Ep. 27 - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
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That's $50 off with code LISTEN at BlueNile.com. Dungeons and Daddies is a rowdy, horny, violent podcast for grown-ups. Content warnings can be found in the episode description. You're listening to another episode of Close Encounters where we dig into everything the man upstairs doesn't want you to see. From the paranormal to the conspiratorial. Stick around, traveler. Episode 915, Time Travel.

That's right, we're talking about that DeLorean Terminator primer time travel. Fiction? It is not. And I can say conclusively that I have experienced the bizarre, strange effects of temporal dilation personally. Because time moves for us in this strange and fantastical land at a different pace, except for when we reach out and communicate with individuals in reality prime via cell phone, which means...

that signals belonging to the 4G LTE band are shared across parallel universes, which means that we can now conclusively say that the LTE standard, based in turn on the GSM standards developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, or ETSI, was a global government conspiracy to give potential time travelers the ability to communicate across parallel dimensions using existing cell phone networks, a classic case of military tech gone consumer.

Etsy. Interesting. Sound familiar? It does to me. A little phone app used to sell homemade goods and crafts and bongs to strangers? Or something far more sinister? Better uninstall it just in case the man's listening. In any case, we have some time paradoxes of our own to untangle. Odds are if you're listening to this, your reality might be missing a Fry's Electronics somewhere in the world. And while your scientists struggle to explain that disappearance, we'll be here going to Ravenloft.

and rescuing our kids. Stay cool fellow travelers and watch your back.

Welcome to Dungeons and Daddies, not a BDSM podcast, only occasionally a BDSM podcast. Most of the time it's a Dungeons and Dragons podcast about four dads from our world flung into the Forgotten Realms in the quest to rescue their lost sons. My name is Freddie Wong. Howdy everybody.

How's it going? Hi, Freddie. How are you? Good. I play Glenn Close. He's the barred rock and roll dad of the group. This week's Glenn fact. As you heard from last episode, Freddie Wong, just like Glenn Close, I guess in this case, gets the hiccups. What? Constantly. Most of my friends have tapered off in their adult life, but I feel like

The rate of hiccups that I get has just been a linear function since childhood. I still get the hiccups. Glenn Close also gets the hiccups too, and that's affected one of their gigs one Christmas. This was during the 2018 tour. They were playing in Glendale, the Americana brand. And the problem was they're doing... Does Glenn make a joke about it being Glendale whenever he's in Glendale? A lot of finger guns. Yeah, he's like, hey, this is my home turf. Yeah.

Is there a guy in the band named Dale? No. They had to fire Dale. Dale's wanted in too many states. So they're in the middle of like a Jingle Bells rendition. And then the second verse is coming up and Glenn steps to the mic and realize he has hiccups. So he had no choice but to wait out the hiccups.

to the confusion of the band. So they play the 30 minute Jingle Bells solo while he waited for his hiccups to die down. And then it became like, everyone was like, this is some great prog rock stuff. And it ended up being the mistake that launched the career to the next level of Christmas music. Wow.

It's like an avant-garde like Jingle Bells. It's like Jingle Bells meets like String Cheese Incident or something like that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It became a jam band for Jingle Bells. Jam band, fish jam band. Fish saves Christmas. Yeah, exactly. Hello, my name is Matthew Arnold and I play Daryl Wilson. I was about to change my voice. I play Daryl Wilson.

Daryl just got puberty. Daryl Wilson. A stay-at-home coach dad who's a barbarian once he enters the Forgotten Realms. I still feel like you're putting on a voice. Yeah, now I'm really self-conscious. A barbarian once he enters the Forgotten Realms. He's a big man barbarian. He sounds 10% more like Patrick Warburton than I do. He sounds super deep.

- Whoa! - Whoa! - Whoa! - I didn't know you could do that. - Holy shit. - What's happening? My name's Daryl Wilson. This is my deep voice. - Daryl became the hottest dad. - Oh my gosh. - He only puts that voice on in the bedroom. - Yummy. - That's horrible. Everybody in the house can hear that.

Yeah, Grant's like, why is Patrick Warburton fucking my mom? Grant thinks there's ghosts upstairs. Just his low rumbling. Sexy ghosts. Kids hear ghosts sometimes. I be cry the fact that we no longer had any sexy stuff going on this podcast, so I thought I would have a sexy dad fact. Nice. My sexy dad fact is, so Sunday 9 p.m., that is...

That is their scheduled sex time. That's the whole fact. That is Daryl and Carol's sex time. On the calendar, it's called financing. Financing? In case Grant ever looks on their calendar. And they've kept it up. That's pretty consistent. That's really Daryl's job. They had to move it at 11 p.m. during Game of Thrones because they both got really into that. When Leno's on? When Leno's on. That's how they keep their marriage going. Do you hear about this? Do you hear about this?

If you're under the age of 20 and not married, yes, someday you will do schedule sex. Apparently it's great. Apparently it's the best way to do it. Sex? Sex is great. Scheduling, yeah, no, sex in general. If you've got to schedule something, schedule sex. Clear my schedule. What?

When did they do their actual finances then? And what did they call it on the calendar? Like when it's March 28th and they're like, oh shit, we gotta get our taxes. We gotta go to H&R Block and fuck. Man, tax day must be such a horny event. Yeah, tax day, they get really excited on tax day. Oh, he's got just like a Pavlovian response to financing. Yeah. Quickbooks.

Hey, would you like to refinance your home? What? Man, it's the folder where all your porn is. It's just in the QuickBooks folder, so Carol can easily access it as well. The safe word is TurboTax. Hey, everyone. My name is Will Campos. I play Henry Oak.

It would be like, Henry Oak. That's Ash from Pokemon. Henry's spirit child is Ash from Pokemon. Henry is a granola munching, Birkenstock rocking, crunchy munching nature druid dad. And my dad fact about Henry this week, I feel like every time I do a Lark and Sparrow dad fact, the punchline is always, Henry sucks. So then I do a fun, a little family time fun fact this week, which is about game night at the Oak household. Hmm.

And every game night, they put together a little game called Oaks and Ogres for Larkin Sparrow, which is kind of like a homebrew tabletop RPG wherein Larkin Sparrow play two brave adventurers, the Oak Boys, and every week they have to do a different task for an ogre. It's usually something like he's got a sick tummy and he needs chicken noodle soup. It's all like good deeds. Yeah, it's good deeds for the ogres, right? But it's secretly, it's Henry and Mercedes' way of getting the boys to role play like

what it would be like to be a nice person who did you know obeyed authority and like did good things for other people so like to power up like their healing spells they have to compliment the person they're trying to heal and like if they want to like forge gold they've got to like earn it by like you know picking up their toys and putting them back in the toy chest so it's like a little bit of like gamifying chores around the house how good are they at the game

inevitably the game turns into a fight at some point because essentially the vector you're trying to ride is like how much like productive chore energy can you get out of these boys but at the same time you are feeding into like their desire for power because you're saying that like you're gonna level up and you're gonna be better at fighting and you're gonna be better at this and that and at a certain point they'll be really productive but if you take it a little too far it's like feeding a gremlin after midnight and then they're just amped up on the idea of being powerful

It's like a promotion from middle management. It's like you can't go further than that. That's so much effort to put into like... You put effort into your kids? You'd think that if you're putting that much effort into your kids, they would be a little better. Hi. Were you done, Will? I'm sorry. I'm done now. I'm genuinely sorry. I yield the floor.

He rips up his notes. I'm ripping up Beth's character sheet as she gives the state of the Ron. The state of the character Ron is, hi, I'm Beth May, and I play Ron Stampler. That's Misty from Pokemon. Now I can't even remember. Ron's voice? Yeah. No, now I can't even remember how to describe Ron. Oh, he's an emotionally detached stepfather and a rogue. Today's death.

Dad fact is a continuation of last week's dad fact, which was a melancholy dad fact in which I informed you guys that Samantha is the only person who's ever called Ron Ronnie.

So to add to that, Samantha, she's also the only person who's ever called Ron daddy flapjack Google Doc Dick. Google Doc Dick? Yeah. Go on. Oh, that's it. She's the only one. When did she call him that? During finances. Oh, all the time. When they're putting their expenses on that Google Doc Dick, you know? I'm Anthony. I'm your dad. Hi, Dad. Hi, Dad. Hi.

I'm not talking to dad today. I pissed at dad. So my dad fact is, I don't think I mentioned this in the talking dads about the second to last episode where all the moms kind of died, but there's only one edit I made. I basically, all the letters that the dads got were first draft, except for Henry's, which had one edit that I made where the

She had a line where she said, like, I can live knowing that I have no regrets. And for a long time, I had a parenthetical where she said, except for that time, we had unprotected sex with those two hitchhikers in like Madrid or something. But then I was like, I was like, that's a lot to put on Will's shoulders to like tear up and then also say that midway through. I had to get choked up saying Universal Studios Hollywood. It was great. It was great.

But no, that's still canon as far as I'm concerned.

So, when we last left you, you and the Bad Dog Mercenary Guild were on your way to Castle Ravenloft, you in your van, them on horseback. So something I didn't ask last time is, what about Doug? Did you bring him? Ah, shit, we forgot Doug. No, a good intern doesn't have to be asked where to go. He probably got in the car. Yeah, I have a feeling he would have gone with you. He was trained to anticipate our needs. Yes, he was holding the door open for you. Yes. And he had a bunch of coffees in his other hand. The other option is that we forgot about him, and then the moment that we happened to see him, we're like, what was his name again?

The intern. What was his face? Is he with us? Yeah, I think he's with you. I think he's in the back with Peyton. Yeah, he's definitely hanging out with Peyton. And they have nothing to relate about. Until he reveals, I mean, but if Peyton never finds out he murdered a man, Peyton's going to want to talk. He didn't murder a guy. It didn't happen. He found a guy with the top of his head cut off.

I don't know if Doug would have the confidence to do it, but Doug is definitely saw Peyton slash at Glenn's Achilles tendon. It was like, they're more subtle ways to handle. Like you got caught. The problem is you don't, you want to get caught. They were looking at you in true intern form. They're just like really sizing each other up and setting each other as their enemies. No, they should be teaming up. How long you, how long you been here? Okay. It's like, yeah, let me show you the ropes. Um, all right. Let me show you the ropes. I'll show you, I'll show you the ropes. I'll show you the ropes. Um,

So as you drive northward toward Castle Ravenloft, toward the Kingdom of Barovia, the weather gets colder and colder around you. Can we put on them seat warmers?

Are there seat warmers in the Honda? Only in the front two seats. So who's sitting in the front seat with me? Whose buns are toasty? Shotgun. All right. So Henry's getting them buns warm. Hey, scoot over, Henry. Oh, yeah, sure. Run, shove on in. Do you want to share one of these bun warmers? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Okay, all right. It's normally not as safe as I'd like to ride in a minivan, but considering that there's no other cars on the road, I think we can risk it. Let's get that seatbelt around both of you guys. All right. Okay. All right. And I reached the seatbelt around and we both... I got to suck in a little bit. Okay.

I will remind you that you have an unidentified shield that you got from Revenge of the Mummy, The Ride, which is now currently, I believe, at Fry's Electronics. Oh, shoot. You know what? I need some more tiny screws for my CPU back home, my computer case. I need an Ethernet port.

I need a spare graphics card from eight years ago. I need an ATI Radeon 9800 HD for a laptop. I need some astronaut ice cream. You guys liking these fries jokes? Yeah. Keep at it. Keep going. I need an old dishwasher and three weird batteries.

What does that shield do again? You don't know because you had to basically pass a DC 20 Arcana check. And since all of you failed, your only option is finding essentially an NPC who can try for you. And Doug didn't know despite his college education. Or we could put the shield on, right? Or you could put the shield on. I rolled down the window and I'm assuming a bandit cumber patch. Cabbage patch. Cabbage patch is like riding nearby. Mm-hmm. Benedict. Yeah, we got a crazy shield over here.

We don't know what it is, but you guys know your armory and stuff? You know weapons, right? We know martial armaments, yes, yes, yes. If I... And his mustache goes out like two antennae and starts like... With the diamonds on it. With the diamonds on. And they sort of reach out toward the shield, and he goes, I'm getting a tang of magic, mayhaps, but we're all non-magical here in the bad dog, so I'm afraid we won't be of any use to you. So you would say you're heroes of might. Do you know...

Any heroes of might and magic who can help us identify this? Oh, are there still trees? There are trees near you, yeah. Hey, guys, one second. And I stop the van. And I go to one of the trees. I go, Aaron O'Neill. Oh, clever. So as you call out Aaron O'Neill's name, the leaves on the trees begin to shuffle off of the branches, and then they float down onto the trunk and arrange themselves in the familiar, slightly surly, but generally likable visage of Aaron O'Neill.

And she goes, yeah, what's up? Hey, how's it going? It's actually going pretty good. We got like a society like sort of in its nascent state. We just came up with currency. Daryl's not listening. He's like kind of like trying to gesture to the army around him. Like, notice anything new about us? Did you lose weight? Daryl for the first time looks down at us. I was like, holy shit. Yeah, while I was walking around, I think I'm...

I'm looking pretty good. Hey, Daryl, how many steps you got? I don't know, but it's a lot. You know what it is? If you don't think about exercise. And you have to kill a lot of people. And you got to do it every day. Yeah. You know? Whether you want to or not. And that's kind of the situation we're in. That's the situation we're in. And he's like, I kind of like you better than you like me. You got to get Chris Brown vibes. Oh, my God. Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. Yeah. What's up? Okay. Go ahead, Ron. You know how you died?

I, uh, thank you for reminding me. I have some ongoing trauma from that, but yeah, thanks for reminding me. Yeah. Okay. Well, speaking of ongoing trauma, our wives died. Oh, sort of not yet, but they will. And so, um, we're just trying to like make it so that they don't die. Just like you didn't die, but you did because they did. I did. Are you asking for my birds or what do you, what's going on? Um,

Can I just hand her the shield? Yeah. Here. Do you shove the shield toward a bunch of leaves? Yes. Okay, so the leaves encircle the shield, and it sort of floats up on the bed of leaves, and she goes, Okay, so...

This is, I can tell through the trees, the trees are telling me right now. This was an item submitted by Jake Nolan. Thank you, Jake. It is called the Shield of Protection. It is a cursed shield that, as I told you to text, is a plus one shield. But the DC 20 Arcana check that Aaron O'Neill just got you lets you know that it's actually a shield that when you wear it, it's a shield that you can wear.

It adheres itself permanently to your arm. Whenever the creature wearing the shield is attacked, the shield forces the creature to interpose itself between the shield and the attacker, shielding the shield from damage with its body. So it gives you minus two to your AC if you're holding it, and it can only be removed and released with a remove curse spell. So it's literally the exact opposite of a shield. So it's terrible. It's a reverse shield. It's a reverse shield.

So the shield uses you as a shield. Exactly. It turns you into a shield. It's as if you're an agent of the shield. Yes. Exactly. Oh. And for the first couple times you use it, it's like not that good. But like around like season three or four of using it, it actually gets kind of weird and kind of interesting on its own merits. Yeah. Could you explain that one more time? Not the agent of shield. Agents of shield. Yeah. So for a while they had to be connected to the MCU. Oh, I get it. And it wasn't very good. Yeah.

Yeah, you know like in a good Jackie Chan fight scene where he's got that big vase or something and he's making sure nobody breaks it? It's like you're doing that but with a shield. You make sure that nothing hits the shield. So it's a terrible shield. You know what though? This sounds like a sort of item maybe we could try to trick someone into holding onto and then that could be a fun thing to do. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you told us. Hey, Aaron, that would have been real bad if we had put that shield on. That seems like the sort of reckless thing that someone would have done impulsively at some point, I say, pointing my eyes directly in Daryl's direction. Because Daryl has lifted up his whole shirt, and he's looking at his tummy. He's checking himself out. He's like, is there less here? If we had put too much stock in season one, we might have gotten really disappointed. But now knowing this, this is great information, and we'll keep our expectations managed. Great.

you were talking about your, uh, your wives are going to, is there anything else you want to talk about before you, whatever you guys are doing with all your, what are those? I've got a lot I want to talk about actually. Um, recently I've been thinking a lot. So Aaron turns over her shoulder. She goes, this is going to be a second event. Sorry. And you see, and you see behind her, the two dimensional man that she pulled out of the bully wugs is lying down in bed. He's like, take a shot, baby. Oh God. That's,

And when I say lying in bed, like he's like completely like, he's like, he's like, he's like a perpendicular to you. So you basically see a shard of a person and then just the head pops up and goes, it's okay, baby. And then leaves back down and it's basically invisible again.

I'm so glad we called Aaron O'Neill. Daryl just turns away. He's like, oh, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I don't have a shame about it. It's all good. Hi, stick person. Anyway, I was thinking. Hi, Vince. Great body. So I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be father.

Not only just a father, but a stepfather. I actually, I've been thinking a lot and then feeling a lot and I'm not used to actually, um, do you have time? Uh, like maybe like an hour next week so I could talk more about this stuff. Uh, and by this stuff, I mean my thoughts and my feelings and, and thinking about, you know, taking responsibility for myself and my family and, and,

Stepping up. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. No, I've got a, I know somebody who, I can't talk to you because we have a pre-existing relationship. So that would be a sort of a weird breach of etiquette. But I have somebody I could send you to. And the leaf, one of the leaves like starts scratching on another leaf. And then that leaf wafts into your hands and it just says not me on it. Oh my God. I thought she was going to recommend like an elf thing.

therapist. Hey, how Aaron rolls. Okay, do you know what Dr. Me's address is? Yeah, he's in Neverwinter. Okay, fabulous. I will put this in my wallet next to my very sharp business cards, and yeah, this has been really cleansing, and I'm really sad, but I'm gonna save that conversation for me and Dr. Me.

All right. Well, if that's it, I'm going to get back to doing stuff with my boyfriend. I just, hi, it's Henry here. Hello. Hey, Henry. Hey, um, do you want to come to Castle Ravenloft and help us fight the bad guys and save our sons? We've got a whole army with us now. I know before it seemed like kind of an iffy proposition, but we've got 200 guys. We got rich. We're still pretty rich. I know you're rich too. So that's because, you know, we,

came up with that fair and equitable business proposal. But if you want to come and, you know, be part of a great epic adventure, you know, maybe that'd be something that'd be cool for you. Yeah, no, I'll definitely for sure think about that. That sounds like a lot of fun. I just want to reiterate...

Just get your kids and run, though. Really, just get your kids and run. So you can't. All right. All right. You know what? OK, OK. I'll explain. You want to explain why I can't tell you if I'm right about the kind of magic that those people have over you. It makes the magic more powerful. So you will be even weaker if I'm correct. And you have that knowledge because the control they have over you will be even worse. So it's like the more we know, the less powerful we are.

I don't know if I would say that as an overall holistic rule about life. Because if that's the case, then I'm golden. I got nothing to worry about. But it's like us having to tell our wives that they couldn't go to Universal Studios then.

You know what? It's exactly like that. You should tell all this to Dr. Me. So it's like, okay, so we can't talk about it. That's going to be tough for me. I got to talk about everything, guys. Vince in the back is like, you guys talking about time travel stuff? And then Aaron's like, I guess, I don't know. They're talking about the future and the past. And Vince is like, I mean, I know Dimensional Witch.

Like, I don't know if she goes all the way up to four, but that might be a thing. I don't know. Maybe we can talk about it later. I don't know. Hmm. A dimensional witch. Yeah, that's why I am the way I am. Remember? That was that. That's right. Yeah, I'm recalling that now. She downgraded you down to two. Yeah, I don't know if she can go how far up she can go and how, you know, if it's both directions kind of street or if it's just. Did we get her information or something?

Uh, it's in my other pants right now. I don't want to. We'll hit you up after we save our kids. We'll shout into a tree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If we need to hit me up, catch me on my mobile. Okay. What's up? What's your mobile? Your mobile? What? My mobile leaf. I'm always carrying it around with me. She holds up the leaf. Okay. All right. All right. We're going to hang up the leaves now, I guess. Okay, cool. And she can introduce the stereo.

Okay, I just kind of shoo at them. She goes, no, you go away. So yeah, the leaves all fall back to the ground and they crawl back up the tree and take their places back on the branches. Next time I feel like we need to have to enter like a 20 digit leaf meeting code. That's good. Or we'll get connected to a different witch. Can I roll an investigation on the leaf with not me on it? Yeah. Okay.

That is an 18. With your 18, you can tell that Dr. Not Me is a real doctor. She was not being sarcastic.

That person exists. Wow. Wow. Doctor, not me. Must get a lot of referrals. Daryl's grumbling at how rude Aaron was, like fucking should not have given her half the money. And as we get in the car right before we peel off, you guys want to go? Yeah, let's go. I think we should keep trucking. I go, Aaron! And then I just peel out. Behind you, you can see all the leaves like sort of coalesce in the shape of Aaron. She's like, wait.

Vince, start it back up. We're going from the top. Vince! And then the leaves go back to where they were. Let's do some taxes. Okay, so you are going to just, I presume, drive straight to Castle Ravenloft? Yeah, what now? We have no more goofy stuff for us to do. We cleared all our subquests. Nothing left to do but storm the castle. Okay, so I'm going to roll to see if you get any random encounters. Whoa. Whoa.

Is that a thing that happens? In D&D, it's supposed to. It's generally bad for storytelling and especially bad for podcasts. But no, you didn't. So you're fine. It hasn't stopped us before. Come on, a little pregame. We have 200 people. Yeah, Daryl's down for a pregame. That'd be, yeah, that's like. It wouldn't be anything. It would just be you like annihilating. It's like, oh, three wolves.

Yeah, you know what? Three wolves attack. We didn't even notice. We have wolves for dinner. They attack the right flank before guards killed it. Okay. Before we get to Castle Ravenloft, I would like to explain how you can control your soldiers. So you have... Is he some mechanic's

Yeah, I made up some mechanics. So if you recall, you have 200 mercenaries. Hell yeah, we do. So I've decided that there are arbitrarily three classes of mercenaries that you have. You have archers, shield bearers and pikemen. They all have different stats. Archers basically have not that much HP and they're kind of easy to hit, but they do range damage and their damage is piercing and it's pretty good.

You have shield bearers that are pretty hard to hit and have a lot of HP and they're fairly strong, but they do very little damage. But they can also do a thing where they raise their shields and anyone behind them gets half cover, which means they get a plus two bonus to AC. They're a little bit harder to hit if you're behind them and they have their shields up. And then there are pikemen, which are sort of in the middle. They do a fair amount of damage and they have like medium health and hit ability.

It's a real rock, paper, scissors situation here. So you basically get to decide how many of your soldiers are each of those classes. So divvy up 200 amongst archers, shield bearers, and pikemen. Real quick, shouldn't we just make each one a mobile unit of three? So it's like a shield guy blocking an archer with a dude with a big old pike next to him so that they're the best of all worlds? Only if, like, I mean...

No, that would be terrible. Oh, okay. All throughout all of history, that's never been the case. I'm just saying that maybe I solved Napoleon's problem. Hey, Napoleon, why don't you just put all of them and mush them together? You clown. You idiot. Just one archer hiding behind a shield and another guy with a stick and the three of them are just moving together. What is known as the unstoppable soldier. That's like my friend who never took martial arts but was absolutely certain that if you just punched and kicked at the same time, no one would be able to stop you. To be honest,

To be fair, that is basically the idea behind Krav Maga. Okay, so it's a castle, right? Yes. Yeah, we need engines, siege engines. Actually, you know what? Do you want to see Castle Ravenloft before you make this decision? No, because you would have done it before you left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, to be fair, Benedict Cabbage Patch, who we should be consulting with, would know a little bit about the theater of battle we're about to go into. So, Benedict. Yes. What would be...

this is now a flashback conversation that's playing at the montage of us like traveling over there. What's the best, uh, like, you know, makeup of folks, uh,

How do you do war goodness? I feel like we want defense heavy. I feel like, you know, I want a smoky eye. I want to throw this out there. I'm okay giving a lot of creative control here to Benedict Cumberbatch because it does Cabbage Patch. Cabbage Patch. Or Benedict Cumberbatch. Him too. Just like, I don't know, it feels like we're like the IP holder EPs of this mercenary adventure and like he could be like the showrunner. You know what I mean? He's in charge of the day-to-day. You're Kathleen Kennedy circa the new trilogy. Yeah, just do what you want. Yeah.

Daryl is really into Gladiator, so he is definitely picking his brain and trying to involve himself in this discussion for sure. What has been in the same way you're trying to be the coach of the soccer team? Yeah. I have some plays I came up with for the shield bearers. Yeah. He's like, remember that chariot scene in Gladiator? Like, you need some, right? We need some shields.

Right, Benedict? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The shield bearers, I would recommend you do shield bearers and then behind them you do the archers because then it provides cover for the archers from range damage from afar. But we're going to be like invading the castle. Yes. So like not probably too many archers. She's using your castle. Well, it depends on what...

is waiting for you on the outside of the castle. So I'm not sure what we're going to walk up against. They know we're coming. They do know we are coming, which is a problem, which means that there are certainly going to be either traps or something extremely deadly waiting for us. Now, my understanding of Castle Ravenloft is that it is sort of a one-way trip, if you will. There's one land bridge leading to the castle, and on all sides of the castle is a precipitous drop

just drop that, uh, make it so that if you wish to invade, you're essentially going up one, uh, means of entry, which is, uh, some would consider suicidal. Others would consider an adventure. I'm of the latter, except we have two means of entrance because we have the Dima dome sword.

which can extend to a football field length, right? Yeah, 100 yards. So we could use that as a miniature land bridge to sneak a second party in to ambush the castle. Wow, that's good. How wide is this sword, he says, and he looks at it, and it is the width of a sword. So we'll need your most daring acrobatic soldiers. Or we could lay planks out on it or something like that, right? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, you could use it as the baseline of a bridge you could build.

Which looks the coolest? Which has the coolest outfits of the three? Of the archers, the shield bears, and then the pikemen? I would say the shield bears look pretty cool. They have color coordinated with their armor. Okay, guys, guys. So we have everybody dress up as shield bears. And then we have the one entrance through the front. And then the one backdoor entrance with the Dimidon sword. And then the big daddy entrance, so to speak. You use the transportation orbs.

while everybody's distracted by the cool fighters in the shield bearers outfits, we just sneak in right there and grab our kids and run. Because we can all transport at the same time. The only thing, though, is we don't know where that orb ends up. They may have thrown it into a garbage compactor. Now, I will say this. We should throw the orb away here.

safely out of the rain. Oh, it's like a getaway or so that's our getaway. Like worst case scenario, we get to the, we get to the orb, but in the minivan, pedal to the metal, like have the engine in the car ready to go. Fucking that's not bad. I like, well, so we'll keep the minivan at a safe distance and we'll continue the rest on foot, but that'll be our escape. If we have, okay, how about this? I like the minivan has the thing that makes it so that it's hard to find from magical, you know, folks and it's fast faster than anything else around here. He did see, he did see,

Yeah, our butts are toasty. If we do a secondary entrance, maybe we have all the shield guys, like, you know, make the big show of the big entrance. And then maybe we have archers, like, because we're going to be going up over a wall. Like, have those archers, like, shoot and defend our entrance as we're, like, climbing up over the wall with that big, long sword. The other option with the sword is this. According to Ryan Peterson's description. Cut the castle in half. Yeah, it's a sort of adjustable length. Did you stipulate a length for it? It maxes out at 100 yards. Okay. Okay.

Because if you just shot it 100 yards in the air and tipped it straight down, it would probably cause a lot of force. Right? Because it would be a big, long, heavy, sharp thing. What you're proposing is that we have a whole bunch of men on one side of the sword, and then we just whack the castle over and over again from 100 yards away to break down the wall. Our siege weapon. You broke Dungeons and Daddies. What if we beat a castle to death with this?

with the sword, they said. Wait a second, Anthony, what is the HP of a wall of a castle? Let me Google. I mean, I feel like the sword would probably snap, I'm assuming. Well, he doesn't say, he says weight and length are proportional, not that it gets more brittle, it just becomes bigger and denser. We have 200 strong-backed men. If you smacked a stone wall with a sword, you would probably get a cut, yeah, over and over, eventually it would break. So it's the same brittleness, but you might get one or two whacks in. I know what to do, gentlemen.

We put the sword on the front of the van, make it go 100 yards, and then we drift, and that sword does a slash. A 100-yard slash, cutting everybody in half who comes towards us. Oh, no.

Also, just in case we wanted to know, a 100-yard sword would be about 480 pounds, which is not shit compared to what a minivan. Just so you guys all know, in case we want to do it, 480 pounds. So here's what I'm going to do.

I am not going to make any comments on the feasibility of any idea as the DM. I will only be able to do it in character. So do whatever you're going to do and then tell me when you want to keep moving. Let me ask a question. Yes. How big is this? He says it's better than Cabbage Patch. How big is this precipitous drop? And what is the, like, is it like a valley? Basically, what is the geography? So imagine a mountain range.

And within this mountain range, imagine a canyon that basically goes down a thousand feet. And amidst this canyon, there's but one tiny tundra of land that extends from one of these mountain ranges to a little island of cold rock in this sea of nothingness and mountains. That is Castle Ravenloft. It sits on that rock in that ocean of cold and gravity. Where does their poop go? Off of the side of the thousand foot drop, I would assume. Oh, that's cool. Oh, wait, wait, wait.

Hold on. I have an idea, guys. I want to pull one of the mercenaries. Like, hey, Bennett, can you just give me a fast rider? Just any one of your guys fast rider? Absolutely. Absolutely. And he pulls out a random dude and the random dude goes, yes, ha. What can I do for you? All right. I got a five gold tip here. I need you to ride back to that pyramid. Yes. And just pick up. I write down like the description of like the

the DJI Phantom drone. I'm just going to tell them to go bring us a bunch of drones and technology from The Fry's Electronics. Oh my god. And so I write a big list of things. So two-way radios,

Like the DJ, like multiple drones. Could you get a Walkman? I will absolutely get anything that is on this list to the best of my ability. And he rides off in a puff of cartoony smoke. He'll be back in like four hours. That's fine, that's fine.

Okay, so you have to scale a thousand foot wall to get to the castle from the other side. Correct. If we wanted to come in from the side on the sword, like how far is it from like the nearest other side? Because like if this is all useless, if it's like more than a... 102 yards. 102 yards, then we're fucked. I do not know for certain, but I would suspect that the land bridge connecting it to the nearest mountain range is approximately 75 yards. Are there any mountains above it? Mountains above it? Yes. Yes.

Surrounding it, yeah. Zipline, baby. Oh, wow. Zipline, baby. You could zipline the whole fucking army in on that bad boy. Oh, my God. Oh, shit, dog. Yes.

Yes! It would be a difficult climb up the mountain, but yes, I believe that once we get to the top of the mountain, as I've said, it is roughly 75 yards away and is a high elevation. We could indeed line a zip down to the castle. We need a distractionary group in the front so that all their attention is up there so that the other people can go in and we can fucking zip line in. Yeah, get a bunch of shield people and archers at the main entrance and have a crew of 50 people. Well, and then they'll know the van.

So if we send the van out as a vanguard force, if you will, to be the distraction, they'll see the van, think we're in the van, especially if we're with a pitiful army of, you know, 50 guys or whatever up that front door. They'll think that that's the main army. But then we're zipping in over the line. Do you see what I mean? So we don't know what they don't know about us yet, right? Yeah, Ron. What if we send spies up ahead? Spies that they won't suspect. Right.

spies that fly. Are you thinking when I'm... Rats? Rats on drones! I was thinking... I was thinking bats because those are kind of what rats on drones are. Bats.

So the next time I'm in a zoo... Sort of a reverse, reverse ratatouille. Oh, but we can give them two-way radios so that you can talk to them, Henry. Oh, that's true! So while you guys are talking... Four hours later. Four hours later. We've been talking about this for four hours. The bad dog comes back carrying, like, two large bags full of stuff. You will get to have any ten items you could imagine from a Fry's Electronics, but when you want to use it, you're going to have to roll...

you're going to tell me what you're going to roll in order to see if it has been broken or not. Cause it's been going through the fucking void for 20 years. I can see that. I can see that. Um, that's fair. 10's too many. Five. It's also future technology. I mean, hell we're dads. We can barely figure it out on our own phones. That's true. Imagine trying to make electronics for 20 years in the future work and you can't read the instructions. Yeah. Cause everything turned to Esperanto in America. 10 years after that. Political practice gone mad. It's all in Esperanto.

Okay. I tell the bad dog, good dog. All right. So what's on the table? We've got a reconnaissance mission. It definitely feels like a stealth thing for sure. Reconnaissance first and foremost. We're going to approach Castle Ravenloft, but not to where we're within eyesight yet. More than a DJI drone distance. Okay. Okay.

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You start moving your way through the mountains on this very... So are you leaving the van or are you taking the van with you? Taking the van with us for now. So you're driving the van up. It's just barely big enough and just barely not steep enough that you can manage to get the Odyssey up there. And you come across sort of this rise and you can see in the distance Castle Ravenloft. And just like it was described by Benedict Cabbitchbatch,

Castle Ravenloft sits on a snowy plateau, an island of cold rock and a sea of mountains. Only a single thin land bridge connects the castle to the mountain range surrounding it. Only one way in, and unless you can survive a thousand foot fall, only one way out. So what would you like to do with the drone? Wait, oh, I haven't said it yet. We don't go to Ravenloft. Anyone? F5-2? F5-2. I want to fire up one of these future drones. Okay. Which probably has thermal imaging capacity and GPS and HD video streaming. Okay.

It's the future. Yeah, yeah, why not? It's going to be built into the controller. Yeah, so it's from 2030, whatever the straight is. Oh, but here's the bummer. It's controlled by your phone, and it only works on an iPhone 20. Sorry. Oh, damn, my iOS is too old for this shit. But wait, what's that in the box? An iPhone 20. Yeah, that can be two of your five items. Definitely a new phone. Definitely a Walkman. What is that?

Just give me a straight D20 roll. There's no obvious. I don't know why I was looking at a D&D character sheet as if there's going to be something that I go, aha, yes, that's the stat to see if an iPhone works. I roll it. I unpackage it and I roll a six. Okay. So the iPhone, the first iPhone, assuming you want to have multiples of them, unfortunately does not work. It doesn't have a battery charger that is compatible with anything you have in the Odyssey. Whoa, guys. Turns out like the US adopts like the UK standard of plugs in the future. What crazy future do we live in?

Huh. It's all an Esperanto. Weirdly, after Brexit, the UK became a state in the United States. We were going to adopt their health system, but no. No, we just got the plugs. All right. Can I see if the Walkman works? Are you going to make that one of the items? Yeah. I think it is now. All right. Go ahead and make a roll.

That's a 19. It has the best audio quality of any. It's only if only we got any tapes to put it in. It's like it's got to be one of those like music. It comes with a demo tape. That's like all the like now that's what I call music. Seven hundred eight nine. It comes with the YouTube album. Yeah. And there's no way to remove it. It's a new one, though. It's the one they did in 2030.

I'm looking up now. That's what I call music for. I assume the difficulty will be based on how OP this item is. One of the other items is like a golf range finder. So it's like a scope. Okay. I'm going to put it to my eye and like be able to tell the distance from here to the pin. Just get higher than a five and you'll be fine. Seven.

Great. So that works. All right. So I'm going to do an investigation on the castle looking for any kind of, you know, weaknesses, anything that stands out for ways to get in. And then more specifically on the green, where the pin placement is and where the bunkers are. So that'll be a 13. So through the scope, you can see that there's basically two main spires in castle Ravenloft. There's one in the center. That's very, very tall and has a pointy top. And there's another next to it. That's sort of not so tall and has a flat top. And, uh,

For a second, you're wondering, why does that one have a flat top? And then you see...

The biggest fucking dragon you have ever seen in your entire life. Also the smallest technique. No, Gartok was a dragon. So definitely the biggest dragon you've ever seen in your entire life. The size of a kaiju, essentially. Flaps its way up to the flat-topped spire and just sort of sits there, looks around, and continues to idle animation, just like sort of staring down at the land bridge that leads to Castle Raven. It is bright gold. Exactly.

Hey guys, there's like a dragon or something. There's like some smog ass shit happening here. Oh, benefit cabbage patch. Do the smog thing. The what? Smog. The smog thing. Smog. I forgot that he was smog. Smog. The desolation of smog. Smog.

Let me see that if you would. And he takes the range finder from you and his mustache like droops and the diamonds fall out. Um, he's like, that's definitely a three iron. Uh, and he goes, my gosh, an ancient gold dragon. I'm, I'm,

this will be glorious. We are almost certain to die, but this will be quite a way to go out if I may say so myself. How do you kill them? What's the deal with the gold dragon? Gold dragons are, this particular one is an ancient gold dragon, so it's one of the most dangerous possible creatures that exist in all of the Forgotten Realms. And you, I mean, you just sort of kill it by hitting it many, many, many times. Are there any weaknesses? Oh, gosh, no. What happens if you had a hundred yard sword? If you had a hundred yard sword,

I suppose you would get like one good swack at it. I mean, they're not exactly slow. They can fly. What if we tape the gun to the end of the sword and we zip this gun up and we shoot the dragon?

It is very large. I mean, you would probably piss it off. I think we use the sword as like a big javelin. Wait, wait, question, question. Is there anything that gold dragons like? Do they like gold? Do they like, you know what I mean? Yeah, is this a smart dragon? Tell us about ancient dragons. Are they intelligent? Are they cunning? Do they have, like, what are they? Are they easily charmed? Are they artistic? As far as I know from the legends, because it's not often you see a dragon, but...

Dragons tend to be fairly intelligent and can be reasoned with unless they are under the thrall of somebody else. And there are certain very rare, very magical items that allow one to have control over a dragon. And I can't think of too many good reasons that a strong, intelligent dragon would be defending someone else's lair. So my fear might be that that dragon is under their control, perhaps with an orb of dragon kind.

So it's just like, if we got rid of that orb, we'd have like a pet dragon. You know who might be able to help us with this? Is our old friend Scam Likely, who owes us a scam. Okay. He does owe us a scam.

We could maybe use Scam Likely to flim-flam this dragon, maybe into tricking them into thinking we've got the orb of dragon kind, and then it'll have to obey us. Or maybe scamming the people in the castle to get the orb for us. That could work, too. Like it's an orb cleaning service or something. Yeah, he's got a bowling ball polish. Yeah, he's there to check the sewage or something, and then he steals the orb for us. Okay, so your phone rings. Who's phone? Oh, Daryl's phone. Daryl's the only phone left. I answered. Hello? Hello?

Is it my ears that currently burn, or do you wish to use the scam that you once earned? Scam? How did you hear us? I'm always listening. Are you? Turn off location tracking. This is a Nokia. This doesn't have no GPS. All right. Are you nearby? Whenever there are jigs to be found, I'm not far behind.

Scam. It's Henry and Daryl and the other dads. All right, scam. Do you think you'd be up to scamming an orb of dragon kind at a castle Raven loft for us? Oh, dear. Dear me. An orb of dragon kind. I mean, that's too hard of a scam for you. Yeah. I see what this is. Go ahead and roll persuasion.

Whatever I add to that, it's probably not going to do it. How many times have I told you, good boys, you cannot scam a scammer? I like where your head's at, though. I do. Daryl, how many times does he have to tell you you can't scam a scammer? Now. Actually, hey, scam, what about a favor?

A favor? What kind of favor? Oh, you know, one scammer to another. How about... You're not a scammer. You've never scammed anyone. How do you know that? Because I would know about it. That's sort of my thing. Oh, what if you don't, though? Because I'm scamming you. Okay, so your scam would be to hide the scam? Yeah. What's the point of a scam hidden? If a scam falls in the forest, does anyone like it? No, we're all scammed by it.

You have my attention. To kind of bring it back around to the Orb of Dragonkind, you said we could call you for a free scam. I did. And this is the scam we'd like you to pull. We'd like you to scam the Orb of Dragonkind out of that castle and into our hot little hand. Okay. And just so you know, we're just not throwing you out in the wind here. We got a 200-person army nearby.

We got us, and we got some electronics. So we got stuff to help out if you, you know, just let you know the tools you got at your disposal for the scam. Well, so what do you know about what's inside this castle? Because it helps to know whatever I can about my mark before I go in. Mark is an interesting term for who you're going to scam. It's also the name of my brother. Our kids are in there. There's three purple-robed figures who are guarding this castle, and they probably have... Are they your wives?

No. A lot of people seem to think that. Probably not.

So these are the bozos that stole our kids. And, you know, we've been able to kind of connect with them in like a liminal dream space. We were warned that the more that we learn about their power, the more powerful they'll become. Now, you might know something about that. But if you do, don't tell us because we don't want to make them more powerful. So, Scammy, you know Castle Ravenloft or no? I know of it. OK, so it's a big castle. Yes. Like a thousand foot gorge around it. Yeah. And one bridge. Yeah. And there's a big dragon on top of it. Oh.

Oh. That's what we know. There's a big ancient gold dragon. And we're pretty sure it's got an orb or some magical item that somebody's using to control it. And we would like that item on this side of the gorge. So that we can control it. So we can control the dragon and help us out on this whole battle. Or maybe set it free like in Free Willy. Or a scam item. A scam item that looks like the dragon item but is a scam.

Okay. Trick the dragon. It sounds like you have essentially no information on what awaits me inside the castle. It's to get an item that's extremely likely to be well guarded, and there's no guarantee that my means of egress will be protected. I have only one thing to say to that. And then the entire time he's been talking, you've been noticing that Benedict Cabbage Patch has his back to you, and then Benedict turns around and rips his mustache off. And he goes...

You've been with us the whole time.

And Scam Likely removes his Benedict Cabbage patch costume. I knew it, that mustache. I was like, something's weird about that mustache. And he goes, see you in a bit. And he starts walking towards... Wait, wait, wait. He got all the gems. He got the rest of our gems. He still got the gems after all. He... He... And it's done. He got our gems. You gotta be fucking kidding me. Who me? I'm gonna give him, though, a drone.

To take with him. Well, he knows everything we have. Yeah. So I'm going to give him a drone to take with him. He's like, hey, if things get hairy, just attach the orb to this thing. Okay? Okay. Yeah, I can do that. Okay. All right. Okay. So I guess here I go. Are you guys going to wait here until I'm done with my sort of little side quest adventure? See, now we're the dungeon masters and you're the player going through your own dungeon for us. We'll just like ellipses and rest.

We need you to act as our sort of a candid scammer. Oh my God, that's very good. In the words of DJ Khaled, I played myself. Literally. All right, so you see...

So you currently don't have a means of controlling the drone, right? Because you don't have the phone. No, like you can have drones that are not phone based. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, remote with, okay. So you got a normie drone. We didn't run for it. You got to roll for it, right? I'll roll for it. I'll roll for it. I mean, how many items did we pull out to? And then the Walkman, right? Yeah. The range finder, the phone that didn't work, the Walkman that did. So this is your fourth. Would this count as electronic, which is that fries does indeed sell 36 packs of Charleston shoes. Yeah.

I was just double checking. Did you have the foresight to tell that guy before you left? I was checking it and I didn't find a time to interrupt it. So I would have like taken him aside and be like, hey, can you grab some Charleston shoes? What the fuck? Who has some Charleston shoes? All right. Let me. They were out. Oh, devastating. Daryl looks at his new bod and sees the like 10 pounds he's dropped. He's like, it's

It's all right. I'll save it for later. All those Charleston chews you've ever eaten are still in there. Yep. What do I have to beat? You got to beat an 11. I got an 11 on the dot. Whoa. All right. All right. All right, sexy boy. You have a drone. You have a functional drone. Nice. Hey, guys. Freddy, you're such a fucking nerd. I can't stand it. Sometimes it's like,

Well, this is great. It's just like, it's just watching a man chase down his very specific kink in the context of tabletop role playing. It's like, I get a DJI Phantom with like all the trimmings. Well, the drone like weight ratio, these in the future has got to be fucking excellent and batteries have gotten better too. So Scam Likely is walking away with the drone sort of like tucked in his waistband because in the future they're kind of small and they unfold into something bigger. What does Scam Likely look like?

So right now he looks like exactly like Benedict Cabbage Patch, but with no mustache. So when he ripped off the costume, you just saw the same guy, but with no mustache, essentially. Can I put his mustache on? Roll constitution. Oh no. Uh oh. Do it. Baby may have made a mistake. 13. The mustache...

latches into your upper lip and fucking razor sharp barbs embed themselves in your flesh and the mustache you can feel like suddenly it's like you've grown a new limb you can feel the cold air hitting every individual hair follicle on your mustache it is a it is a symbiote that is now one with you you have a parasite on your face

That is inextricable from you without some serious surgery or magic. So it's like Davy Jones' tentacles on his face? Yes, it is independent of you. It can be sort of maneuvered if you can convince it to do certain things, but it very much has its own agency, and it is now embedded in your face. Wait, okay, actually this is important. Did Ron already have a mustache? I think actually, yeah. Okay, so he has a mustache on top of another mustache now. Or just like a really thick mustache. Or a very, very thick brown and black mustache. Wow. Wow.

This is a wild episode, guys. What's Ron's reaction? He just strokes the mustache and says, mmm. So we don't know that anything's weird about it. The mustache, like one of the tendrils, like whips at your finger, like, psh, like, meow. You can hear there's a voice in your head going, meow. You haven't heard that yet. Wait, so Ron, did that mustache just move? Whoa, Ron, what happened to your mustache? Guys, guys, sorry, sorry. Be quiet, please, please. Mr. Mustache, am I allowed to answer them? Meow. What?

Guys, everything's fine. Can you take off the mustache? What happened? Why would I? It looks so good. It looks so good, right, Mr. Mustache? I like that. I like that. Okay, yeah, I like that too. Okay. Hey, um, how are you?

I'm doing okay. Okay, yeah, me too. I'm really nervous about a lot of things, but I'm really scared. I'm nervous too. That's just, I mean, that's just... You know, that's so weird because Aaron was telling me that I needed to go talk to somebody, but maybe that somebody was in me all along and like we're here together and we're in this... I wasn't in you all along. I was in you as of about 30 seconds ago. Okay, that's what she said, but then I...

Your mustache begins to vibrate and you hit it. That's good. That's good. That's good. I like that. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Me too. But for now, I've got this Walkman and I have got, now that's what I call Music 4, which features Blue Daba D by Eiffel 65. Put one of the earbuds in me. Yeah, okay. I actually put like one of the earbuds in my mouth. Does Ron know how to listen to music?

You could see that the mustache is like sort of bobbing to the beat of blue. Okay, so anyway, to get to the other stupid thing that we're doing, scam likely vanishes into a tiny little dot on the horizon. And eventually, so do you have a, you probably do have a camera. Describe the remote. So the remote would probably have a built-in screen to it so we can see. It's like a Wii U.

It's like a Wii U. Yeah, yeah. And it's got probably gimbal controls. It's got one good game. It's got like four. How dare you? How dare you? You know, it's like 4K streaming video. Okay, great. So you can see because he's holding it behind himself, you can sort of see him. You can't see what he's looking at because, again, he's holding it at his back. Eventually, you start seeing the land bridge that he's on as he starts moving across it, presumably towards Ravenloft. And at a certain point, you hear the knock of a fleshy fist on stone.

And he goes, okay, I need to think of a scam that's actually relatively convincing. Avon calling. Representative of the Doodlers here. Knock, knock, knock. And you hear the doors open.

So I step in or I don't? I do? I do. Okay, cool. You see him walk into a courtyard and you hear the breathing of the dragon hot and heavy and very close. And as he moves past the dragon, you can see that this thing is fucking massive. This thing is the size that you imagine Clifford the Big Red Dog to be in relationship to you. Is Clifford the Big Red Dog a kaiju? By definition, yeah.

What's a kaiju? Like a big Japanese monster, like in a Pacific room. He's just a big dog, Will. Why does it always have to be super geeky? I'm just over here dropping my skewed takes on pop culture. This is the kind of comedy you can expect from my Twitter at Will B. Campos on Twitter. I do all sorts of wacky observational stuff. Okay, listen. You'll find something rational, like just talking about how hot Clifford the Red Dog is.

This was supposed to be the big climax. Yeah, sorry. I'm more, okay. All right. I am a Marmaduke girl and please go on. You hear two very large doors open and he... Taking notes. Someone's taking notes. Doug, you're taking notes. I'm watching right over your shoulder looking at the screen.

Oh, hey, hey, hey. It's like, hey, we should be ready to fly this drone, by the way, if something goes down. Oh, yeah, I got the arm switch here. Ready to go? You can see the light suddenly go dark as he moves indoors somewhere. And he seems to be in some sort of foyer that is lit primarily by candles. And I was lucky because the drone's pointing behind him. You can see mounted on the wall what looks to be a sort of digital projector.

And it flicks on. And you can't see what it's pointing at because it's in front of him. But you hear the familiar voices of the purple robes. And they go, Speak your piece. Hi, nice to meet you. So, you're seeking the doodlers, yes? Yes, we seek the doodlers. We've invited them here. And, uh, kind of just waiting on them to wait for a little while. We were considering, like, hitting them up again.

But I didn't want to rush it. You know, like when you send a text, you don't want to immediately, hey, did you get it? Because it's desperate. So we were just kind of waiting on it. Yes, yeah. The reason that you're waiting is because I tricked them. I captured them. And I thought we could perhaps have a little ransom, a little exchange of currency in exchange for these doodlers you want so bad. So he's going to roll persuasion. I love watching Anthony play Dungeons and Dragons with himself.

You're watching. This is the best thing I've ever seen in my life. This is role-playing masturbation. This is horrible. No, it's literally just like we're all watching our own adventure on TV. We made A's and A's do it all against themselves.

Four adults were like, what if we listen to our podcast while being on our podcast? Dude, this is great. We're the only people in the world who can't listen to our podcast, but now we can. I'm not even playing. I'm just like leaning on the edge of my seat watching Anthony so excited about what's about to happen. His eye lines are perfect. Everything's perfect. I love this. I'm literally getting lightheaded. If I could only bottle this up and repeat this experience.

All right, so he's going to roll deception with advantage. No, this podcast is funny. Like, now that I'm just, like, listening to it, it's pretty good. I mean, Anthony's a really good DM. Yeah. All right. Hey, you're doing great, Anthony. So they're going to roll insight. Okay, he's rolling insight. Okay, so scam likely. Hey, Anthony, can you say your rolls more into the microphone? Fuck. Fuck my ass. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

So Scam Likely got a 17, and he gets a plus six to scams. So he got a 23 scam, and they rolled insight, and they only got about a 12. So he succeeded at that scam check. You've captured the daddies. Hmm, interesting. Actually, not entirely surprising. They seem very easily capturable. So that kind of tracks. Hey, Glenn. Hey. That guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Yeah, that's right. High five. High five. I prepped her. High five. High five. Name your price. What do you wish for the doodlers? Oh, I thought...

Shall we say 40,000 gold? And then, gosh, I think that's it. 40,000 gold? That's obscene. That's ridiculous. That's more gold than anybody has in this area of the...

That's ridiculous. That's more gold than money. That number's too high. That is a very large number, and that's a ridiculous negotiation tactic. Okay, well, I guess you've convinced me to sort of lower my negotiation because I'm very good at it. Oh, guys, this is called anchoring. It's great. He's doing anchoring. Well, why don't you give me something that makes me happy? What's something you could offer me that's really impressive? Well, we've got the children. We've got the army of the undead. We've got the

We should have asked him to scam our kids out of there. Damn it! Can we talk into the drone? Does he remember the dragon? Let him do his work. I'm getting nervous. Just let the man scam. God forbid you interact with this scene in any way. That's not what I'm trying to do. We have the orb of dragon kind. We are not giving up the orb of dragon kind. We're probably fine with that. An orb of dragon kind?

I guess that's probably the lowest I could probably go as an orb of dragon kind of thing. He lives a master at work, guys. I have one at home. Holy shit. So I'm not super impressed by it, but like I would consider maybe. Hundreds of yards away, Glenn's going around just like doing like explosion hands around his head. It's like, this guy's so good. He's so good. All right, so he's going to try to deceive them again. And they, okay, they rolled badly again.

Alright, I feel like I'm going to regret this, but yeah, okay, you can have the Orb of Dragonkind, but just please, I mean, can we have some sort of, actually, no, I don't need to give you a gentleman's agreement. We've done enough sort of, you know, emotional scar into this thing that it's not going to attack us, but like, don't be a dick about it, okay? Yes, we'll give you some control of the dragon outside, but don't, like, don't make me regret this, okay? I will leave you a bag of Yelp review, and if you've seen the acoustics of this canyon, it will go very far.

Hold on a moment. You hear somebody rummaging around, and then you hear the clack of bones getting louder and louder, and Scamlikely goes, ooh, stairs, cool. And a skeleton coming down the stairs holding an orb. Delightful. Absolutely delightful. Guys, this is like some theater of the mind shit. And he takes the orb from them, and the robes go like, okay, now, where are the daddies? They are on their way forthwith. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to need something considerably more concrete than that.

Do you have any proof that you have them with you? I have, uh, I could tell you something that only the daddies might know, perchance. Would that be sufficient? Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, why don't you tell us something that only they would know? Let me just think about it. Let me see if anything is called to mind that only they would know. If I could just dial in to a particular thought or particular, you know, sentence. Guys, I think he wants us to call him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I'll call him. I open my phone and I call Scam Likely. I need a roll, right?

Yeah. Natural 20. Natural 20? Okay. For my phone not dying. Great. Was something only we would know. Hey, get us out of here, scam. Hey, who is this? He's got us trapped. We're trapped. So you hear him go, bleh.

And then you hear the noise that whatever you're saying is sort of coming from a tinny speaker like an echo chamber that sounds like it's coming out of his mouth. Where are we? It's all dark in here. Gosh darn it. Scam, you rogue. I can't believe you scammed us so bad. Oh, I'm dying. Oh, God, please let us out.

I hope you don't hurt my son's lark and sparrow. You hear one of them, you recognize the voice as the shorter one being like, I don't want to die. Don't be killing him. If everything goes according to plan, I won't. Let me leave this room. Let me leave this particular canyon with this orb of dragon kind in tow, and they will be on their way forthwith. What say you? One final deception check may happen. What? Nothing. All right, so that's 21.

They critted. They got a natural 20 on their insight check. So the, uh, oh boy. So you hear a voice go, wait a minute. And it's the voice of the tallest one. You wanted the orb of dragon kind, didn't you? Yeah, that's why I negotiated for it. That's how negotiation works. You pretend you don't want a thing and then you, and then you get that thing. I negotiated you down to it. I'm very good at that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is all bullshit, isn't it? Oh, oh.

Scam's cover's blown! Turn on the drone! Distract them! I flip on the drone and fly it upwards and point the camera towards this visage in front of us. Okay, so in front of you, you can see that the projector is projecting an image of the three purple robes sort of standing next to each other, and behind them

you see your kids. So you see the tall one go, get him, get him! You can see all around you these stone walls that you assumed were just normal stone and had like cute little decorative skulls and stuff in them. Bodies begin to pull themselves out of the walls. Skeletons sort of making themselves manifest, crawling out of what seems to be sort of their hive and the walls of this fucking castle. And they start running towards Scam and he goes, Scam likely away! Scam likely away!

And he starts running, and he runs presumably out of sight of the drone, unless you're going to follow him with the drone. I'm going to follow him with my drone piloting skills. He still has the orb of dragon kind, right? He does. Daryl, give me the phone. Scam. Use the orb of dragon kind. Press the action button to bring the dragon to your side to help you escape the castle. It's a third-person video game because I've piled the drone around him, behind him, so it's like a third-person video game. You're like waist height, and he's like taking most of the left half of our screen. Do we have to roll for the drone? You have to roll to handle the drone properly and not like...

crash it into something. Oh, it's like you have to do that and then you have to call out obstacles to scam likely and then he has to duck around them like quick time events. Yeah. Me and Grant used to fly remote airplanes. Okay, I toss it. I toss Daryl the remote. I'm like, pilot that thing. That's 17 plus 4, so 21. So you can see that some of the skeletons...

have, uh, spears made out of their own ribs that they're just taking them out and, like, chewing down on the ends and just throwing them like darts, and you're managing to evade these ribcage darts with the drone pretty dexterously. This game is running as fast as he can, and so he's, he looks into the orb's depth, and you can see him, uh, you can see him making a charisma check.

So it worked. So he attunes to the orb. He controls the orb for as long as he remains attuned to it. So because he is controlling the orb, the orb has seven charges. Imagine how fun this would be if you had this. Ha ha ha!

We're trying to get it to us. Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. It will in a second if everything goes to plan, baby. While you control the orb, you can use an action to cause the artifact to issue a telepathic call that extends in all directions for 40 miles. It doesn't say here, but I'm deciding it means you can give dragons a one-word command, essentially. I feel like Scam's move is going to be to just hitch a ride on the dragon and just peace the fuck out.

That was my thought, yeah. Okay, so Scam's going to think the word, rescue! And so you hear a beating of wings and a shadow passes over Scam likely and lands directly in front of him like a cool scripted event. He's like too far away so you can't mess up the cutscene kind of thing. And then as Scam runs up and sort of scampers up the dragon. Scampers, yeah. He scampers and onto its back and he goes, Scam likely away!

And as he's saying that, from the tallest tower in the castle, you see a beam of purple energy shoot out, and it goes straight through Scamlikely's fucking skull. What? And his face frozen in a rictus grin, he falls off of the dragon and down, down, down into the thousand-foot chasm surrounding the castle raven loft.

He is still holding the orb of dragon kind and it falls with him. And the dragon is looking around in confusion and sees its master falling down into nothingness. And now free, it just sort of hovers in place, not quite sure what to do. But you feel, you can feel deep in your heart that Scam likely is dead. Scam! Scam!

This is a great scam. This is great. Yeah, he's going to come back. He's playing us, right? Oh, scam. This is your best scam yet, scam. Scam? I try to call scam likely. Scam. Scam.

The phone rings and it goes to voicemail. Whoa, he has voicemail? What does voicemail say? I put on speaker. Don't trust anything you hear or see. You've received a call from Scam Likely. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep. I go, thanks, Scam. Thanks for everything. Just kidding. That was me. I was pretending. There was no real beep. He got you. Oh, he got me. And then an actual beep happens. Scam, is your refrigerator running?

Because I miss you.

Dungeons and Daddies is Matt Arnold as Daryl Wilson. Anthony Birch is our DM. Will Campos is Henry Oak. Beth May is Ron Stampler. And myself, Freddie Wong, as Glenn Close. Theme song and outro is All Right by Maxton Waller. Thanks this week to Jake Nolan for his item submission. And thank you this week to all of our Patreon supporters, but especially Kevin G. Host. Kevin Ghost? Is he a ghost? Nobody knows. Rebecca Beavers, Aaron Murphy, Jonathan Trombino, Marcus Howell, Will Maynard, Chris Smith, Gary Fitzpatrick,

Spencer and Madison Ryan. These are the kinds of people that we should all aspire to be. More merch, by the way, is coming soon. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 outbreak has really slowed down a lot of the manufacturing overseas. And there's obviously way more important things for those factories to start churning out the niche podcast merch. But we do have stickers, shirts, and more pins in the works. Additionally, there are now merch tiers on the Patreon. So we've enabled this feature called Merch by Patreon for tiers, $10 and up.

which means if you join now and stick around for three months, you will get merch sent to you through Patreon. We got stickers, our first ever dad mug designed by artist extraordinaire Kat Kerwin, which if you follow us on social, you've definitely seen her work. So head on over to patreon.com slash dungeons and dads for all the juicy deets. And remember, Patreon supporters at any level get first crack at any new merch.

Our website is dungeonsanddaddies.com, where this week we put together a handy, convenient page with links to all the bonus content if you're a patron. If you're not a patron, you can just, like, gaze longingly at all the bonus content patrons get access to, I guess. We are at Dungeons and Dads on Twitter, bit.ly slash Dungeon Dads for that private Facebook group, and r slash Dungeons and Daddies for the subreddit. Next episode's coming out March 3rd, so we will see you then. There was a time we'd meet between to know they'd never run

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