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C1 Ep. 8 Eberron Reviewed 2
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This week we take a break from the campaign to dive into the nuts and bolts of what makes the story work. Jeff sits down with Eric and Philip to discuss the story so far, where things may be headed, and taking a closer look at Beric’s character. It’s a fun hour talking about all things Eberron Renewed. Come join us!
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Transcript
Introduction and Recap
00:00:09
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is roll.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi everybody, welcome to Eberron Renewed. It is an actual play D&D podcast, but not today. As we did last time, we are going to take a minute, or approximately an hour, and go back through the session that we just played, the last three episodes that you guys heard, where I, oh I'm Jeff, and I'm going to pick the brain of our Dungeon Master,
00:00:52
Speaker
who is introducing himself soon. I'm Eric. There we go. We appreciate your feedback about the last time we did this episode. We genuinely were not going to do another one unless people said that they didn't hate it because we were kind of concerned they might. Anyway, so we're
D&D Prophecy Interpretation
00:01:08
Speaker
just going to jump in. Oh, and then after we talk a little bit about the session, Phillip and I are going to talk about Barrick and his character and some things like that. So
00:01:15
Speaker
So let's just jump right in. So episode five, the beginning of the following the trail. Is that what you need? Finding the trail. Finding the trail. We got to find it before we can follow it. That's good advice. Yeah. So the beginning of the finding the trail arc and
00:01:31
Speaker
So you just wanted us to have a train fight eventually, huh? Yeah. Play D&D in a setting with trains. Why wouldn't you have an epic train fight? Like that just makes sense. So we got that prophecy from Graham and I'm sure that people who listen to this podcast figured out more quickly than we did sitting around the table that
00:01:51
Speaker
there was clearly
Character Backstories and Pronunciation
00:01:52
Speaker
a portion, like I've listened to it multiple times now, there was clearly a portion of that rhyme for each of us. And the only one that I picked up on was the dawn and find the boy and dawn and shadow, all I picked up on at the time. And you really had to spoon feed a little bit for us to now Philip may have figured it out immediately and just wasn't ready to say anything.
00:02:15
Speaker
But yeah, so, I mean, that each couplet, right? Is there one for each of us? Loosely, yeah. That I assume is dictating future arcs. I mean, the big one that was the, the veil was the thinnest on was obviously Draconosis because that led you all to the next breadcrumb essentially. Eventually, yeah, took some work too.
00:02:41
Speaker
So we meet, I guess it was inevitable that we would meet some of Barrick's family because he is nobility and pretty widely spread throughout nobility. Yeah. In this area of, oh, apparently they've made an official announcement on how to pronounce certain words in Eberron. Yeah. On manifest zone. Right. Another, I would say the definitive Eberron facts podcast. Eberron lore.
00:03:02
Speaker
I mean, on the subject of pronunciation,
Magic and Technology in Eberron
00:03:04
Speaker
Keith Baker has said on numerous occasions that pronunciation is not going to be standard, just as in the real world. Probably most of us don't say Mexico when referring to the country south of our border. We say Mexico, even though people from there pronounce it that way. So if I say Cair and you say Siri, well, that's just a difference of region. It's like how we say aluminum, but in England, they say Lori. They call it university.
00:03:33
Speaker
That's a very specific joke for a very specific listener and I hope he doesn't hate me Okay, so let's jump back in to the story So we get the prophecy and we meet barracks. What is he? He's like your second cousin. He's my third cousin or something like yeah, something like that Okay, so he's not like somebody you saw at Thanksgiving No, or whatever the Eberonian equivalent more closely. My brother is his personal assistant. I
00:03:57
Speaker
So okay, but he wasn't there So and it and Rookin is his name and he jumps in to our lives to hire us for Really for no good reason because we did just lose a child, but he's like these three seem competent I'm gonna hire them for protection. So okay. So lightning train. That's I mean lightning rail lightning rail. Pardon me It's a train. Well, yeah, you know
00:04:23
Speaker
So this is a very much an Eberron trope, right? This harnessing an elemental go it like, I mean, it's, it's something that Keith Baker made specifically for Eberron. I mean, his whole,
Graham's Mysterious Past
00:04:35
Speaker
I've heard the term Arcana punk used or magic punk where it's taking magic and using it for mundane purposes. I guess the closest pop culture touchstone would be the Harry Potter movies where you see them using magic to wash the dishes or light a fire. The Weasley house basically. Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:51
Speaker
And so he kind of thought, I mean, you have these elementals that are just raw energy. It makes sense that people would capture them and use them as a motor. And so that allowed for the advent of trains, planes and automobiles. So I mean, it's basically the same situation as once we figured out how to harness electricity, we no longer walked around in the dark.
00:05:13
Speaker
I mean, just same idea. Just magic. When Wizards figured out the light spell, they were like, hey, we can just cast this on stuff and light your house. For some reason, that one doesn't only last six rounds. That one lasts for as long as ... I skipped. Let's jump back to the little short individual stories that each character had at the beginning of the episode. Barak going to Graham's to get more.
00:05:37
Speaker
books and finding out, so Graham's got a backstory that is probably going to matter eventually. Why don't you tell me all about that? Well, she was original. I thought she was obviously a courtesan, but apparently I'm wrong. You are incorrect. Based on what you said, she was very much something oppressive to women, which is something we wouldn't do on this podcast.
00:06:00
Speaker
No, I just basically included that because once again I was reading through my Everon books and kind of found some unfinished threads that Keith Baker left in there and one of them involved stuff going on a considerable amount of time ago and I was like Graham could fit well into this storyline so it's included to be something that
00:06:22
Speaker
might come up. May or may not kind of thing. Might not. It just depends on Ural's agency to give a crap. It's
Podcasting and Performative Styles
00:06:29
Speaker
just part of the rich tapestry. Yes. That you're built. Man, I tell you what, for some reason I get in front of this microphone and I do not talk like Lyle Dex in real life.
00:06:37
Speaker
But there's like a sense memory in this room where all of a sudden I'm just talking to y'all about things and stuff. Well, that's like my friends tell me that I switch into my NPR voice when we do podcasts. Oh, yeah, you absolutely do. Hello, my name is Eric. It's performative voice. It's a thing that happens. It's just unfortunate that mine is here now. I guess it's a good thing I chose an accent somewhat close to mine. I'm not like saying like, come to the gig.
00:07:04
Speaker
The day people will be talking about comic books. Well, that was terrible. I've got that. No one wants to hear that. That's something that listeners can pick up on is you can immediately tell how long an NPC is going to stick around by how difficult their accent is for me to do. Because if I know they're going to
NPC Dynamics and Character Safety
00:07:20
Speaker
be around for a while, they're going to be pretty close to American with a little, maybe, British flavor. But if I go way off the reservation, like with Borussia and doing gruff Australian accent,
00:07:31
Speaker
He'll be around for a bit, but not going to be a go-to. I thought that was a really good impression of a Star Wars clone. Thank you. That's what I was going for. I was going to say, that was pretty obviously Rex, right? Yeah. And then Farlands is kind of easy, and he's nice to have around. So that could be good. Well, I mean, he's not pleasant, but he's helpful.
00:07:48
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, so Barrick has his thing with Graham. I once again let my being an actual father sneak into my role-playing by saying, well, I'm gonna go talk to Trant and make sure that he understands that we're not abandoning the quest for his kid. But to be fair, there are also Dex reasons for that. Having lost his family, I made a joke about it in that episode, everybody loses their family.
00:08:12
Speaker
Uh, but having seen his on his brothers, I know we haven't talked. I don't think we talked about this last time and it definitely hasn't come up in the show, but Dex watched his brothers disappear. So as a child, losing a child, it's a thing. So, so that made sense. And God,
Introducing Farlin, the Brewer Druid
00:08:26
Speaker
what? Draconos saying, are there kids around? What dude? Oh, there's no kids around. I guess I'll just sit outside the bar for a while.
00:08:35
Speaker
Because he has such a good harness on that weird care like well and that gave me a perfect in to kind of introduce Farlin Joining like because it makes sense that Farlin would be walking out of the bar and so yeah, that was kind of perfect I I kind of want to ask a question real quick just while we're on the things going on I'm sorry. That's not the format of the show. I'm I apologize, but I am the dungeon master
00:08:58
Speaker
uh i just i'm curious other than the courtesan joke like do you all have any thoughts on gram's backstory and like just the clues that have been laid out i just want to get a well i think she's evidently a cleric of the silver flame okay that's my guess yeah i mean that was if not nobility uh by blood nobility by association or or in the work in the circles of nobility and yeah i assumed also okay
00:09:24
Speaker
uh cleric now even makes even more sense i'm just not as well versed in the lore as you guys are but the cleric of the silver flame sounds great to me obviously receiving a prophecy means that she's got some sort of if not divine uh divine um connection at least a open to that world yeah so yeah okay i'm just wondering yeah so are we right
00:09:49
Speaker
That never works. So yeah, and then we do meet Farlin. Did you choose Farlin after the bar scene where he side eyed us and particularly me and thought that would be some good color or were you already like, I'll introduce this character and he'll be the next NPC? No, Farlin actually. I really want to do an episode of the knowledge check over this concept
00:10:15
Speaker
at some point, but he was pulled out of what I call my DM spell book where I just, anytime I have an idea for an NPC or an encounter or something, I'll put it in my Microsoft OneNote and then just leave
Train Fight Scene Analysis
00:10:28
Speaker
it there for when I need it. This episode brought to you by Microsoft. Because they've got so much money to throw around, they just don't care anymore.
00:10:36
Speaker
D&D can only be played on the Surface Book Pro. His gruff attitude, him being a brewer and a druid, and there's a couple other elements to him, were already there. And so when I was constructing the bar fight scene, I was like, hey, a gruff dwarf who's a brewer?
00:10:53
Speaker
And just dropped him in. And so a lot of his backstory in the context of Eberron had already been established just from an idea I had. And it fit in well with the continuity moving forward. So I knew I had enough on him for him to be a reoccurring.
00:11:11
Speaker
Once I knew Akko was going to die at the end of the first mini arc, obviously needing a fourth person who could heal. So would he keep us alive? Yeah. Druids can heal. So you had already met Farlin and so it kind of made sense just to plug him in there. But I didn't elevate him after the bar scene. He just was kind of there to be used. Gotcha. Sure. OK, let's jump to the train. We've kind of already talked about a little bit enough about the Rukin interaction. There wasn't a lot there.
00:11:38
Speaker
I mean, we figured out that, that, that, uh, Barrick is, we already had a pretty good feeling Barrick was not the, if not the black sheep, definitely.
00:11:47
Speaker
more the ashen skin sheep More removed from the nobility trappings than the rest of his family. Yeah, and that I Don't know why I made the decision but I'm glad I did that Dex just doesn't give a crap about nobility and also he's kind of turned into He's not turned into John Wayne But he has the John Wayne sensibility of not taking any crap and I don't know why that happened so suddenly But I really like playing it
00:12:12
Speaker
What I loved about the Rookan interaction was you all obviously eventually agreed to go once Draconis explained like oh the prophecy is leading us here but just before that happened the notion that you all were going to say no to the Prime Minister and he was going to accept that answer like When when you started saying we appreciate the offer But we're not going to do like I had already thought in my head as soon as you were done talking was going to go I'm sorry
Berick's Magic Insecurities
00:12:38
Speaker
you misunderstood. That was not a request. No, and that's fair. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that I totally biffed over the fact that you said prime minister. Like, I just, I don't know why that wasn't registering with me. But yeah, no, you're right. That would not have played out to our favor.
00:12:57
Speaker
Well, I think I did say I said we don't agree we acquiesce at one point because I did realize nothing we can do about this. But yeah, and man, it was kind of pulling teeth to get around to obviously barracks going to need to be convinced. Dex is going to need to be convinced to to leave regardless to be comfortable with leaving. Yeah. And so when when we finally got it out of Draconos, this was like, oh, let's go.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, so then we meet and remind me who created brasha, please Josh Boyd Josh Boyd creates a super rad character. That's going to be a lot of fun and if you want the chance to make your own NPC go leave a rating of review on iTunes and send me a screenshot of it and You'll get a chance to do that So and he's at a high bar because there's a lot of cool stuff with this dragonborn paladin. Mm-hmm
00:13:47
Speaker
but so we meet him and you almost immediately take away my ability to change shape the thing that makes my character cool. I didn't take away your ability like you okay a dragon was like i hate people who don't who don't show their true selves and i'll be like well check this out and then die and then i'll and then i'm going to die by the hands of a dragon so dragon born not a dragon a half dragon half half half dragon that was gross
00:14:17
Speaker
will burn.
00:14:18
Speaker
Fair enough. Will plunder. But yeah, so we meet we meet Rash and we meet Orgev, whose name I almost never get right. And we don't really have any conversation with Orgev yet. No. But he was chatting his ear off the whole time. So. Right. And we get to Nukire. And I thought you had a really interesting question, Phillip, when you said, can we see the the mornlands from here? He told us yes. And I really wanted to know if
Character Trust Post-War
00:14:46
Speaker
that messed with you.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah. Or messed with Beric. I'm sure you were fine. Yeah, I think I even actually asked, I think it made it into the episode where I just straight up said, you know, does that mess Beric up? Yeah. I don't know because Beric is, Beric is dealing with some magic that he doesn't quite understand. And of course the Mornland is this gigantic geographic feature of magic that nobody understands. And so I think one of the things that Beric
00:15:15
Speaker
worries about privately which hasn't really come out. Barak's various private insecurities about the magic that he's wielding. I think one of the things that Barak worries about is whether or not they're connected because he as a member of the aristocracy probably has a pretty solid idea of what happened in the morn land as far as like
00:15:38
Speaker
What it did to people when it happened not what caused it obviously and has maybe seen survivors and things like that. And so he has a strong idea of how bad it is and how awful it is. And I think one of the things he worries about is whether or not this magic that he came into possession of.
00:15:58
Speaker
reasonably chronologically close to the time of the morning is in some way or another similar. Right. I mean, I didn't realize honestly until Eric said something to me the other day that we are within what, five years. We are of the morning, four years from the morning, two years out from the war.
00:16:16
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, assuming that we're in 998, I don't know. For example, Dex was in Thrain during the morning. It wasn't like he was still away or not born yet. It's not World War I, it's Afghanistan. Yeah, I think that's one of the really cool things. This is actually the topic of the most recent episode of the Manifest Zone that we were referring to earlier, is the last war. I think that is one of the really interesting things is most
00:16:41
Speaker
Uh, most fantasy settings, uh, as they were pointed out in that have this, some kind of big cataclysm in the past, but it's always like in the really distant ancient past, whereas this just happened.
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah, this is, I mean, of course, I didn't know any of this going in, but as I learned more, like Eberron is a very, I was gonna say very unique. Unique doesn't need a lot of fire. It's binary, yeah. Eberron is a unique setting in the sense that, yeah, a lot of the tropes of fantasy, they're not necessarily done away with, but they're subverted in different ways, like modern conveniences being available, but in different forms, or yeah,
00:17:22
Speaker
The great defining event not being five generations ago being four years ago. Yeah, it's really neat when I think it's also interesting probably for our characters and I know that we haven't really dealt with this in the game yet I think for our characters one of the things that would be very real about that is
00:17:38
Speaker
There's only been two years since a treaty was signed and so This is a war that lasted a hundred years. So realistically do our characters even look at the war and say it's over or This is a lull and it's gonna write up any minute temporary armistice. Yeah, and how do we how do we reconcile? I mean I
00:18:00
Speaker
And again, I don't know who the warring parties were, really. Like, I don't know who was against whom, but just the idea that you guys know, the two of you now know that Dex is not from Breeland. Right. And, or, or, or, uh, Kire or anywhere, uh, that you know of, like, how much can you, not, can you two trust him? I think,
Train Fight Consequences
00:18:25
Speaker
And I don't want to speak for either of your characters. I think the three, I trust the two of you implicitly at this point, both through the last session and also just having worked for a while together. But how much can...
00:18:37
Speaker
if someone else were to find out that I was not a Corvair resident during, or before, or whatever, how much one might trust that. So it's an interesting dynamic that I'm sure will, Eric being a good storyteller will get explored. But okay, so Eric is back, Eric had to step away for a second and Phillip and I chatted, and we're gonna do more of that in a minute, but about Eric specifically.
00:19:02
Speaker
So yeah, episode two, uh, coming up now train fight, uh, where, where man, oh man, did some bad things almost happen to all of us multiple times. Like.
00:19:17
Speaker
Okay, real talk. If Dex had fallen off a train, okay, how high of a, what was my clear I needed on that dexterity saving throw to not just fall smooth off the train? Were you being nice and letting Dex live, or did I actually? I think I got like a 20. Yeah, I think it was a 15 is what you needed. It was a medium difficulty check. It wasn't a gimme.
00:19:41
Speaker
And I had a plus four, so yeah, I had to roll. I mean, less than half the die was available for me to pass that. Would I have been dead? Would you have killed me? No, and it got edited out of the episode, but I mentioned this to you while we were playing that what I probably would have done is because part of the thing that I love about playing with theater of the mind and not having maps and minis is it allows the surroundings to be a bit more nebulous.
00:20:07
Speaker
And I
Fan Engagement and Character Interpretation
00:20:08
Speaker
would have fallen into a lake. No, you would have fallen into an earth sled with five angry warforged standing around you. Ooh, rough. That was on fire. Even though, into the fire. You say I've fallen into the sled and you just hear Philip roll for damage.
00:20:24
Speaker
Um, even though in my mind, the earth sled was on the opposite side. See, that's where I was too. Um, it's easy to switch that stuff around. And some dungeon masters might think that that's going easy on you, but I, it's not their game, man. Well, if you're going to die, I want it to be heroic. I don't want it to be. I appreciate that. He took a bad step and fell off a train. Dummy.
00:20:46
Speaker
So that's just, I would rather have deaths be heroic and so I would have introduced an element to make your life suck because you failed that check, but not kill you outright.
00:20:59
Speaker
Man, just the idea of us running on top of a train. Like in my head, you and me? Yeah. But you and I running down that train, are you like gliding down it apparently? Man, we looked really cool. Yeah. Like if we had enough people who listened to this that we got fan art, that would be the coolest.
00:21:17
Speaker
And we you know what that's not fair. We did a very we did get a very cool Sketch of each of our characters and so I take that back We did we did get that which is by the way Bonkers the fact that anybody listens to this at all is bonkers to me But somebody took the time to sit down and picture and draw our care. Yeah is both Very very flattering and and humbling and also just completely whack a doodle. Yeah No one drew you I don't know why you're saying yeah nobody drew the dungeon master I think it's
00:21:47
Speaker
cool. Yeah, I mean, that's really weird to me and cool and I can really cool way but it's really weird to me because you have this thing that I imagined and expressed through the character and then somebody else imagined it and expressed it through a different art medium and it's just very
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, something I think, I think that an idea that I have adopted personally for this is from another podcast, The Adventure Zone, which is a great, we'll call it a role-playing game podcast. Yeah. It started as D&D and it has gone very much away from that into a wonderful product. But the
Warforged in Eberron
00:22:27
Speaker
guys on there all say basically all interpretations are correct. Yeah. Which is such a cool way to think about it. Yeah.
00:22:34
Speaker
We have our interpretations, but whatever anybody pictures or sees or thinks about, if it's not explicitly stated, like, you know, Draconis is a tiefling. Draconis has horns. He said bright red skin. Outside of that, literally anything goes. And I think it's really cool. And I love that about this.
00:22:54
Speaker
book this medium as a player and this medium as an enjoyer of watching other people play it. Any interpretation of Beric that doesn't explicitly look like a vampire would be incorrect.
00:23:11
Speaker
But yeah, no, it's super cool. And really, Dex is just Calvin Ball. You can make him look like whatever you want. Because literally, all interpretations are correct. He would have to wear a name badge and a picture for you to know that it was Dex. Or think it. Whatever you're thinking when I'm being Lyle or Dex, you're right. Because I can do that. Because I can't shape shift. That'd be neat. But Dex can. I'm Jeff. Anyway, so yeah, second fight, train fight, neat things happen. We find out that Farlin is, I guess,
00:23:42
Speaker
he doesn't do anything specifically druid in the second episode or the the first one he is that thorn vine grab somebody is that is that explicit that's a druid uh druid spell okay well then so you knew i didn't see that one so i didn't um i mean i wish i could elaborate more like
00:24:01
Speaker
It was a train fight, and a couple of things happened, but mainly it was a train fight. I mean, you encountered a lot of warforged for the first time in the campaign, which is a very Eberron-esque thing. They are unique to the setting, which I like warforged a lot, which is why I threw 36 of them at you. Yeah, that was...
Future Narrative Focus
00:24:21
Speaker
Would you said that?
00:24:22
Speaker
I was terrified. I was like, oh man, we're not making it out of it. Honestly, I thought half of these guys are going to have to fail their checks and fall under the wheels of the train in order for us to survive. I think maybe two did. But you had Barash going off on his own and defeating six.
00:24:43
Speaker
Barracks stupid trap for the driver that just kept rotating. That was so funny like I listening back to it again I laughed out loud a couple of times and was like, all right and another one grabs the grabs the controls and you just Like nine fired him. Well the first time that happened you can hear me pause like oh My immediate question is how do they stop this?
00:25:07
Speaker
I mean, I would assume water would. Yeah. Well, it's like magical silvery fire like. Yeah. But it is still fire. So I would assume that you could you could say spell it in some way. And don't say that because he's just going to have water around next. Everybody carries buckets of water from here on out. Just full bladders. Forget to go into battle with a hex blade.
00:25:30
Speaker
Um, uh, but yeah, so it was a train fight and it ends with us finding out that the Prince, uh, shocker when Barasha disappeared, the Prince got abducted. Uh, I mean, I get it. You didn't want to play two fighting NPCs. Yeah. In a battle. And we needed a healer more than we needed a brawler. So I mean, I'm on board with the way you played it to be sure. Um,
00:25:53
Speaker
So jumping ahead to the third episode, the train fight concludes. We see, we see Barrick with some tough love casting a spell that is supposed to really injure somebody in order to help get the prince back onto the train, but it worked.
00:26:09
Speaker
yeah fortunately road rolled very low on your damage roll yeah i was a little worried about it i mean it's only a d8 so and then there's no modifier on it so i figured that probably the prince has more than eight hit points yeah he's a grown he's a grown-up right uh i don't have more than eight hit points
00:26:27
Speaker
But yeah, so we do that. We see Farland change into a bear, which gives Dex some pause about being as mean as he is. And then I love the character of Prince Orgev. Yeah, I love his magnanimity and his is how gregarious and and and what's a word? What is the word? I can't think of it because I'm not sincere, a smart note. Yes, he is. But no.
00:26:57
Speaker
the Princess Diana niche of him. He knows where he is, but he does not let it define his interaction with other people. You know what I'm saying? Humility? I guess humility is a good word. You want to get fancy, you can say, noblis oblège. Yeah, you know what? Yes, I do. I always want to be fancy. There you go. So that's what it is. It's the nobouche oblige. And man, why do you guys talk to me? I'm an idiot. But yeah, just the idea that
00:27:24
Speaker
Well you know cause it paralleled nicely and I think this was your intention. When I reached out, when I put my hand out for Rook and he, you know, like he expected me to spray some Purell on it before he'd shake it. And then, and we did just save his life, but Orgev puts his hand out to me and I would, I mean Dex, because of what he's grown into over the last three episodes, is already kind of thinking,
00:27:48
Speaker
I wonder if this guy needs more people in his detail because I would rather work for him than Rookin. Well, and go ahead. Is there some source of that? Because I remember, because Oregon showed up in the campaign that you and I ran and he was that way and that as well. Except I think I was personally in that occasion. I think the only difference was that I think I gave him an Irish accent. You all do not want to hear me do that. Right. Sounds like the lucky charms.
00:28:15
Speaker
Oh, they destroyed my country. No, I kind of have always viewed Orgev as, I think an interesting arc for him is potentially being very Rookan-esque in his youth and during the war and when all this is happening.
00:28:34
Speaker
But then your entire country family way of life getting wiped out in an instant has a way of humbling you and making you realize that there's more to life than your station or money and things like that. And so I think.
00:28:51
Speaker
Whereas something like the morning took a lot of people down a very dark road, it made Orgev kind of realize. It was almost an enlightenment. Well, the most precious thing about his country was the people. Okay. That were lost and the people that survived. And so it made him much more magnanimous and generous with people. So yeah, I hope that I mean, obviously, he's going to be around for a little while because we're traveling with him. But I
00:29:18
Speaker
I mean, I hope that character comes up regularly simply because I think the dynamic of three misfits need a person of some sort of power and station who's on their side, you know, both in a practical and just an emotional. Yeah, I think I think that's a really neat dynamic for these three guys because I mean, absolutely are misfits like
00:29:44
Speaker
Just because Dex looks as normal as anybody else, but only because he can do that. And that makes him innocent. And he's clearly the most crotchety. I don't know how that happened. Everybody sucks. Yeah, that's exciting. And I really don't know what else. I mean, episode three, do you guys have. I keep saying episode three because I think of them in terms of.
00:30:04
Speaker
Of the art yeah episode 7 the last episode and by the way listeners friends and loved ones We are Genuinely, sorry. I am genuinely sorry Eric and I've talked about it that the last two episodes were very short We were working under some weird time constraints. Yeah, it will not happen again if we can avoid it We're planning on in fact as soon as we're done recording this we're gonna do another session and we're planning there's no time loop We're gonna be play as long as it takes
00:30:30
Speaker
to get three or four good, uh, episodes of the kind of length that we can tell a good story. Yeah. So, um, well, and, and I think that of all of the stories to be told with shortened episodes, I mean, these were very combat heavy episodes. And so I feel like if they were an hour long, they potentially would have drunk on a little bit. That does get boring. Yeah. I've, I've listened to two hour long combat podcasts and it's like, all right,
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, and especially, especially, not to be, luckily we have some characters with interesting combat skills. If we were all barbarians and fighters and paladins, it would be, I hit him, I hit him. Yeah, I hit him too. Hit you back. Ah, nuts.
00:31:16
Speaker
something that, well, I'll go ahead and give a preview to next week's episode, the session we're about to record. I very intentionally have designed a style of D&D adventure that I've never run before because it is
00:31:32
Speaker
Very light on combat very narrative heavy very Yeah, the players are going to have to use their minds as much as the dice to figure things out And so I I think that will make good radio. Hopefully it'll make for good D&D right? Yeah, so
Social Media and Community Appreciation
00:31:50
Speaker
I I try to be
00:31:52
Speaker
conscious of that when designing encounters, but I wanted a big train fight and you all were going to be traveling a long distance, so it seemed a good place to kind of insert that. Before we jump over and just start talking about Barrick, I'm going to do, just because we're kind of in the middle-ish portion of the episode, I'm going to do a quick break to plug social media and things like that.
00:32:15
Speaker
Um, so our, our podcast ever on renewed is still housed under the geek pantheon, uh, label, uh, brand as it were.
00:32:27
Speaker
if things start to really pop off on the Facebook page and people are talking about this podcast more than the family of podcasts, we'll start a separate one. But as of right now, you can find anything relating to this podcast or the other two podcasts that Eric does. I'm on two of the three, Phillip's on two of the three, Eric's on all three. So if you don't like Eric, I'm very sorry. If you don't like me, I understand. Petition Jeff and Phillip to start their own show.
00:32:51
Speaker
Oh, God. We are the Ouroboros of podcasts. But no, you can find us on Facebook. Just search for the Geek Pantheon. We're on Instagram. We are on Twitter. We're probably on Google Plus. We've got a LinkedIn, Friendster, Zenga, but all of those. Go check out our MySpace playlist. Yeah, it's hot.
00:33:14
Speaker
But that those are all at the geek pantheon We want to thank Kevin McLeod for the music and apparently I've been giving you I apologize It's Eric's fault. He told me what it is the wrong website. His actual website is free PD calm Okay, so so what I've been saying is free PD music. That is not right. It's just free PD like public domain dot-com
00:33:37
Speaker
And really quickly, and I'm going to start doing this every time we do one of these episodes. Since we record three or four episodes at a time, I simply can't thank everybody who talks about us every week. So I'm just going to kind of lump together the people that I see reaching out and saying great things about us online. It means so much to us. And so this
00:33:58
Speaker
tag lions, which by the way, tag lions, I kind of want to use that name in a campaign. He's super cool dude and also super cool name. But tag lions, Nico Batson and Jessica Smith have been doing a lot of talking about us very kindly. Jessica Smith's a very common name, but I'm pretty sure she knows who she is because she's probably the only one that listens to our show. But thank you guys so much for
00:34:26
Speaker
The nice things that you said about our podcast, telling people about it. I know like for a fact that we have our subscriber base has been growing. Yes. Because of other people like I've run out of friends to tell. I don't know. I don't. And most of them have said, no, I won't listen to it. I got literally all my friends to be on the podcast. So I can't tell them anything about it.
00:34:47
Speaker
And I haven't told my family about the podcast. But yeah, our subscriber base really has grown, and it's because of you guys and word of mouth, and it means so much to us. Because as much fun as we have playing, we wouldn't record it unless we wanted other people to listen to satisfy whatever psychological or personality issue it is that we have that we're exercising in the public domain.
00:35:15
Speaker
All
Berick's Warlock Journey
00:35:16
Speaker
right, so let's jump on. Let's talk about Barrick now. I Know most of what I know about the warlock class I know a very little bit from reading because I never considered playing one in the two two times I created a character. They weren't on my radar So actually most of what I know is from listening to the knowledge check another great podcast from the geek pantheon It's actually Eric and Philip where they as people with years of DMing experience to kind of talk about
00:35:41
Speaker
the inside baseball of D&D fifth edition. It's great if you are a dungeon master wanting to learn some more tips and tricks. It's awesome if you're a player. In fact, some friends of mine who are playing for the first time were wondering how to build their characters, what they should do. And one of them happened to be a fighter. Your second episode was a fighter build. And I said, go listen to the knowledge check and take what advice you want from that.
00:36:07
Speaker
And she actually enjoyed it enough to listen to the rest of the episodes, which was pretty rad. Awesome. So it's a good resource, kind of inside baseball resource for D&D 5E. But so, okay, so Warlock, my understanding is, and you absolutely will be correcting me because I'm probably wrong.
00:36:25
Speaker
the warlocks magic came with a bargain with a price yeah and make a pact with something very powerful and the nature of that pact can vary uh depending on largely who your patron is some of the patrons it's gonna i mean there's a there's a fiend patron so if you want to play Faust and do the really classic you made a deal with the devil thing then that's that but there's a wide variety of them now
00:36:53
Speaker
Man, I just thought a warlock bard in the story of Robert Johnson and the crossroads. That's awesome. Anyway, now, Barrick specifically did not make the pact. Right. It was made on his, it was Samuel and Eli. Is he on Eli? No.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, Samuel's mom gives him up to the church. Right, right. Yeah. It's been a minute since I've dug deep into that Old Testament. But no, yeah, so it was it was Berwick's mother that set this up for him. Yeah, Berwick.
00:37:29
Speaker
The nature of barracks packed is not something the barrack knows. I've left it up to Eric, uh, partly because I'm a little foggy on what the designers intend as far as the hex blade, because the hex blade, I really liked the way the mechanics worked. And I liked the idea of being a, a melee competent spellcaster and boy are you, but we'll get, we'll get to that. But.
00:37:53
Speaker
The text of the UA of the Unearthed Arcana class says that you've made a pact with a powerful intelligent weapon, but you don't have that intelligent weapon. So it's a little confusing to me. Do you go visit it or how it's just, I don't understand exactly what they're intending with that. That is interesting. Yeah.
00:38:14
Speaker
So I kind of left that open to Eric. I told him this is the mechanics I wanted to be. It calls out a couple of other things like the Raven Queen in the district description, but doesn't exactly explain how she works into it. So the flavor text of it is a little bit vague. And I figured that would just be a fun opportunity for Eric.
00:38:32
Speaker
yeah so like the weapon could be a a relic that is not something you could ever wield or it could be like Excalibur where one day right you're even more powerful and then what's the point of me even having a weapon if Varric is more powerful so
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah, Barak's story is essentially that his mother long ago came into contact with this source of magic, whatever that looks like, and used it as part of her role as a general of Brelund in The Last War to create this sort of special forces mage unit.
00:39:14
Speaker
And after her death, Barak has this journal, and in reading through this journal that is at least in part written by his mother, he has worked out how to access this same magic.
00:39:29
Speaker
He doesn't really know what he's messing with. I don't
Magic's Impact on Identity
00:39:32
Speaker
know to what degree people who exist in this universe use terms like warlock and paladin and that kind of thing. Right, right. Yeah, Dex would never call himself a rogue. Right, right. But if asked what class he was, I don't think Barrick would answer warlock. I think he would say he's probably a wizard or a sorcerer or something like that. Or just simply magician. Yeah, he's a mage of some kind. I don't think Barrick is yet aware of what he's messing with. He understands that it's
00:39:59
Speaker
And that it's not like the other magic he's been taught or the other magic that he's witnessed. But I don't think Beric fully grasps what he's drawing on yet. Right. And now the warlock is not inherently dark. No. Or inherently, the pact is not inherently dark. It can't be a benevolent being that you've made a pact with, right? Yeah. And they've specifically created several patrons that are benevolent in nature.
00:40:24
Speaker
And barracks might be, we don't know. I mean, it's hard to believe because of the way that you're decomposing or whatever you're doing. And that's kind of a thing with the warlock is that a lot of the powers of the warlock are deliberately designed to be a little bit eerie and unsettling.
00:40:40
Speaker
Well, you nailed that. Warlocks do a lot of necrotic damage. Warlocks have a lot of powers that relate to darkness or messing with people's brains. So yeah, so there is a little bit of an unsettling side to the warlock.
00:40:56
Speaker
Pretty much no matter, I mean, you can build it to avoid that, but it's hard. Right. You're going to skip out on some of the things that make the warlock cool if you do. Sure. And so yeah, but the patron doesn't have to be evil or dark or nasty. Okay, so the vampire thing, like we keep making jokes about it being a vampire or vampiric, but it is, I mean, not the ashy skin thing and the pitch black hair and the black eyes, like that's
00:41:26
Speaker
funny and vampire but that's also like there are real humans who have very dark eyes and dark hair and pale skin. But then you get into the you held a coffee cup for a while and it started to blacken like you and your and your armor and your clothing. Now is it does it
00:41:44
Speaker
in your mind, since you this is all flavor that you came up with, right? Yeah. Okay. Is it losing its I want to say strength as clothing is the clothing failing? No, is it just it turns black? Yes. It's the armor doesn't get crumbly. It just turns black.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a real source of frustration because I actually imagine that he has quite a nice wardrobe. Sure. And that many parts of it were nicely colored, but not anymore. Just some real florals and some real nice. You can probably even still see some of the pattern in it, but it's just some really black on black now. Just some really nice patterned shirts that he picked up at Simon that are black now.
00:42:22
Speaker
Um, I just learned about this place called Simon's in Canada that has like the coolest clothes just whatever anyway, um, Did it has that been his whole life? No, there's a point. No this some of this some of it. Yes He's he's always had the sort of ashy skin and and dark hair but some aspects of it have Come into his experience only only since he started to learn to wield this magic
00:42:52
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Very cool. Um, I have a quick question if it's okay. If we break format for a second, relating to unlocking the magic, was there a point where Barak accidentally, you don't like, I go back to like X-Men and young mutants where you accidentally do a thing and that kind of starts you down the path. Was that a thing or was it more controlled through the journal?
00:43:16
Speaker
I think
Berick's Aristocratic Relationships
00:43:17
Speaker
that was definitely a thing where there was a point at which Barak realized that he wasn't just reading his mother's journal to learn about her and feel close to her while mourning her and realized that he was actually being able to interact with this power. But I think another thing and an important aspect of Barak is that
00:43:39
Speaker
He was in training when all of this started to happen. He was being trained to use magic, probably through some part of the Church of Silver Flame in Breland.
00:43:53
Speaker
but saw this as more powerful and it didn't come with all of the restrictions that the priests and the professors and all of this bureaucracy put on it. And so this has kind of been a shortcut to being a powerful mage for him. If literature is not as anything when you have access to more powerful magic with no restrictions, that never goes poorly. No, it's always good.
00:44:19
Speaker
Always good. Shortcuts. I trust Beric with that. Shortcuts are always beneficial. Yeah. So how does Beric feel about his compatriots? Or as much as you want to share, I don't want to give away things you don't play to, but I mean, just the idea that he, though odd, grew up in the aristocracy. He is a noble person. He has money, comes from money, could feasibly and reasonably go back to a comfortable lifestyle.
00:44:50
Speaker
And yet he spends all of his days with a monster and a I mean, yeah, he's a He's he's a from a certain lifestyle and you know, we have a tiefling And then you know even not knowing about Dex Lyle is very much a common person. Yeah
00:45:12
Speaker
How in your head how long did it take for Berwick to warm up to the idea of working with these people and also Is is he there yet? Yeah
00:45:24
Speaker
Well, Barak is aristocratic, but there's two things that make him, I think, have a little easier time with this. One is he's from Sharn, which is definitely the most cosmopolitan place in Eberron.
Family Influence on Motivation
00:45:39
Speaker
And so I don't think that the fact of discovering that Dex is a changeling or even the idea of Draconis as a tiefling
00:45:51
Speaker
I don't think those inherently bother him. It's more of the personalities. He just hates you as people. Or whatever we are.
00:46:03
Speaker
Uh, actually I kind of briefly made a joke about this while I was contemplating whether is that perhaps he had hadn't realized that Draconis was in fact a tiefling and thought he was just a really skinny variety of Minotaur or something like that. Uh, shaved Minotaur. Right. But the other thing is that.
00:46:23
Speaker
but he doesn't have any idea about his parentage on his father's side. Um, and also his mother while aristocratic, he has a very extensive family tree, but they weren't always aristocrats. They came to the aristocracy through service in the last war. Okay. And so, uh, there's, there's a little bit of the,
00:46:51
Speaker
the more upper middle class to them rather than the, we've always been landed aristocrats or something like that. And so that, that I think keeps him a little more down to earth. And then lastly, the fact that because he doesn't know anything about his parentage on his father's side, he's always been a little bit, um,
00:47:17
Speaker
a little bit out of the proper social circles as it were. Additionally, his mother is not an uncontroversial figure. I actually pulled his mother from a couple of different Eberron source books. Uruk Rowan is someone you find in the book on Sharn and in the book on The Last War, which is this woman who is a female general in Breland who on multiple occasions
00:47:44
Speaker
Saves the day in really clutch moments, but usually at terrible cost and so she's sort of this odd mix of
00:47:56
Speaker
war hero, but also whose sort of controversial methods tended to cause her to suffer very high casualties. And she keeps getting reassigned throughout the war to places that are supposed to just sort of keep her out of the way. And then something monumental will happen there. And she's the only one placed to- You're a loose cannon, but you get the job done.
00:48:24
Speaker
I love the idea that you, Philip, not you, Barret, you were like, I gotta create a character for this podcast. Oh, the great hero of Eberron? I'm just gonna make that my mom.
00:48:36
Speaker
Well, one of the one of the things I tried to do with this is previous characters I've tended to play usually tend to be fairly alone, fairly cut off in me and Eric's really long campaign. I played a spy.
00:48:55
Speaker
who worked for the Brelish Secret Service, the King's Dark Lanterns. The big arc of the character was he kept everyone at arm's length because he was a spy. He had his own mission and the whole thing was breaking that down. His whole family was dead. He was the whole classic thing. I very deliberately decided I didn't want to do that this time. So I set out to create a character who has just
00:49:21
Speaker
a lot of family still out there and plenty of people that he potentially still cares about to differing degrees because, you know, extended family. And so I looked around for someone in the aristocracy that would make sense for him to be attached to and hit upon Eurek Rowan from these books and decided to go that direction.
00:49:45
Speaker
I really only have one more question and this interests me because I mean I've made a thousand illusions now. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, not being recorded for a podcast of
Character Creation for Public Podcast
00:50:00
Speaker
some sort. You have played for years. Was there a difference in the way you built this character knowing that
00:50:08
Speaker
other people besides your friends and also maybe some people who've never played but just enjoy the format. I very deliberately chose Dex being a changeling because I thought it would make for fun radio to be a different character, have different voices, different things like that. Did you consider that at all when you were building? Did you think of the fans? Or were you like, I'm going to build a character that's going to make the gameplay fun for me because that'll be good enough. That'll shine through.
00:50:37
Speaker
It actually took me a really long time to settle on a character, as you probably know. And I went through several different iterations of it and kind of ran it down with Eric. And there were a couple of different things I was trying to think about. One was I wanted to wait until I saw what you two were going to do so that I could do something because with so few people, I didn't want to be stepping on the same
00:51:02
Speaker
turf of the other characters. And so once you had settled on a rogue, I didn't want to do another sneaky, infiltrating character. And once he'd settled on a paladin, I didn't want to step into the heavily armored upfront thing. And so that was part of it. I talked through several concepts with Eric. And yeah, it was part of the conversation was
00:51:27
Speaker
what what's going to add an interesting hook into the story and also what's going to make it able for him to relate to the characters in a way that's fun to relate to the other characters in a way that's fun to listen to and the warlock I really like because it immediately creates this interesting campaign hook in the form of the patron and so and having played with Eric a lot and played in games run by Eric a lot
00:51:55
Speaker
I felt really confident choosing something really vague because I trust Eric to do something fun with it and not to use it to torment me. Right. And also I think we can all trust that eventually Eric is going to make you choose between your patron and your party.
00:52:11
Speaker
Sure. And that will be dynamic or interesting. Yeah, and I think that's an interesting aspect of a warlock or realize that the power he's using is somehow eating his soul or something like that. I don't know. It's definitely eating his clothing. OK, very cool. Oh, I did have one more thing that I thought of. You mentioned that you pulled the Hexblade out of Unearthed Arcana. Yeah. For those of you that don't know, Unearthed Arcana is playtest material. It is published by Wizards. They come up with it.
00:52:41
Speaker
And basically, they put it out there so people will put aspects of it into their games at home and then let them know, give feedback about, okay, this worked, this did not work. That's the reason that the Ranger has changed so dramatically over time from basically being garbage to being pretty rad is because of Unarched Arcana changes. So Hexblade is from the Unarched Arcana. Yes.
00:53:03
Speaker
I'm DMing a campaign soon that is going to have a mystic also from the unearthly canon. I've already told this person I'm going to nerf your mystic. It's clearly too powerful. Oh my gosh. I've got someone playing a mystic in a game I'm playing in at home.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah. Having looked at it, it's crazy. It's like two classes, at least, smashed together. You can do everything. Right. And a smart player, and Ginny is a smart person. I've never played with her, so I'm pretty sure she's going to figure it out quickly. Could just run the show. Yeah.
00:53:35
Speaker
Do you think maybe the Hexblade's a little overpowered? I think there are a couple of changes that I would make if I was publishing it. One is the Hexblade curse. One thing I noticed very quickly when looking at it is this is a character whose flavor is all about a weapon. But if I was just
00:53:59
Speaker
Just metacomade, if I'm just min-maxing it, the best way to do it is to focus on spellcasting, is to focus on Eldritch Blast. And so I would add language to the Hexblade's Curse, which is sort of its signature abilities, that thing I do where I pull the shadows off of them after I kill them.
00:54:15
Speaker
I would add language that only works with weapon attacks so that you can't use it with your Eldritch Blast because that's just numerically way better to work it with to combine it with some of the other Eldritch Invocations that make Eldritch Blast super cool and then just go ham on that.
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah, if I was if I was genuinely just trying to min max Beric, that's what I would do every turn was I cast Eldritch Blast. I'd have all the all the invocations that make it better than that. So that's that's one change. Another change that Eric has allowed me to make is one of the signature Eldritch invocations for the Hexblade is to gain access to this particular blade that it specifies is a great sword.
00:55:04
Speaker
But one of the Hexblade things is allowing you to use your charisma on your attack and damage, but only if you're using a one-handed weapon. And a great sword isn't, and it seems a little odd to me that they contradict each other. So Eric's allowed allowing that to turn into a longsword when we when we come to that.
00:55:21
Speaker
So that's another change I would make. But I think, yeah, the that a little bit of language on the Hexblade curse could make it scale a little bit better and also encourage the Hexblade to do what the flavor indicates the Hexblade is there for, which is to be a warlock who fights with a weapon.
00:55:40
Speaker
Okay. So I think that would be a good change that would scale down. Now I haven't been
Conclusion and Future Plans
00:55:45
Speaker
making use of that very much because I haven't been using Eldritch Blast, but I think that's a, that would be a good change that would help. Sure.
00:55:55
Speaker
Well, I look forward to seeing where, I mean, the whole thing goes, Eric. But also, Beric's character. I want to find out what this great weapon that he has to pact with. I want to find out, like, I'm as interested in Beric as I am in Dex.
00:56:10
Speaker
I think that's all I just I can't think of anything else to ask and so in about in real time in about 15 minutes or less we're going to be recording episodes 9 through 11 or 12 probably.
00:56:26
Speaker
Hope you guys enjoyed this one. Hope you keep listening. Tell your friends. Thanks for everything. You guys are fantastic, wonderful people, and the world is better because you're in it. And so this has been Everyone Renewed, Episode 8. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Goodbye. Bye.