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Peel back the curtain because it's a peek behind-the-scenes in this episode of Imagine Dungeons! This time Jordan delivers a crash course in chaos as he takes you through his thought process (and in-the-moment thoughts) when it comes to playing the wildcard character. Jordan walks us through his three Pillars of Fiddlesticks: Entertain, Support, and Destroy.
Imagine Dungeons is an actual-play Dungeons & Dragons 5e podcast set in the world of Eberron, and our story is enjoyable for everyone, regardless of their experience with D&D!
DM: Gage Kell
Donyark Ghaash'kalla: Carter Willis
Fiddlesticks: Jordan Wonders
Ridley Fontina: Vince Kelly
Sue: Mariah Kelly
Glintwood Thistlewick: Justin Dozier
Original music by Justin Dozier
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/EEtr3z7YYv
WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone, gather in, gather around, come on in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Don't crowd the door, don't crowd the door, come on, don't be shy, listen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jordan, A.K.A.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Fiddlesticks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And look, I've been, I've been keeping my ear to the ground.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing my best to, well, frankly, to listen to you, the people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I hear what you say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Every day you approach me in the street, you send me the M's on Zenga and my space.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You throw crumbled up wads of paper at my house with the same note, written over and over and over again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I hear you loud and clear.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You all ask me, Jordan, Jordan, when are you going to do an OF?
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[SPEAKER_00]: When are you going to start an OF?
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[SPEAKER_00]: When are you going to have an OF?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So after some serious self-reflection and some time alone to just sort of meditate, I think I've decided to finally give the people what you want.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to give you my OF.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's time for only Fids.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's just, it's just Phil Sticks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Which is me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's sort of a unique blend of realism and humor that I like to have, sort of my own special sort of twisted South Park mind out here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, of course, I know what Oh, I've really stands for, and it's only friends.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And right now I don't have any of those.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just me, but I thought it would be fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something to be said for playing sort of the Chaos Grimland, the wild card character, and I think that there are ways to do it well, and I think that there are ways to do it selfishly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I've done both from time to time as we're kind of learning our characters and learning how to play.
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[SPEAKER_00]: D&D not only just generally collaboratively, which is sort of the game's design in the first place, but also learning to play it for an audience.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something different about playing Dungeons and Dragons with your friends around a table, which is like the most sacred fun thing in the whole world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something different when you're playing for an audience, because you kind of always have to have the audience in mind when you're making not only character decisions
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[SPEAKER_00]: There are certainly people that I would like to hear from, you know, I'd love to hear gauges approach to DMing a game that is meant for an audience rather than just
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[SPEAKER_00]: you know, for an audience of one of the Lord, but also, you know, I think that every single one of us probably has our own unique approach to playing this game with you, the audience in mind.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't just want to do things that make sense game playwise.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do things that are fun and interesting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there are people that would argue that that
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[SPEAKER_00]: uh... might take away some of the creative agency from us the players but i'm here to tell you that i really think playing with you in mind has changed my game for the better in the way that i approach playing fiddle sticks for the better so uh... yeah this is you know we can cause whatever wildcard one on one uh... how to play uh... what is it how to make friends and influence people if it's uh... how to how to make fids and influence people that's fun but i think i'm
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[SPEAKER_00]: makes me gaggle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There are three general subheadings that I want to kind of focus on as we talk about my approach to playing this weird delicious silly character named Fiddlestick.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And basically I've broken it down into three categories that I feel are so important and that is to entertain
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[SPEAKER_00]: to support and to destroy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to talk about all three of those because I think each one of them has a particular audience in mind.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that each element of fiddlesticks is designed with someone
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[SPEAKER_00]: in mind as the target of whatever she is doing, whatever I am doing as her as we play.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I just kind of want to break them down, piece by piece, just so you can kind of understand where I'm coming from when I'm playing fiddle sticks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it might also just help to give you a little insight into the mind of a public facing D&D player.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to start with intertaining.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Intertaining has one target audience in mind, and that is you, the listener.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When I'm playing Fiddlesticks, there is sort of a natural inclination when you have created this character that is like, I think Carter talked about what thought process we all had as we were creating our characters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, it was sort of what will benefit the audience the most, what will be the most fun, but then also what will benefit the team the most.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to the audience, the thing that I'm always trying to think of is, what is fun?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've got some really fantastic characters.
06:17.329 --> 06:25.076
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that Doge has done such a great job making Glent feel lived in and fully realized.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Glent has fears that I think the audience can identify Glent has hopes and dreams that I think the audience can identify Glent has things that he loves.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I can say the same for Ridley when it comes to, I think when you listen to Vince play Ridley, you know that Ridley loves his family, Ridley loves snaps and Ridley loves a good deal, which is always a blast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sue of course is, you know, Mariah has done such a good job making Sue this well-rounded and interesting individual.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Any time Sue is involved in character interactions with NPCs, particularly like plot important NPCs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mariah is always playing Sue as though they are not only sort of nervous but also enthralled and so excited to move forward with whatever the plot has in front of them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think
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[SPEAKER_00]: It takes a really deaf hand to play a character that is heartwarming and kind while also being a real threat and I think that that's such a tough needle to thread and then of course we have Donnie who is this like
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[SPEAKER_00]: tortured past but hopeful individual who Carter has decided to play so like charismatic and yet like kind of if the cool aid man was in sales is sort of like Donnie's vibe and I mean that in a good way like he just
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even tacked, it's thoughtfulness, and I think that's also Carter's skill set.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a piece of each of us in our characters that we're playing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think for Fiddles, the biggest piece of me that is in Fiddles is I just want to have fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm going to sit down at a computer with a microphone and front of my face, with a bunch of my friends, I want Fiddles to have fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to have fun playing Fiddles, and maybe most importantly for you, the listeners, I want you to have fun listening to Fiddles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What that means for me in actuality when it comes to really sitting down and trying to play fiddles is, I am always trying to do the most interesting thing, whether that is, you know, if there's a dark alley, I'm gonna go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I might get slapped around a little bit, but I want to see what's in there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think the perfect example of this is the frapp party.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Gage is really good at dangling possibilities in front of us and seeing if we will bite and by no means was I the only
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[SPEAKER_00]: interested in going to this frat party, but by golly, I was the most interested, I think, and I knew as soon as he dangled frat party in front of us that there was no way fiddles or Jordan were going to pass up the opportunity to go to a fantasy frat party in a fantasy college.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever an opportunity presents itself to do something fun, whether it's the frapp party or a heist or if there's just kind of an opportunity to make fiddles socially inept in a way that puts her or the party in an uncomfortable situation, I think my general leaning is, you always do that thing, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is much more fun if it is always herself, 100% of the time, regardless of the trouble it might get her into.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm certain those that know me well might say that, yeah, that's easy for you to do because you tend to kind of just operate that way yourself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And to them, I say, not your episode, get out of here, don't talk to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's usually sort of my general outlook when it comes to people telling me things anyway.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But.
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[SPEAKER_00]: there's an element of trying to play an entertaining character that I think can be really dangerous.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is so easy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: to accidentally make every scene about you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not careful, particularly if you're like me and you love attention and making people laugh, oops, there's only opportunities to do that when you're playing the Indie for an audience.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In order for it to be a good listening experience for you, I think a lesson that I had to learn early on is just because Fiddles or Jordan could take this moment over and make it really funny and stupid, doesn't mean you necessarily should.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I had to learn it the hard way a few times.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There were moments when I listened back to the beginning of the first season that I'm just like, hey, why didn't you shut actually up?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody needed you to chime in here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think particularly about some moments that could have been a little more saccharine and earnest at the beginning of,
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[SPEAKER_00]: the first season where I decided to chime in with something stupid, and the sort of good news bad news of that is I got to learn that it's actually better to let a moment breathe sometimes rather than just always make a joke, and also it's a good lesson to learn that you should trust your fellow players to know where they want their characters to go and know what a scene should be, and it's so much fun to see what they do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's way more interesting than me just taking things wherever I want it to be.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think what I would call like a guardrail when it comes to playing fiddles for you, the audience is, I do want it to be fun and I do want fiddles to be silly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Almost all the time, however, I think that when you're making a story together, having the, I don't wanna call it like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: courage because, you know, that sounds intense, but it really is sort of a courage to say, you know, I could lean on my jokes, which are comfortable or myself and fiddles, who both sometimes become uncomfortable with vulnerability.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We could let a moment breathe and we could let somebody else sit in the driver's seat and take a scene where it needs to go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think pretty much all of our
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have not been selfish, you know what I mean?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You probably do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's good to let the other players be silly and not take it upon yourself to be the only silly person in the podcast because I'm playing with so many funny people and so many talented people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when you're playing the K.A.
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[SPEAKER_00]: screen, let it's very easy to go.
12:32.813 --> 12:34.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's my job to be goofy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, of course.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it's important that you collaborate and that you let moments breathe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the podcast is better for not being the fiddle show all the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I've done a much better job of that in the second season.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really proud of the places that the stories have gone because of gauges hard work and everybody I get to play with and their creativity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just so happy to let fiddles be able to breathe also and just sort of,
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[SPEAKER_00]: fully flesh out into a real person rather than just sort of like a little crazy goblin, which is also fun, of course.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The next role that I feel like I play and that I think a Chaos Grimlin can play inside of a D&D campaign is the role of support.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you hear support roles in D&D, if you're familiar, you're a lot of people will think of clerics or they will think of paladins or they will think of anybody who's been set up, a bard sometimes, anybody who's been set up to incapacitate large groups of enemies at once or set up buffs or debuffs or healing,
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the way that our team is made up in our game, I learned very quickly early on that the support we needed was actually damaged dealing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think that the audience for support in a game of D&D is your fellow players.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You want to be somebody that they can reliably count on to do the thing that you're good at so that they can focus on the things that they're good at.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's really fun when you play D&D with a group consistently, because you start to learn not only is Vince going to have the perfect one-liner, not only is he going to have the forethought to set up a beautiful emotional moment in the game,
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you also kind of learn what he's going to do in combat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you can learn to anticipate how he's going to play.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you've listened long enough, that what Vince is going to do as Ridley is, he's going to attack, he's going to smite, and he is going to try and direct attention to himself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's something I didn't know before we started.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the longer we play, the more I started to realize, OK.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm in combat and Vince is nearby, I can be mobile and I can hit from afar or I can try and hit hard while somebody's distracted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what support can look like in D&D.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily always buffing your teammates or setting somebody up to do there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it can just look like you are consistently doing the thing that your character was built to do well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there is a lot of discourse that I see online about D&D roles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people can get really caught up in alignment charts or they can get caught up in what their class is, quote unquote, supposed to do based on, you know,
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[SPEAKER_00]: general game design or sometimes I feel like they even can get caught up in like I'm not allowed to do that because I'm a rogue or I'm not allowed to do that because I'm a cleric and I think something that we honestly all have done really well is we have learned to make our character builds fit who our character is becoming.
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[SPEAKER_00]: rather than box in who our characters might become into whatever build we pick, you know, two and a half years ago.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's ultimately what is fun about a long-term D&D campaign is your character gets to grow not only as a quote unquote person, you know, a fiddle feels very alive to me, but not only does fiddle get to grow, I get to grow as a player in learning how to support my teammates.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think if I can give an example,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, in a recent level up, um, which I actually don't think you've heard yet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So this will be sort of a fun, uh, look forward.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I won't give details here, but I took a spell called Sanctuary and Sanctuary is not typically something that I think fiddles or Jordan would have gravitated to in a character.
16:39.407 --> 16:44.670
[SPEAKER_00]: I tend to really like to watch big number happen when I play D&D or video games.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, ooh, I got a 10% boost to big number.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But sanctuary is not that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sanctuary is this spell that protects someone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And early fiddles would not have been interested in that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Early Jordan probably wouldn't have been interested in that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what we've watched, as you've listened and as I've played, is there are times when one of my teammates need saving.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't have a great capability to do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that bother Jordan the player just as much as it bottled, bothered, excuse me, fiddles the character.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when support comes into play, and when you're looking at sort of meshing well with your teammates, like a puzzle piece, I think something that's important to look into is where are our weak points.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Where do we fall short as a team in terms of situational preparedness?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What roles are we failing frequently?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What, and that's R-O-L-L-S, that's dice roles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What roles are we failing on a frequent basis?
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[SPEAKER_00]: But also,
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening that's causing the same person to go down over and over again?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What sort of combat setups are causing my team to hit death roles or death saving throws rather?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And how can we help prevent that?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, the thought I had was, well, what if they just couldn't be hit?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't that sound great?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And lo and behold,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Warlocks got access to sanctuary.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there's some fun stuff we do with sanctuary later on that I think you should definitely be excited about because it's a very fun spell if you can use it creatively and I think that is something that honestly all of us have really strived, striven, strove, strove.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All of us have really strived,
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[SPEAKER_00]: to use our spells creatively and to use the things that were capable of very creatively.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that keeps support interesting, rather than just sort of like, I heal and I hit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something interesting about, well, could I use this skill in a way that it's not typically thought of?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that I think when you're the wild card, when you're the Chaos Grimland, you sort of have the leeway to be like, well, I mean, nobody's really expecting me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: to be the one that protects or saves from harm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just supposed to run in and smack somebody with sword or flip them off in a magical, eldritch blast kind of way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when you do get access to something that is uncharacteristically protective,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can kind of surprise not only your fellow players, but the audience and the DM as well, which brings me to my third and final bullet point, which is also my favorite to talk about because as I've been preparing for this, I keep thinking of gauge and how much work he puts into this game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He prepares so much, he pivots on a dime.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He is very improvisational when it comes to his actual game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Design, he's always willing to let us do the fun thing and kind of let us poo poo on whatever he had prepared, which is why the target audience for the third bullet point is the DM.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that third bullet point, of course, is destroy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're not a wild card.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not looking for ways to ruin your DM's day, a little bit, listen, I respect the role of DM.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope to get a chance to DM a long campaign someday, and I expect to have all of my philosophies here thrown directly back in my face.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I welcome it, but listen, as much as I can respect the DM for the preparation that they do, for the writing that they do,
20:44.052 --> 20:45.153
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to break all of it.
20:45.493 --> 20:47.034
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to break every single last piece of it.
20:47.054 --> 20:55.620
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not a single combat scenario that I am not actively thinking about, like, what would he not think that I'm going to do?
20:57.141 --> 21:01.204
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the, the move, the spell, the,
21:04.017 --> 21:10.462
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't know the wrench that I could throw directly into gauges plans that will make him go.
21:10.582 --> 21:11.543
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, dude.
21:11.643 --> 21:12.743
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't prepare for that.
21:14.144 --> 21:24.992
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to talk about it in detail, but there is a moment near the end of season two that I left our recording particularly smug, and then, of course, had it, you know, smacked right back in my face the next episode.
21:25.052 --> 21:25.293
[SPEAKER_00]: But!
21:26.205 --> 21:36.889
[SPEAKER_00]: I left the original recording incredibly smug because I felt so confident that Gage just did not for a second think that I was going to do the things that I did in that episode.
21:37.129 --> 21:43.871
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing that I love more than feeling like I have left Gage reeling as a DM.
21:44.357 --> 21:46.918
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's sort of a fun give and take.
21:47.538 --> 21:53.080
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a certain amount of respect that I think a player should have for the DM's world and the DM's plans.
21:53.740 --> 21:58.542
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's a bad look to try and ruin that world in those plans.
21:59.882 --> 22:01.923
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is fun is sort of this,
22:03.373 --> 22:21.265
[SPEAKER_00]: verbal creative ping-pong match that I feel like I get locked into with gauge sometimes, where there is a move, a plan, an enemy, an ambush, a trap, something that he has set that he has thought to himself, I've got him.
22:21.745 --> 22:22.766
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to walk right into it.
22:22.826 --> 22:25.808
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes, honestly, let's be real, most of the time.
22:26.368 --> 22:27.449
[SPEAKER_00]: We walk right into the trap.
22:27.489 --> 22:28.450
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows as well enough.
22:28.991 --> 22:37.959
[SPEAKER_00]: He can bait us with, you know, gold or more accurately, probably like a goofy NPC that we're going to try and adopt and make him have a name for.
22:37.999 --> 22:45.987
[SPEAKER_00]: And he can lure us into moments where we are vulnerable and moments where we are prone to, well, let's just say, die.
22:46.968 --> 22:51.472
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I can see through his plans,
22:52.481 --> 23:12.005
[SPEAKER_00]: when I can see a route to confusion, when I can see a route to cause a little chaos and do something unexpected, whether that is casting a spell that you forgot I had or whether that is remembering an old note about an NPC that might be useful in that moment.
23:12.085 --> 23:19.247
[SPEAKER_00]: Or frankly, sometimes with the way that Fiddles has kind of rolled towards the end of the second season, sometimes it's just real big hit.
23:20.471 --> 23:28.774
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the most boring option, but frankly, I think it's very difficult for gauge to balance combat around our team and everyone's in a while.
23:28.834 --> 23:37.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Fiddles will just absolutely hit a quick smack of Rusky and just destroy the HP of an enemy.
23:38.899 --> 23:45.124
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think looking for those moments when I can keep gauge on his toes, you know, I haven't run this by him.
23:45.144 --> 23:46.946
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a chance that he's like, no, it's actually hell.
23:47.026 --> 23:48.427
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hate every time you do it.
23:48.547 --> 23:56.234
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's the case, I guess, like, then in a booboo, stick your head and do do, you suck.
23:56.274 --> 24:00.338
[SPEAKER_00]: I rule, you know, I'm cool with that.
24:00.478 --> 24:01.979
[SPEAKER_00]: If he is annoyed.
24:02.779 --> 24:03.259
[SPEAKER_00]: when I do it.
24:03.279 --> 24:04.000
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think he is.
24:04.020 --> 24:13.208
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there is this give-in-take between DM and player that makes it a little more exciting that you have to react in your world to the things that your players have thought of.
24:14.329 --> 24:22.055
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's an element of like, you know, sometimes I have to think, would fiddles have this idea or is this too much of Jordan meta-gaming?
24:22.095 --> 24:26.219
[SPEAKER_00]: And to that I say, maybe, I don't know, that's not my problem.
24:27.079 --> 24:28.000
[SPEAKER_00]: that's gauges problem.
24:28.520 --> 24:29.361
[SPEAKER_00]: Let him deal with that.
24:30.241 --> 24:44.372
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, he's got an arsenal of creative ideas and thoughts and I haven't seen it myself, but I'm fairly certain he's got some sort of Google Doc with different ideas to throw at us should we succeed to intensely or too quickly.
24:46.392 --> 24:51.316
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is always a fun element to disrupting that.
24:51.496 --> 25:05.947
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the guardrail that I think is very important when you are trying to have that ping pong tennis-like relationship with your DM is, you can't have the goal of ruining the game.
25:07.028 --> 25:10.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there is a distinct difference between.
25:15.888 --> 25:20.792
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus, I want to ruin the hard work that Gage put into his story.
25:22.333 --> 25:26.756
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to play sort of a wild card loose cannon Chaos Grimlin.
25:28.179 --> 25:35.421
[SPEAKER_00]: The fastest way to ruin the fun for yourself, the other players and the DM, is to just always derail the game itself.
25:36.441 --> 25:41.202
[SPEAKER_00]: I never want to feel like I am in an adversarial relationship with the DM.
25:41.622 --> 25:50.624
[SPEAKER_00]: However, some friendly competition and attempting to outsmart an outplay, each other that is, I think sort of at the core of,
25:51.344 --> 25:52.284
[SPEAKER_00]: D&D combat.
25:52.305 --> 26:08.011
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the very nature of playing a game where your good friend is having to pretend to be the sexy skateboarding dinosaur cop that you have a crush on as well as the big bad super evil dude who wants to take over the world or whatever.
26:08.071 --> 26:11.653
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have the balance of it's a give and it's a take.
26:12.193 --> 26:20.157
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to learn to accept sort of, you know, take it on the chin whenever the DM has outsmarted you and that's something that I have not always done.
26:21.057 --> 26:28.224
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, well, let's say fantastic job of I think that there have been times where I am not pleased with my reaction in the moment.
26:28.244 --> 26:29.506
[SPEAKER_00]: But hey, that's real.
26:29.526 --> 26:29.946
[SPEAKER_00]: That's raw.
26:29.966 --> 26:30.987
[SPEAKER_00]: That's in TV, baby.
26:31.007 --> 26:35.652
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you get when, you know, a bunch of strangers moving to a house together and start getting real.
26:35.892 --> 26:40.997
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really what D&D is at the end of the day is a bunch of strangers on a Zoom call.
26:41.838 --> 26:46.242
[SPEAKER_00]: being roommates and forgetting to do the dishes, but just like in game form, you get what I mean.
26:47.323 --> 26:59.994
[SPEAKER_00]: But the relationship between those three elements, the audience, your fellow players, and the DM, it's such a unique balance that you have to strike, and it's not unique simply to fiddle or the chaos Grimlin archetype.
27:00.014 --> 27:04.458
[SPEAKER_00]: I think all of us probably have to have our own unique approaches to, well,
27:04.878 --> 27:27.453
[SPEAKER_00]: I want the audience to enjoy this, but I also want it to make sense, and I want this to absolutely smear gauges, new character, just absolutely into space, but I don't want to ruin all the hard work he's put in, and there's this delicate balance that you always have to maintain, and I'm talking about it like it's hard or unique or interesting, but I think it's more just fun.
27:28.561 --> 27:36.446
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think at the end of the day, sort of my closing thought on my approach to D&D, and my approach to fiddle specifically is this.
27:38.808 --> 27:41.069
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not having fun, what's the point?
27:42.770 --> 27:45.332
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to think about that for everybody you're playing with.
27:46.399 --> 27:48.181
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to take away the fun from Doge.
27:49.162 --> 27:51.144
[SPEAKER_00]: Doge shouldn't want to take away the fun from Carter.
27:51.585 --> 27:53.727
[SPEAKER_00]: And none of us should want to take away the fun from Gage.
27:53.787 --> 28:04.480
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if anything, we should be trying to make sure Gage has a blast because of how much extra work he puts in to prepare the game and the world and the story that we all get the privilege of participating in.
28:06.021 --> 28:07.263
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's what I'll say.
28:08.556 --> 28:28.901
[SPEAKER_00]: If you find yourself playing a new D&D character in a campaign with your friends, if you've never played before and you want to get into it, or if it's been a while and you want to knock the rust off, might I recommend a little wild card, a little fiddle, a little diet fiddles, if you will, because let's be real, you'll never be fiddles.
28:28.921 --> 28:33.742
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can try, that's fine, I want you to try, I'm a robot.
28:35.386 --> 28:37.628
[SPEAKER_00]: role model for all of you and I know that.
28:38.649 --> 28:43.733
[SPEAKER_00]: You tell me all the time after you're done asking me for an OF, you say, and by the way, I look up to you and I appreciate that.
28:43.813 --> 28:50.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of you are in your 70s and 80s and I think it's very cool that you are that you're willing to do that.
28:50.418 --> 28:52.060
[SPEAKER_00]: So that means a lot.
28:52.120 --> 28:52.480
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
28:52.780 --> 28:54.422
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart belongs to you.
28:54.522 --> 28:58.805
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, if you ever have any doubts
29:04.153 --> 29:05.594
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of get to be anything.
29:06.074 --> 29:07.595
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of get to fulfill any role.
29:08.115 --> 29:10.376
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of get to mess with your DM.
29:10.496 --> 29:17.880
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I will say is learn from the people you play with and don't be afraid of a little earnestness, don't be afraid of a little vulnerability.
29:18.280 --> 29:23.723
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, if you're like me, maybe apply those to your real life too.
29:24.832 --> 29:30.517
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and if you're my therapist and you're listening to this high-tiler and also why are you listening to this?
29:31.117 --> 29:33.039
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I'm sure we'll talk about it someday.
29:33.639 --> 29:38.203
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not my therapist, which I assume is most of you, hey, how's it going?
29:40.485 --> 29:40.985
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty good.
29:43.667 --> 29:44.108
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
29:45.409 --> 29:52.054
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you guys ever worry that you haven't tried the best food in delivery radius of your house?
29:54.497 --> 29:57.399
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I think that I found the best one and then I get locked into it.
29:58.540 --> 30:02.162
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what ends up happening is every Friday that we're like, let's order some dinner.
30:02.342 --> 30:05.024
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, well, spice kitchen's just good.
30:05.304 --> 30:06.185
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good in the infoot.
30:06.225 --> 30:07.605
[SPEAKER_00]: We know this, why don't we just do that?
30:09.086 --> 30:12.449
[SPEAKER_00]: But what might we be missing out on?
30:13.549 --> 30:14.190
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard.
30:15.591 --> 30:17.412
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody talks about it, but it really is tough.
30:18.139 --> 30:24.258
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, if you can't tell, I plan to everything except for the very end of this, which is sort of how we ended up here.
30:25.662 --> 30:38.325
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the best thing to do is turn it over to you in your discussion boards and what I would like is one to two sentences from each of you, just about how you would approach the Chaos Grimlin, character, the Wild card character.
30:38.365 --> 30:39.345
[SPEAKER_00]: How would you play Fiddles?
30:40.065 --> 30:43.186
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the answer is better than you, let's fistfight about it later on.
30:43.366 --> 30:46.567
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this afternoon or this weekend, the weather should be nice so we can do that.
30:47.527 --> 30:50.228
[SPEAKER_00]: And to all of you, listening, I love you.
30:51.406 --> 31:04.932
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry for all of the times that my jokes went too long in an episode of Imagine Dungeons and also I'm not sorry so, you know, deal with that.
31:05.372 --> 31:10.314
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're gauge, keep trying pal, keep trying, okay I love you.
01:14.602 --> 01:16.887
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone, gather in, gather around, come on in.
01:17.168 --> 01:20.676
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't crowd the door, don't crowd the door, come on, don't be shy, listen.
01:21.538 --> 01:21.738
[SPEAKER_00]: It's me.
01:23.088 --> 01:24.969
[SPEAKER_00]: Jordan, A.K.A.
01:25.049 --> 01:27.009
[SPEAKER_00]: Fiddlesticks.
01:27.029 --> 01:30.731
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, I've been, I've been keeping my ear to the ground.
01:31.151 --> 01:36.393
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing my best to, well, frankly, to listen to you, the people.
01:36.933 --> 01:37.833
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hear what you say.
01:37.973 --> 01:44.795
[SPEAKER_00]: Every day you approach me in the street, you send me the M's on Zenga and my space.
01:45.115 --> 01:51.998
[SPEAKER_00]: You throw crumbled up wads of paper at my house with the same note, written over and over and over again.
01:52.858 --> 01:54.138
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hear you loud and clear.
01:54.579 --> 01:58.940
[SPEAKER_00]: You all ask me, Jordan, Jordan, when are you going to do an OF?
01:59.000 --> 01:59.940
[SPEAKER_00]: When are you going to start an OF?
01:59.980 --> 02:01.920
[SPEAKER_00]: When are you going to have an OF?
02:02.081 --> 02:02.761
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it.
02:03.201 --> 02:12.863
[SPEAKER_00]: So after some serious self-reflection and some time alone to just sort of meditate, I think I've decided to finally give the people what you want.
02:13.043 --> 02:16.164
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to give you my OF.
02:16.424 --> 02:16.824
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
02:16.864 --> 02:18.325
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time for only Fids.
02:19.236 --> 02:22.197
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's just, it's just Phil Sticks.
02:23.298 --> 02:24.558
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is me.
02:25.058 --> 02:36.222
[SPEAKER_00]: That's sort of a unique blend of realism and humor that I like to have, sort of my own special sort of twisted South Park mind out here.
02:37.023 --> 02:39.864
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, of course, I know what Oh, I've really stands for, and it's only friends.
02:39.924 --> 02:41.905
[SPEAKER_00]: And right now I don't have any of those.
02:41.945 --> 02:44.546
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just me, but I thought it would be fun.
02:45.566 --> 03:01.121
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something to be said for playing sort of the Chaos Grimland, the wild card character, and I think that there are ways to do it well, and I think that there are ways to do it selfishly.
03:01.141 --> 03:06.887
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I've done both from time to time as we're kind of learning our characters and learning how to play.
03:07.427 --> 03:15.030
[SPEAKER_00]: D&D not only just generally collaboratively, which is sort of the game's design in the first place, but also learning to play it for an audience.
03:15.310 --> 03:23.794
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something different about playing Dungeons and Dragons with your friends around a table, which is like the most sacred fun thing in the whole world.
03:24.274 --> 03:32.157
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something different when you're playing for an audience, because you kind of always have to have the audience in mind when you're making not only character decisions
03:34.378 --> 03:43.963
[SPEAKER_00]: There are certainly people that I would like to hear from, you know, I'd love to hear gauges approach to DMing a game that is meant for an audience rather than just
03:44.890 --> 03:57.857
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, for an audience of one of the Lord, but also, you know, I think that every single one of us probably has our own unique approach to playing this game with you, the audience in mind.
03:57.937 --> 04:01.439
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't just want to do things that make sense game playwise.
04:01.459 --> 04:03.260
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do things that are fun and interesting.
04:03.461 --> 04:05.462
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there are people that would argue that that
04:06.342 --> 04:32.535
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... might take away some of the creative agency from us the players but i'm here to tell you that i really think playing with you in mind has changed my game for the better in the way that i approach playing fiddle sticks for the better so uh... yeah this is you know we can cause whatever wildcard one on one uh... how to play uh... what is it how to make friends and influence people if it's uh... how to how to make fids and influence people that's fun but i think i'm
04:35.416 --> 04:36.277
[SPEAKER_00]: makes me gaggle.
04:37.097 --> 04:51.329
[SPEAKER_00]: There are three general subheadings that I want to kind of focus on as we talk about my approach to playing this weird delicious silly character named Fiddlestick.
04:51.890 --> 04:58.815
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically I've broken it down into three categories that I feel are so important and that is to entertain
04:59.716 --> 05:02.059
[SPEAKER_00]: to support and to destroy.
05:02.459 --> 05:09.707
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to talk about all three of those because I think each one of them has a particular audience in mind.
05:11.048 --> 05:17.334
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that each element of fiddlesticks is designed with someone
05:18.357 --> 05:23.438
[SPEAKER_00]: in mind as the target of whatever she is doing, whatever I am doing as her as we play.
05:24.158 --> 05:29.780
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just kind of want to break them down, piece by piece, just so you can kind of understand where I'm coming from when I'm playing fiddle sticks.
05:29.800 --> 05:35.901
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it might also just help to give you a little insight into the mind of a public facing D&D player.
05:36.361 --> 05:38.061
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to start with intertaining.
05:39.862 --> 05:45.463
[SPEAKER_00]: Intertaining has one target audience in mind, and that is you, the listener.
05:46.444 --> 05:59.127
[SPEAKER_00]: When I'm playing Fiddlesticks, there is sort of a natural inclination when you have created this character that is like, I think Carter talked about what thought process we all had as we were creating our characters.
05:59.167 --> 06:08.249
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, it was sort of what will benefit the audience the most, what will be the most fun, but then also what will benefit the team the most.
06:08.550 --> 06:11.990
[SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to the audience, the thing that I'm always trying to think of is, what is fun?
06:14.547 --> 06:17.229
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we've got some really fantastic characters.
06:17.329 --> 06:25.076
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that Doge has done such a great job making Glent feel lived in and fully realized.
06:25.316 --> 06:32.343
[SPEAKER_00]: Glent has fears that I think the audience can identify Glent has hopes and dreams that I think the audience can identify Glent has things that he loves.
06:33.423 --> 06:48.007
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I can say the same for Ridley when it comes to, I think when you listen to Vince play Ridley, you know that Ridley loves his family, Ridley loves snaps and Ridley loves a good deal, which is always a blast.
06:48.247 --> 06:55.169
[SPEAKER_00]: Sue of course is, you know, Mariah has done such a good job making Sue this well-rounded and interesting individual.
06:56.530 --> 07:04.077
[SPEAKER_00]: Any time Sue is involved in character interactions with NPCs, particularly like plot important NPCs.
07:05.178 --> 07:18.209
[SPEAKER_00]: Mariah is always playing Sue as though they are not only sort of nervous but also enthralled and so excited to move forward with whatever the plot has in front of them.
07:18.430 --> 07:18.790
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think
07:19.470 --> 07:34.876
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes a really deaf hand to play a character that is heartwarming and kind while also being a real threat and I think that that's such a tough needle to thread and then of course we have Donnie who is this like
07:35.856 --> 07:51.136
[SPEAKER_00]: tortured past but hopeful individual who Carter has decided to play so like charismatic and yet like kind of if the cool aid man was in sales is sort of like Donnie's vibe and I mean that in a good way like he just
07:52.097 --> 07:56.160
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even tacked, it's thoughtfulness, and I think that's also Carter's skill set.
07:56.200 --> 07:59.682
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a piece of each of us in our characters that we're playing.
07:59.702 --> 08:05.827
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think for Fiddles, the biggest piece of me that is in Fiddles is I just want to have fun.
08:06.427 --> 08:13.892
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm going to sit down at a computer with a microphone and front of my face, with a bunch of my friends, I want Fiddles to have fun.
08:13.992 --> 08:20.417
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to have fun playing Fiddles, and maybe most importantly for you, the listeners, I want you to have fun listening to Fiddles.
08:21.237 --> 08:36.401
[SPEAKER_00]: What that means for me in actuality when it comes to really sitting down and trying to play fiddles is, I am always trying to do the most interesting thing, whether that is, you know, if there's a dark alley, I'm gonna go.
08:36.641 --> 08:39.341
[SPEAKER_00]: I might get slapped around a little bit, but I want to see what's in there.
08:40.061 --> 08:42.642
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the perfect example of this is the frapp party.
08:42.662 --> 08:50.184
[SPEAKER_00]: Gage is really good at dangling possibilities in front of us and seeing if we will bite and by no means was I the only
08:51.424 --> 09:08.930
[SPEAKER_00]: interested in going to this frat party, but by golly, I was the most interested, I think, and I knew as soon as he dangled frat party in front of us that there was no way fiddles or Jordan were going to pass up the opportunity to go to a fantasy frat party in a fantasy college.
09:09.010 --> 09:10.170
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know,
09:10.870 --> 09:31.137
[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever an opportunity presents itself to do something fun, whether it's the frapp party or a heist or if there's just kind of an opportunity to make fiddles socially inept in a way that puts her or the party in an uncomfortable situation, I think my general leaning is, you always do that thing, right?
09:32.292 --> 09:39.718
[SPEAKER_00]: It is much more fun if it is always herself, 100% of the time, regardless of the trouble it might get her into.
09:39.838 --> 09:47.044
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm certain those that know me well might say that, yeah, that's easy for you to do because you tend to kind of just operate that way yourself.
09:47.184 --> 09:52.048
[SPEAKER_00]: And to them, I say, not your episode, get out of here, don't talk to me.
09:52.328 --> 09:58.493
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's usually sort of my general outlook when it comes to people telling me things anyway.
09:58.673 --> 09:58.834
[SPEAKER_00]: But.
09:59.614 --> 10:04.766
[SPEAKER_00]: there's an element of trying to play an entertaining character that I think can be really dangerous.
10:05.968 --> 10:07.391
[SPEAKER_00]: It is so easy.
10:08.448 --> 10:11.170
[SPEAKER_00]: to accidentally make every scene about you.
10:11.410 --> 10:20.578
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not careful, particularly if you're like me and you love attention and making people laugh, oops, there's only opportunities to do that when you're playing the Indie for an audience.
10:21.639 --> 10:36.111
[SPEAKER_00]: In order for it to be a good listening experience for you, I think a lesson that I had to learn early on is just because Fiddles or Jordan could take this moment over and make it really funny and stupid, doesn't mean you necessarily should.
10:37.101 --> 10:40.463
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I had to learn it the hard way a few times.
10:40.483 --> 10:48.208
[SPEAKER_00]: There were moments when I listened back to the beginning of the first season that I'm just like, hey, why didn't you shut actually up?
10:49.289 --> 10:50.970
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody needed you to chime in here.
10:51.811 --> 10:56.414
[SPEAKER_00]: I think particularly about some moments that could have been a little more saccharine and earnest at the beginning of,
10:56.994 --> 11:18.038
[SPEAKER_00]: the first season where I decided to chime in with something stupid, and the sort of good news bad news of that is I got to learn that it's actually better to let a moment breathe sometimes rather than just always make a joke, and also it's a good lesson to learn that you should trust your fellow players to know where they want their characters to go and know what a scene should be, and it's so much fun to see what they do.
11:18.318 --> 11:22.139
[SPEAKER_00]: That's way more interesting than me just taking things wherever I want it to be.
11:23.019 --> 11:33.990
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think what I would call like a guardrail when it comes to playing fiddles for you, the audience is, I do want it to be fun and I do want fiddles to be silly.
11:34.971 --> 11:44.581
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost all the time, however, I think that when you're making a story together, having the, I don't wanna call it like,
11:45.787 --> 12:00.638
[SPEAKER_00]: courage because, you know, that sounds intense, but it really is sort of a courage to say, you know, I could lean on my jokes, which are comfortable or myself and fiddles, who both sometimes become uncomfortable with vulnerability.
12:01.359 --> 12:07.423
[SPEAKER_00]: We could let a moment breathe and we could let somebody else sit in the driver's seat and take a scene where it needs to go.
12:08.104 --> 12:09.665
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think pretty much all of our
12:12.827 --> 12:15.208
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not been selfish, you know what I mean?
12:15.728 --> 12:16.348
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably do.
12:17.308 --> 12:29.792
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's good to let the other players be silly and not take it upon yourself to be the only silly person in the podcast because I'm playing with so many funny people and so many talented people.
12:30.272 --> 12:31.633
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when you're playing the K.A.
12:31.653 --> 12:32.793
[SPEAKER_00]: screen, let it's very easy to go.
12:32.813 --> 12:34.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's my job to be goofy.
12:34.214 --> 12:35.174
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, of course.
12:36.368 --> 12:39.971
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's important that you collaborate and that you let moments breathe.
12:40.011 --> 12:45.416
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the podcast is better for not being the fiddle show all the time.
12:46.097 --> 12:49.240
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I've done a much better job of that in the second season.
12:49.260 --> 12:55.205
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really proud of the places that the stories have gone because of gauges hard work and everybody I get to play with and their creativity.
12:55.986 --> 13:00.910
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just so happy to let fiddles be able to breathe also and just sort of,
13:03.422 --> 13:10.670
[SPEAKER_00]: fully flesh out into a real person rather than just sort of like a little crazy goblin, which is also fun, of course.
13:12.134 --> 13:21.616
[SPEAKER_00]: The next role that I feel like I play and that I think a Chaos Grimlin can play inside of a D&D campaign is the role of support.
13:22.657 --> 13:40.681
[SPEAKER_00]: When you hear support roles in D&D, if you're familiar, you're a lot of people will think of clerics or they will think of paladins or they will think of anybody who's been set up, a bard sometimes, anybody who's been set up to incapacitate large groups of enemies at once or set up buffs or debuffs or healing,
13:42.421 --> 13:52.167
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way that our team is made up in our game, I learned very quickly early on that the support we needed was actually damaged dealing.
13:53.260 --> 13:59.483
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think that the audience for support in a game of D&D is your fellow players.
13:59.523 --> 14:06.746
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to be somebody that they can reliably count on to do the thing that you're good at so that they can focus on the things that they're good at.
14:06.826 --> 14:21.993
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really fun when you play D&D with a group consistently, because you start to learn not only is Vince going to have the perfect one-liner, not only is he going to have the forethought to set up a beautiful emotional moment in the game,
14:22.933 --> 14:25.174
[SPEAKER_00]: But you also kind of learn what he's going to do in combat.
14:25.314 --> 14:28.635
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can learn to anticipate how he's going to play.
14:29.895 --> 14:40.439
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you've listened long enough, that what Vince is going to do as Ridley is, he's going to attack, he's going to smite, and he is going to try and direct attention to himself.
14:41.599 --> 14:42.079
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
14:42.179 --> 14:43.920
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something I didn't know before we started.
14:44.520 --> 14:46.861
[SPEAKER_00]: And the longer we play, the more I started to realize, OK.
14:47.908 --> 14:56.771
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm in combat and Vince is nearby, I can be mobile and I can hit from afar or I can try and hit hard while somebody's distracted.
14:57.311 --> 15:00.032
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what support can look like in D&D.
15:00.092 --> 15:08.014
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily always buffing your teammates or setting somebody up to do there.
15:08.034 --> 15:13.476
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it can just look like you are consistently doing the thing that your character was built to do well.
15:14.767 --> 15:21.513
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there is a lot of discourse that I see online about D&D roles.
15:22.374 --> 15:30.702
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people can get really caught up in alignment charts or they can get caught up in what their class is, quote unquote, supposed to do based on, you know,
15:31.648 --> 15:53.977
[SPEAKER_00]: general game design or sometimes I feel like they even can get caught up in like I'm not allowed to do that because I'm a rogue or I'm not allowed to do that because I'm a cleric and I think something that we honestly all have done really well is we have learned to make our character builds fit who our character is becoming.
15:54.958 --> 16:00.921
[SPEAKER_00]: rather than box in who our characters might become into whatever build we pick, you know, two and a half years ago.
16:01.501 --> 16:18.810
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's ultimately what is fun about a long-term D&D campaign is your character gets to grow not only as a quote unquote person, you know, a fiddle feels very alive to me, but not only does fiddle get to grow, I get to grow as a player in learning how to support my teammates.
16:18.890 --> 16:20.711
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if I can give an example,
16:21.917 --> 16:25.459
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, in a recent level up, um, which I actually don't think you've heard yet.
16:25.559 --> 16:29.321
[SPEAKER_00]: So this will be sort of a fun, uh, look forward.
16:29.341 --> 16:39.347
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't give details here, but I took a spell called Sanctuary and Sanctuary is not typically something that I think fiddles or Jordan would have gravitated to in a character.
16:39.407 --> 16:44.670
[SPEAKER_00]: I tend to really like to watch big number happen when I play D&D or video games.
16:44.730 --> 16:48.232
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, ooh, I got a 10% boost to big number.
16:48.292 --> 16:48.833
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
16:49.530 --> 16:50.551
[SPEAKER_00]: But sanctuary is not that.
16:50.571 --> 16:55.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Sanctuary is this spell that protects someone.
16:55.674 --> 16:59.837
[SPEAKER_00]: And early fiddles would not have been interested in that.
16:59.977 --> 17:02.258
[SPEAKER_00]: Early Jordan probably wouldn't have been interested in that.
17:02.318 --> 17:11.865
[SPEAKER_00]: But what we've watched, as you've listened and as I've played, is there are times when one of my teammates need saving.
17:12.965 --> 17:15.387
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't have a great capability to do that.
17:16.385 --> 17:22.853
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that bother Jordan the player just as much as it bottled, bothered, excuse me, fiddles the character.
17:24.154 --> 17:34.806
[SPEAKER_00]: So when support comes into play, and when you're looking at sort of meshing well with your teammates, like a puzzle piece, I think something that's important to look into is where are our weak points.
17:35.622 --> 17:41.229
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do we fall short as a team in terms of situational preparedness?
17:42.030 --> 17:44.293
[SPEAKER_00]: What roles are we failing frequently?
17:44.933 --> 17:49.419
[SPEAKER_00]: What, and that's R-O-L-L-S, that's dice roles.
17:49.459 --> 17:52.923
[SPEAKER_00]: What roles are we failing on a frequent basis?
17:53.043 --> 17:53.584
[SPEAKER_00]: But also,
17:54.605 --> 17:58.407
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening that's causing the same person to go down over and over again?
17:58.507 --> 18:06.011
[SPEAKER_00]: What sort of combat setups are causing my team to hit death roles or death saving throws rather?
18:06.051 --> 18:08.432
[SPEAKER_00]: And how can we help prevent that?
18:08.632 --> 18:13.354
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, the thought I had was, well, what if they just couldn't be hit?
18:13.914 --> 18:14.715
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't that sound great?
18:15.615 --> 18:16.696
[SPEAKER_00]: And lo and behold,
18:17.854 --> 18:19.696
[SPEAKER_00]: Warlocks got access to sanctuary.
18:20.317 --> 18:34.511
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's some fun stuff we do with sanctuary later on that I think you should definitely be excited about because it's a very fun spell if you can use it creatively and I think that is something that honestly all of us have really strived, striven, strove, strove.
18:35.152 --> 18:36.393
[SPEAKER_00]: All of us have really strived,
18:37.722 --> 18:42.364
[SPEAKER_00]: to use our spells creatively and to use the things that were capable of very creatively.
18:43.684 --> 18:49.046
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that keeps support interesting, rather than just sort of like, I heal and I hit.
18:49.647 --> 18:56.029
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something interesting about, well, could I use this skill in a way that it's not typically thought of?
18:56.229 --> 19:06.133
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that I think when you're the wild card, when you're the Chaos Grimland, you sort of have the leeway to be like, well, I mean, nobody's really expecting me.
19:07.692 --> 19:12.376
[SPEAKER_00]: to be the one that protects or saves from harm.
19:12.396 --> 19:17.501
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just supposed to run in and smack somebody with sword or flip them off in a magical, eldritch blast kind of way.
19:18.462 --> 19:23.647
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you do get access to something that is uncharacteristically protective,
19:24.797 --> 19:41.969
[SPEAKER_00]: You can kind of surprise not only your fellow players, but the audience and the DM as well, which brings me to my third and final bullet point, which is also my favorite to talk about because as I've been preparing for this, I keep thinking of gauge and how much work he puts into this game.
19:42.972 --> 19:46.674
[SPEAKER_00]: He prepares so much, he pivots on a dime.
19:46.854 --> 19:51.596
[SPEAKER_00]: He is very improvisational when it comes to his actual game.
19:51.616 --> 20:08.583
[SPEAKER_00]: Design, he's always willing to let us do the fun thing and kind of let us poo poo on whatever he had prepared, which is why the target audience for the third bullet point is the DM.
20:09.004 --> 20:11.705
[SPEAKER_00]: And that third bullet point, of course, is destroy.
20:13.178 --> 20:14.278
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not a wild card.
20:14.799 --> 20:21.602
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not looking for ways to ruin your DM's day, a little bit, listen, I respect the role of DM.
20:21.782 --> 20:30.385
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope to get a chance to DM a long campaign someday, and I expect to have all of my philosophies here thrown directly back in my face.
20:30.806 --> 20:39.369
[SPEAKER_00]: I welcome it, but listen, as much as I can respect the DM for the preparation that they do, for the writing that they do,
20:44.052 --> 20:45.153
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to break all of it.
20:45.493 --> 20:47.034
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to break every single last piece of it.
20:47.054 --> 20:55.620
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not a single combat scenario that I am not actively thinking about, like, what would he not think that I'm going to do?
20:57.141 --> 21:01.204
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the, the move, the spell, the,
21:04.017 --> 21:10.462
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't know the wrench that I could throw directly into gauges plans that will make him go.
21:10.582 --> 21:11.543
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, dude.
21:11.643 --> 21:12.743
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't prepare for that.
21:14.144 --> 21:24.992
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to talk about it in detail, but there is a moment near the end of season two that I left our recording particularly smug, and then, of course, had it, you know, smacked right back in my face the next episode.
21:25.052 --> 21:25.293
[SPEAKER_00]: But!
21:26.205 --> 21:36.889
[SPEAKER_00]: I left the original recording incredibly smug because I felt so confident that Gage just did not for a second think that I was going to do the things that I did in that episode.
21:37.129 --> 21:43.871
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing that I love more than feeling like I have left Gage reeling as a DM.
21:44.357 --> 21:46.918
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's sort of a fun give and take.
21:47.538 --> 21:53.080
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a certain amount of respect that I think a player should have for the DM's world and the DM's plans.
21:53.740 --> 21:58.542
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's a bad look to try and ruin that world in those plans.
21:59.882 --> 22:01.923
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is fun is sort of this,
22:03.373 --> 22:21.265
[SPEAKER_00]: verbal creative ping-pong match that I feel like I get locked into with gauge sometimes, where there is a move, a plan, an enemy, an ambush, a trap, something that he has set that he has thought to himself, I've got him.
22:21.745 --> 22:22.766
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to walk right into it.
22:22.826 --> 22:25.808
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes, honestly, let's be real, most of the time.
22:26.368 --> 22:27.449
[SPEAKER_00]: We walk right into the trap.
22:27.489 --> 22:28.450
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows as well enough.
22:28.991 --> 22:37.959
[SPEAKER_00]: He can bait us with, you know, gold or more accurately, probably like a goofy NPC that we're going to try and adopt and make him have a name for.
22:37.999 --> 22:45.987
[SPEAKER_00]: And he can lure us into moments where we are vulnerable and moments where we are prone to, well, let's just say, die.
22:46.968 --> 22:51.472
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I can see through his plans,
22:52.481 --> 23:12.005
[SPEAKER_00]: when I can see a route to confusion, when I can see a route to cause a little chaos and do something unexpected, whether that is casting a spell that you forgot I had or whether that is remembering an old note about an NPC that might be useful in that moment.
23:12.085 --> 23:19.247
[SPEAKER_00]: Or frankly, sometimes with the way that Fiddles has kind of rolled towards the end of the second season, sometimes it's just real big hit.
23:20.471 --> 23:28.774
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the most boring option, but frankly, I think it's very difficult for gauge to balance combat around our team and everyone's in a while.
23:28.834 --> 23:37.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Fiddles will just absolutely hit a quick smack of Rusky and just destroy the HP of an enemy.
23:38.899 --> 23:45.124
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think looking for those moments when I can keep gauge on his toes, you know, I haven't run this by him.
23:45.144 --> 23:46.946
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a chance that he's like, no, it's actually hell.
23:47.026 --> 23:48.427
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hate every time you do it.
23:48.547 --> 23:56.234
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's the case, I guess, like, then in a booboo, stick your head and do do, you suck.
23:56.274 --> 24:00.338
[SPEAKER_00]: I rule, you know, I'm cool with that.
24:00.478 --> 24:01.979
[SPEAKER_00]: If he is annoyed.
24:02.779 --> 24:03.259
[SPEAKER_00]: when I do it.
24:03.279 --> 24:04.000
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think he is.
24:04.020 --> 24:13.208
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there is this give-in-take between DM and player that makes it a little more exciting that you have to react in your world to the things that your players have thought of.
24:14.329 --> 24:22.055
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's an element of like, you know, sometimes I have to think, would fiddles have this idea or is this too much of Jordan meta-gaming?
24:22.095 --> 24:26.219
[SPEAKER_00]: And to that I say, maybe, I don't know, that's not my problem.
24:27.079 --> 24:28.000
[SPEAKER_00]: that's gauges problem.
24:28.520 --> 24:29.361
[SPEAKER_00]: Let him deal with that.
24:30.241 --> 24:44.372
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, he's got an arsenal of creative ideas and thoughts and I haven't seen it myself, but I'm fairly certain he's got some sort of Google Doc with different ideas to throw at us should we succeed to intensely or too quickly.
24:46.392 --> 24:51.316
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is always a fun element to disrupting that.
24:51.496 --> 25:05.947
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the guardrail that I think is very important when you are trying to have that ping pong tennis-like relationship with your DM is, you can't have the goal of ruining the game.
25:07.028 --> 25:10.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there is a distinct difference between.
25:15.888 --> 25:20.792
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus, I want to ruin the hard work that Gage put into his story.
25:22.333 --> 25:26.756
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to play sort of a wild card loose cannon Chaos Grimlin.
25:28.179 --> 25:35.421
[SPEAKER_00]: The fastest way to ruin the fun for yourself, the other players and the DM, is to just always derail the game itself.
25:36.441 --> 25:41.202
[SPEAKER_00]: I never want to feel like I am in an adversarial relationship with the DM.
25:41.622 --> 25:50.624
[SPEAKER_00]: However, some friendly competition and attempting to outsmart an outplay, each other that is, I think sort of at the core of,
25:51.344 --> 25:52.284
[SPEAKER_00]: D&D combat.
25:52.305 --> 26:08.011
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the very nature of playing a game where your good friend is having to pretend to be the sexy skateboarding dinosaur cop that you have a crush on as well as the big bad super evil dude who wants to take over the world or whatever.
26:08.071 --> 26:11.653
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have the balance of it's a give and it's a take.
26:12.193 --> 26:20.157
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to learn to accept sort of, you know, take it on the chin whenever the DM has outsmarted you and that's something that I have not always done.
26:21.057 --> 26:28.224
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, well, let's say fantastic job of I think that there have been times where I am not pleased with my reaction in the moment.
26:28.244 --> 26:29.506
[SPEAKER_00]: But hey, that's real.
26:29.526 --> 26:29.946
[SPEAKER_00]: That's raw.
26:29.966 --> 26:30.987
[SPEAKER_00]: That's in TV, baby.
26:31.007 --> 26:35.652
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you get when, you know, a bunch of strangers moving to a house together and start getting real.
26:35.892 --> 26:40.997
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really what D&D is at the end of the day is a bunch of strangers on a Zoom call.
26:41.838 --> 26:46.242
[SPEAKER_00]: being roommates and forgetting to do the dishes, but just like in game form, you get what I mean.
26:47.323 --> 26:59.994
[SPEAKER_00]: But the relationship between those three elements, the audience, your fellow players, and the DM, it's such a unique balance that you have to strike, and it's not unique simply to fiddle or the chaos Grimlin archetype.
27:00.014 --> 27:04.458
[SPEAKER_00]: I think all of us probably have to have our own unique approaches to, well,
27:04.878 --> 27:27.453
[SPEAKER_00]: I want the audience to enjoy this, but I also want it to make sense, and I want this to absolutely smear gauges, new character, just absolutely into space, but I don't want to ruin all the hard work he's put in, and there's this delicate balance that you always have to maintain, and I'm talking about it like it's hard or unique or interesting, but I think it's more just fun.
27:28.561 --> 27:36.446
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think at the end of the day, sort of my closing thought on my approach to D&D, and my approach to fiddle specifically is this.
27:38.808 --> 27:41.069
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not having fun, what's the point?
27:42.770 --> 27:45.332
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to think about that for everybody you're playing with.
27:46.399 --> 27:48.181
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to take away the fun from Doge.
27:49.162 --> 27:51.144
[SPEAKER_00]: Doge shouldn't want to take away the fun from Carter.
27:51.585 --> 27:53.727
[SPEAKER_00]: And none of us should want to take away the fun from Gage.
27:53.787 --> 28:04.480
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if anything, we should be trying to make sure Gage has a blast because of how much extra work he puts in to prepare the game and the world and the story that we all get the privilege of participating in.
28:06.021 --> 28:07.263
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's what I'll say.
28:08.556 --> 28:28.901
[SPEAKER_00]: If you find yourself playing a new D&D character in a campaign with your friends, if you've never played before and you want to get into it, or if it's been a while and you want to knock the rust off, might I recommend a little wild card, a little fiddle, a little diet fiddles, if you will, because let's be real, you'll never be fiddles.
28:28.921 --> 28:33.742
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can try, that's fine, I want you to try, I'm a robot.
28:35.386 --> 28:37.628
[SPEAKER_00]: role model for all of you and I know that.
28:38.649 --> 28:43.733
[SPEAKER_00]: You tell me all the time after you're done asking me for an OF, you say, and by the way, I look up to you and I appreciate that.
28:43.813 --> 28:50.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of you are in your 70s and 80s and I think it's very cool that you are that you're willing to do that.
28:50.418 --> 28:52.060
[SPEAKER_00]: So that means a lot.
28:52.120 --> 28:52.480
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
28:52.780 --> 28:54.422
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart belongs to you.
28:54.522 --> 28:58.805
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, if you ever have any doubts
29:04.153 --> 29:05.594
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of get to be anything.
29:06.074 --> 29:07.595
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of get to fulfill any role.
29:08.115 --> 29:10.376
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of get to mess with your DM.
29:10.496 --> 29:17.880
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I will say is learn from the people you play with and don't be afraid of a little earnestness, don't be afraid of a little vulnerability.
29:18.280 --> 29:23.723
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, if you're like me, maybe apply those to your real life too.
29:24.832 --> 29:30.517
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and if you're my therapist and you're listening to this high-tiler and also why are you listening to this?
29:31.117 --> 29:33.039
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I'm sure we'll talk about it someday.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not my therapist, which I assume is most of you, hey, how's it going?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you guys ever worry that you haven't tried the best food in delivery radius of your house?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I think that I found the best one and then I get locked into it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then what ends up happening is every Friday that we're like, let's order some dinner.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, well, spice kitchen's just good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's good in the infoot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We know this, why don't we just do that?
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[SPEAKER_00]: But what might we be missing out on?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody talks about it, but it really is tough.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, if you can't tell, I plan to everything except for the very end of this, which is sort of how we ended up here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the best thing to do is turn it over to you in your discussion boards and what I would like is one to two sentences from each of you, just about how you would approach the Chaos Grimlin, character, the Wild card character.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How would you play Fiddles?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if the answer is better than you, let's fistfight about it later on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this afternoon or this weekend, the weather should be nice so we can do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And to all of you, listening, I love you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry for all of the times that my jokes went too long in an episode of Imagine Dungeons and also I'm not sorry so, you know, deal with that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're gauge, keep trying pal, keep trying, okay I love you.