campaign in
a dungeon and by the way, you know the um
the reason why it became Dungeons and Dragons, um why
they chose dungeons was because they didn't want players being
able to just kind of wander all over the place.
They wanted to kind of keep them together in small,
(24:46):
confined spaces and a dungeon or a cave system or
something like that. It was a pretty good way to
keep everybody. To get catacombs. Man, it's all about the catacombs.
So you're your your group of characters are on a campaign,
the dungeon, and the d M might say something like
this is in the middle of the game. The d
M is in charge of telling you what's going on
where you are, describing your environment. So they he or
she may say, you're in a long dark cord, or
(25:08):
you see a faint light at one end. To your
right is a ten ft by ten ft door. It
is locked. Do you want to try to pick the
lock or continue down the cord or towards the toward
the light. And so the players decide to have the
thief pick the lock, right, because that's what you do.
Now here's what I don't get and I don't know
if you know this is it? Do you get together
(25:29):
as a group and decide and like take a vote
or is it someone's turn? To like say no, it's
my turn, and I make the thief go. It depends.
So first of all, before on a campaign, you have
a caller, and that's the person who speaks to the
d M for the group. But the caller is also
in charge of saying, hey, what do you guys want
to do and then saying that to the d M. Okay,
(25:50):
so they're the just the voice of the group, right.
They don't make any decisions. The groups supposed to decide
as a whole um, and the d ms are sitting
there going little do they know exactly? Uh? And then
there are turns as well, especially in combat. Now, if
like you have three fighters and a thief and there's
suddenly battling um um uh minotaur um, the thief is
(26:14):
gonna be like I'm standing over here, and the d
M will leave them out of the turns and then
will be the thief in the minotaur, and or the
one fighter in the minotaur and the next fighter in
the minutear. But blah blah blah, I always just keep
going on like that. Okay, that makes sense alright, So
back to our little story. The door is locked. Do
you want to pick the lock? We decide let's send
our thief in to pick the lock. Okay, So so
(26:35):
what happens in the d M, Well, they gotta roll
the dice and that's how you figure out if things work.
So if you're a thief, that means you're really good
at picking locks. So let's say it's a twenty sided
die and all you gotta do is roll like a
four or higher to successfully pick it. So that just
means your chances are really good that you'll be able
to pick the lock. If you don't have a thief,
(26:56):
you can send your fighter in to pick the lock,
but you may have to roll like a sixty or higher.
You would think so, but fighters can't pick locks at all,
not at all, Okay, they just like bang on the door.
So only certain characters can, like you can't even try
if they if they don't have that I believe someone
basic D and D like only thieves are definitely not fighters.
(27:17):
So if you don't have a thief in your campaign,
the d M wouldn't even say do you want to
pick the lock? They may say do you want to
try to bust the door down? But the d M
might also know in the game module it's unbust downable.
It can only be picked. So so um it is
because you're rolling for everything and you were saying they
(27:38):
rolled to find out the thief was successful, and that
that would be based on that low number, like if
you just need to roll a four. That's in relation
to the dexterity score, because it takes high dexterity to
pick a lock. To the higher dexterity score, the lower
you have to roll, which gives you, on a twenty
side of die, a lot more of a chance that
you're going to be successful at picking the lock. It's
all rolling of the dice and the rumbers. So in
(28:01):
this case, the d M knows that on the other
side of that door is the gelatinous cube, and that
is bad news if you're playing D and D, which
if you're an experienced dn D player, that ten ft
by ten ft door probably would have given it away
because that's the exact dimensions of a gelatinous cube, which
is evolved to move through the doors of a dungeon.
(28:24):
I would be dead so soon. So what happens the
door opens, there's the gelatinous cube boom, and then you
got to do battle. And when you're doing battle. You
do it again by rolling dice and you get these hits.
You have the hit points that we referenced earlier. And
let's say you gotta roll all right, these two four
sided dice. Um, you gotta roll each one once and
that those will be the the licks that the gins
(28:46):
gelatinous cube puts on you. And if it totals seven
or higher than you're dead. Yeah, exactly. And if you
had depending on your hit points, if you have seven
hit points, yeah, you'd be dead. So that I mean,
that's generally the game. And you can get experience points,
which are huge, which is this it's interesting to know
experience points. That's what you do to like grow as
(29:07):
a character, to get more hit points, to become more invincible,
more to kill a monster and you'll get experience points,
but you get way more experience points for getting treasure.
And the authors of the Basic D and D rule
books point out like this is we want you to
use your head, right, how do you get around confrontation
(29:28):
to go find the loot? Right, which, if you battle
a monster you deserve something, sure, but the point isn't killing.
The point is is using your head to get around
problems as well. And that's why you get more for treasure. Yeah,
we'll look at there. I had a thing I think
we made it up because I looked it up and
I couldn't find it called a bag of plenty, not
(29:49):
a bag of holding. The bag of holding was you
could put like anything large in it and still be
able to carry it. Like I found like all this food,
and I normally wouldn't be able to carry it. But
your bag of holding little all that and there? Right?
Did you have to keey stir it? I don't know
what that means? Like up the butt? Yeah, you're the
first person who's ever said up the butt when somebody said,
(30:10):
keyst what he's supposed to say. Did you just know
a Keyston would say up the button? Yeah? All right,
Um no, I wouldn't that key stir it. But I
had something called a bag of plenty, and you guys
made that up or I don't remember, man, because I
didn't find it anywhere. The only thing I found was
something called a bag of plenty plus one in Balder's Gate,
(30:31):
which was a video game I had played once. But
I think those Balder's Gate related to D and D somehow,
like one of the variations so I didn't know that,
but well, maybe what we played was with a bag
of Plenty, which is it would double whatever you put
in it. So if you have like twenty gold coins,
you put in your bag of Plenty and you have,
you know, double that amount. But I think we might
(30:52):
have made that up because I can't verify that anywhere.
I wonder how many, um how you just inadvertently admitted
to playing Baller's Gate, and wonder how many people are
just like, well, his credibilities out the window. I think
people enjoyed that. No, I don't know, maybe if I
vaguely remember it too. It was one of those games
that I played on like PS two for three months
(31:13):
until I completed it and then I was done with it.
You know. So if if any of that even slightly
piqued your interest, I would strongly recommend going and researching
and maybe trying out. There's usually, uh, if you go
on meetup dot com, you can find him probably just
about any even semi major city of D and D group,
(31:37):
And apparently Wednesdays are typically days at like comic book
shops and gaming shops and stuff like that that have
D and D groups where it's just kind of like, uh,
anybody who wants to come can can come by and
try their hand in it. I think they're very open community. Yeah,
well it depends. Oh sure, Like if you tried to
come in and like just PLoP down and like, hey,
(31:58):
I want to join this game that you guys have
been playing for seven years, and they wouldn't like me,
I'd be like, oh, I got a bag of plenty,
That's why they'd be like Balther's gate Um. I did
try last night to play the online version because I thought,
you know what, I'm gonna give it a whirl. I
downloaded this Mac beta version that was like eight gigs.
(32:21):
It took a couple of hours to download, and then
there was some errandloading and it wouldn't work. I was like,
all right, well that sucks. Let me go get my
PC laptop, because you know me, I'm rich. I have
like eight different kinds of laptops. I know they're like
falling out of your pocket. So I went to my
PC laptop and tried to sign up and download the
PC version, and it wouldn't recognize me. It wouldn't let
(32:43):
me because I'd already signed up with that name, and
so it was like midnight, and I said, screw this,
but I think I might try and play the online
version just to see what it's like. It's called D
d O. Yeah, we're not getting into that. It's in
a whole other thing. But um, there's a good article
by John that's Strickland on Dungeons and Dragons online that
you can find on how stuff works. So um, so
(33:06):
I said, go check it out. And if not, if
it didn't really pique your interest at the very least,
I imagine you would be interested to know that for many,
many years there were a lot of people with a
lot of voices who considered Dungeons and Dragons to be
thoroughly satanic. Yeah, and uh, it didn't help that what
(33:28):
was the year that the guy seventy nine, James Egbert,
James Dallas Egbert the third he went by Dallas. Yeah,
this was a kid at Michigan State University and he
went missing, and they the story out and the one
that was later disproven, but the one that really got
around in the news was that he disappeared into the
(33:50):
tunnel system underneath the school playing D and D and
died doing so. Yeah, he was a sixteen year old
by the way computer prodigy in seventy nine, so there's
like not such a thing as computer prodigies. Then he's
like one of the first. He's at Michigan State and
he actually did go in the steam tunnels and he
went to go kill himself to take an overdose on barbituous. Yeah,
but it didn't work, and he came to in the
(34:11):
steam tunnels. Yeah. And it had nothing to do with
dungeons and dragons, but it was announced so in the news,
and that's sort of what people remembered at the time,
and they used that as fuel, of course, to fuel
the fire of this is an evil game, satanic. They
made a movie with Tom Hanks, man, do you remember
seeing that when it first came out as a TV movie? Yeah,
And and I guess you know, it's just sort of
(34:33):
loosely told of slightly fictionalized version of James Egbert's uh
you know, the sensationalized version of the real version. Tom
Hanks plays the guy who gets so wrapped up in
his character that he um, he just has a break
with reality. He disappears because they find him again, but
he still thinks that he's uh Pardue the Cleric, and
(34:53):
I call him Pardue the cleric who lives with his
parents now because they take him back home and he's
just some crazy dude. Yeah. Um, I don't think any
there was any better reaction to Dungeons and Dragons than
Dark Dungeons by Chick Publications. So Chick Publications make religious
tracks on everything about um. They're extremely fundamentalist christian um.
(35:17):
And they have tracks on everything from how the new
Jesuit Pope is in league with the devil to how
if you are a Mason you are become possessed by
a heathen god. Um. And they're basically like these easy
to read comic books you're not familiar I might have
if I saw one, I might recognize it. So and
then they publish them and they sell them so you
(35:39):
can go hand them out and proselytize the people on
the streets like an ice breaker basically. But Chick Publications
came up with the not the creme de la creme
of anti D and D material propaganda. Yes, it's called
Dark Dungeons and it's a comic strip about a girl
who becomes who starts playing D and D and then
(35:59):
as were routed into a real life witchcraft COVID by
the Dungeon Master, because Dungeons and Dragons is just this
front for Satanists to like find the best of the
best to come do the real thing. And one girl
who becomes so wrapped up in her character. Once her
character dized, she goes and hangs herself in her room.
That sounds familiar. I might have been forced to read
that at some point. Check it out. And as a
matter of fact, I wrote a blog post on these
(36:22):
and some other ones about how it's called back when
people thought Dungeons and Dragons was satanic k's on our
site stuff you should Know dot com and this it was.
It's really interesting, like there was this period that coincided
with that whole satanic ritual abuse scare. Yeah, with the
heavy metal music. Yeah, that got Judics, priests on Landed
(36:43):
the West, Memphis three in prison. Um, it was a
real thing. And yes, and Dungeons and Dragons was, if
not the originator of this huge part of it. It
was in the center of it for a long time.
But it came out because thanks in part to the
um Doge's and Dragons cartoon. Yeah, I had a cartoon.
They had a movie which wasn't very good. Um, I'm
(37:06):
surprised I haven't redone that movie. Yeah, so I bet
they will at some point. I wrote a Time magazine
article that was saying, like, why is Dungeons and Dragons
not like a huge franchise. I didn't really get to
the bottom of They kind of settled on, well, it's
made a billion dollars for its owners. Um, it's in
(37:26):
I think a dozen languages. Um. I think twenty million
people have played it, so it does have a huge following.
But they were saying like, it's not the Lord of
the Rings and why not? And I think possibly because
it's just totally open ended, and it's that's what I think.
It's the individual Lord of the Rings. You go read
and there's a story and it happens, and yeah, you're
(37:47):
kind of imagining it, but you're just imagining what Tolkien
has explained to you. And guy gangs by the way,
I thought Tolkien sucked. Yeah he was in a conan sure,
So um, not O'Brien the barbarian. So Um. With Tolkien,
you're told with D and D like you man, you're
(38:07):
totally using your imagination. And even more than that, something
as strange as a group imagination, a group of people
using their imaginations together and kind of the interlocks like
that's high level stuff. Well, it is high level. And
that's exactly why a movie failed and probably wouldn't not succeed,
is because for a D and D movie to work,
you have to satisfy the D and D fans and
(38:29):
no matter who for a movie, you have to create
some hero character and that's not going to satisfy all
D indeed people, no matter who you create and what
story you create, they're gonna be D and D fans
that I think. Now, my what, my guy was way
better than this jump right exactly, And you call that
a white dragon. White Dragon would never do that because
(38:50):
it lived in my imagination as this, So I agree.
I don't think it will ever happen. It's a great success.
Although the cartoon was pretty well received. I think it is.
So it's a classic. Yeah, but that's that's different. It's
it was nominated for Greatest Cartoon Shows of All Time
nineteen know by listeners. I I put a list up
(39:12):
and said if anybody have any other nominees, and on
our website people nominated More and Dungeons and Dragons was one,
so it's up there. I think Scooby Doo one. Oh,
of course duck Tails was a hard contender. Yeah, I've
never watched that. I was surprised. Uh, let's see, you
got anything else. No, I mean there are dozens of
offshoots in different games and different modules, and like we
(39:34):
only covered a very small part of it. Uh, the
universe is vast. The D and D universe is vast.
It is Go forth and check it out, you say, we, Uh,
take up those glasses and check it out. And if
you if you want to learn more about Dungeons and Dragons,
type those words into the search part how stuff works
dot Com and it will bring up some cool stuff. Oh.
(39:55):
By the way, it has sort of been known as
like a guy's thing, but there's a rabid female community
with D and D and I saw I watched the
documentary last night on Dungeons and Dragons. It was pretty good. Um,
the Dungeons and Dragons experience. I think you know, there's
a there's like a pretty serious other documentary that's being
(40:15):
got kickstarted. Really that's in it's in production right now. Yeah,
this one was okay, it wasn't great, but it did
interview a female, a woman, and she was like, yeah,
you know, I think a lot of girls they see
it as a guy thing and the guy nerds, so
they're reluctant to get into it. But the girls that
I know that I have gotten into it have have
found that it. You know, it's really not like a
(40:36):
guy sing after all. They have just as much fun
and um, it looks I don't know, it's a fun community.
It is funny. They showed them playing the at one point,
and they definitely get like the dungeon Master is just
sort of going on and on and the players will
say things in character like I'm not sure what to
do after such a long story and stuff like that,
and uh, they're taking like barbed shots in characters. Pretty funny.
(41:00):
That's cool. Yeah, that's the way to do it, I guess.
So actually, however, you and your group of friends want
to do it and have fun doing it, that's the
way to do it. Yeah, unless it veeers towards satanism
and like real, but it doesn't. That was all made up.
I know. Uh, if you want to learn more, didn't
I already say this thing? Yeah I don't know, Okay,
(41:20):
so I said search part, which means it's time for
message break. And now it's a listener mail, right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this D and D listener mail for
D and D podcast. That's a really clumsy title. How
amazing it is. This is pretty cool. Actually, hey guys,
a big fan of the podcast. In the TV show,
(41:42):
I worked for the Ford Motor Company at the Kentucky
Truck plant in Louisville, and I'm an assembly line worker
and you can imagine my job gets pretty monotonous. I
put on passenger side doors on trucks night, on specific trucks.
He does. He can't just throw any door under a
new truck. No, it's all very specific. But if you
own afford super duty and you open your passenger raw
(42:03):
or you can thank this dude for it. That's true.
You can thank Jeremy Elmore. Um So, anyway, he's been
listening for a little while and he's listened to all
but five of the shows, and uh, he's getting on
his wife's nerves. We hear this a lot when one
spouse is sort of annoyed that doesn't listen about the
other one getting smart. And I think everyone just needs
to start, you know, taking care of business in the household.
(42:25):
What what is that mean? Get the other spouse on board,
get them listening. That way you can circumvent this defense
mechanism of feeling threatened. So that's what his wife does.
She's like, yeah, yeah, I know what you learned from
Chuck and Josh. Look just listen. So he goes on
to say, the great thing about the show is you
two are very relatable to me, a couple of years
younger than Josh. So I love hearing about your childhood
(42:46):
stories from g I Joe, adolescent chocolating and Dungeon and Dragons,
going to panic shows, watching Seinfeld, and now marriage. I
feel like I've grown up with you guys. So I
want to send you something. My father is where it
gets good is Larry Elmore. He's a freelance artist who
used to paint for TSR and D and D. Yeah.
So like the blog post that you used, that was
(43:09):
his father's artwork. Yeah, the blog post. I wrote a
blog post on it right on DNDB and S can Yeah,
and that was like, just by chance, this dude's father.
His name is Larry Elmore. Like I said, he um,
Dragon con and D and D have been mentioned on
your podcast before and it made me want to send
you something. So he has a twenty years art of
Art book I can't wait to get. I can't either.
(43:29):
It came out a decade ago, but it's still really
cool and I want you both to have one. He's
a new one coming out in August as well, so
consider this a plug. I guess um. He has already
personalized them for me for you guys, and I need
to know how to get them to you. Is very cool,
he asked me. This is even cooler because he asked
who they were for. He explained it to Pops and
now he is listening to the show in his studio
(43:52):
while he's that illustrating. So by the time this comes out,
hopefully Larry Elmore is listening to the podcast about D
and D. What's Up Larry Elmore? So all that he
was like one of the first or maybe the first
artist early on when they did this. He's definitely an
early one because the illustration that I used from the
Night three edition of the Basic set Um, so he
(44:15):
would have Yeah, that's pretty early. Well. I went to
his website and looked at his art and like all
those iconic images that I remember we're him. That's really
I can't wait to get It's very cool. So thank
you Jeremy Elmore in Louisville and Thanky Larry and uh
that was it. Yeah, thanks to you both. Um, if
you want to send us something, especially if your dad
is um an indvertent idol of Chucks in mind agreed, Um,
(44:38):
we want to hear from you, So you can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com. And then why not just go see
if we're sitting in our home on the web, on
the couch, maybe watch a little TV. That home is
(44:58):
called Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
Works dot com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know
is brought to you by Jack Threads dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Truck Bryant. I'm just a I'm just
a simple cleric mind in my way. Are you down
the Primrose Path? I was gonna ask you what what
you were? Got my staff, got my sword? Yep, that
(00:23):
you would be well outfitted man, ready to battles some nerds?
So have you have you played before? Okay, this is
about dungeons and dragons, and I think that is a
good move. Is two things one caveat if you're a
big D and D person. We're not gonna get everything right.
(00:47):
We'll get what we what we can write, obviously, but
when it's not gonna be as comprehensive as you want,
I'm going to go over the basic indition and too,
I think we should both relate our own experience. So
people just knew I played a little little bit because
this is right in my wheelhouse. Dude, I was. I'm
really surprised that you're community. Let you play the Baptist community.
(01:08):
Uh yeah, I didn't hear it talked about much in church,
but um, in school, there were some of my friends
started to play, and I played. I started to a
little bit, but it was always way too complicated and
involved for me. Um I played a little Top Secret.
That's another role playing game that was like the espionage
(01:30):
James Bond, D and D. So I played a little
bit of that, but I never got into it man
like other people did. And I think it's because I
was so active, and I was I would always rather
be out riding my bikes, my bike and playing at
the creek near my house and building forts and zip
lines and setting things on fire and putting fireworks and
(01:54):
bottle rockets and model planes and flying them off my roof.
So I was doing stuff like that. I wasn't so
much inside playing D and D or I was early.
I was an early gamer, so I'd be like, screw
dn D. Let's play adventure on Mataria and be a
block with an arrow right exactly. That's the real cutting stuff. Yeah,
So that that was that was my deal. Mine was. UM.
(02:14):
I did all that stuff, like I had a four
in the woods and I had I could make a
pretty good machine gun sound, and um, I did all
that kind of stuff. But I also played D n
D fairly extensively. Several summers like that were just basically spent,
you know, in a friends basement playing Dungeon D. I
think it depends on who your friends, said is, unless
you're the initiator, like you'll just fall in and do
(02:37):
whatever your friends are doing. Um, and here's the deal.
I think this affected it too. I grew up on
a street in the woods with like six houses. I
didn't grow up in one of those big, sprawling neighborhoods
like all my other friends. So they would walk down
the street and play D and D. In the basement,
it was just me and my bro out. Like in
the woods. I would walk across the street for one
(02:57):
group and there was another one where I had arrived
I by distance I was. I was secluded. I was
sequestered out in the in the forest, and I got
made fun of because of that until later on when
all my friends were like, dude, you live on two
acres in the woods. That's rad. Let's have a bonfire exactly,
and we did so. So we both played D and D. Uh,
(03:18):
And we both are not experts in any way, shape
or form. Like from the time I last played D
and D until we started researching for this episode. I
forgot everything basically over those three months. So it was
like a pretty cool trip down memory lane, like going
back and researching that. Yeah, me too, some because I
didn't I don't think I remembered how much I had
(03:40):
played it, And it was a little bit more than
I had remembered because a lot of stuff was like
oh yeah, I remember that, Yeah, I remember that cover,
I remember that box. But there was, like I tell
you exactly, there was a ton of new stuff that
I didn't know that I learned in researching this, Like, um,
like Gary guyas gas oh Man, have a bunch of
people just put the ropes on, put the hoods on
(04:02):
their heads, like, um, Gary Guy GaX. Let's call him
Gary g from now on. He He is the co creator,
along with Dave Arnison, of Dungeons and Dragons UM. And
he started out as a war gaming fanatic, so much
so that he started gen Con at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin,
(04:23):
his hometown, UM, which is this huge gaming convention still um.
But he started out as a war gaming convention. And
that's basically where you rolled dice move little men. It's
like risk. Risk is a war game. It's like that
and Access and Allies are like quintessential war games. It's
(04:43):
a great game. But Guy GaX and and his buddies
were doing this before there was ever any risk, Like
they were making their own boards, they were reenacting battles
or doing alternate universe battles of them. Um. And then
along came Dave Arnison, who I kind of had this
idea for something a little less stilted, a little more
(05:04):
free form UM, and he didn't quite have a conception
of it yet, but Guy GaX did. He was working
on something called chain Mail, and they got together and
that ultimately became kind of the first dry run of
Dungeons and Dragons. Uh, And they liked what they were
doing and they kind of took it from there and
(05:25):
then ultimately made Dungeons and Dragons in nineteen seventy four. Yeah,
I didn't find out a whole lot about UM. About Arnisson,
it seems like Guy gas is always the I guess
because he was the original, like the originator of the idea.
He's always the one that's revered and like, you know, yes,
he was also I get the impression UM a lot
(05:47):
more of the self promoter than Arniston is UM. But yeah,
I mean they were both very much intimately involved in
the creation of this game, right um. Guy gags. Also,
by the way, slidebar says that he is a descendant
of Goliath. Is there a yeah? He well he he
didn't let me rephrase that the interview I saw. He
(06:08):
wasn't like, I'm a descendant of Goliath. Yeah, he wasn't
like that. He was a cool guy, Yeah, he said.
The guy GaX means giant and supposedly, like the family
law is that we are descendants of Goliath. So I
thought that was sort of interesting, more appropriate than descendant
of a biblical giant than to make this fantastical fantasy
game right exactly, you know. Um he And there's actually
(06:31):
like a really neat Wired article on him that includes
a pretty decent amount on artists and too, um called
The Dungeon Master. It's about Gary Guy GaX, who died
in two thousand and eight. Say um. But the two
of them get together, and this is when when things
are really good, and they set up something called TSR,
which is a company called Technical Studies Rules, which sounds
(06:53):
like the most boring company you could ever think of,
But this company is what produced the this what became
the role playing game. Like you said, um, top secret
was the James Bond D and D. Yeah, you didn't say,
top secret was the James Bond role playing game and
(07:13):
D was literally literally become synonymous with role playing games,
and for good reason. Like in nineteen seventy four when
Dungeons Dragons came out, there was nothing in the entire
world that even remotely resembled it. Yeah, it was super unique,
and that's one of the reasons why, you know, people
always say it's like a nerd game, and you know,
you sit in your basement by yourself, and they did
(07:35):
have adventures. You're going by yourself. But they pointed out
in this article it's a very social game because you
would get together with your friends and sit around the
table and you could play it straight and just sort
of play, or you could start acting things out and
doing funny voices and make it more like a dramatic
like portrayal of this game. It was really kind of
(07:55):
up to you. But it may have a nerdy h connotations,
but they're just punch nerds together playing right well. And
if you look at some of the recent ads for
Dungeons and Dragons, um in some of the gamers magazines.
They are still appealing to that, the fact that it's
(08:15):
a social game. They're trying to get people who play
World Warcraft like start playing D and D again. Um
and and they're they're using taglines like, if you're gonna
sit in your basement and pretend you're an elf for
hours on and you might as well do it with
a group of friends, that's a great so. Um. It
has been social from the beginning. And what what guy
(08:36):
GaX and Arniston came up with was essentially a book
of rules that used dice to advance imaginary characters along. So.
And then in seven they released the basic set. That's
the red box. That's that's the one that makes us nostalgic, right.
And then they also simultaneously released Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,
(08:57):
which kind of had stricter rules, it was more eeping
in scope. But they both came out in seventy seven,
that's right. Uh. And then in seventy nine, the the
d M Guide was introduced. And if you play Dungeons
and Dragons in a group, you got to have a
someone running the game, and that is the Dungeon Master.
That is a person that sits behind a little cardboard
(09:19):
screen and hides all of their stories, and they're the
ones who create these basically kind of right the game.
And like some people will spend hours in days and
weeks creating these campaigns in these games for their friends
to bring to life as characters. And it's it was
definitely unique at the time. So you've got all these additions, right,
(09:43):
there's I think ten now they're working on the tenth,
depending on who you ask, right, And with every edition
of Dungeons and Dragons, there was a m like there's
a change. Sometimes they are really big changes. Like they
released the second edition of Advance Dungeons and Dragons and
like it did away with a lot of like the
(10:03):
evil monsters because like d n D had gotten a
bad rap wh we'll talk about later um. And there's
like a kind of role that you had to figure
out how many hit points you lost or how many
hit points were UM inflicted. It was just different. And
so with every addition, it's been different and different and
(10:23):
different um and so you get adherence to different sets,
different versions, uh, which has kind of led to this
weird fracturing in the Dungeon's Dragons community. Apparently. And you
know the grabster at Grabowski, one of the writers of
many of the articles that we've talked about. He's a
bit of a D and D expert, it turns out, Yeah,
(10:45):
and you can go check his stuff out. Agreed. Uh.
He writes extensively on I O nine dot com about
D and D c check out his stuff. He's basically saying, like, Okay,
because a big fractured community of dn D players, everybody
has their own edition that's their favorite, but everybody still
wants to be able to play together. But it's just incompatible.
(11:07):
So what he's saying is Wizards of the Coast, to
people who made um Magic the Gathering and ultimately bought
dn D, they have said, Okay, this fifth edition is
going to bring everything together. We'll see about that. Well,
that's what Grabanowski says. He says, Um, there's no possible
way to literally unify the various editions under a single
(11:27):
rule set. It would be like trying to build a
car that uses parts from a two thousand ten Mustang,
a nineteen fifty packard, and a tractor. So he's incredulous.
But they have it in like open gaming testing right now.
The fifth edition. I don't see what the big deal is.
I think that's one of the cool things about D
and D is that depending on who you play with, uh, like,
find your people, you know, like they might want to
(11:50):
play a certain edition. I know that some players like
to play with the little figurines and some people think
that's an abomination. You should only use your imagination. Some
people go and make up their own campaigns. Some people
stick to campaigns that are in the books. So, like,
I think that's a cool thing about it is there's
something out there for everybody. Unless you're just not into it. Well, yeah,
(12:12):
then there's nothing for you, nothing for me. Um, So
let's talk about how to play. Like, we'll just give
a brief primer and we since we're nostalgic for the
Red Box, which is the basic set, basic rule book
that came out first and seventy um that we're just
gonna go with that. Don't yell at us, but it's
(12:33):
a very basic, good intro to D n D for
all the other people who are listening to this one
who don't know what is going on. This is a
single episode on D n D, and you could have
an entire podcast that's about d n D that you
did for five years. You know, I'll bet there are
and right in let us know, we'll tweet, we'll tweet
about it. Okay. So, like we said, it is a
(12:54):
role playing game. So the basic concept is by the way,
you can't win. There is know, like endpoint. It's all
just about the fun of continuing with these characters you create, right,
The only beginning and and really is the creation of
a new character and the death of that character. And
even still if like that character dies, it sucks depending
(13:15):
on how far along your character was, but you can
always create another one. So you bother me about it,
I think is I was too late, like I would
cheat it and just make up characters. Well that's why
I was never invited back, you know. And so you
were that guy? Huh No, I mean I don't remember
if I was. I just remember not getting it and
being like, well, my guy's good at all this stuff.
(13:36):
I'm gonna go sit someone on fire, all right. So
you create your character, and in the red box and
the basic set, you have these different attributes and abilities
that will come into play as you play the game,
and they are strength of course, it's pretty easy. How
much you can, how much damage you can inflict with
a weapon, Wisdom, how intuitive you are, dexterity, which is
(13:59):
good if you're nimb um. It could help you with
a weapon or getting in that high window on the
second floor, especially like a missile weapon like a bow
and arrow or something. If you have a high tex
you want to pair that with a bow and arrow.
For intelligence, um, how smart they are, how how much
they can learn things as a character, constitution which is
(14:20):
your stamina, and how much stuff you can carry, how
long you can fight. But if you have that bag
of holding, you're all set. Uh. And then charisma, which
is your likability. So uh, if you want to hook
up and make friends or get out of a fight
with some bad character, that's when that's going to come
into play. And all these are determined by rolls of
(14:40):
the diet. Yeah, Like everything we just talked about is
represented by a number UM. And then in addition to
the armored class of the character, which is a number
that represents ay, how easy it is to inflict damage
on that character. Uh. And then the number of hit points,
which is I guess the representation of um basically how
much life you have left to get your health right exactly.
(15:02):
In a video game, that would be your health par exactly. Um.
And you put all these together and you have a
character that, so long as it can stay alive, can
go out and go forth into the D and D
universe and in adventure indefinitely basically. Uh all right. So
there were seven playable characters in the Inn the basic set,
(15:22):
and I think I remember being a cleric, but the
first one is a fighter, and that's what you think
they're They're stronger, and they're better at fighting, and they're
probably not as smart or as uh charismatic as like
another character might be. It depends. You can have high
curuismen like in the D and D um the Basic
sets players Manual, the first character they hook you up
(15:45):
with has high curuisma and high strength. But strength is
the prime requisite for being a fighter. Yeah, okay, so cleric.
I think I was a cleric. Uh. That's sort of
a fighter in a in a wizard, so that they
have good fighting abilities. But they're all so very dexterous
and wise, and you can cast spells, which is very important.
(16:05):
Right with the difference between a cleric and a magic user,
which is the next one, is that a cleric received
spells through meditation, so they have to sit around and
rest sometimes before they can get a new spell. Um.
And they also can turn undead, which means literally turn
the undead the other way. So if you have a
zombie on your trail, you're it's good to have cleric
(16:27):
to say, hey, zombies, turn around zombies. Where they called
zombie zombies is one? Where is another? Undead skeletons. I
didn't play enough. I don't know any of this stuff.
I didn't either until I went back and read the
entire players manual again the other day. So magic user
can do cool things like their balls of lightning and um,
learn other spells, learn new spells without meditation. No, it's
(16:50):
learning from book learning, which means you have to have
the prime requis is a high intelligent score. It's not
a meditative thing, right, it's just from learning books. Uh.
You have the door worf. Of course, what fantasy game
would be complete without it? Four feet tall? Got that beard?
Males and females have a beard. Yeah, and uh, and
just like in like the Lord of the Rings, they're
they're kind of ornery and super strong and have great constitution.
(17:14):
And of course they're good fighters because they're a little short,
mean boogers. Um, you've got the thief, which you would think. Um,
and it took me a long time to figure this
one out. To the thief, why would you want to
have a thief around the person is going to steal
the thief, Well, a thief typically doesn't steal from people
they're adventuring with. Um, but they do know how to
(17:37):
find secret doors, traps, picklocks, picklocks. Uh. Yeah, and so
they have a very high dexterity score. Yeah, but they're
they're also going to turn their back on you in
a battle because it depends they're not great fighters. Okay, right,
you don't want them near the battle. You want them
like kind of off to the side, get out of
the way, and let's get the fighter in there. Maybe
a dwarf or two as well. But yeah, the thief
(17:58):
is just kind of meant to stand back and maybe
be like, yeah, get them over there a second to
them and just cheer along. Uh, you've got halflings. They
are even smaller than the dwarfs. They're only three feet tall,
about sixty pounds, and they're demi humans and um, they're
dexterous and they have a great constitution. They're tough to
hit because they're tiny, and so they're good fighters, the
(18:20):
very spry. Yeah. Um. They're also like dwarves and elves,
capable of sustaining magic attacks. Um, which leads us to elves.
It's another demi human character. And they're a cross between
fighters and magic users. So they have high strength and
high intelligence. And it's not you don't just say with
any of these like, oh I want an elf. So
(18:41):
you roll until you have something with high intelligence in
high strength. You can you're not supposed to when you're
supposed to roll, and come up with your ability scores
first and then figure out what you have based on
those scores. Yeah, And it is interesting. And one thing
I do remember is that it is about the imagination.
And even though these these characters exist as a series
(19:02):
of numbers on a chart, is all it is. Um,
you create them in your mind and that's the fun
part about it. And like, I never started acting things
out like I've seen other people do, which can go
overboard pretty easy. Um. And I guess that was sort
of the precursor to what ended up being LARP. Was
just sitting around the kitchen table doing accents and things,
(19:22):
and some people thought, hey, let's let's go outside and
take these broomsticks and actually do this fight. You got
you got some cardboard. I'm in the move from making
some sorts. Yeah, I'm really an active guy. I think
you know, sitting around this table is no good, right. Um.
So you said that everything is represented numerically, and that's
absolutely true. Um, except there's one thing that that kind
of lends itself to acting, uh or at the very least,
(19:45):
decision making of a character in this alignment. And there's
three kinds of alignment and basic D and D there's lawful,
which is what we would equate with good goods, where
if you have a lawful character, they're they're probably the
hero type. You're gonna put their own skin on the
line in order to save the group. They're certainly not
going to turn and run without the rest of the
(20:06):
group doing the same. Um. Chaotic is the opposite of that.
It's what we would equate with evil. Yeah, they just
sort of look out for themselves forget the group. And
you'd think that would be the worst one, but apparently
the worst is neutral because you can't tell they're just
gonna do whatever is best for them no matter what. Well,
that's neutral is very it's animalistic um where it's basically
(20:29):
just about the survival of of the the individual. And
if you have a neutral person, they might fight with
the group if they feel like the group's gonna win
and just will protect them, or they may just turn
and run with Hey, no hard feelings, they got nothing
against you, But I'm just very instinctual. That's what neutral is.
The alignments there are all manner of like shelter and
(20:51):
weapons and foods and all these different things you can
pick up along the way, uh, and even languages that
if you approach a character and they don't speak your language,
then you can't communicate and you have to take a
different path on your adventure. But everyone can speak at
least two uh universal And then alignment tongue. Alignment tongue
allows you to speak to other characters in that same
(21:13):
alignment without the other people knowing what's being said, and
it's your private little conversation exactly. So, if if both
of us were chaotic magic users, right Chuck, yes, and
there was a somebody playing and there was a fighter
who was lawful, we could say, hey, let's put a
charm spell um on this guy and make them do
our bidding. Um. And so the player is going to
(21:34):
know what we're doing, but the character wouldn't. Yeah, And
the person responsible for keeping all this separate you mentioned earlier,
the dungeon master, the head nerd Right, the dungeon master
is in charge of saying things like you wouldn't know
that when the fighter says, I want to kill um
the two magic users who are about to use a
(21:54):
charm on me, the dungeon master would say, your character
doesn't know that because they just spoke in their alignment
tongue and boy. Dungeon master is a specific kind of person.
It takes a lot of work, and you can get
as involved as you want to. But no matter which
way you slice it, if you're the d M, you're
gonna be putting in some time coming up with these things,
even stories, even before the beginning, even before you sit down,
(22:16):
and it's Uh. I'd be curious to find some correlation
between people that were dungeon masters when they were like
twelve in the late seventies and early eighties and what
they ended up doing with their life. Yeah, it would
be an interesting study because they I would say that
a lot of them are probably running companies and running
(22:37):
the show wherever they are, because it takes a great
deal of initiative and patience and like stamina and creativity
and all these things to be a great dungeon master,
plus the sense of justice as well. You have to
be fair. Oh yeah, I'm sure it doesn't always sit
well with the group. Um and yeah, like you were saying,
like they it does take creativity. It takes also a
total and utter awareness of the game. Like while everybody
(23:00):
just creating their players, the d M has to show
up to that very first game having read the player's manual,
having read the Dungeon Master's Guide, understanding all the rules,
and then if you're using a game module, which you
know TSR published tons of games um, which essentially are
maps of an area that the dungeon master has access to, uh,
(23:21):
and then running the whole game as a whole, like
understanding what players can do, what players can't do. Um,
you have to understand how much damage a monster can inflict.
Let's give an example, like the dungeons Masters's Guide is intimidating. Yeah,
so I don't know how these kids at twelve, we're
sitting down and figuring this stuff out well, so they
a lot of the appearance of omniscience, and any dungeon
(23:44):
master kind of cultivates this this idea that they are
all knowing. But like you said, they're hiding behind a
cardboard screen, and behind that screen is like the dungeon
Master's guy, the game module, which has everything clearly marked
and all that. They have everything at their disposal, but
there's still a revered person, typically the dungeon Master. They're omniscient.
(24:05):
Because I don't know how many twelve year olds have
the initiative to take this on. There was I think
it's about right. It's probably about one out of every
ten kids as the initiative to beat the dungeon Master,
and the rest just wanted to be characters. So that
was that was a big problem with the game, was
like sometimes you couldn't find somebody to the DM because
there was a lot of work. So let's give an
(24:25):
example of of play, if you'll indulge me. Okay, So, okay,
we got a group of characters around a campaign in
a dungeon and by the way, you know the um
the reason why it became Dungeons and Dragons, um why
they chose dungeons was because they didn't want players being
able to just kind of wander all over the place.
They wanted to kind of keep them together in small,
(24:46):
confined spaces and a dungeon or a cave system or
something like that. It was a pretty good way to
keep everybody. To get catacombs. Man, it's all about the catacombs.
So you're your your group of characters are on a campaign,
the dungeon, and the d M might say something like
this is in the middle of the game. The d
M is in charge of telling you what's going on
where you are, describing your environment. So they he or
she may say, you're in a long dark cord, or
(25:08):
you see a faint light at one end. To your
right is a ten ft by ten ft door. It
is locked. Do you want to try to pick the
lock or continue down the cord or towards the toward
the light. And so the players decide to have the
thief pick the lock, right, because that's what you do.
Now here's what I don't get and I don't know
if you know this is it? Do you get together
(25:29):
as a group and decide and like take a vote
or is it someone's turn? To like say no, it's
my turn, and I make the thief go. It depends.
So first of all, before on a campaign, you have
a caller, and that's the person who speaks to the
d M for the group. But the caller is also
in charge of saying, hey, what do you guys want
to do and then saying that to the d M. Okay,
(25:50):
so they're the just the voice of the group, right.
They don't make any decisions. The groups supposed to decide
as a whole um, and the d ms are sitting
there going little do they know exactly? Uh? And then
there are turns as well, especially in combat. Now, if
like you have three fighters and a thief and there's
suddenly battling um um uh minotaur um, the thief is
(26:14):
gonna be like I'm standing over here, and the d
M will leave them out of the turns and then
will be the thief in the minotaur, and or the
one fighter in the minotaur and the next fighter in
the minutear. But blah blah blah, I always just keep
going on like that. Okay, that makes sense alright, So
back to our little story. The door is locked. Do
you want to pick the lock? We decide let's send
our thief in to pick the lock. Okay, So so
(26:35):
what happens in the d M, Well, they gotta roll
the dice and that's how you figure out if things work.
So if you're a thief, that means you're really good
at picking locks. So let's say it's a twenty sided
die and all you gotta do is roll like a
four or higher to successfully pick it. So that just
means your chances are really good that you'll be able
to pick the lock. If you don't have a thief,
(26:56):
you can send your fighter in to pick the lock,
but you may have to roll like a sixty or higher.
You would think so, but fighters can't pick locks at all,
not at all, Okay, they just like bang on the door.
So only certain characters can, like you can't even try
if they if they don't have that I believe someone
basic D and D like only thieves are definitely not fighters.
(27:17):
So if you don't have a thief in your campaign,
the d M wouldn't even say do you want to
pick the lock? They may say do you want to
try to bust the door down? But the d M
might also know in the game module it's unbust downable.
It can only be picked. So so um it is
because you're rolling for everything and you were saying they
(27:38):
rolled to find out the thief was successful, and that
that would be based on that low number, like if
you just need to roll a four. That's in relation
to the dexterity score, because it takes high dexterity to
pick a lock. To the higher dexterity score, the lower
you have to roll, which gives you, on a twenty
side of die, a lot more of a chance that
you're going to be successful at picking the lock. It's
all rolling of the dice and the rumbers. So in
(28:01):
this case, the d M knows that on the other
side of that door is the gelatinous cube, and that
is bad news if you're playing D and D, which
if you're an experienced dn D player, that ten ft
by ten ft door probably would have given it away
because that's the exact dimensions of a gelatinous cube, which
is evolved to move through the doors of a dungeon.
(28:24):
I would be dead so soon. So what happens the
door opens, there's the gelatinous cube boom, and then you
got to do battle. And when you're doing battle. You
do it again by rolling dice and you get these hits.
You have the hit points that we referenced earlier. And
let's say you gotta roll all right, these two four
sided dice. Um, you gotta roll each one once and
that those will be the the licks that the gins
(28:46):
gelatinous cube puts on you. And if it totals seven
or higher than you're dead. Yeah, exactly. And if you
had depending on your hit points, if you have seven
hit points, yeah, you'd be dead. So that I mean,
that's generally the game. And you can get experience points,
which are huge, which is this it's interesting to know
experience points. That's what you do to like grow as
(29:07):
a character, to get more hit points, to become more invincible,
more to kill a monster and you'll get experience points,
but you get way more experience points for getting treasure.
And the authors of the Basic D and D rule
books point out like this is we want you to
use your head, right, how do you get around confrontation
(29:28):
to go find the loot? Right, which, if you battle
a monster you deserve something, sure, but the point isn't killing.
The point is is using your head to get around
problems as well. And that's why you get more for treasure. Yeah,
we'll look at there. I had a thing I think
we made it up because I looked it up and
I couldn't find it called a bag of plenty, not
(29:49):
a bag of holding. The bag of holding was you
could put like anything large in it and still be
able to carry it. Like I found like all this food,
and I normally wouldn't be able to carry it. But
your bag of holding little all that and there? Right?
Did you have to keey stir it? I don't know
what that means? Like up the butt? Yeah, you're the
first person who's ever said up the butt when somebody said,
(30:10):
keyst what he's supposed to say. Did you just know
a Keyston would say up the button? Yeah? All right,
Um no, I wouldn't that key stir it. But I
had something called a bag of plenty, and you guys
made that up or I don't remember, man, because I
didn't find it anywhere. The only thing I found was
something called a bag of plenty plus one in Balder's Gate,
(30:31):
which was a video game I had played once. But
I think those Balder's Gate related to D and D somehow,
like one of the variations so I didn't know that,
but well, maybe what we played was with a bag
of Plenty, which is it would double whatever you put
in it. So if you have like twenty gold coins,
you put in your bag of Plenty and you have,
you know, double that amount. But I think we might
(30:52):
have made that up because I can't verify that anywhere.
I wonder how many, um how you just inadvertently admitted
to playing Baller's Gate, and wonder how many people are
just like, well, his credibilities out the window. I think
people enjoyed that. No, I don't know, maybe if I
vaguely remember it too. It was one of those games
that I played on like PS two for three months
(31:13):
until I completed it and then I was done with it.
You know. So if if any of that even slightly
piqued your interest, I would strongly recommend going and researching
and maybe trying out. There's usually, uh, if you go
on meetup dot com, you can find him probably just
about any even semi major city of D and D group,
(31:37):
And apparently Wednesdays are typically days at like comic book
shops and gaming shops and stuff like that that have
D and D groups where it's just kind of like, uh,
anybody who wants to come can can come by and
try their hand in it. I think they're very open community. Yeah,
well it depends. Oh sure, Like if you tried to
come in and like just PLoP down and like, hey,
(31:58):
I want to join this game that you guys have
been playing for seven years, and they wouldn't like me,
I'd be like, oh, I got a bag of plenty,
That's why they'd be like Balther's gate Um. I did
try last night to play the online version because I thought,
you know what, I'm gonna give it a whirl. I
downloaded this Mac beta version that was like eight gigs.
(32:21):
It took a couple of hours to download, and then
there was some errandloading and it wouldn't work. I was like,
all right, well that sucks. Let me go get my
PC laptop, because you know me, I'm rich. I have
like eight different kinds of laptops. I know they're like
falling out of your pocket. So I went to my
PC laptop and tried to sign up and download the
PC version, and it wouldn't recognize me. It wouldn't let
(32:43):
me because I'd already signed up with that name, and
so it was like midnight, and I said, screw this,
but I think I might try and play the online
version just to see what it's like. It's called D
d O. Yeah, we're not getting into that. It's in
a whole other thing. But um, there's a good article
by John that's Strickland on Dungeons and Dragons online that
you can find on how stuff works. So um, so
(33:06):
I said, go check it out. And if not, if
it didn't really pique your interest at the very least,
I imagine you would be interested to know that for many,
many years there were a lot of people with a
lot of voices who considered Dungeons and Dragons to be
thoroughly satanic. Yeah, and uh, it didn't help that what
(33:28):
was the year that the guy seventy nine, James Egbert,
James Dallas Egbert the third he went by Dallas. Yeah,
this was a kid at Michigan State University and he
went missing, and they the story out and the one
that was later disproven, but the one that really got
around in the news was that he disappeared into the
(33:50):
tunnel system underneath the school playing D and D and
died doing so. Yeah, he was a sixteen year old
by the way computer prodigy in seventy nine, so there's
like not such a thing as computer prodigies. Then he's
like one of the first. He's at Michigan State and
he actually did go in the steam tunnels and he
went to go kill himself to take an overdose on barbituous. Yeah,
but it didn't work, and he came to in the
(34:11):
steam tunnels. Yeah. And it had nothing to do with
dungeons and dragons, but it was announced so in the news,
and that's sort of what people remembered at the time,
and they used that as fuel, of course, to fuel
the fire of this is an evil game, satanic. They
made a movie with Tom Hanks, man, do you remember
seeing that when it first came out as a TV movie? Yeah,
And and I guess you know, it's just sort of
(34:33):
loosely told of slightly fictionalized version of James Egbert's uh
you know, the sensationalized version of the real version. Tom
Hanks plays the guy who gets so wrapped up in
his character that he um, he just has a break
with reality. He disappears because they find him again, but
he still thinks that he's uh Pardue the Cleric, and
(34:53):
I call him Pardue the cleric who lives with his
parents now because they take him back home and he's
just some crazy dude. Yeah. Um, I don't think any
there was any better reaction to Dungeons and Dragons than
Dark Dungeons by Chick Publications. So Chick Publications make religious
tracks on everything about um. They're extremely fundamentalist christian um.
(35:17):
And they have tracks on everything from how the new
Jesuit Pope is in league with the devil to how
if you are a Mason you are become possessed by
a heathen god. Um. And they're basically like these easy
to read comic books you're not familiar I might have
if I saw one, I might recognize it. So and
then they publish them and they sell them so you
(35:39):
can go hand them out and proselytize the people on
the streets like an ice breaker basically. But Chick Publications
came up with the not the creme de la creme
of anti D and D material propaganda. Yes, it's called
Dark Dungeons and it's a comic strip about a girl
who becomes who starts playing D and D and then
(35:59):
as were routed into a real life witchcraft COVID by
the Dungeon Master, because Dungeons and Dragons is just this
front for Satanists to like find the best of the
best to come do the real thing. And one girl
who becomes so wrapped up in her character. Once her
character dized, she goes and hangs herself in her room.
That sounds familiar. I might have been forced to read
that at some point. Check it out. And as a
matter of fact, I wrote a blog post on these
(36:22):
and some other ones about how it's called back when
people thought Dungeons and Dragons was satanic k's on our
site stuff you should Know dot com and this it was.
It's really interesting, like there was this period that coincided
with that whole satanic ritual abuse scare. Yeah, with the
heavy metal music. Yeah, that got Judics, priests on Landed
(36:43):
the West, Memphis three in prison. Um, it was a
real thing. And yes, and Dungeons and Dragons was, if
not the originator of this huge part of it. It
was in the center of it for a long time.
But it came out because thanks in part to the
um Doge's and Dragons cartoon. Yeah, I had a cartoon.
They had a movie which wasn't very good. Um, I'm
(37:06):
surprised I haven't redone that movie. Yeah, so I bet
they will at some point. I wrote a Time magazine
article that was saying, like, why is Dungeons and Dragons
not like a huge franchise. I didn't really get to
the bottom of They kind of settled on, well, it's
made a billion dollars for its owners. Um, it's in
(37:26):
I think a dozen languages. Um. I think twenty million
people have played it, so it does have a huge following.
But they were saying like, it's not the Lord of
the Rings and why not? And I think possibly because
it's just totally open ended, and it's that's what I think.
It's the individual Lord of the Rings. You go read
and there's a story and it happens, and yeah, you're
(37:47):
kind of imagining it, but you're just imagining what Tolkien
has explained to you. And guy gangs by the way,
I thought Tolkien sucked. Yeah he was in a conan sure,
So um, not O'Brien the barbarian. So Um. With Tolkien,
you're told with D and D like you man, you're
(38:07):
totally using your imagination. And even more than that, something
as strange as a group imagination, a group of people
using their imaginations together and kind of the interlocks like
that's high level stuff. Well, it is high level. And
that's exactly why a movie failed and probably wouldn't not succeed,
is because for a D and D movie to work,
you have to satisfy the D and D fans and
(38:29):
no matter who for a movie, you have to create
some hero character and that's not going to satisfy all
D indeed people, no matter who you create and what
story you create, they're gonna be D and D fans
that I think. Now, my what, my guy was way
better than this jump right exactly, And you call that
a white dragon. White Dragon would never do that because
(38:50):
it lived in my imagination as this, So I agree.
I don't think it will ever happen. It's a great success.
Although the cartoon was pretty well received. I think it is.
So it's a classic. Yeah, but that's that's different. It's
it was nominated for Greatest Cartoon Shows of All Time
nineteen know by listeners. I I put a list up
(39:12):
and said if anybody have any other nominees, and on
our website people nominated More and Dungeons and Dragons was one,
so it's up there. I think Scooby Doo one. Oh,
of course duck Tails was a hard contender. Yeah, I've
never watched that. I was surprised. Uh, let's see, you
got anything else. No, I mean there are dozens of
offshoots in different games and different modules, and like we
(39:34):
only covered a very small part of it. Uh, the
universe is vast. The D and D universe is vast.
It is Go forth and check it out, you say, we, Uh,
take up those glasses and check it out. And if
you if you want to learn more about Dungeons and Dragons,
type those words into the search part how stuff works
dot Com and it will bring up some cool stuff. Oh.
(39:55):
By the way, it has sort of been known as
like a guy's thing, but there's a rabid female community
with D and D and I saw I watched the
documentary last night on Dungeons and Dragons. It was pretty good. Um,
the Dungeons and Dragons experience. I think you know, there's
a there's like a pretty serious other documentary that's being
(40:15):
got kickstarted. Really that's in it's in production right now. Yeah,
this one was okay, it wasn't great, but it did
interview a female, a woman, and she was like, yeah,
you know, I think a lot of girls they see
it as a guy thing and the guy nerds, so
they're reluctant to get into it. But the girls that
I know that I have gotten into it have have
found that it. You know, it's really not like a
(40:36):
guy sing after all. They have just as much fun
and um, it looks I don't know, it's a fun community.
It is funny. They showed them playing the at one point,
and they definitely get like the dungeon Master is just
sort of going on and on and the players will
say things in character like I'm not sure what to
do after such a long story and stuff like that,
and uh, they're taking like barbed shots in characters. Pretty funny.
(41:00):
That's cool. Yeah, that's the way to do it, I guess.
So actually, however, you and your group of friends want
to do it and have fun doing it, that's the
way to do it. Yeah, unless it veeers towards satanism
and like real, but it doesn't. That was all made up.
I know. Uh, if you want to learn more, didn't
I already say this thing? Yeah I don't know, Okay,
(41:20):
so I said search part, which means it's time for
message break. And now it's a listener mail, right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this D and D listener mail for
D and D podcast. That's a really clumsy title. How
amazing it is. This is pretty cool. Actually, hey guys,
a big fan of the podcast. In the TV show,
(41:42):
I worked for the Ford Motor Company at the Kentucky
Truck plant in Louisville, and I'm an assembly line worker
and you can imagine my job gets pretty monotonous. I
put on passenger side doors on trucks night, on specific trucks.
He does. He can't just throw any door under a
new truck. No, it's all very specific. But if you
own afford super duty and you open your passenger raw
(42:03):
or you can thank this dude for it. That's true.
You can thank Jeremy Elmore. Um So, anyway, he's been
listening for a little while and he's listened to all
but five of the shows, and uh, he's getting on
his wife's nerves. We hear this a lot when one
spouse is sort of annoyed that doesn't listen about the
other one getting smart. And I think everyone just needs
to start, you know, taking care of business in the household.
(42:25):
What what is that mean? Get the other spouse on board,
get them listening. That way you can circumvent this defense
mechanism of feeling threatened. So that's what his wife does.
She's like, yeah, yeah, I know what you learned from
Chuck and Josh. Look just listen. So he goes on
to say, the great thing about the show is you
two are very relatable to me, a couple of years
younger than Josh. So I love hearing about your childhood
(42:46):
stories from g I Joe, adolescent chocolating and Dungeon and Dragons,
going to panic shows, watching Seinfeld, and now marriage. I
feel like I've grown up with you guys. So I
want to send you something. My father is where it
gets good is Larry Elmore. He's a freelance artist who
used to paint for TSR and D and D. Yeah.
So like the blog post that you used, that was
(43:09):
his father's artwork. Yeah, the blog post. I wrote a
blog post on it right on DNDB and S can Yeah,
and that was like, just by chance, this dude's father.
His name is Larry Elmore. Like I said, he um,
Dragon con and D and D have been mentioned on
your podcast before and it made me want to send
you something. So he has a twenty years art of
Art book I can't wait to get. I can't either.
(43:29):
It came out a decade ago, but it's still really
cool and I want you both to have one. He's
a new one coming out in August as well, so
consider this a plug. I guess um. He has already
personalized them for me for you guys, and I need
to know how to get them to you. Is very cool,
he asked me. This is even cooler because he asked
who they were for. He explained it to Pops and
now he is listening to the show in his studio
(43:52):
while he's that illustrating. So by the time this comes out,
hopefully Larry Elmore is listening to the podcast about D
and D. What's Up Larry Elmore? So all that he
was like one of the first or maybe the first
artist early on when they did this. He's definitely an
early one because the illustration that I used from the
Night three edition of the Basic set Um, so he
(44:15):
would have Yeah, that's pretty early. Well. I went to
his website and looked at his art and like all
those iconic images that I remember we're him. That's really
I can't wait to get It's very cool. So thank
you Jeremy Elmore in Louisville and Thanky Larry and uh
that was it. Yeah, thanks to you both. Um, if
you want to send us something, especially if your dad
is um an indvertent idol of Chucks in mind agreed, Um,
(44:38):
we want to hear from you, So you can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com. And then why not just go see
if we're sitting in our home on the web, on
the couch, maybe watch a little TV. That home is
(44:58):
called Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
Works dot com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know
is brought to you by Jack Threads dot com.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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