Ratnado, Underdark Therapy, and Be Gay Do Crimes

D&Daniel D&Daniel here, everyone's favourite podcast peon keeping it 100. With headwig and Carlo our favourite patrons. Unlike tabletop Tim the usurper, the false King, who keeps it zero. That's right. Enjoy.

Pencil Hello and welcome to the probably bad podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad, i'm pencil

Paper i'm paper. And today's probably bad RPG idea is as the PCs sneak into the enemy base, the guards assume the noises they're making are just rats in the wind. They feel very stealthy until they reach the final room and are jumped by the air elementals and were-rats that the base is absolutely infested by

Pencil like, so I really like you know, you'd have the sort of trope of Oh, it's nothing to worry about. It's just insert clearly ludicrous cover up here. And then clearly ludicrous coverup comes true. It sort of feels very similar in spirits to like you're a bunch of monsters and all of the monster attacks are being covered up look by being route teams. And then in the final light session, the vampire Prince is murdered by the band of incredibly dangerous rowdy teens that have been rampaging through the city.

Paper See, it sounded like you almost said rowdy queens and I would much rather play that game.

Pencil After Prince Phillip you know she's going a bit off the rails.

Paper So yeah, I do. I do enjoy. I mean, this is why I read discworld. I do enjoy the things that are just very blatantly lampshading the hell out of something. Like your players are never going to expect it.

Pencil Yeah. Like my favourite one has to be spoilers for game for I think 20 years ago with relation to Monkey Island where the whole time you go try get rescue for the damsel in distress. And it' like I'm sure she can take care of herself, and then you get there and she's beaten up the big bad, because she can take care of herself as everyone has been telling you. And it's just I know, I like that twist of like, you assume that a given bit of information is just plot spackle, it's just you know, it's just there to get the narrative going. And then turns out no, yeah, you probably should have listened to what every single person was telling you. But maybe

Paper it's definitely it's definitely got that same kind of vibe to it.

Pencil Yeah.

Paper But at the same time,

Pencil but maybe we should make this an actual idea.

Paper Well, my thought now is are the guards, like if the elementals and were rats are presumably, more towards your like your target in infiltrating this base. Is that what the guards are guarding?

Pencil Yeah,

Paper like is the big bad A swarm of wererats?

Pencil The big bad is a wererat air elemental like just a cloud of fog that every full moon turns into a rat.

Paper Okay, see, I was thinking ratnado.

Pencil That's probably more intimidating than just a cloud of fog that shrinks into a normal rat and squeaks at you aggressively,

Paper what if it turned into a fog size rat?

Pencil Just a rat but like diffused like fog is just like a cloud. [crosstalk] Yeah, my little claws and teeth floating in it.

Paper Oh No.

Pencil And then it just goes up to you and you're just you're just really grossed out so you leave. And that's how it defeats you.

Paper Honestly, more big bads and monsters should rely on just making you nope the fuck out of there because I feel like that is the ultimate mo of dragons is that they rely on people looking at them and going oh shit, it's a dragon and leaving.

Pencil This isn't even my grossest form. Then I level up and my head turns inside out but yes, in terms

Paper sorry my immediate thought was just that the mouth would probably look pretty similar because you can already see inside it

Pencil mthe mouth opens and inside is a human face.

Paper Just sitting in there where the tongue should be

Pencil yeah So for the three people who haven't unsubscribed that's not a thing thing we're not a YouTube channel I don't know what

Paper we have subscribers that's

Pencil okay. We don't have any more but yes so yeah, I do like the idea of just this place is just full of like it's just like a home for wererats and air elementals and the guards who just don't want you going in there and upsetting them they're just little little friends

Paper in which case frankly, they are terrible guards

Pencil Yeah,

Paper because presumably they're trying to keep people out and wererats and air elementals in so if they're hearing wind and rats moving around by the by the entrance or in the corridors, something's gone wrong and they should go and investigate.

Pencil Okay, so maybe what it is, is you're infiltrating the building, but at the same time, the wererats and air elementals are also infiltrating the building.

Paper Why are they infiltrating the building for the same reason? Or for their own reason?

Pencil They've got their own life outside of us, like they're little adventures too

That's adorable.

Like it's just a rat and tornado wearing like adventure hats. And they're coming in to commit crimes.

Paper How does a tornado wear a hat please?

Pencil Like the top you got the tornado? Okay, and the hat is just floating on the top

Paper but how does it not get shlorped inside?

Pencil Like it's it's it doesn't is what happens but the air elemental doesn't want to suck the hat in so it just like you know avoids sucking that bit of air.

Paper my hat cannot be sucked

Pencil It has a bunch of like stuff floating around in it that form like a smiley face. and it also has a gun.

Paper Why does it have a gun? That was not an option. Why is that an option?

Pencil It's it means to fight.

Paper I thought tornadoes just fought people by slorping.

Pencil which it's levelled up. It's an adventurer.

Paper Level one slorp level two gun?

Pencil Yeah.

Paper I don't know seems OP.

Pencil Level three two guns.

Paper Level four, control of the rats.

Pencil At level four, you get given a rat. And the rat helps you out. And

Paper like a familiar.

Pencil yeah, and at level five the rat also gets a gun.

Paper pulls the trigger with its tail.

Pencil So um, so yeah, these are the antagonists who are well, rivals, and they're also trying to get in steal the final bits of treasure. And your players have to like, get to the treasure before they do.

Paper If if the if the rats make a good stealth check do the guards go, oh, it's probably just adventurers.

Pencil Yeah, it's probably just bugs as well. Like, so there's two sets of guards one of whom can only hear burglars, one of whom could only hear air Elementals and wererats.

Paper And one of them can only tell the truth.

Pencil And yeah at the end, you have to work together with the air Elementals and wererats to get past them strategically based on which guards can see which set of things.

Paper I mean, that's certainly a concept.

Pencil Yeah. Like so the whole point of like, so like I saw this thing of like stealth games are essentially variants on puzzle games. Like it's less actually a thing and more, which of these paths Do I go down? When do I go this way and so forth. And I feel like having this kind of maybe not quite as ridiculous as these guards can only see people and hats and these guards can't see people if they're living La vida loca. But like as long as you have like, you know, different guard patrols and different like guards who were skilled in different things. Especially if you have like magical things and you're like okay at this place to guards have been given seeing invisibility spells. So you've got to find different ways to get past the different groups of guards. And I feel that's definitely one of definitely an idea.

Paper I will go as far as it is an idea

Pencil because like the problem of a lot of stealth in Dungeons and Dragons is essentially it's just you rolled a stealth check and maybe you've rolled the deception check. And yeah, I think there's definitely like the sort of multi stage kind of, okay, how do you get past these bunch of fuckers who could only see wererats The problem is I need to give the guards less stupid like weaknesses

or additional stupid weaknesses.

These guards can only see movement

Paper like a jurasic park T rex

Pencil yeah the base is guarded entirely by Tyrannosaurus Rexes like I mean to be fair if you had something like Oh yeah, you've escaped this particular like, guard captain in is a greedy fucker so if you bribe him it you might be able to get past him easier and that's an idea here in my head somewhere. I'm thinking i'm creating Shadow of Mordor

quite possibly which means we need a sexy spider you still there?

Paper Yeah this I forgotten about sexy sexy shelob and I needed a moment.

Pencil Yeah, I hope you're all enjoying this. Take that game that is I believe at least five years old. Shall we move on to questions.

it's either that or like a 30 minute discussion of sexy shelob

Paper that's for the Patreon

Pencil okay, this is from Shark Rat 08222222. Any ideas for the derro?

Paper So I'm only very vaguely aware of what Derro are. They're like, weird, creepy underground dwarves, right? more underground than regular dwarves.

Pencil I mean, they're they're kind of dark, like dark dwarfs as opposed to Dark Elves. They're sort of weird underground. sad little men who have some like so they have some kind of like, madness TM powers. You know in the current generically kind of...

Paper If Yeah, if you become mentally ill enough you become psionic we know how [inaudible] work.

Pencil Yeah, basically they're crazy underground dwarfs so I feel that the best way to deal with them I feel the best way to do it is just to push them further underground. So they don't come back. Because what

Paper have you considered providing them counselling?

Pencil That's possible. I was thinking more in a sense of like, it is a slightly like, neh concept. But I do like if you go down to provide therapy, and the whole thing is like oh they're crazy dwarves but like you can even give them like medication. They also

Paper my idea is deal with the inherent ableism of Dungeons and Dragons by just getting all of the quote unquote, mad races and just like giving them space to talk. Yeah, maybe nothic as well. And they can just have like a group therapy session.

Pencil I love this. I love this underdark therapist who is going down there and just like clearly there's very poor mental health services in the underdark And you know, we just said like,

Paper it isn't called the underhappy place.

Pencil That is true like it is it is a miserable little hole rather like the UK

I'm not gonna debate this.

Paper neat fact, Derro refers to the surface as the overburn which is quite a cool name for like the surface from the underdark. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it makes sense. It is pretty much the opposite of the underdark as a as a name.

Pencil Yeah, I think they also do experiments to turn people into derro

Paper That's less cool

Pencil it is less cool

Paper don't do that

Pencil that's sort of a jerk thing to do like it seems like this sort of like sort of like greys in the sense of they come up and experiment on people and then mutilate cattle and so forth and so forth. So just give them spaceships. But spaceships with therapists on them.

Paper Space therapy

Pencil Yeah, you are a space therapist on the moon. And you've come down to earth. Well, I mean, you know, whatever fictional version of earth this is and you are talking to the ableist like concept in order to treat them. But also you have Moon arms.

Paper What are moon arms.

Pencil I I was imagining like wacky inflatable chub manner. But like they're independent, and they keep

Paper oh the tall boys.

Pencil Yeah, you are wacky inflatable tube therapist from the moon. And you are going into the underground in your spaceship to give therapy to Derro

Paper i'm into it,

Pencil the spaceship has a little drill on the front so it can like go into the underdark

Paper Well, naturally, otherwise, it'd be silly. Yeah. Just one thing that we've tried to avoid on this podcast is being silly.

Pencil If you think if you think you remember any jokes, anything, you're wrong, every idea we've put forth is 100% serious.

Paper Just because you found it amusing doesn't mean we were joking.

Pencil Yeah, no, every single thing I say I stand by 100% Feel free to take this out of context if you want to cancel me. Yeah, and then the end you give all the aerospace little spaceships i've used the word little loads, you give the derro spaceships

Paper they are small. proportionate spaceships.

Pencil spaceships of their own and they all just go out of the ground and go to live in space.

Paper they can just set up the their own planet where they don't have to do weird creepy experiments.

hazel Hi, I'm Hazel, and I make a podcast with Liz called Grit and thread which you might enjoy. If you are a fan of food, or clothes, or other interesting parts of domestic history. We find out interesting facts about things like regional foods, ancient breeds of sheep. Pretty much anything domestic history. So if you'd like to know why it's illegal to import the sheep into Iceland, and what was presented by Queen Victoria to Harriet Tubman, then you might want to check out bread and thread. Find us at bread and thread on Twitter, or find us everywhere podcasts exist.

Pencil Okay, our next question is anonymous. What are your current characters?

Paper I only have one current character because as I've mentioned before I suffer from Forever DM syndrome. So I'm currently running three of the four games I'm in. But the character I'm actually playing is one of our homebrew concepts, which is a Sin Eater Paladin who I love them very much they're they're gradually learning to do things like swearing and pranks while also trying to solve various enormous problems because it's quite high level campaign.

Pencil I like the idea that they start off with like very small swears like oh Sillybum and then it just goes up and up until like in the grand finale. Then they call the final big bad [gunshot, pop, skidding brakes, twisting noise, slide whistle]-hole and that is really bad.

Paper See, they did they did the first ever swear. Telling off I think I can't remember the name of the God now. But a very mean gods

Pencil and there are some very mean gods

Paper who they didn't realise at the time was a god and that seems to have got them a lot of respect from from some of the NPCs but that is my only character the name is messy and I love them it's short for cleanliness because they're a Tiefling

Pencil I currently have 0 characters

Paper apart from in one of the games that I mentioned that I'm running

Pencil oh yeah I might be in that game

Paper you have a character in that

Pencil fuck I do time is like I left a bunch of my games because burburburburburburbur and I forgot that I'm actually still involved yes my one character is I forgot their name and every single fact about them. game hasn't started yet but they're a criminal. And they have stolen a powerful magic artefact and they have no idea it's a powerful magical artifact all they know is everyone is tracking them down to kill them. They have multiple was it mod parchments? The evil ultimate version... mod pen so they have mod pen, who you may remember is my evil twin and arch nemesis from the Tumblr as one of their goons. They also have Steve who as you may remember is my other arch nemesis.

Paper That's just the name that you always pick on.

Pencil Steve is my arch nemesis and any Steves in our fandom come fight me IRL.

Paper Yeah, I think they you mentioned that they're also I think she's also a fence.

Pencil Yes.

Paper Because yeah, it's a Monster of the Week game set in york pencil immediately went for I am the crooked and I stole something spooky.

Pencil It is the only acceptable backstory. Her main relation with the other players is that one of the players is an expert, or someone who knows about knows about magic and stuff. But who doesn't believe in magic, and my character has forced him at gunpoint to tell her about magic, which she doesn't believe in. It's going to go badly.

Paper I'm very excited for this game to start. We will start playing it on the day this episode goes out. I think

Pencil one of the one of the characters knows the other characters, mostly for being a hairdresser. It's just It's just we all are hairdressed by this one person. Which I mean, there are worse ways to get an adventuring party together.

Paper I mean, it's it's something other than you all meet in a pub.

Pencil Yes you all meet in a hair salon.

Paper Yeah. Who says I can't come up with creative ways to bring characters together.

Pencil I still feel the most most creative way is trapped in the elevator together.

Paper I'm pretty sure we've done this question but I'm willing to do it again. If someone asks can come up with even worse ones. Hmm.

Pencil Okay, final question. Is also anonymous. Okay, but how do fancy dad's avoid turning evil?

Paper This is because of our rules of being a fantasy dad last time, isn't it?

Pencil Well, I mean, a pretty big coincidence if not.

Paper Rule 2 is don't turn evil. Yeah, like the impetus for most of them to turn evil is like the death of their spouse normally in some particularly tragic way. So if you consider just getting divorced early on, like be a single unmarried dad.

Pencil Make your wife a lich.

Paper I feel like that may be drifting towards the evil territory.

Pencil Make your wife a nice lich.

Paper But what if then you go mad with power and your wife has to take you down in a tragic twist.

Pencil Then the space therapist comes in to help. So yeah, what you need to do, like, yeah, so it's almost always Oh, no, my wife has turned evil or Oh, no, I was always evil. So don't be evil. That's step one of not turning evil. Don't that. And then, yeah, make your make your wife. It's always your wife. Maybe be gay you never hear anyone turning evil because like their husband was tragically killed by orcs.

Paper That's true. The rules of narrative are very heteronormative and you can avoid most of them by being gay.

Yeah, be gay or be

I mean there rather than different narrative problems but you don't tend to turn evil after after the gays get buried. Yeah, unless you're Willow from Buffy. Don't be Willow from Buffy.

Pencil Both for this reason

Paper but Willow from Buffy isn't a dad. For Several reasons

Pencil Don't be written by Joss Whedon

Paper I mean that's just good life advice

Pencil yeah so yeah just just be gay. be gay obey laws if that

Paper we never said they have to be lawful.

Pencil True

Paper it could be chaotic good

Pencil be gay Robin Hood. Yeah, what you need to do become gay Robin Hood. And then you and your child. Go on a Father probably son I'm afraid father son adventure while you go fight the sherrif of Nottingham as you don't want them you might be killed by the sheriff of nottingham

Paper I am just thinking bidet... not bidet, be gay do crimes. just seem like a good way to avoid it though. Because then you also avoid the whole like Frollo thing of like, oh, there's these rules I have to obey. But also I'm horny. just go fuck. but don't get married or your spouse will turn evil.

Pencil Yeah, have a lot of no strings attached while committing crimes. Maybe you know what else you know generally does stop you turning evil.

Paper What?

Pencil So you take you take your baby, you got a baby. Now,

Paper it is a requirement for being a dad

Pencil You leave your baby on someone's doorsteps. Then like 20 years later, they will show up at your house and be like I am your son or daughter. And at this point it'll typically be the end either the end of the narrative, at which point you'd then like you know, tearfully embrace them. And then the story continues and you're presumably happy. Or it's the start of the narrative at which point you're a dick. And they leave and you're not generally included in the narrative anymore.

Paper So be gay, do crimes, child abandonment and be a dick.

Pencil Yeah, be gay abandon your child. I start to think this is still veering on the evil side.

Paper I don't know if you're abandoning your child in order to avoid being evil at them. I think overall that's a net good.

Pencil I mean, it's certainly like on the dickheads side.

Paper It is but there's there is a there is a vast gulf between dickhead and evil.

Pencil Okay, there's a trolley heading towards your child and you can abandon them on a doorstep to redirect it Yeah, okay. So final thing is to sit down and study moral philosophy in extensive detail to determine what precisely is good and evil

Paper and if you study moral philosophy long enough, you can justify pretty much anything and therefore isn't evil. Because you figured out how it's actually good.

Pencil As you stab your child

Paper good and evil are the same actually, I am very intelligent.

Pencil as You stab your child explain why under a particularly esoteric interpretation of classical virtue ethics. This is actually what a fully rational fully virtuous person will do.

Paper Write a very long thesis on antinatalism and then murder your child to prove your point.

Pencil Yeah, like you know, if life is inherently bad, stop your kids.

Paper And on that note If you have a question or want to yell at pencil, about moral philosophy, you can email probablybadpodcast@gmail.com. Or message us on Tumblr, or I guess on Twitter. I keep forgetting to mention that we have a Twitter it's just bad probably. And yeah, that's that's the one that pencil tends to be active on more than me.

Pencil To be clear, the name is badProbably that wasn't just a sick burn.

Paper It's, it's as bad as the tumblr. Whether that's whether that is bad. That's up to your own interpretation. And if you want homebrew and bonus episodes we are on Patreon at probablybadrpgideas. And I don't know what my voice is doing. I'm like some sort of weird children's game show announcer let's go red team and remember to

Pencil ...and remember to have a probably bad day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai