Probably Bad 17: Spare Parts, D&D Tag and Roll For Friendship

(5th August 2020)

Nick

Greetings, traveller. This podcast is supported by Hedwig, Mario and Matt. They are joined by Robert the Terrible, though they are equally awful…

Opening theme

Mod pencil

Hello and welcome to the probably bad podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad. I’m pencil.

Paper

I’m paper. Today’s probably bad rpg idea is…

Dice roll.

PAPER

Instead of the GM deciding what the player needs to roll, the player chooses one of their skills to use and the GM decides the DC based on the relevance of the skill. That was submitted by headless horse boy.

MOD PENCIL

I’m the one who suggested doing this idea this week so my reasoning is firstly a lot of times the skills can get kind of nebulous especially in games where there’s a lot of them – acrobatics and athletics for instance. I like the idea of intimidating a door open.l I like the concept that if you’re good enough at intimidation you can open doors with it.

PAPER

I wonder how loudly you have to yell in order for a door to swing open.

MOD PENCIL

Ten loud.

PAPER

I was thinking cause you said about – athletics vs acrobatics and things like that. I want to use 3.5 skills for this, use rope – not intimidate, that’s too easy, make friends using a rope.

MOD PENCIL

Is this some kind of bdsm thing or is it rope tricks?

PAPER

You could befriend a sailor using cool knots.

MOD PENCIL

You could use appraise on someone by seeing their inner beauty and inner value and seeing how many gold pieces it was worth.

PAPER

It was beautiful until you said gold pieces. How much are you objectively worth.

MOD PENCIL

I can see paost yur humble exterior to your interior which isn’t worth a huge amount but is worth more than you’re presenting, affordable on a middle class salary.

PAPER

Could sell for scrap. I’m just saying organs are expensive, therefore a person has a lot of scrap value.

MOD PENCIL

Yeah this is getting rapidly less beautiful. You can use tumble to resist social attacks by jumping out of the way of peoples hurtful words.

PAPER

By opening tumblr. I’ve been in games where it’s kind of a thing, you can use whatever social skill as long as you tell me what you’re doing with it. It’s an expansion on what a lot of GMs do anyway which I feel are the best ideas cause they’re logical to a point.

MOD PENCIL

I think partly especially with social things like you can’t draw an exact line between different social things, especially with bluff which –

PAPER

Yeah, perception and investigation – at what point do you go from looking at something to looking for it?

MOD PENCIL

I was considering the kind of more mythic fairy tale kind of game where you can literally steal someone’s heart and seduce them that way, that kind of thing.

PAPER

Roll sleight of hand to seduce someone, which when you put it like that sounds like a very different roll.

MOD PENCIL

It works for games where you’re blurring metaphor and things in that manner.

PAPER

I’m wondering if you can use it in a more literal game. I want to roll to use my gun… You can say anything after use my gun, it’s going to be bad.

MOD PENCIL

This is my character and his only skill is gun.

PAPER

I’m going to use my gun to sneak – how – no witnesses

MOD PENCIL

I’m going to shoot wildly in the air so everyone’s distracted by the gun they don’t notice me the person holding the gun.

PAPER

That’s a bold play I would let you do it, I’d give you a high DC but it’s a 1 in 20 chance.

MOD PENCIL

Everyone just remembers the floating gun and no-one remembers the person holding the gun.

PAPER

You could combine it with invisibility.

MOD PENCIL

I cast invisibility on everything except the gun.

PAPER

No you cast it on the gun and convince people you’re firing bullets from your hand.

MOD PENCIL

This is a very specific reason to go to wizard school. It’s like someone who skipped over learning magic missile and has to magically mcgivre a way to cast magic missile.

PAPER

I’d watch that show.

MOD PENCIL

A wizard that forgot to learn all the obvious spells and now has a spell that makes a mouth appear on an object and one that illuminates invisible creatures has those spells and has to cobble together a way to use fire out of those spells. We’ve created a good idea in its own right.

PAPER

Yeah. I do feel like the ideas that would boil down to your own persuasion ability, like your ability to persuade the GM that – I keep coming back to use rope – but how well can you convince your GM that with this small length of rope you can befriend this lion.

MOD PENCIL

I’m sure there’s a way to bullshit. I’m going to use this rope as a big cat’s toy.

PAPER

Now I’m just imagining like sort of a lateral thinking exercise where you have to randomly roll for any skill to use in any situation and you just have to convince the GM to let you do it. True chaotic neutral character.

MOD PENCIL

Maybe not as a full game but I like that as a one-shot. As a honey badger… Honey heist. Honey badger’s a different game. Honey heist style game where your character has one skill – use rope or appraise and you have to convince the GM it’s applicable.

PAPER

Also you’re all honey badgers.

MOD PENCIL

Also you’re all honey badgers, yes. Honey badger with a gun. It’s a larp game that requires two opponents to play.

PAPER

You can probably get honey badger fursuits.

MOD PENCIL

I take no legal responsibility for any consequences for playing honey badger with a gun.

PAPER

So as is traditional when we come up with a whole new RPG we move onto questions, but first I want to shout out one of our followers because we posted some very bad pictures of werehorses and someone who I think is called anceilline says she listens to the podcast so much she hears our posts in our voices, I want to say sorry for my awful voice.

MOD PENCIL

I apologise for psychically narrating my beautifully created horse son.

NICK

I apologise for nothing.

PAPER

Thanks nick.

MOD PENCIL

For those who are interested, nick doesn’t apologise.

PAPER

I think the microphone picked that up.

MOD PENCIL

I don’t know microphones, I just know horse masks.

Question music. Plugs.

PAPER

Questions are anonymous this time, which is unusual. How do I burn down the player’s home base? The base is a stone pillar.

MOD PENCIL

Roll use rope. Fire burns, well it melts if it gets hot enough.

PAPER

I’m going to work on the assumption you’ve already considered a lava monster.

MOD PENCIL

You can never have too many lava monsters.

PAPER

Magmar is one of my favourite pokemon.

MOD PENCIL

What you have to do is very slowly piece by piece replace the bits of stone with lots of wood painted to look like stone over the course of many months or years, burn it and they go “shit how did that happen”

PAPER

But if you replace it all is it still the same pillar?

MOD PENCIL

Burn it down literally then burn down their minds metaphorically by revealing the philosophical underpinnings of your argument. Argument in this case being a word for setting things on fire.

PAPER

Can we for a moment consider the fact their home base is a pillar? Is it D&D tag? Monsters can’t get you if you’re touching base.

MOD PENCIL

I was assuming they’d gone on top of it and the reason they want to burn the pillar down is the players won’t come down from the pillar and do the adventure, they’re just roleplaying sitting around.

PAPER

Yeah cause the monsters can’t get you if you’re touching the pillar.

MOD PENCIL

The alternative is they’re inside the pillar, just buried in there.

PAPER

I don’t like that.

MOD PENCIL

If we assume it’s burning it down as an aggressive act, maybe it’s how do I burn it down to free the players

PAPER

Maybe it’s a metaphorical pillar it’s the heart of the community.

MOD PENCIL

How do I burn down the most important person in this town who is also incidentally an animated stone pillar?

PAPER

How do you burn down a rock elemental?

MOD PENCIL

It’s a riddle you have to answer to play D&D.

PAPER

I think it is now.

MOD PENCIL

Send us your answers and who knows it may happen.

PAPER

Maybe we’ll do it next episode.

Questions, questions, ooooh the music for the questions.

PAPER

The second question I thought I’d include it as we haven’t had a question like this in a while. What’s your favourite bad idea?

MOD PENCIL

What is my favourite bad idea? At the risk of sounding narcissistic, put your GM in the marmalade. I don’t know if that’s an idea or just a series of words I came up with.

PAPER

I liked it, as a GM who likes marmalade.

MOD PENCIL

I feel like in terms of actual ideas instead of gibberish, my favourite idea…

PAPER

I think the one I have a real soft spot for a party that’s all half human half something else hunting down their terrible deadbeat dad, I have a soft spot for that that I did run it. The party was convinced at some point there would be something called a reverse manticore, and I’m not sure what that is.

MOD PENCIL

I can see a reverse centaur, or something, but a manticore has like four parts…

PAPER

They were trying to base guessed on the knowledge of how I think as a Gm, but the twist was the human father was actually an incubus.

MOD PENCIL

I guess like a reverse manticore would just be a lion a scorpion a bat and a human, and they’re not linked just walking around.

PAPER

Or just the other way around so you’ve got the head of a scorpion, the body of a bat, the wings of a lion so just no wings, and a human butt.

MOD PENCIL

This is my new supernatural creature a giant scorpion with a human butt.

PAPER

The problem is most of the bad ideas I like are ones you can do as good ideas, as opposed to ones like eat the dice and throw one up every time you need to roll.

MOD PENCIL

I like the ones that are completely incomprehensible, like make dice out of cheese and eat one when it rolls too low.

PAPER

Eating dice ones are always fun, especially since it led to Nick getting me edible dice for christmas one year.

MOD PENCIL

You are helping mod paper’s relationship if you send dice. That’s almost a sentence.

PAPER

Close enough.

MOD PENCIL

Today’s episode is sponsored by my slow descent into madness.

PAPER

Don’t descend all the way yet we’ve got one more question.

MOD PENCIL

My favourite idea probably is a while back the long stream of terrible monster of the week monsters that people sent. I loved all the terrible monsters, I eat all the cheese samples at the grocery store, the cow that hates you but can’t act on it but if it could it would do too many terrible things, I want a campaign where they team up and rob a grocery store.

PAPER

Do you follow tumblr shittycryptids? I feel you’d enjoy it.

MOD PENCIL

I actually do not.

PAPER

It’s very that vibe.

Question music.

PAPER

But anyway, someone wants to know… I’ve been wanting to play D&D for a long time, but none of my friends play and I don’t know how to play or where to start any ideas?

MOD PENCIL

Kidnap people at gunpoint.

PAPER

Best way to start is get in on a one-shot someone else is running.

MOD PENCIL

The problem is most of the places to start are currently locked down.

PAPER

Yeah go to the local gameshop is my immediate go to, but not now.

MOD PENCIL

But…

PAPER

Yeahhh… There’s a lot of websites, there’s a reddit you can find people who are looking for players which I think is called just lfg, a lot of D&D centric websites like D&D beyond have places you can find people, there’s discord servers, I have a discord server.

MOD PENCIL

If you want to just chill in your own discord server.

PAPER

It’s called am I playing right and it’s fun.

MOD PENCIL

To answer your question hang out with mod paper and then you’ll be in a D&D game.

PAPER

I’ve been thinking because we’ve been getting a lot of people saying how I can I find a group at the moment we need to provide a service where pepole can send us a message that says hi I want to play D&D and we can send posts into the ether.

MOD PENCIL

Like a dating site but for nerds.

PAPER

I was thinking less a dating site and more classifieds.

MOD PENCIL

Craigslist.

PAPER

Just like DM looking for group, newbie looking for group.

MOD PENCIL

Not a terrible idea, pick some people who want to run games. This has become admin discussion, so I hope you enjoy this simulation of sitting in a meeting.

PAPER

I am probably going to set up a sideblog for people trying to find other groups.

NICK

They did, it’s called RPGmatchmaker.tumblr.com

PAPER

So keep an eye out on the blog for that.

MOD PENCIL

To answer your question wait for them to set up the sideblog and until then kidnap people at gunpoint and force them to play D&D.

PAPER

Throw some dice of varying shapes at people and if they say “ow was that a d6” instead of was that dice, then you know you’ve got one.

MOD PENCIL

Throw D20s at people, and if they go why did you throw D20s at people… Then you’ve found a D&D friend.

PAPER

And if you roll a 20 on that D20 you’ve done a critical success at making a friend,

MOD PENCIL

They are now your best friend

regardless of how they feel on the matter.

PAPER

And that is how you use the dex skill to persuade someone.

MOD PENCIL

And that’s how it all fits together. I think we’ve probably, I don’t know if we answered anything but we definitely said words.

PAPER

Thank you for listening to our words, if you want to pay for bonus words both spoken and written we’d appreciate if you went to patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas and in exchange we’ll send you bonus episodes and homebrew content including the now probably infamous werehorse. If you have a question you can send it to us on tumblr – probablybadrpgideas, or email probablybadpodcast@gmail.com, if you want to you can leave us a nice review cause that’s how more people find the podcast.

Both

And remember to have a probably bad day.

Closing music.

MOD PENCIL

Woo! We did it!