00:00:05.62 Kurt Crenwelge Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Sidekicks and Sidequests, the best unofficial Dungeons and Dragons podcast in my humbly biased opinion. I've got an amazing guest for you this week, but before this month rather. 00:00:19.79 Kurt Crenwelge And before I get to my guest, you know I have to do it. 00:00:20.18 Britt Anderson Ooh. 00:00:22.26 Kurt Crenwelge I have to leave you in suspense with the ad read. and insert here where, uh, transcription readers know, uh, the plus one exp and the RPG zine club. So if you're not plugged in, tuned into that, you should check that out where you're getting new indie TTRPGs every month. 00:00:40.15 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, And it's you know curated from the community, and it's it's really cool stuff that they're doing at Plus One EXP, which, by the way, if you go to PlusOneExp.com and you use the code RANDOLPH at checkout, you can get some coins saved on your purchase. So be sure to use PlusOneExp.com and the website as well, RPGZine.club. 00:01:03.14 Kurt Crenwelge All right. And without further ado, I turn the microphone over to my guest and I ask, hello, mystery contestant. Would you care to introduce yourself? Tell us who it is that you are and what is it that you do? 00:01:14.64 Britt Anderson Oh my goodness. Okay. ah So my name is Britt Anderson. i go online ah by the handle BrittaJJ26. I'm an artist. 00:01:25.10 Britt Anderson I've been working in games, entertainment, ah social media, and animation for about nine years now. And you've probably seen a lot of my fan art ah across multiple places on the internet. 00:01:36.75 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:01:39.91 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. Now that ah it seems to be, I don't know for me personally, I don't know how it is for everyone else, but you know, now that ah Twitter has done its whole thing and really kind of put a hamper on the, the hobby, the TTRPG Z or, 00:01:57.00 Kurt Crenwelge put a put a damper on the TTRPG sphere that's been online. And, you know, there's other places that it's gone to. There were a couple that they were experimenting to, but I don't know. For me personally, I was kind of always wanting to stay away from Instagram because I was like, what's a podcast going to do on Instagram? But just, it seems like it's really interesting I don't know, intuitive or easy to pick up. And it just seems like I'm spending way more time on it. 00:02:19.62 Kurt Crenwelge And that's how I found your account and then recognize like, oh, yes, the fan arts of like, you know, Critical Role ah pieces or even Worlds Beyond Number, which is a podcast that I've really been finally able to binge. 00:02:33.25 Kurt Crenwelge And I'm now ah concurrent as you are. So I know earlier today at the time of recording, you were like, oh, I've got my new my new plush of the Fox while I'm listening to the newest episode. 00:02:44.22 Kurt Crenwelge And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. 00:02:45.02 Britt Anderson God. 00:02:45.28 Kurt Crenwelge Some riveting stuff this past episode. 00:02:48.15 Britt Anderson Oh, so much. So much is happening. I'm so excited to draw all of it. Oh my gosh. 00:02:56.91 Kurt Crenwelge that's That's the kind of enthusiasm that I would hope to encourage with this podcast as well, where someone listens to ah an episode and they're like, this this NPC character, I must sketch them. I must put put something out into the world for them. Not that I require it, but you know one one podcast hope host can hope and dream, I suppose. 00:03:16.87 Kurt Crenwelge But cool, yeah. if If I recall from your bio, you've done you've worked ah in a couple of different areas and companies and projects and and things that we would recognize your artwork from. Isn't that correct? 00:03:29.10 Britt Anderson Yeah, I've been a couple places. So first professional job out of university was actually as a character designer at Marvel Animation for a few years. 00:03:39.25 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:03:39.87 Britt Anderson That was really fun. ah had a great time. I actually worked with a couple people that I knew from college there. So that was great. And then... ah Right in the middle of the pandemic, I was hired by TikTok and worked there for about four years where I did animations and filter design, illustration, graphic design, animation. 00:04:05.15 Britt Anderson just I kind of did a little bit of everything with them. 00:04:08.85 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:04:10.24 Britt Anderson And then I kind of wanted to start leaning more into the work of board games and TTRPGs. And right around the time when I was thinking about a transition, Dice Throne was looking to hire some more artists. 00:04:23.42 Britt Anderson And I was the first artist outside of their ah solo artist, Manny, at the time to join. And I was also the first woman to join full time at ah at Dice Throne. So that was kind of a That was kind of cool. 00:04:39.21 Britt Anderson And that's where I still am. And the whole time since I moved to LA in 2019, I've been doing freelance illustration on the job, which is how i met Erica Ishii and email met Aabria Iyengar. 00:04:54.83 Britt Anderson We haven't met in person, but we've done a lot of projects together and a bunch of other people. 00:04:56.52 Kurt Crenwelge Sure, sure. Right. 00:04:59.43 Britt Anderson So yeah, my career has been a little all over. 00:05:00.17 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. Well, it's just one of these days. It's inevitable. It's inevitable. 00:05:03.94 Britt Anderson yeah 00:05:04.31 Kurt Crenwelge Aabria's gonna just show up at your house and just be like, hey, how's it going? and Yeah. 00:05:09.25 Britt Anderson I'll be like, oh, great. Come in. Let's have some tea. Here we go. like 00:05:12.13 Kurt Crenwelge Well, that's 00:05:13.97 Britt Anderson It's bound to happen at some point. 00:05:16.00 Kurt Crenwelge but That's very exciting. I know ah my only ah Marvel sort of claim to fame with this podcast is early on. think Well, trying to make a long story short, my dad was friends with a gentleman named Dave McDonald, and they go back to their junior high days. 00:05:31.26 Kurt Crenwelge And fast forward, eventually Dave goes on ah to become an editor at Starlog magazine, which is apparently a big sci-fi magazine that was really big back in the 70s, 80s, and all the way up through the mid two thousand 00:05:39.89 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Oh. 00:05:43.31 Kurt Crenwelge And so through that, ah you know, I became you ah Facebook friends with Dave and I i really really would love to have him on because I'm sure he would be a fascinating guest to have. But I know he's like, oh, I oh, I don't know about me, but i do happen to know, you know, 00:05:57.69 Kurt Crenwelge William Murray, who's the co-creator of Squirrel Girl. So I've had, you know, Will Murray on the podcast as a guest. i'd I'd really love to get in touch with him again and have him come back and return and just see how life has gone, especially since, ah you know, Squirrel Girl is kind of in the zeitgeist right now because of a certain popular video game. 00:06:17.92 Britt Anderson Yeah, she blew up and has, I love her. I think she's great. 00:06:23.56 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. And so when you worked at, just, you know, because I'm also a Marvel fan myself, you know, you said you worked at Marvel Animation. 00:06:30.06 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:06:31.44 Kurt Crenwelge Were there any characters that that were your favorite to get to work on? 00:06:31.96 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:06:36.99 Britt Anderson Oh, ah cross-eyed moment there. I worked on so many. um I worked on seasons three and four of that show and some uncredited things on, I believe it was the Guardians of the Galaxy animated show at the time. 00:06:53.07 Britt Anderson I did a lot of stuff for... the the lady characters because I just, I enjoy drawing very beautiful women. So I drew a lot of a lot of outfit alterations and special poses for when we had Ms. 00:07:02.08 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:07:08.78 Britt Anderson Marvel on there for a bit, a lot of Black Widow. Any villain that was a woman usually came across came across my table. um But one of my favorite things to do was in the animated shows, when you have the main characters, 00:07:25.43 Britt Anderson going through the action. And then you have incidental characters in the background that don't have a speaking role. My favorite thing was when they would go, Hey, Brett, we need some and incidentals in a science lab. 00:07:36.75 Britt Anderson So then I would take like a sheet of 20 to 30 employees, people that I actually knew at the studio, and then would just draw them as characters in the background. 00:07:47.52 Britt Anderson So yeah, 00:07:47.48 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, that's cool. 00:07:48.75 Britt Anderson My friend Jess Cuff, who is a storyboard artist at Marvel, Flying Mark, Netflix, a whole bunch of places. she ah She got redrawn a couple times as characters. And there was one episode, I don't remember which one it was, when they traveled back or possibly forward in time to cowboys riding dinosaurs as horses. 00:08:14.78 Britt Anderson And I was a saloon girl in one of those episodes in a purple dress. So if there's a plus size blonde haired bimbo kind of looking woman in the background of a saloon somewhere, that's me. 00:08:19.64 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. Ah. 00:08:26.70 Britt Anderson Because at the time i had bright blonde hair and very big makeup. So if you if you look in the background and you know people at the studio, you can usually spot who your friends are. 00:08:38.85 Britt Anderson You're like, oh, there you are. 00:08:40.48 Kurt Crenwelge I know that there is a documentary or a film or movie that came out and and it basically the premise was it had to do with more like live action and the background actors. And so I know when I was young, I would recognize certain, I would, you are a background actor. You're someone who's been in a lot of stuff. And so, 00:08:58.97 Kurt Crenwelge this sort of speaks to that idea of like, you know, if you're an animator and you know, you can just draw like your friends in it. And then the real sleuths out there are like, wait a minute, that that person in the background of this of this cartoon, they look very familiar. 00:09:11.92 Kurt Crenwelge And then there's like a whole, the meme of where they're drawing the the conspiracy map. 00:09:15.91 Britt Anderson it's pepe sylvia it's pepe sylvia and you're just you go through it's like a big funny cute conspiracy theories when you get to draw your friends and family 00:09:17.99 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:09:24.86 Britt Anderson and fellow co-workers into a show or into a comic. 00:09:28.30 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:09:28.73 Britt Anderson it's my fate It's my little teeny favorite piece of animation lore that just happens every time. And I'm like, yes, I love this. I love this for us. 00:09:40.71 Kurt Crenwelge And certainly with the four-year-old son who, you know, continues to astound me day by day with what he knows and what he learns and what he's able to like absorb, you know, I certainly would love to sit down with him more ah for more of these Marvel animated shows and be able to like, you know, 00:09:58.16 Kurt Crenwelge watch and then see and try and find your name in the credits. So that'll give me something ah to look forward to, to do. And then with dice thrown, ah you know, certainly for anyone in the audience, not readily familiar and, you know, apologies for me, ah maybe not readily recalling to mind, but ah what is dice thrown a, a, one of these, like, is it, ah is it a dice company or is just, does does the name throw us off to what it's true ah origins and intentions are? 00:10:06.75 Britt Anderson yeah 00:10:22.55 Britt Anderson Oh. 00:10:25.43 Britt Anderson ah Dice sedicece Throne is is a board game that uses dice rolling as a mechanic to ah to activate cards, to activate abilities. 00:10:33.22 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:10:37.76 Britt Anderson If you want to really think about it, it's kind of halfway between ah traditional board game, but also ah collectible card game. 00:10:48.28 Britt Anderson We're kind of in this unique niche in the middle where we're like kind of a collectible board game. 00:10:51.04 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:10:54.22 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 00:10:54.73 Britt Anderson Uh, yeah, it's, that's the best way I can think to explain it. It's, it's fast and easy to set up. It's fun to play. There is a surprising amount of, uh, it's not skill. What's the word I'm looking for? 00:11:10.58 Britt Anderson ah being tactful and having, a ah plan There's a word for this. I'm losing it. It's right on the tip of my tongue. 00:11:19.04 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:11:19.74 Britt Anderson Strategy. Thank you. ah Yeah, it's there's a surprising amount of strategy that goes into the game once you get to know the characters. But it's also very age friendly for a very large swath. I think the youngest that I know of children who play this game is about six or seven. 00:11:37.33 Britt Anderson So they can start pretty early with some easier grade characters and then graduate to more complex ones as they get a little bit older. But all of the heroes across all of the games that we've come out are completely cross compatible. 00:11:51.02 Britt Anderson So you could have our barbarian from season one fighting Miles Morales and they stay cross... 00:11:54.25 Kurt Crenwelge Nice. 00:12:00.46 Britt Anderson They cross different dimensions and can fight each other. And it's, it's great. And I get to play it pretty much whenever I want at work. That's part of our job is playing the game. 00:12:09.25 Kurt Crenwelge nice 00:12:11.49 Britt Anderson So it's great. And I love looking at Manny's art. A lot of people are receiving their Marvel and X-Men back, uh, ah Kickstarters that they backed in the past like year or two. 00:12:22.48 Kurt Crenwelge oo 00:12:23.46 Britt Anderson They're receiving them now. friend of mine, Kevin, Dice Cream Sandwich just got his today. so 00:12:29.11 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, there we go. 00:12:29.73 Britt Anderson we were like kind of celebrating about that today. 00:12:29.99 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. 00:12:31.77 Britt Anderson It was great. ah yeah Yeah, it's, I was one of the, as they hired me about 11 months ago to help with arts and new heroes and some other projects that I can't talk about because and NDAs are a thing. 00:12:46.05 Britt Anderson ah But I'm really excited about all of the stuff we have lined up over the next couple of years. 00:12:46.02 Kurt Crenwelge Sure, of course. 00:12:51.47 Britt Anderson So it's exciting. 00:12:52.23 Kurt Crenwelge So certainly as someone who's an outsider, I mean, this this feels like how I've seen you know some reels or memes on on Instagram or some of these other places. 00:13:03.70 Kurt Crenwelge ah the ah The one comedian who talks about like, oh, I have my cow and I activate my cow who activates my cheese lord and who does this, who can search the deck and find the Limburger Meister or whatever it is. 00:13:16.01 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:13:15.97 Kurt Crenwelge um So, you know, the idea with like, you know, Magic the Gathering now, it seems like has definitely gone out into these branches of like, you know, getting the licenses to agree. 00:13:20.64 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:13:26.51 Kurt Crenwelge So now we can make Lord of the Rings cards or Fallout cards or some of these other things. 00:13:30.76 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:13:31.55 Kurt Crenwelge And so you're, you know, so you're hybrid collectible card game, but also board game, you you know, sounds like it's, you know, doing the same thing but you know you've got you know your original fantasy stuff but also sounds like with you and you know even you know out outside of your influence bringing in the marvel stuff and you know you've got nda so i can only imagine what other sorts of cool characters and stuff will find their way to the game 00:13:57.92 Britt Anderson there's all There's all sorts of things. If you're familiar with another game that's very similar, Queen by Midnight by Darrington Press functions pretty similarly. 00:14:04.50 Kurt Crenwelge oh okay 00:14:10.04 Britt Anderson So they have new heroes that we call ours are heroes. 00:14:10.09 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:14:13.85 Britt Anderson Theirs are like queens and royalty. But it's a basically collectible card game slash board game. 00:14:16.41 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:14:21.31 Britt Anderson ah 00:14:21.80 Kurt Crenwelge Cool. 00:14:22.59 Britt Anderson And it's it's just a it's just a lot of fun. 00:14:25.40 Kurt Crenwelge It sounds like a lot of fun. 00:14:25.56 Britt Anderson I have some... Oh, yeah. I have some 3D printable characters of them up on my shelf that I can't show because they're currently in production. But once I can, then I can fuss about it. 00:14:35.19 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Well, it's so tragic for you podcast audience. 00:14:38.37 Britt Anderson Oh! 00:14:39.44 Kurt Crenwelge This is purely an audio medium. So if I really wanted to twist the knife, I would just be like, oh, you can show me and then I'll just cut around it in the audio and no one. 00:14:41.39 Britt Anderson Oh, 00:14:45.99 Britt Anderson wow. 00:14:48.39 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah. 00:14:48.78 Britt Anderson ohha 00:14:51.55 Kurt Crenwelge Well, you know, we're having a great time. We're working our way through the questions here that I think it'll be pretty easy ah to answer this next question. 00:14:56.22 Britt Anderson working in the way Yeah. 00:14:59.82 Kurt Crenwelge But ah do you currently or have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons before? 00:15:04.50 Britt Anderson ah I have. I've been playing for several years. um I'm not the best at playing full casters because I'm still... I started with a barbarian and stuck pretty close to non casters for a while because the concept, ah the, the analysis paralysis of here's a giant book of spells. 00:15:21.19 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:15:26.91 Britt Anderson You can only prepare a certain number of them a day and you have to be tactical about it. So then I became everyone's worst nightmare by going, okay, but what if I was just a half caster and caused chaos that way? 00:15:38.66 Britt Anderson Cause then I just know my spells. And i love my, one of my current DMs is they put up with so much of my antics and I love them for it. And I'm pretty sure they love me for it, even though I make their life a living nightmare sometimes with my very chaotic characters. 00:15:57.89 Britt Anderson um But yeah, I've so far played barbarian, bard, warlock, ranger, monk, druid, cleric, and rogue so far. 00:16:09.55 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. Okay. 00:16:10.97 Britt Anderson Yes, I'm currently working my way through playing every class in the main five v first. And then wanting to delve more into some other things like Dagger Heart and Thirsty Sword Lesbians and a bunch of other niche TTRPGs as well. 00:16:28.41 Britt Anderson So hoping to be in more games soon. 00:16:30.20 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, that's way that's way more player character classes that you've played than me, because I started back in fourth edition, and I had a human wizard who was my main guy that I used. 00:16:43.63 Kurt Crenwelge And at one point, I made... 00:16:44.04 Britt Anderson a glass cannon. 00:16:45.66 Kurt Crenwelge Yep. And I made I made a Charmine. I made a Charmine. Basically, he was like a psionic guy. So it's like just another step over. um Yeah. The Charmines. Yeah. The from made from the living astral gates or the living gate in the astral sea. 00:17:01.91 Kurt Crenwelge ah I don't know. Those were a cool thing that that were in fourth edition, but didn't make their way to fifth unless there's some plan that they've got for 2024 rules. 00:17:03.19 Britt Anderson yeah 00:17:11.74 Kurt Crenwelge ah five e rules um 00:17:14.51 Britt Anderson Oh. 00:17:15.00 Kurt Crenwelge so there was that. And then I came to fifth edition and, you know, I've played a couple different ones and I especially am fond of the, uh, the MCDM production, ah third party classes that they've made. 00:17:25.48 Kurt Crenwelge I played uh, an ill rigor, a hobgoblin ill rigor for a hot minute there, which was, which was fun for a game or two, but, um, yeah, no, that's cool. 00:17:31.69 Britt Anderson 00:17:35.07 Kurt Crenwelge That's awesome. So you've got to play a lot of D and D and you get to make a, uh, you get to make a lot of a fan art as well of other famous, uh, uh, characters, you know, uh, of witches and wild ones and wizards and and all that too. 00:17:44.63 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:17:51.34 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And, Amy Carrero's character, I've seen the two ones where it's just like her regular. And then the one with like the extra arms, I am woefully behind on season three. 00:17:57.65 Britt Anderson Yes. 00:18:01.75 Kurt Crenwelge As I, as I mentioned, did you know I had a four-year-old? So when season three, 00:18:05.56 Britt Anderson Yeah, you've had a lot to do. 00:18:07.96 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. When can't, I remembered distinctly when campaign three was like premiering my son, like we had just gotten our house and my son was like a couple months old. 00:18:15.49 Britt Anderson Wow. 00:18:16.84 Kurt Crenwelge So it was still like, ah Oh, I have to go back into his room. 00:18:17.53 Britt Anderson oh 00:18:20.75 Kurt Crenwelge And so I just lost momentum and I know that they've wrapped up and you you know, as, as Brit and I have been speaking today is the actual official 10th anniversary of critical role today. 00:18:32.32 Kurt Crenwelge So, you know, kudos and cheers to them. 00:18:33.11 Britt Anderson Amazing. 00:18:34.64 Kurt Crenwelge Happy birthday. ah hearing this episode in may but at the time of our recording it's it's here in march um but yeah yeah i just didn't get the momentum for for season three but hopefully now that it's wrapped up and you know they're gonna be teasing out and letting you letting you wonder what they're gonna be doing next um but yeah maybe it'll now be my opportunity to finally binge that podcast on the drive to work yeah exactly 00:18:40.61 Britt Anderson yep 00:18:57.12 Britt Anderson Catch up. Yeah. I need to, I need to catch up myself on the most recent e EXU that they did. 00:19:05.66 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:19:06.18 Britt Anderson So I'll probably be catching up on that whenever worlds beyond number goes on their next scheduled break for a little bit. 00:19:14.72 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Okay. 00:19:15.81 Britt Anderson Cause I know that's coming up. I just don't know when, so when they do that, I'll hop over there, catch up there, then come back. Yeah. 00:19:22.27 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. Well, with this podcast, we are called Sidekicks and Sidequests, so we like to ask ah you know some very interesting and deep thought-provoking questions. 00:19:24.85 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:19:28.54 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Ah. 00:19:33.94 Kurt Crenwelge So, Britt, do you happen to have a favorite NPC or non-player character, whether they be from RPG, video game, movie film, television, etc.? And why is this character your favorite NPC or sidekick character? 00:19:49.95 Britt Anderson Gee, I wonder which one is one of my favorites, not me holding the fox plushie with his little fish for the fish slurry. ah He's absolutely one of my favorites and he became one of my favorites. 00:20:05.23 Britt Anderson um And I believe it was episode nine when Ame was having a particularly difficult time with like, oh, people can always catch me if I do the selfish thing that I want to do instead of doing the thing that everybody else wants me to do. And he kind of gave her a little pep talk. It was actually a scene that was recently, 00:20:28.24 Britt Anderson ah uh storyboarded by i believe her name was danica i'd have to look it up again uh for the official worlds beyond number account which was really cool um cup yeah but a couple other characters that one is at the fourth of my mind so i love injury mainly because she's like an even more refined mean girl regina george but like 00:20:39.92 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. 00:20:53.31 Britt Anderson also a witch and i just she's cool uh i love grimoire because she leans so far into the is she actually human or is she other weird kind of monster fusion and i just i just love a a strong woman big muscly woman who could kill me like to be perfectly honest uh love it um 00:21:07.92 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:21:19.12 Britt Anderson Critical Role themed, Marion Lavorre, or for those who don't know her actual name but know her stage name, Ruby of the Sea, is my favorite NPC of any live play ever. 00:21:31.43 Britt Anderson um I've drawn her, I think, about that eight, seven, eight times at least. And I've got at least two or three more that I want to do. I like her so much. 00:21:43.45 Britt Anderson She's the main image on my business card. 00:21:47.35 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, there you go. 00:21:47.96 Britt Anderson The fan art that I did. um and then from Accord to Fame Flowers, I just loved the cameo of Jeremy Renner. Not actual je Jeremy Renner, but Aabria playing Jeremy Renner flirting with Lou Wilson was just so funny. 00:21:59.57 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:22:06.60 Britt Anderson i couldn't ah could not. 00:22:06.87 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:22:08.72 Britt Anderson um 00:22:11.32 Britt Anderson I'm trying to think if there's other side characters that I really love. ah i ah I love Thumber Chod from the D&D movie, but I love the fact that instead of going with terrifying athletic dragon, they went with fat dragon that's been overstuffed with food that he rolls around like a fat corgi. 00:22:37.73 Britt Anderson ah i love. And um basically the entire cast of the Iron Giant... 00:22:44.67 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, there you go. 00:22:46.36 Britt Anderson what uh iron giant uh treasure planet is my favorite movie of all time ah so much so that i'm showing on camera so unfortunately you guys can't see i have ah accurate a film accurate functioning treasure planet map that sits on my desk that i play with while i work lights up green and everything um 00:22:46.30 Kurt Crenwelge There's a deep cut. 00:22:51.60 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. Yes. 00:23:04.94 Kurt Crenwelge o Oh, man. 00:23:11.76 Britt Anderson But Silver, Long John Silver from that movie is probably my favorite NPC or side character of all time. 00:23:20.42 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:23:21.25 Britt Anderson Bar none. 00:23:21.48 Kurt Crenwelge He, I just love, I love the whole vibe of treasure planet, you know, I'm, you know, early, early two thousands. 00:23:27.09 Britt Anderson Ah, yes. 00:23:29.68 Kurt Crenwelge And, you know, I, I think I got my DVD copy of it probably when I was in college. So, and I entered college in like 2006 or so, um, going back and watching it now. 00:23:38.23 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:23:39.96 Kurt Crenwelge And certainly, um you know, with five E and the spell jammer coming out, how much I can look back at treasure planet and just be like, 00:23:44.58 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:23:47.65 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah, they must have been in into Spelljammer or something like that when they were making that movie. And I take so much inspiration from there because ah ah ah basically a one on one campaign that I'm running with a good friend of mine. 00:23:59.88 Kurt Crenwelge We just do it all on Google Docs back and forth. But she started out as a astral elf bard from Spelljammer. 00:24:02.92 Britt Anderson Nice. 00:24:08.37 Kurt Crenwelge And so like we took very much that vibe and. just thinking I'm just thinking you know you said launch on silver and immediately I'm thinking of when you first meet him in the galley and you're watching his robot arm like like switch between different things he's making this new and I'm just like dang that guy's cool 00:24:23.26 Britt Anderson Yes. 00:24:27.87 Britt Anderson He's so cool. Those early 2000s animated films where they just kind of... really got experimental and tried some new new plots, new ideas from the late 90s to the early 2000s, early to mid 2000s, was a real interesting time in animation. And it holds a certain fascination. 00:24:50.75 Britt Anderson I think it's because early two thousand s me, what was it? Treasure Planet came out in 2002. was 14 years. i was 00:24:56.93 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:24:57.47 Britt Anderson fourteen Yeah. And then by the time I saw it, when I got it on DVD, when I was 15, I was the same age as Jim. 00:25:03.78 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:25:07.23 Kurt Crenwelge oh 00:25:07.74 Britt Anderson And I was just coming off of about two and a half or three years of being obsessed with ah Star Wars. So I was still in my Star Wars era when I saw Treasure Planet and it completely took over my personality. 00:25:15.91 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:25:23.26 Britt Anderson I wrote so much fanfic for for it. but When I was younger, ah drew so much fan art. It's everywhere. And, uh, and, but like Iron Giant is another one of those. 00:25:36.71 Britt Anderson Atlantis is another one of those, just all in that same era. 00:25:36.97 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. Oh, yes. 00:25:42.27 Britt Anderson I love even like Tarzan and Mulan like the later Disney stuff and uh your other DreamWorks pieces so Road to El Dorado Prince of Egypt and if you look at the work that I do it all feels kind of like an amalgam of all of those mixed with a little bit of Bruce Timm designs from Batman the animated series 00:25:44.99 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:25:51.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:26:05.71 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:26:05.78 Britt Anderson Like they all smushed together and became an amalgam that's pretty close to the legend of Vox Machina style. 00:26:05.84 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:26:13.34 Britt Anderson So by the time that came out, I'm like, oh, I'm in my element. Here we are that oh Come to me. All of this great stuff. Yeah. 00:26:24.22 Kurt Crenwelge And of course, you know, i have to give a shout out ah because I remember being a kid when it came out in and the theaters. And I don't know if, ah you know, if Disney has had a ah ah more awesome animated movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 00:26:37.96 Britt Anderson Oh my gosh. I have the art book of that somewhere over in there. ah I was obsessed with it because I'd never seen a film that somehow made ah building have so much emotional impact on a person watching it. 00:26:56.69 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:26:57.81 Britt Anderson You can feel how the cathedral goes through longing and emotion and happiness and rage at the end. And it's, it's so transformative. 00:27:11.28 Britt Anderson was like, Whoa, this is amazing. Some artistic peak happened in that movie. And I love it. Chef's kiss. 00:27:22.10 Kurt Crenwelge And certainly having the have had the privilege of going myself back on my study abroad trip and, you know, getting to go to Notre Dame um and and and ah went to two masses because I was like, oh, you know, I have I'm studying abroad. 00:27:33.46 Britt Anderson Oh, wow. 00:27:35.99 Kurt Crenwelge I haven't been to mass, so I better go to mass. And I was like, international mass. Surely that'll be in English. Right. no that was in French. um But I went to the Gregorian mass and that was beautiful too. 00:27:46.85 Kurt Crenwelge So just hearing all the Latin chanting, you know, the and it's still like a weird, it's an interesting thing because you'd have the tourist, you know, they'd be relegated to the outside looking around 00:27:49.69 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:27:58.69 Kurt Crenwelge So there'd be like a general din sort of around you, but yet you'd be in this holy sacred moment in the interior and there's the altar, there's the rose window and all these things. And it's just, yeah. 00:28:09.40 Kurt Crenwelge And then you see the movie and you've got Esmeralda singing, you know, you know, God, God help the outcast. 00:28:11.47 Britt Anderson Wow. 00:28:14.93 Kurt Crenwelge And it's just so good. 00:28:17.67 Britt Anderson Beautiful. My gosh. 00:28:19.52 Kurt Crenwelge Wonderful. I feel like we're two kindred souls and this podcast could go wildly in many different directions. 00:28:25.87 Britt Anderson It probably could. 00:28:25.93 Kurt Crenwelge So I'll attempt 00:28:27.93 Britt Anderson we should probably rein in it in a little bit, but I'm, I'm having so much fun talking with you. yeah. 00:28:32.68 Kurt Crenwelge Good, good. ah Well, to keep those good times rolling as well as to get to the other side of the coin as well. 00:28:36.50 Britt Anderson yeah 00:28:39.28 Kurt Crenwelge um Do you happen to have a favorite side quest or B plot element? Again, the same sort of criteria, whether it's from an RPG, video game, movie, film, television, et cetera. And why is this B plot element or side quest your favorite? 00:28:54.42 Britt Anderson Gosh. 00:28:57.36 Britt Anderson I don't play a whole lot of narrative video games. And I watch a lot of films, but when I watch them, they're more for entertainment than for like plot analysis. ah The closest thing I can think of right now, and it seems kind of silly. 00:29:17.26 Britt Anderson I play The Sims 4 for fun on my own, but I don't play it the way it's intended. I plan it to build replicas of places that I have been. 00:29:29.40 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, OK. 00:29:30.56 Britt Anderson So I have built my parents' home that I grew up in my whole childhood, like exact replica to a T as close as I could get it without doing a lot of like custom content or hacks or downloads. 00:29:47.78 Britt Anderson Um, 00:29:47.76 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:29:49.11 Britt Anderson And there's just something so satisfying about it. I think it's because when I was younger, i showed a real aptitude for architecture and reading blueprints. 00:30:01.38 Britt Anderson And early on, before I told my parents I wanted to be an artist, that was my ah that was my creative outlet. Until I was like, well, no, I actually want to make art as a, I love architecture and I can read a blueprint pretty well and I can navigate through that. 00:30:21.54 Britt Anderson i 00:30:21.64 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:30:24.06 Britt Anderson But I really want to just draw stuff for my day job. And then if I want to do something with blueprints and maps, I can do that on my own. So I like building those things for fun. 00:30:35.40 Britt Anderson Sims, you're supposed to actually play the game with the Sims and like do things with them. and Have them go to work, do jobs. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Let me try to rebuild the Sistine Chapel. 00:30:46.64 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:30:47.43 Britt Anderson For like seven hours. 00:30:50.07 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:30:50.16 Britt Anderson And have multiple screens up over here to my left. Between my phone and my laptop. Of interior shots of it. So I can try to build something similar. 00:31:01.27 Britt Anderson And then go, huh, I did that. And then turn it off and walk away. 00:31:05.17 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:31:06.81 Britt Anderson It's not a side. It's the closest thing I can think of to a side quest that I regularly engage in. And I find supreme amounts of joy in And i 00:31:14.98 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:31:16.25 Britt Anderson I don't know why, but to me, it's incredibly satisfying. So. 00:31:20.10 Kurt Crenwelge Well, that's I mean, if it if it's a situation where if I recall, you know, again, talking Notre Dame um and and and the cathedral and everything, you know, when the big when the big fire happened and like everyone was like the whole world was shocked, obviously. 00:31:34.12 Kurt Crenwelge um 00:31:34.23 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:31:35.10 Kurt Crenwelge But I think if I recall Ubisoft, because they had done Assassin's Creed, ah you know, the Assassin's Creed that took put a place in in in revolutionary ah Paris, um you know, they had all these scans and stuff for the the cathedral. 00:31:40.88 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:31:50.66 Kurt Crenwelge And so I can only think in the situation of like, oh, you recreating the Sistine Chapel, If there was nowhere else in the world where they're like, we need some sort of facsimile representation of what the Sistine Chapel could possibly look like. 00:32:04.41 Kurt Crenwelge Let me boot up my copy of Sims 4, guys. I've got i've got art the Western art world saved. 00:32:10.28 Britt Anderson Yeah, and I've got, you know, ah Pinterest board about a thousand pins deep of snapshots that other people have gotten or artistic renders. 00:32:18.40 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:32:18.97 Britt Anderson Because I also have a very extensive private ah Pinterest board that is filled with so much reference for drawing and anatomy and props and homes that 00:32:28.23 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, sure. 00:32:30.85 Britt Anderson it There's a lot in there. You have to scroll pretty far to find some, to find a lot of stuff. Hmm. 00:32:42.26 Kurt Crenwelge Wonderful. I love that answer. That's a great answer. So don't don't let anyone shame you and be like, that's not a good side quest or B plot answer. 00:32:45.71 Britt Anderson yeah 00:32:50.02 Kurt Crenwelge Like, no, that is. It's a great, fabulous answer. And then the way that we round out the personal interview section of this episode of the show, of this podcast, Britt, what are you passionate about and why? 00:33:00.89 Britt Anderson yeah 00:33:07.44 Britt Anderson I'm really passionate about maintaining the integrity of artists in this world where we have a lot of AI that's kind of coming into the, 00:33:22.72 Britt Anderson it a lot of ai that's being introduced into the creative process that is not only ah kind of harming the environment with so much of the energy that it takes to even run, 00:33:37.49 Britt Anderson the AI simulations and the calculations and to get those results. But it's also creating a lot of job creep on a lot of people where studios and other artistic endeavor places are laying off a lot of people. 00:33:44.50 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:33:54.11 Britt Anderson And then instead of hiring people to take their places, they're either replacing them with AI or placing those responsibilities onto others, which is creating a lot of burnout. So And because I know a lot of people that this directly impacts, um including it was starting to happen to me a little bit at a previous job that kind of prompted me to change careers. 00:34:20.61 Britt Anderson It was a... 00:34:24.75 Britt Anderson I just ah just want to see people who are creatives and artists who want to do this work that should be able to do this work and earn a living wage. So a lot of... 00:34:33.86 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:34:35.70 Britt Anderson it seems It seems like a weird, boring answer, but it's like, no, I'm very passionate about making sure that people who want to do this work can do this work and are able to do it. And part of that is between unionizing and... 00:34:49.44 Britt Anderson ah supporting protests, the peaceful protests in that. um And hopefully people, hopefully people are receptive to that. 00:35:02.86 Britt Anderson I just, yeah. 00:35:05.74 Kurt Crenwelge Well, I can certainly remember, you know, it seems like it's been, maybe it's just because of being a parent and like how time works now in my life. But it's like, it was only a couple of years ago, really, when some of these first big things like Dolly and some of these other ones started coming out. 00:35:14.90 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:35:22.65 Kurt Crenwelge And there was a bit, and there was a bit of like novelty with it, with the idea of like, 00:35:23.10 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:35:28.34 Kurt Crenwelge oh, I just want to see like a lobster in a top hat on a tricycle. And it would just like do its best attempt. 00:35:34.09 Britt Anderson yep 00:35:35.88 Kurt Crenwelge And it would be like, haha, that's funny. um But yeah, definitely with some of these other ones as they've come along, you know, and everyone makes fun of the fingers and and all that stuff or like some of these weird specific things niche things like you have to keep telling the computer to get more ridiculous or exaggerated or just like things washed out or, you know, the filters or whatever. 00:35:57.36 Kurt Crenwelge Like you said, you did filter work for TikTok. 00:35:58.45 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:36:00.36 Kurt Crenwelge So it's just it's interesting, you know, seeing how how far it's come and, you know, 00:36:00.66 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:36:07.11 Kurt Crenwelge the stories of people that are like, Oh yeah, I just used ai generator to write a killed a children's short story book and then used AI art. And then I tried to make it and sell it on Amazon. And it's like, really? Like that's, that's what we've come to. 00:36:21.38 Kurt Crenwelge Like, 00:36:21.50 Britt Anderson yeah 00:36:22.41 Kurt Crenwelge if you had an idea, you know, we have worked with someone and like, you know, made a like a really good book instead of just trying to, trying to game the system to like, I know times are tough for everyone and like everyone's trying to make a little extra scratch, but it's like, at what cost, man, at what cost? 00:36:33.59 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:36:39.57 Britt Anderson Yep. At what cost? And as someone who has professionally had to, there was a point where I was doing a job and I'm being very general here, ah where part of my responsibility was taking the AI generated assets and And I was given those and they're to by people being like, fix whatever's wrong with it. 00:37:08.01 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:37:08.57 Britt Anderson So I'd have to sit there and painstakingly go through and analyze and be like, okay, this person's got seven fingers and there's another hand coming out of their chest. Well, okay, let's fix that. 00:37:21.01 Britt Anderson Oh, their eyes are looking in two different directions. What's going on with their teeth? like and And to be honest, it took way longer and much more time and energy put into Fixing those mistakes, quote unquote, so they didn't look like AI, quote unquote, to then it would have been to either just use stock images that are there or taking the reference photos yourself or having an artist draw something um so that the the integration of ai in a lot of creative fields is also something that I'm passionate about trying to put a cap on a little 00:37:42.30 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:38:01.50 Britt Anderson just But I know that's a very hot button topic with a lot of people. 00:38:06.13 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:38:06.42 Britt Anderson A lot of people. 00:38:06.90 Kurt Crenwelge i think i think there is I think there are kind of like right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it, certainly. 00:38:07.96 Britt Anderson But yeah. 00:38:12.84 Kurt Crenwelge You know, it is a tool. It is ah it is a thing that has been developed. And I think just lately, a lot of on untrained people or like people who don't have like, you know, the technique or the eye or the vision, like, you know, like you and other great creatives. Like I could see it being useful. If you're like, I know I'm going to draw this, but for whatever reason, I've just like, you know I've got something on my mind. I can't, I just can't picture it. Okay. 00:38:40.15 Kurt Crenwelge You go to like some sort of prompt thing and you're just like, I just want to see like what a pirate captain lady would look like where she's like in a swashbuckler pose and then you have it generate that image just so you can get some ideas and then you're like great maybe I use this as like a pose ah because you're looking through your your your photos or your references or whatever and you're just not finding something so do you think there's like a like ah ah good ethical way for an artist to be able to use an AI thing like that not to use it as the final pro prod product but like something along the way as like a stepping stone to be like 00:39:11.69 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:39:15.82 Kurt Crenwelge okay, I have the idea. And then like, you know, ah I don't, yeah I don't use Adobe Photoshop or the art programs. I know you can do like layers of of filters or whatever. It's like what I would know, like as a kid, like, oh, here's a cool comic book. I'm going put a piece of paper on it and I'm going to trace it. 00:39:32.99 Kurt Crenwelge And then I'm going to work on it for my own. You could do layers like that. Or maybe you could be like, Here's this weird, you know, not great looking ah pose thing that I want to use. But now I'm going to draw my take on it and then like, OK, now more of my vision and my artist eye, my training and my expertise comes through. And now I can make this thing look like how I would see it thanks to that ah stepping stone that I had. 00:39:58.88 Britt Anderson I think ah I do understand where a lot of people would see the possibilities of using it as a tool to be able to generate ah images. 00:40:14.17 Britt Anderson To me, part of what makes being an artist so great is you get to take your lived and lived experience and things you've observed and things you think about and create something out of them. 00:40:28.09 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:40:28.66 Britt Anderson ah And if I wanted to do a swashbuckling pirate that was riding an astral dolphin with like a robotic astral dolphin with jetpacks and ah that produced like... 00:40:49.66 Britt Anderson some type of bubbles or something, ah is I would, the first thing that I would do is I'd be like, okay, so I kind of know what pirates are about. 00:40:51.97 Kurt Crenwelge right 00:41:01.75 Britt Anderson I kind of know what a dolphin looks like. I've seen a few of them. I know what mechs look like. And part of what I love doing is finding reference of things that inspire me to be like, ooh, well, love Treasure Planet and I love the way his mech looked in his arm and the pistons that they use. 00:41:13.76 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:41:20.19 Britt Anderson So maybe I'll want to lean this way with this dolphin and I'll do. And the the path of exploration of looking through my Pinterest boards, my art books, the thinking back to movies that I've seen of like all sorts of things or reading comics like Lore Olympus, ah kind of start depositing pieces of ideas in the same way that like someone be like, oh, here, I'm just going to feed all of this stuff to a program and give it two minutes to spit something back out. 00:41:44.34 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 00:41:53.56 Britt Anderson And while you might get something cool out of it, 00:41:59.03 Britt Anderson There's a disconnect for me where it's like, oh, well, something else made that. That's not me. I just told something to do something. Part of what I love is and what I think I see in a lot of artists that really kind of move me is. 00:42:17.61 Britt Anderson And like a lot of like you said, you love the hunch the hunchback of Notre Dame. 00:42:21.82 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:42:23.94 Britt Anderson That film was made by a lot of very talented, skilled people that were inspired by Victor Hugo's novel, that were inspired by the grandeur and the feeling that you get of being in that building. 00:42:40.23 Britt Anderson There is a life and... 00:42:45.78 Britt Anderson There's a life and a rawness to it that comes out during the creative process that when you automate that, it kind of, there feels like a disconnection. 00:42:56.97 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:42:57.72 Britt Anderson It's like, so to me, when I see people using AI art for something, to me, it's like, so you, if you really wanted to create something You would do it. 00:43:12.36 Britt Anderson You wanted to create a podcast. You've done it. You've met with people. You've talked to people. You've gotten people's stories. You've created this beautiful, wonderful thing. 00:43:24.73 Britt Anderson But you did it. And you collaborated with other people that worked on you with it. It's deeply personal. And it's very real. 00:43:35.95 Britt Anderson I feel the same thing when I'm working on stuff that I create. a And when you cut the person out of it and it just becomes mechanical, 00:43:48.76 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:43:51.44 Britt Anderson it kind of feels like cutting the umbilical cord off and being like, oh, we don't care about people. We just care about the result. And the moment that you cut people and their connection to things out of the equation, what's the point? 00:44:07.64 Britt Anderson if if If it's to create a cool looking image, all right, cool. Do you want people to connect with it? Or do you just want something that looks cool? And, but yeah, that's just, I get, I feel my heart kind of go in a little bit because it's like, you care so deeply about this thing. 00:44:25.38 Britt Anderson i'm like, I know that is also not the entire point of this podcast, but you asked what I was passionate about. 00:44:29.63 Kurt Crenwelge No, no, that's I mean. 00:44:31.68 Britt Anderson Like, well, here it is. 00:44:32.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, no, but that's good. 00:44:33.41 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:44:34.11 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I have, you know, I have some limited access to, you know, chat GBT with my with my job. And so, you know, if I use it, you know, I'm using it because it's like, you know, it's like, hey, I need what was that thing again? 00:44:49.92 Kurt Crenwelge And so I'm basically treating it like a search engine. Maybe a couple times I'm stuck on something and I'm like, give me like a list of names for something. 00:44:53.30 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:44:58.11 Kurt Crenwelge And then it's good. But, you know, I'm still an or I'll use it to mash things like I did use it for D&D with my player, for example, because i just didn't think I could do it ah justice for because I like I knew all the I knew I needed like an NPC cleric. 00:45:14.42 Kurt Crenwelge But then I was like, I know I'm picturing that this this el this moon elven cleric. looks like and sounds like Werner Herzog, because that's just the idea I got in my head. 00:45:25.88 Kurt Crenwelge But I was like, he has a very particular way of speaking. 00:45:26.54 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:45:29.28 Kurt Crenwelge I know I've heard other comedians do impressions, and I've heard a few interviews of him. So he has this very stark, bleak sort of way of speaking of like existential things. And I was just like, there's no way that I can do it justice unless I just shorthand wrote like, oh, he says something like existential and and deep or whatever. But I did use that where I was like, I gave him some like, hey, these are the kinds of tenants that they believe in. Like, this is the same he follows. And the same is the patron saint of these domains. So if he was going to speak about this topic, like what's a very Werner Herzog way of saying something. And so he came up with some really cool lines. And so 00:46:07.01 Kurt Crenwelge You know, I was clear with the player that I was using, like, hey, I don't use this thing as a crutch all the time, but like I really wanted something authentic sounding to come out, you know, from like, you know, a search engine thing that could and know go through like however many hundreds of hours of ah interviews or whatever that Werner Herzog had done to make it sound more believable. 00:46:10.57 Britt Anderson yeah 00:46:24.76 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:46:28.53 Kurt Crenwelge which I think like, okay, that's cool. But after hearing your impassioned arguments for like the, you shouldn't use AI for getting your references. No, you should, you know, take your pictures or watch movies or read comic books or live life and and see it out there. 00:46:46.99 Kurt Crenwelge to find the human element, to have the connection with it. I'm just like, okay, well that, that seems to maybe perhaps have swayed me and my answer. Maybe I shouldn't use even my little mini access to to programs ah even a little bit. I should just, you know, oh okay, well, I guess I really got to think how this character is going to sound, but yet I specifically want them to sound like Werner Herzog, but I don't know how to make them sound believably like Werner Herzog unless I, 00:47:13.03 Kurt Crenwelge just go into the deep end of watching a lot of words or Werner Herzog movies and and things that he's interviewed and done. Yeah. 00:47:22.78 Kurt Crenwelge So, all right. Well, it sounds like ah we've done ah killer job here in the, the first half of the show that now I think it's time to head into some NPC creation. 00:47:36.30 Britt Anderson Woo! 00:47:42.90 Kurt Crenwelge And NPC creation is brought to you by you, our patrons of the podcast and our audience of the podcast. Thank you all so much. ah You know, so now is the time of the show where we give a shout out to our comfortable patrons and above with a loud hurrah. 00:47:58.09 Kurt Crenwelge So do you are queen of the Patreon, Katie Downey, AKA Goblin Katie. as well as our other wealthy tier level patrons, answer Jablinski and good old mom and dad. We say cheers. 00:48:08.67 Kurt Crenwelge I've got my can of, uh, Dr. 00:48:09.22 Britt Anderson Cheers. 00:48:10.78 Kurt Crenwelge Pepper blackberry, which is a very interesting soda flavor. And, uh, it's not bad. 00:48:14.38 Britt Anderson Ooh. 00:48:16.13 Kurt Crenwelge It's, it's quite good. and Uh, 00:48:17.96 Britt Anderson Nice. 00:48:18.34 Kurt Crenwelge so So, yeah, these fine folks donate at least $2 or more a month, and they get a shout out on every monthly episode that we're doing this season. But all these people that I named are at least wealthy tier, which means they get to introduce an element of chance to our random tables. 00:48:33.94 Britt Anderson Ooh. 00:48:34.65 Kurt Crenwelge So we might to get here we might get to hear some of their responses used today. So... If you want to learn more about ah the Patreon, you should just go to the show notes below, go to the podcast website, or just go directly to patreon.com forward slash sidekicks and sidequests to find out more about the accommodations that we have awaiting for you within the Levitating Platter. Help us to grow and expand our operations in this Demiplane and worlds beyond. 00:49:01.82 Kurt Crenwelge And then there's Kofi. Kofi's a thing, and I promise I'm going to do better about catching up on Patreon, but there we go. there's There's the spiel for that. So, okay. We're now in the part where we get to make up a character. 00:49:14.36 Kurt Crenwelge i believe before we started rolling, you said you had your Caduceus themed dice for today and you were and you were ready to roll. 00:49:21.14 Britt Anderson I do. ready. I am ready to i am ready to roll. 00:49:24.55 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. eggs Excellent. Okay. So as we, as you've listened and you kind of know how this works now, we're going to use the whole standard array of dice. And, you know, we'll just go down the line, asking the questions, rolling the dice. If you're not feeling something, you know, if you want to reroll, that's totally fine. Or if you want to use that as your springboard and then you're like, oh, wait, no, I have a better idea. And I'm going to run with this tangent and go with it and see it's as far as I can go. 00:49:52.07 Kurt Crenwelge ah Then totally we can do that too. So, 00:49:54.56 Britt Anderson Okay. 00:49:55.32 Kurt Crenwelge The first question we have to ask ourselves is what is going to be the name of this character? And if you get your D20 at the ready, we can go ahead and figure it out who it it who it is going to be. 00:50:03.10 Britt Anderson Got it. 00:50:05.82 Britt Anderson All right, rolling. You've got a seven. Thorsten. 00:50:09.24 Kurt Crenwelge Lucky number seven. Your answer was provided by previous guest, Max Giacchino Thorsten, which is spelled. 00:50:17.81 Britt Anderson thton 00:50:18.84 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. T-H-O-R-S-T-E-N Thorsten. 00:50:23.30 Britt Anderson mm-hmm Thorsten love it percentile die here we go do we got we have 83 00:50:24.55 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. And then the next thing we roll for is the ancestry of the character. So this is where we get to do a 2d10 or a d100 roll. 00:50:42.15 Kurt Crenwelge 83 as I scroll down the list. Okay. ah Troglodyte. 00:50:50.01 Britt Anderson I might have to ask that one because I don't think I actually know what a chocolate is. 00:50:54.86 Kurt Crenwelge proglodytes live in the underdark uh they have an an aura of a of a stench about them they're kind of like nasty uh guys to fight in the underdark if you're feeling that or if you think thorsten might be something else like i said i'm free with the d with the rerolls uh maybe ah earlier guests are like wait a minute no i i lived by the dice and i died by the dice but okay 00:51:06.87 Britt Anderson oh 00:51:18.14 Britt Anderson Oh, no, I'm going to live and die by these dice. We're going to do it. 00:51:22.32 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so Thorsten is a troglodyte, and I'll make sure I ah pull up those details as well on my end, because you know what? The last troglodyte that we made was with our previous guest, ah Jonathan Bearded Blevins. So it's been a little while since I've read up on troglodyte, so it'll be good for me to brush up as well. 00:51:44.05 Kurt Crenwelge But... um 00:51:45.09 Britt Anderson I'm also looking it up currently. So I'm like, oh, OK. OK. A 10. 00:51:49.61 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, and then let's see what's going to be the job or role in society that Thorsten is going to have. 00:51:50.41 Britt Anderson oh 00:51:57.86 Kurt Crenwelge let's This you just get to roll a regular d ten 00:52:02.30 Britt Anderson d ten okay 00:52:03.92 Kurt Crenwelge Correct. 00:52:07.50 Britt Anderson ten 00:52:08.95 Kurt Crenwelge Aha! Your answer was provided by a previous guest and owner, ah operator, ah client, lover of games, Tony Vicinda of Plus One EXP, Vermin Rancher. 00:52:24.99 Kurt Crenwelge So Thorsten is a Vermin Rancher. 00:52:26.13 Britt Anderson vermin rent 00:52:32.77 Britt Anderson Please tell me he's got a bunch of guinea pigs. 00:52:33.15 Kurt Crenwelge And... 00:52:34.65 Britt Anderson He gotta have guinea pigs. 00:52:37.55 Kurt Crenwelge Perhaps? 00:52:38.17 Britt Anderson Guinea pigs are little. They're vermin. i'm calling I'm calling it. 00:52:40.26 Kurt Crenwelge yep 00:52:40.99 Britt Anderson He's got horde. A horde of guinea pigs. a horde of guinea pigs 00:52:47.57 Kurt Crenwelge And then the the next dice we get to roll for before we take a small ah pause on the dice rolling, what's going to be the age range of Thorsten, the Vermin Rancher? This you roll a D8. 00:53:00.71 Britt Anderson Two. 00:53:06.05 Kurt Crenwelge Teenage. Teenager. So Thorsten, the troglodyte teen, who's a vermin rancher. So with these details in mind, when you picture Thorsten, who's a troglodyte, who's a teenager, but he's also a vermin rancher, ah what sort of picture is coming to your mind? You're going to get ready to do, find all your references. 00:53:29.95 Kurt Crenwelge You're getting ready to sketch him. How are you going to sketch Thorsten? 00:53:32.03 Britt Anderson Oh yeah. Oh, so I'm seeing a lot of troglodytes are kind of, they almost kind of built like tanks. They got big, barely chests and the long claws. And, uh, I mean, she's caring for Guinea pigs. They're just these cute little guys that when they around so cute and, 00:53:52.07 Britt Anderson walk around so cute As a teenager, I feel like he he hasn't quite grown into his barrel-chestedness yet. He's not quite full-grown, so maybe he's a little bit more on the scrawny side before he's... 00:54:07.92 Britt Anderson fully matured um and there's just something so charming to me about he's in the underdark and he's got all these but then you've got these he's just when he walks around he's got like this trail of guinea pigs that will follow will follow him as he goes 00:54:09.97 Kurt Crenwelge okay 00:54:29.22 Kurt Crenwelge as someone who's finally gotten a Xbox series X and downloaded a copy of Baldur's Gate three, and now working on his very first playthrough with Duncan from the podcast, um getting to see the underdark depicted in that game has been very fascinating and interesting. 00:54:37.91 Britt Anderson Oh. 00:54:42.95 Britt Anderson Oh. 00:54:48.57 Kurt Crenwelge Just seeing all the, the darkness, but yet the vibrancy with all of the underground mushrooms. So now I'm just picturing, like, if I'm exploring Baldur's Gate 3 right now, and it's like, oh, there's troglodytes over there, but then I just see, like, a guy walking, and then this whole herd of guinea pigs following after him, like, and you that you don't see every day. 00:54:55.04 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:55:08.22 Kurt Crenwelge I saw two minotaurs earlier that were hostile to me, but this guy, there's something different about him. 00:55:14.69 Britt Anderson but I mean, vermin can be all sorts of things. It could be, you could have rats, you could have mice, you could have some weird D&D fusion of like, i don't know, a chicken and a... 00:55:32.92 Kurt Crenwelge A cockatrice? 00:55:34.67 Britt Anderson Yeah, you could you could have like a cockatrice, you could have... a cockat tree you could have I don't know, maybe maybe chickens are also fused with guinea pigs in some cute way. and But, I mean, vermin tend to be kind of on the small side. 00:55:50.01 Britt Anderson So it makes sense to have just herds of these little guys and following around and burrowing and such. 00:55:51.11 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:55:59.63 Britt Anderson And they're all very skittish. 00:55:59.84 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:56:00.75 Britt Anderson So when something flies overhead or they're out from under... the underdark than they would like want to hide in tall grass. If you ever seen them out in the wild, if anything flies over, one of them sounds an alarm and they all whoop go right into tall grass under things. 00:56:17.85 Britt Anderson So being in the underdark would be great for them because there's no sky predators. They just be out in everywhere, munched on clover, like whatever undergrowth plants. 00:56:29.22 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:56:29.83 Britt Anderson Yeah, they'd be cute. 00:56:31.07 Kurt Crenwelge Munched on some mushrooms or something like that. 00:56:33.03 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:56:33.26 Kurt Crenwelge Hopefully the non hallucinogenic kind. 00:56:36.35 Britt Anderson yeah Hey, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe I would say maybe those mushrooms are hallucinogenic to other folks, but to, to them, they're not. 00:56:43.47 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:56:45.80 Britt Anderson Maybe that's part of the farming and ranching and a part of their culture is like, yes, we have a crop that is this mushroom that we feed these animals, but also can be used as spell components and other things that are used to make trade with people possibly on top side, who knows? 00:56:59.78 Kurt Crenwelge Very. 00:57:03.08 Britt Anderson so Yeah. 00:57:04.65 Kurt Crenwelge Very true. 00:57:05.03 Britt Anderson come up with a whole society built around this. 00:57:08.80 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so the so vermin rancher, you know, there's there's kind of a, you know, you know, an interest. I'm from Texas, so it's like, yeah, cattle, you know, cattle, cattle ranching is like, you know, big out here, maybe not immediately here around in the Dallas area. You'd have to go to Fort Worth for more of the cattle stuff. 00:57:25.15 Kurt Crenwelge You know, they do have the historic stockyards after all. 00:57:25.68 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:57:28.11 Kurt Crenwelge Um, 00:57:28.35 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:57:29.42 Kurt Crenwelge But it seems interesting to think of how exactly this rancher culture fits in. Is it like, you know, is it like Freetown in the Underdark? And then, you know, these are like the troglodyte ranchers who didn't ascribe to normal, ah you know, lore written down things. 00:57:52.57 Kurt Crenwelge descriptions and details about troglodytes. And so they're just like, oh, we're just simple folk here in free town in the underdark. 00:57:58.98 Britt Anderson ka 00:57:59.95 Kurt Crenwelge And we just branch these little guys. 00:58:00.54 Britt Anderson yeah that's Kind of. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm imagining for them right now. i There's nothing I love more than bucking a little of expectation. so when someone's like, oh wizards are always this thing. It's like wizards are frail old men who are glass cannons. I'm like, okay, but what if there was a buff lady wizard that was like, could bench press a truck? 00:58:27.06 Britt Anderson but also was good at spells. And then we make her dump stat something else. like 00:58:31.45 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:58:32.00 Britt Anderson Like her charisma is terrible, but her intelligence and her strength is through the roof. And there's nothing I love more than doing that with characters, backgrounds, you name it. I'm just like, okay, but what if this... 00:58:48.72 Kurt Crenwelge OK. And so we're imagining ah vermin. And is this, you know, obviously with ranchers, you know, real life cattle ranchers, you know, they are raising animals to be used in processing for consumption. 00:58:58.40 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:59:03.05 Kurt Crenwelge So is it the idea that these vermin are being raised as a meat source substitute ah for these animals? free peoples that live in free town that may be from disparate uh cultures and groups uh that have left their otherwise oppressive group so you've got like some drow you've got some dwergar you've got some other under measles you've got other underdark people that are here in this town maybe even mind flayer who left their colony and is like ah and again like a magic-y guy 00:59:33.72 Kurt Crenwelge maybe not quite like Clarota or the other guy that's in Baldur's Gate 3 but you know you've got like a miss matt mix a mixing match fusion bowl of people in Freetown a melting pot that's the word and 00:59:44.67 Britt Anderson um Yeah, we got we got a melting pot of people in this. Yeah. Yeah, we got we got a melting pot of folks here. 00:59:53.84 Kurt Crenwelge And so they're raising, you know, creatures that the people of the town and and that they can, you know, they can trade elsewhere for, you know, for the meats or the or whatever it is ah or or just, a hey, we got to feed the town. 01:00:07.80 Kurt Crenwelge Mind Flayer still has to eat brains. ah You know, I guess he can have i guess he can have guinea pig brains or whatever it is, whatever sort of vermin doesn't have to be, you know, especially if you're wanting to avoid ah angering people with like 01:00:10.90 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:00:22.15 Kurt Crenwelge How dare you? 01:00:22.77 Britt Anderson how dare you with, with those cute creatures or capybaras or what do you do? 01:00:23.26 Kurt Crenwelge it It's supposed to be cute creatures, but... 01:00:28.51 Britt Anderson And it's like the vermin rancher there's most vermin tend to be a little small. lot of them tend to be, I mean, you could go insect or bird wise, cause there are some bird species that may as well be vermin too. 01:00:42.15 Britt Anderson But ah I mean, who knows? It could be but I think. 01:00:47.28 Kurt Crenwelge Giant rats. Not like tiny rats, but like giant rats. 01:00:50.98 Britt Anderson Yeah. Like R O U S's. 01:00:52.92 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. Yes. 01:00:54.32 Britt Anderson like They could, you know, that, yeah, you know, it it it could be like, I mean, the nice thing about fantasy is that you can, you can do the Avatar, the last airbender thing where they took two animals and fused them together to make something unique. 01:00:54.55 Kurt Crenwelge Rats of unusual sight. 01:01:05.78 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. The turtle ducks. Yes. 01:01:09.62 Britt Anderson Turtle ducks, you have owl bears, you have all of these other things. See, you could have so many different types of vermin. 01:01:13.70 Kurt Crenwelge True. True. 01:01:17.11 Britt Anderson I'm just imagining he's got this herd of them that he's protecting. Maybe he's got a few capybara in there that like... kind of stand guard and are just kind of hanging out, enjoying the vibes. 01:01:29.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Mm. 01:01:31.65 Britt Anderson Maybe knows? 01:01:34.28 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:01:35.37 Britt Anderson i don't I don't know much about ranching culture. I think is you're from Texas. My roommate is also from Texas. So they would know way more about it. I know very little about it. I just know that the same street as me, we had neighbors that had cows and I used to go play with the cows. 01:01:52.15 Kurt Crenwelge Well, my mother-in-law did, in fact, grow up on a cattle ranch, but up in Oklahoma. 01:01:52.60 Britt Anderson So 01:01:56.11 Kurt Crenwelge So the same sort of thing. 01:01:57.12 Britt Anderson Oh, okay. 01:01:58.45 Kurt Crenwelge ah But yeah I mean, it does take quite a bit of work to raise animals and to to tend to them, to care for them, but also to get them ready for market and processing and all that stuff. 01:02:09.32 Kurt Crenwelge And he's a teenager and it seems like he's not um ah alone on his own. So is it like. you know, we're imagining maybe this quote unquote reformed troglodyte family operation going on, or is it just kind of like a, you know, there's someone else who's the rancher, if you will. 01:02:26.45 Kurt Crenwelge And he's like one of the teen workers on the ranch and they employ like a Dwergar or like some other people that then work the ranch. 01:02:28.39 Britt Anderson Ooh, I think it might be that. 01:02:35.56 Britt Anderson Yeah, I think it's, I think it's more that second situation. It's like a, like a little work family that has gotten together. 01:02:43.20 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:02:43.42 Britt Anderson Not, not blood, maybe not blood family related, but you know, spend a lot of time with the people you work for and form close relationships with them. 01:02:53.09 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:02:53.20 Britt Anderson Just a whole smattering of folks. 01:02:55.92 Kurt Crenwelge I was going to say like on a scale of like how serious to ridiculous are we imagining like the more serious and I haven't watched it, but I'm, I hear Yellowstone is like pretty, you know, hardcore, like intense drama on one side. 01:03:10.45 Kurt Crenwelge And then you have a movie say like, I don't know, like Billy Crystal city, city slickers on the other end where it's more zany and silly or dude ranch. Uh, Hey dude was the Nickelodeon show where it was a bunch of kids on the camp, but the idea of it being a dude ranch, 01:03:20.00 Britt Anderson yeah 01:03:24.39 Britt Anderson oh forgot about hey dude yeah i forgot about hey dude woo it's been a minute uh 01:03:26.32 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Hey, dude. 01:03:30.90 Kurt Crenwelge It's been a hot minute. 01:03:34.16 Britt Anderson I think it's, ah o it sounds kind of boring to say kind of in the middle. i I tend to lean a little more towards the comedic and lighthearted slice of life situation with like the dashes of drama and action and adventure it explains why i like worlds beyond number so much or a lot of the dimension 20 shows kind of in the same vein there's an undercurrent of there's drama but there's plenty of lightheartedness on top of it 01:03:49.11 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 01:04:01.11 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:04:08.42 Kurt Crenwelge Of course. Okay. And um okay. So we're, we're getting the picture. So not, not full bodied. So obviously it's the underdark. And I know we've been talking about ranching and and stuff like that. They don't literally look like, Hey, I've been plucked out of Texas, but I'm a lizard sort of guy living underground ranching vermin. 01:04:28.40 Kurt Crenwelge Or is it just sort of like, you know, i mean I don't know. does Does he adopt any garb or clothing? Because I don't think troglodytes technically have to wear clothing or like, you know, maybe maybe like some sort of uniform or or tool belt or something that's going to help him with ranching, maybe. 01:04:40.14 Britt Anderson o 01:04:44.95 Kurt Crenwelge um But I don't know. 01:04:45.60 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:04:45.90 Kurt Crenwelge and Any other notes that you might have for this teen rancher, if you will? 01:04:50.87 Britt Anderson o i think I think the Teen Ranger would probably have some kind of long staff with netting at the end of it, similar to like, you know, the pool skimmers to get things out of the pool. 01:05:00.30 Kurt Crenwelge Mm hmm. 01:05:01.82 Britt Anderson Because you're in the Underdark and you have some cavernous places that things can fall or get to, most vermin, they can kind of handle themselves and get back up. 01:05:07.66 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:05:12.11 Britt Anderson But there might be every once in a while where like one falls down somewhere and you have to get down in there to get them out lot of crags and crevices so the very typical like shepherd's staff but there's like the hook at the end that has like netting or something to be able to scoop up something that's like if one or two of them have fallen somewhere and they need to get them out um i do imagine him wearing some kind of like some kind of tunic covering 01:05:46.92 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:05:47.23 Britt Anderson not necessarily Not necessarily with a hood. I don't think he would necessarily need that. But... ah 01:05:55.28 Kurt Crenwelge Like a poncho? 01:05:57.33 Britt Anderson Yeah, so like ah something like a poncho or like a Rana situation similar to what I've got on where it's just this long drapey thing. 01:06:08.84 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:06:09.03 Britt Anderson I don't necessarily see him as being completely just Creature nude naked. I don't know. I don't know how to describe that. 01:06:16.70 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. ah Natural. 01:06:18.58 Britt Anderson He's natural. Natural. Yeah. I, so I feel like the long drapey poncho or Rana. And then like, you know how those like wrap harem pants are, they're still loose enough that you get plenty of movement. 01:06:31.97 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:06:33.60 Britt Anderson And there are some designs where I've actually designed these as pants for a character before where, ah It ties in the front and ties in the back, but there's like an overlapping seam that allows for a tail to come out. 01:06:47.78 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:06:48.80 Britt Anderson So the clothing is kind of modified to be able to wrap around and not, if he has a tail, to be able to the tail out use. 01:06:57.26 Kurt Crenwelge It does look like, at least in the 5e picture here on the Forgotten Realms wiki, it does seem to indicate that there is at least a tail. Let's see, description. 01:07:05.70 Britt Anderson yep 01:07:07.11 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Coated in rough leathery scales, possessed a grayish brown skin tone, although they had the chameleon-like ability to change their coloration, lizard-like heads with... 01:07:19.53 Kurt Crenwelge uh males crowned with frills that extended from their foreheads to their necks black beady eyes struggled to see the light and their claws and fangs were obvious to those who saw them so you were describing the clothes like maybe loose fitting and i can just imagine as he's like you know he looks maybe the party sees him he looks intense coming up but then like like a bunch of little guys start like 01:07:29.56 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:07:42.62 Britt Anderson Beep, beep, beep, beep. They start poking out. 01:07:44.72 Kurt Crenwelge poking out of his clothes and he's just like, and he gives him a screech and he's like, you know, howdy, how, how are you doing? 01:07:48.54 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:07:49.86 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, kind of, kind of a thing. 01:07:50.95 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:07:50.90 Kurt Crenwelge So, all right. 01:07:53.03 Britt Anderson yeah 01:07:53.80 Kurt Crenwelge And so with, as well as this physical description that we've kind of worked to, uh, build up, we also like for role-playing purposes to try and narrow down the character as well with like three adjectives. 01:08:06.45 Kurt Crenwelge So if you had to describe, uh, Thorsten with three adjectives, what three adjectives would you use? 01:08:07.35 Britt Anderson I don't 01:08:14.88 Britt Anderson ah um know if this is good. The first thing that came to mind, I'm just like, him though. 01:08:23.16 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:08:24.38 Britt Anderson Like Bolin from The Legend of Korra. He's just a nice, a nice kid. kind of a little like intelligence is definitely his dump stat but his wisdom is real high and his charisma is high because not because he's sly but because he's kind of like he's a well he's a well-rounded kid and he's doing his job and he he likes he likes his little creatures that he ranches with uh so bit of a bit of a himbo 01:08:55.32 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:08:59.19 Britt Anderson ah 01:08:59.47 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:09:01.85 Britt Anderson I would still definitely say brave because part of your job as being a rancher a shepherd of a flock is that there's usually some type of bigger vermin or predator that's looking to get at the flock that you're trying to guard. 01:09:05.28 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:09:16.43 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:09:21.64 Kurt Crenwelge Bullets. 01:09:21.91 Britt Anderson You cannot, yeah, you cannot take that job and not have some grit or not have the chutzpah to defend them. 01:09:27.97 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:09:33.23 Kurt Crenwelge Hook horrors. 01:09:33.51 Britt Anderson yeah. yeah see you'd want us lean on the side of like maybe a protector or brave, I would say more probably protector because he's not there to fight for fighting sake. 01:09:43.74 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:09:46.47 Britt Anderson He's there to defend and keep, you know, keep, keep his flock from harm from something else. 01:09:56.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah, bullets and hook horrors and the, oh, um, umber, the umber hulks. Like, yeah, I can imagine like all sorts of nasty ah guys, you know, coming through the Underdark like, oh, like a bunch of little easy things that are defenseless that I can eat. 01:10:04.09 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. 01:10:12.64 Kurt Crenwelge And then like, you know, Thorsten and the team and like, have I mean, you know, well, I don't know. 01:10:13.35 Britt Anderson now papa 01:10:18.90 Kurt Crenwelge Do they have rain? Well, On ranches, you have dogs. You have ranch dogs that'll be out there helping out. But I'm just wondering, what's kind of like the workhorse animal in an underground, underdark vermin ranch, I wonder? 01:10:33.33 Britt Anderson giant capybaras i want i want them to ride giant capybaras don't know why that was immediate i think it's because i drew capybara that was the size of a clydesdale once and all i could think about was i want to ride it oh my god that's like the best and they're like so chill and they vibe 01:10:33.62 Kurt Crenwelge Maybe. 01:10:37.11 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. okay 01:10:56.96 Britt Anderson But then imagine riding one of those because they still have claws. They are still rodents. 01:11:00.70 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. And they are semi-econic. 01:11:02.14 Britt Anderson They will still fight you. Yeah. So in the underground rivers, they would still be able to go around and do those things. So ah part of me sees like they ride giant capybaras that will defend if they need to. They've got those claws that they can dig into somebody. 01:11:21.99 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:11:22.21 Britt Anderson I'm not sure about what... if they had like ranch dogs or something like that i'm not sure that one's kind of stumping me a little bit because trying to think of what other creatures are in the underdark and i don't know a lot about it because i actually haven't been to the underdark in any of my campaigns funnily enough yeah 01:11:34.57 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. ah Well. Ooh, interesting. OK. 01:11:46.30 Kurt Crenwelge Let's see. Forgotten Realms wiki, of course, to the rescue creatures found in underground locations. 01:11:50.32 Britt Anderson yeah 01:11:51.82 Kurt Crenwelge And let's see if there's just any of these that I can just scroll through real quick that seem like they would do the job of perhaps like a ranch dog. ah Again, of course, my my my current state of mind being heavily influenced by Baldur's Gate 3 at the time of this recording. 01:12:10.17 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:12:10.41 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. I just see flumps, but flumps would not be very good. ah Ranch dogs because they would, they only have four hit points. Although, unless they try to chill, they could work as an early warning system, I guess. If like, Hey, something is coming this way. So ah yeah, I don't know. 01:12:29.27 Kurt Crenwelge You could you could get some interesting creatures. 01:12:30.89 Britt Anderson oh 01:12:32.20 Kurt Crenwelge You should let us know in the comments of this episode, wherever you're listening to it. 01:12:35.21 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:12:36.79 Kurt Crenwelge You should say what animal. 01:12:37.41 Britt Anderson What would the ranch dogs be? 01:12:38.85 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. What would the ranch dogs be for the underdark? Perfect. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll leave it at that. 01:12:43.69 Britt Anderson if 01:12:44.72 Kurt Crenwelge We'll leave it up to the invention of whichever dungeon master is going to incorporate this into their game as to what that would be. So let's see. So we had him bow. We have protector. And then did we get that third adjective as well? 01:12:59.09 Britt Anderson No, we didn't. Uh. 01:13:05.34 Britt Anderson Hmm. 01:13:12.95 Britt Anderson Oh, no, I'm having a hard time coming up with the third one. 01:13:15.72 Kurt Crenwelge Is there a flaw? Is there is there something that like eats at him? Like that's something else that he's like, you know, again, going to the Yellowstone. It's like the the drama or whatever of like, oh, there's the the tragic secret or whatever I might have, perhaps. 01:13:30.36 Britt Anderson Ooh, it's tragic secret. 01:13:36.83 Kurt Crenwelge Is he the only troglodyte in Freetown? And is there a reason why he's the only troglodyte in Freetown? 01:13:42.41 Britt Anderson Yeah, I think, Ooh, I think it might be a little 01:13:50.26 Britt Anderson ostracized is not the word I'm looking for. There's something similar to it. 01:14:01.58 Britt Anderson I think, ooh, yeah, because he doesn't have his family there, so maybe he's a little, not quite a loner, but he always feels kind of like on the outside looking in a little bit. 01:14:01.79 Kurt Crenwelge Let's see. Hmm. 01:14:14.60 Britt Anderson Like he's a tiny bit of an outsider. Like he's still close with everybody, but I'd imagine if he is the only troglodyte there, he's probably seeing... 01:14:25.72 Britt Anderson I mean, you're in a melting pot of people. So there's a bunch of different people around you. But if you are the only one of your D&D race or back was not background heritage versus everybody else, like maybe even the Mind Flayer has their family there with them, or there's a or even if they aren't family, but there's a couple other Mind Flayers, but he's the only one. 01:14:45.94 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Right. 01:14:52.77 Britt Anderson might feel a little isolating. So he feels a little isolated from others. Still good kid. 01:14:58.08 Kurt Crenwelge um yeah 01:14:59.59 Britt Anderson Still good thing. But if he's there by himself and there's no other troglodytes, well, and that is definitely worth remarking and definitely an NPC that people would probably zero in on. 01:15:11.91 Kurt Crenwelge right 01:15:12.39 Britt Anderson in a game. It's just like, you've got my advice, you know, but there's a single troglodyte that is over there tending to Guinea, a teenager. 01:15:18.07 Kurt Crenwelge Right, and he's a teenager. 01:15:21.18 Britt Anderson So he's, he's not even a full adult tending after Guinea pigs. 01:15:26.52 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:15:27.39 Britt Anderson And the players were like, that, if that is NPC bait, For walked in and was like, oh, there's mind flares, there's a couple drow, there's a few dozen diseases, and there's a troglodyte that's tending to a flock of guinea pigs. 01:15:44.13 Britt Anderson If you said that to me, describing this town, i would immediately want to go talk to that one because i'm like, really? and you're And you're riding a giant capybara. 01:15:54.31 Britt Anderson Done. You are my favorite character. Who are you? What's your name? What's your life story? Please join our party. Like, immediately. 01:16:00.51 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. That's the magic. That's the magic of this podcast. We just make those NPC bait characters, I guess. 01:16:07.19 Britt Anderson Yeah! Story hook characters. There you go. 01:16:11.07 Kurt Crenwelge Story hook. There we go. get Get the hook right in there. Okay. 01:16:14.71 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:16:15.40 Kurt Crenwelge All right, well, now that we got our our adjectives, um we continue forward with the dice rolling. And so we like to give all of our NPCs something cool on their person. 01:16:21.96 Britt Anderson Ooh. 01:16:24.53 Kurt Crenwelge So what's going to be a valuable item, piece of lore, secret or ideal or concept that this character would ascribe to? 01:16:25.38 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:16:32.37 Kurt Crenwelge So we kind of mentioned a few maybe, but we do like to deploy the dice rolls here. 01:16:33.88 Britt Anderson Ooh. 01:16:36.82 Kurt Crenwelge So this is a combination. So we do a D4 for the category and then a D6 for the particular thing. 01:16:39.69 Britt Anderson Ooh. 01:16:43.93 Britt Anderson Okay. So D4 roll. We have a two. Ooh. 01:16:48.45 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, two would be a piece of lore, and now you can roll d6. 2-2. 01:16:53.55 Britt Anderson D6. We have a two. 01:16:56.74 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, your answer was provided by a previous guest, Leah Murray. Let's see. Thorsten knows the specific song to play on a pan flute that puts people to sleep. 01:17:12.80 Britt Anderson I'm typing this down. Hold on. 01:17:14.37 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. So what are you imagining ah this to mean? Like for Thorsten, is he is he a bit of a bard? Like, you know, if you in D&D terms is like, oh, he would be like the bard in waiting. 01:17:24.87 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:17:28.28 Kurt Crenwelge But like because he's stuck on this vermin range, he can't really unlock his bard potential. But this one piece of lore that he knows is like, I know how to play the song that puts people to sleep. 01:17:33.70 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:17:39.97 Britt Anderson yeah i i do I do love the idea of him kind of being bard, but not necessarily a bard in the way that other people would expect. 01:17:47.41 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:17:52.60 Britt Anderson Like you have, I use this in ah ah one of the characters that I've played ah where I bring a little bit of my heritage into it. 01:18:03.41 Britt Anderson I'm, my family is Swedish. My ancestry comes from the Scandinavia and When they herd cattle over there, they used to do something called culling, which is they would let the let the livestock up into the mountains and up into the valleys. 01:18:20.35 Britt Anderson And then when it was time to call them back, the women would go out and they would sing for the cows to come home. 01:18:27.66 Kurt Crenwelge And is that where the phrase comes from? 01:18:27.85 Britt Anderson And yeah. 01:18:30.74 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:18:31.49 Britt Anderson Yeah. So, ah and there's like, not necessarily a specific tune, but it's because the woman's voice is higher. It carries over distance as opposed to a sonorous voice of a man that can travel through, like, can travel through solid things. 01:18:52.09 Britt Anderson So like, that explains why if you're at a house party, if you've been at a house party, you can't hear the treble through a wall, but you can hear the bass. But you can't really hear all of the other stuff until you enter the room. 01:19:06.58 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:19:07.24 Britt Anderson But you can hear like an opera singer from like miles away because that pitch travels so far in distance. So it could be that I feel like he's got this thing at Lulz. 01:19:21.68 Britt Anderson He's used this as pan flute. he knows He knows the song that puts people to sleep, but he uses it for other purposes too. Not the tune, but the Pam flute itself. 01:19:32.85 Kurt Crenwelge Is it for the guinea pigs? He goes, and then the guinea pigs all come swarming. 01:19:34.53 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because the ah herding dogs have key pitches and consonants and vowels that they listen for or commands to move in different ways. 01:19:49.72 Britt Anderson And if you want that sound to carry far You want that to be a high pitch sound. So if he's got a pan flute and he can get that sound a higher pitch, the animals, whatever animals the commenters decide that are like the the herding dogs basically for the guinea pigs. 01:20:04.41 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:20:10.38 Britt Anderson they would know he's giving them directions to turn this way and that, this way and that. And then he'll use his voice, which is deeper when they're closer, but needs to get through like a little cavern or something where there's rocks in the way and he needs his sonorous voice to carry a little further. So using science and D&D, science and physics. 01:20:33.46 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:20:34.87 Britt Anderson We love it. 01:20:36.18 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:20:36.29 Britt Anderson This is great. Yeah. 01:20:38.12 Kurt Crenwelge Well, now i'm um I'm getting flashbacks to doing the cattle driving missions in Red Dead Redemption, where it's like, OK, Bonnie, we're going to help get the cattle moving. And so now i'm just imagining him on the ah pan flute. 01:20:47.24 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:20:49.75 Kurt Crenwelge He's playing that way and ah like a Ocarina of Time. It's like, quick, you got to hit the buttons the right time but so to play the song and the the all the guinea pigs start moving to one side or way to the other. 01:21:00.79 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. 01:21:02.88 Britt Anderson it 01:21:03.04 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. Okay. And then of course, you know, he's doing that practically, but then he knows of like, you know, Oh, we're out on the, we're doing these drives, you know, to get the Guinea pigs to where they need to go to make sure they fatten up and stuff like that. 01:21:15.83 Kurt Crenwelge And Oh, everyone just can't sleep. 01:21:17.14 Britt Anderson That's why. 01:21:18.57 Kurt Crenwelge And so he just figured out the song. Like if he just plays it and just like, naturally everyone just sort of falls asleep. 01:21:25.74 Britt Anderson i think that might, I think that might lead into a bit of his backstory. If that's a thing, maybe because if troglodytes are typically seen as a monstrous race in D and D, which it sounds like they are, maybe there was a raid on their home. 01:21:30.41 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. 01:21:38.06 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm. 01:21:44.27 Britt Anderson or something and in the bid to try to get out. 01:21:50.77 Britt Anderson yeah mean, he was young. He probably didn't know how to do a whole lot by that time, but he was good at playing the Pam flute and he did learn this one thing that seemed to help ah people lull to sleep. 01:22:05.78 Britt Anderson Maybe he tried playing that to get those that were threatening him and his family to coax them into a sleepful state so they could try to sneak out. 01:22:17.41 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. 01:22:18.26 Britt Anderson It's like telling everybody, plug your ears after this time or sleep with a pillow over your head when these people are here. He's able to allow them to sleep. They start trying to get out. 01:22:30.32 Britt Anderson Staying asleep doesn't always stay. People can wake up. Maybe there was a scuffle and he was maybe he was the only person that got away. he doesn't know if his family escaped. 01:22:41.17 Britt Anderson or whatever and he found his new life here with these people so that gives you that little bit of drama and maybe a hook towards the future of maybe he'll take up the calling and become a bard and leave his village to go do a thing maybe who knows 01:22:42.28 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:22:44.78 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:22:49.30 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:22:56.72 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:22:59.48 Kurt Crenwelge A stinky troglodyte bard. Yeah. 01:23:03.88 Britt Anderson i love it 01:23:04.65 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And then, of course, we want all of our NPCs to be able to give out cool side quests. So when the party meets Thorsten, what's going to be a particular quest that he'd be willing to recruit or hire the player characters to go and do? So if you want to roll the last dice, um that's going to be a D12. Or if you're inspired, you can think of it or maybe match the two, whatever. 01:23:29.09 Britt Anderson Yeah, let's roll and see what happens. We got D12, you said? 01:23:32.04 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:23:33.20 Britt Anderson All right. 12. Okay. well 01:23:36.69 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, okay. Well, you let me know if you think this is good. This is suggested by previous guest, Steven Trinkle. 01:23:40.17 Britt Anderson go 01:23:42.96 Kurt Crenwelge Steve Trinkle, my good my good fraternity brother, line brother. Tail their no good brother, sibling, family member and see if they have fallen in with a bad crowd. 01:23:47.46 Britt Anderson Hey. Yep. 01:23:53.87 Kurt Crenwelge Now, I know we talked about how Thorsten sort of has this found family with this ranching group. So do you think maybe if you took that and amended it slightly, tail their no good, you know, 01:24:06.91 Kurt Crenwelge you know, coworker, rancher, fellow person on the ranch and see if they've fallen in with a bad crowd. 01:24:09.19 Britt Anderson yep 01:24:11.74 Kurt Crenwelge Do you think that's something plausible that e this, ah this loner um looking on the, on the outside, looking in sort of a a vermin rancher kid would care about and ask a bunch of player characters to do on his behalf? 01:24:26.14 Britt Anderson i I feel like it would depend. So if he's a teenager and he's a little bit of an older teenager, you're putting him maybe 16, like in human equivalents, about 16-ish. 01:24:40.78 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. Mm-hmm. 01:24:41.19 Britt Anderson I could see him doing that if there was like a younger farmhand that he's kind of helping to like, that's kind of a newer recruit. 01:24:53.32 Britt Anderson To be like, okay, yeah, come in here, I'll show you this thing, but he's been shirking responsibilities or a couple of the guinea pigs, couple of prize guinea pigs or something like that have gone missing. 01:25:06.26 Britt Anderson Maybe that kid definitely did fall in with... some not great people and he cares. 01:25:12.26 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. Mmm. 01:25:13.89 Britt Anderson Cause he's like, well, he's, we're not blood related, but you know, I kind of I have a fondness with this kid and I don't want to see him get into trouble, but he also has responsibilities that not only does he have to do his own work, but the work that this kid has left behind by going off to do stuff is not insurmountable but it's enough to make him go well I want to go help him but now I'm overworked with two people's worth of work I can't leave to go do this because if I do that then I'm shirking all of this work onto somebody else and they all have their own stuff to do so i think that could work yeah 01:25:42.16 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:25:53.66 Kurt Crenwelge okay All right, so we're going to tail ah tail this new person in the ranch family and see if they have fallen into a bad crowd. um So, you know, certainly gives a dungeon master something to play with to figure out, like, what that exactly means. 01:26:03.53 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:26:07.52 Britt Anderson Mm hmm. 01:26:09.76 Kurt Crenwelge So we get to the end of the quest and the heroes are successful in their endeavor with the tailing. um What does reward for success look like in this side quest? However, that is like maybe it is they prevent something bad from happening. 01:26:25.45 Kurt Crenwelge They figure out the reason why this person's going off and not doing their job. or And they come back and report to Thorsten. How is Thorsten going to reward the party? 01:26:35.35 Britt Anderson Ooh. 01:26:38.39 Britt Anderson Uh. 01:26:41.35 Britt Anderson Ooh. That's a good question. Um. 01:26:48.61 Britt Anderson I feel like. 01:26:51.93 Britt Anderson I really like the idea that he has, he knows the music to play on a pan flute that can cast sleep. 01:27:00.72 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:27:01.24 Britt Anderson on somebody and there's something neat to the wizard thing of like you learn a spell instead of just inherently knowing one that implies that magic can be a skill and it would be fascinating for someone in that party whether they can cast magic or not that can 01:27:30.08 Britt Anderson find a way to transcribe that music or kind of give, like, give them instruction to be like, well, I don't know if this will help, but here's a piece of knowledge that I know that might prove useful to you. 01:27:44.01 Britt Anderson It's not that necessarily that he has coin to be able to just throw at them like, oh my God, here, thanks for going to do this thing. 01:27:50.51 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:27:51.59 Britt Anderson But um being able to cast sleep on someone, especially if someone in the party wants that spell but doesn't have access to it yet uh or yeah there's not really a narrative reason that they would have it but there's a narrative reason why this character has it and there is value in the exchange of ideas and 01:28:01.37 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Like, there's not a narrative reason why they would have it. 01:28:20.46 Britt Anderson knowledge in a specific thing. I mean, he could say like, here, take some guinea pigs for the road, but I don't think the player characters are going to want to take a guinea pig to eat later. 01:28:28.24 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:28:28.40 Britt Anderson ah But the knowledge of that, and then if they were to try to get to further into the Underdark, he would probably be able to show them the way in which he got there. 01:28:42.67 Britt Anderson um 01:28:43.76 Kurt Crenwelge Right. It does say that sleep 01:28:45.06 Britt Anderson Because he cause he probably had to come up 01:28:48.79 Kurt Crenwelge Right, right. and And for sleep, I mean, it does say it's a first level enchantment, and typically the bard, sorcerer, and wizard classes know that spell. So, I mean, it it would be fun for, like, a bard character in the group to be like, oh, you know, a piece of music? 01:29:03.36 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, let me transcribe it. He finishes writing it down, ah but then is like, oh you know, if it if if it affects enough hit points that eventually that that character, ah you know, like, falls asleep. 01:29:09.45 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:29:14.91 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:29:15.85 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:29:15.94 Kurt Crenwelge because it'd be interesting way yeah to kind of uh help contextualize like this is how you can know the sleep spell uh because you know the song now that at least played on a pan flute of how it works and you know yeah and you know so thorsten is this baby bard he's not a full bard but for whatever reason he just happens to know this one spell that he can do like the one first level spell he can do and then you know maybe he knows inadvertently a couple cantrips but he doesn't he hasn't figured those songs out yet, or he doesn't think of them as cantrips. He's like, oh, I just play this little thing. And this, you know, like, like, oh, I played this tune. And then this is like thaumaturgy or it's like the Prestidigitation effect where like my voice gets like super loud. 01:29:58.99 Kurt Crenwelge Like, oh, if I play it this way, it's like I'm suddenly super loud. 01:29:59.58 Britt Anderson yeah 01:30:02.00 Kurt Crenwelge But if I play this way, it's like, oh, no, there's like a little sparkles that happen for some. I don't know why, but, you know, yeah. 01:30:07.89 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. 01:30:09.97 Kurt Crenwelge I can see that. Okay, so Thorsten's able to provide ah access to the sleep spell. once Once you transcribe the music, maybe you humorously have to save against ah the 5d8 of hit points that it affects. 01:30:27.37 Britt Anderson Yeah, it could you you could also spin it narratively in a way of like, if more than one person knows and this this is entirely for this is just me thinking experimentally about this. 01:30:27.99 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. 01:30:42.14 Britt Anderson A song is going to have more of an effect if you start getting others that harmonize with it. 01:30:47.00 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:30:48.02 Britt Anderson So if there's more than one person at the same time that sees their turn to cast sleep, they both successfully do it. And harmonize with each other. 01:30:59.79 Britt Anderson Maybe that. Ups the level of d eight So instead 5D8, maybe it's seventy eight or it's eight d eight 01:31:08.83 Kurt Crenwelge It does. I see. So you're you're thinking if other people like harmonize or they basically use their the help action, I guess, to help with casting the spell as well, if they know it, then that would be the same thing as if you're up casting it, because when you cast the spell using a spell slot of second level or higher, you roll an additional 2d8 for each slot above first. 01:31:33.74 Britt Anderson Yeah. So it, so it could be that like someone in combat could be like, shoot, or they're trying to sneak in. They're like, I can only do up to this. And they're like, but I can help you and harmonize either with the voice or with a second instrument or something. 01:31:49.91 Britt Anderson So that kind of incentivizes the bard not to take it, but somebody who can learn to play the instrument or the music who is not a magic caster. 01:31:50.01 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:31:59.11 Britt Anderson And then it like, oh, okay. But because it's being, both are being done at the same time, you can cooperatively cast a spell with somebody and get a greater effect instead of just one person doing it. 01:32:13.25 Britt Anderson I don't know. It sounds fun. I don't know if that's a thing. 01:32:14.99 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:32:16.41 Britt Anderson It sounds fun to me. 01:32:18.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I don't know if rules is written in either the 2014 or the 2024 version would necessarily allow it. But you know what? If if we're going to homebrew or it's rule of cool here on this podcast. 01:32:27.53 Britt Anderson It's rule of cool here. 01:32:30.79 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, why not? You know, give it a try. If if if you can only do it once a day, then like, you know, it's not going to hurt anything too bad. 01:32:36.56 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:32:37.89 Kurt Crenwelge so ah Yeah, because I'm imagining Thorsten plays it himself and he's like one of the people that's affected by the the pool of hit points anyway. So he always naturally ends up falling asleep. 01:32:50.11 Kurt Crenwelge ah And so he he's not able to cast it more times because he's usually the one playing at the end of the day and everyone falls asleep. 01:32:56.41 Britt Anderson unless unless Unless he puts his i see covers like somehow covers his ears with like something and then plays it. 01:33:02.53 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, right, because he's got the watch. Yeah, there you go. 01:33:04.80 Britt Anderson Yeah. Because he has watch, so he has to stay up. So he's probably found a way of like muff muffles his ears somehow with like his, I don't know, cloth or something. 01:33:14.35 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Cotton balls. 01:33:17.98 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:33:18.44 Kurt Crenwelge He sticks mushrooms in his ears that dampen it. 01:33:23.81 Britt Anderson Oh, yeah, they're not the little iPods that sit in his ears, but they're like, you know little white cap mushrooms that he pops in real quick. 01:33:31.68 Kurt Crenwelge Yep. 01:33:34.70 Kurt Crenwelge But then the opposite has to be considered as well. What's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventures? 01:33:42.66 Britt Anderson Oh. 01:33:44.28 Kurt Crenwelge So the players encounter Thorsten. 01:33:45.75 Britt Anderson Hmm. 01:33:46.15 Kurt Crenwelge He gives them this, you know, this lowdown of like, hey, this kid's supposed to be helping me and keeps running off. I don't know what the deal is. I'm stuck with all this work. Can you go help me? The players say, no, kid, we're not going to help you. 01:33:58.58 Kurt Crenwelge Or, you know, they get involved in this whole plot of what the kid's doing and the kid come, the other kid comes to harm or serious injury or runs off or, you know, gu falls in with a bad crowd and disappears from the town is like ah removed from the game because the choice was made that he ran off with the gang of desperados or whatever it was. 01:34:19.98 Britt Anderson Oh no. 01:34:20.29 Kurt Crenwelge What's going to be the consequence of failure or or that for Thorstein? 01:34:25.78 Britt Anderson Oh, hell no. I thought maybe that would be something we could roll for, but it might not be. um 01:34:36.66 Kurt Crenwelge Is he going to be particularly disappointed in the players if um this kid that he's taken a shine to, like, becomes harmed, dead, or runs off? 01:34:42.52 Britt Anderson Yeah, absolutely. he Absolutely. i think he'd be very, I think he would be very upset. um I mean, 01:34:57.85 Britt Anderson i can't imagine that there's a whole lot of, i mean, I'm not entirely sure of what a lot of the stuff that exists in the Underdark, if they have taverns and things like that. 01:35:07.55 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. they've got ta They've got to have taverns. 01:35:10.67 Britt Anderson yeah Okay, I was going to say like, oh, maybe maybe staying at the ranch was going to be a place where they could stay free of charge instead of having to go instead of having to pay for a room somewhere, which seems pretty... 01:35:18.76 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:35:24.89 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. 01:35:27.01 Britt Anderson pretty low on the rung of things but this is an adventure i would imagine maybe happening kind of early on in an adventure like before they hit their level five so gaining access to a level one spell uh when they can already cast level one spells sounds sounds good instead of being like oh i can cast level nine spell and you're offering me sleep whatever because then they'd be more apt to like say nah um yeah i think 01:35:32.75 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Sure. 01:35:36.20 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:35:43.82 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:35:55.59 Britt Anderson I think Thorsten would be very upset. ah Less so that like, oh man, now I got to do all this other work and more like, but no, this kid that I kind of see as like a little cousin or brother. 01:36:07.73 Britt Anderson And like, if he's a good kid and the town, I'm not going to say the whole town rallies behind him because you're always going to have some stinkers in every, in every town. 01:36:15.15 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 01:36:17.00 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:36:17.66 Kurt Crenwelge It is free town after all. You are free to be free from your your oppressive overlords that you grew up with. 01:36:20.68 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:36:24.39 Kurt Crenwelge but That doesn't mean you have to necessarily get along with everyone else's 01:36:27.74 Britt Anderson everybody yeah i don't know this one kind of has me stumped a little bit 01:36:27.97 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. yeah 01:36:40.79 Kurt Crenwelge I mean, that's fine. Um, it yeah, I mean, it could just introduce more, you know, more negative social consequences in the town because some of them, some of them will like Thorsten, right? 01:36:48.87 Britt Anderson i because it's a kid 01:36:52.82 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, probably maybe, maybe more of them will be more inclined to Thorsten's position, but maybe the one oddball in town that's like, ah, whatever kid, I, I didn't care for that kid because I don't care about kids or whatever. 01:37:04.64 Kurt Crenwelge I'm, I care about the whatever is in front of me right now, sort of a thing. 01:37:04.95 Britt Anderson yeah 01:37:08.84 Kurt Crenwelge Um, Okay, so could introduce some more negative social interactions, you know, maybe make you not as ah welcome in the town or something like that. Certainly the ranchers probably are not going to be very keen on you because you let one of their. 01:37:19.83 Britt Anderson yeah yeah giving you some major side eye bombastic side eye 01:37:27.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Okay. 01:37:32.55 Kurt Crenwelge And then, ah well, then, yeah, depending on how it goes, I'm just, know, again, i because I said it it in Ranchers and like Red Dead, I'm just imagining like suddenly sometime down the line, this kid comes back with this gang of under ah under dark desperados and they're like, you know, roughing up the town and stuff like that. It's like, you used to be a good kid once. And it's like, yeah, well, yeah. work in the ranch stunk and it's like, this is way better now. And now you've created like a, a threat to free town because you've let this kid run off with the bad. 01:38:06.00 Kurt Crenwelge And then, you know, Thorsten's looking at you like you could have present prevented this. And now look at what we have to deal with. Cause I'm busy dealing with the ranch stuff and you know, this bad crowd, you know, these, uh, you know, these evil aligned creatures just come to our town and run, run Ramshaw through it. 01:38:20.60 Britt Anderson This, yeah, it it definitely becomes Thorsten's origin story of becoming a PC later, joining up an adventuring party, because I'm of the opinion that a lot of the NPCs you interact with, depending on how those things happen, you might be the impetus to their own, like, starting up of a campaign. 01:38:28.31 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Right. 01:38:43.78 Britt Anderson Of those other NPCs joining an adventuring party going out for adventure or whatever, because what might not mean a whole lot to you can mean a whole lot to somebody else. 01:38:49.05 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:38:55.41 Kurt Crenwelge right 01:38:55.58 Britt Anderson So this sudden found family rivalry that's happened now that the brother has gone away and a couple of years later comes back is wreaking havoc. All these things are happening. 01:39:07.83 Britt Anderson The town gets busted and now he's like out to eventually not avenge his brother, but like that's kind of his, and don't want to say personal demon that he has to face, but he's like, I need to go fix things with my brother. 01:39:19.11 Kurt Crenwelge Right. Right. 01:39:24.40 Britt Anderson can't, doesn't become this horrible villain or for whatever reason. And then that's like that character's big bad they have to go up against. That personal big bad. 01:39:34.06 Kurt Crenwelge right 01:39:35.18 Britt Anderson Like Percy going up against the Briarwoods. 01:39:37.76 Kurt Crenwelge right 01:39:38.02 Britt Anderson Not that dramatic, but like, i gotta to go do this now. 01:39:39.37 Kurt Crenwelge right 01:39:44.08 Kurt Crenwelge I have to go find seven other magnificent ah heroes of the Underdark and we're going to ride off and to go confront this gang of desperados in the Underdark. 01:39:55.90 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Yep. 01:39:58.41 Kurt Crenwelge It's high. Well, I was going to say noon much. I was trying to think of some pun of like it's a time mushroom. yeah There we go. 01:40:09.88 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, Mushroom! We'll meet you there and we will see this battle out. ah Wonderful. 01:40:18.68 Kurt Crenwelge Well, do you feel like Thorsten's a pretty well-developed character? 01:40:19.37 Britt Anderson It's... 01:40:21.72 Kurt Crenwelge Are you ready to head into the next section? I mean, there are optional questions, but I mean, I feel like Thorsten's pretty well covered. 01:40:24.92 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:40:27.49 Britt Anderson He's pretty fleshed out. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's court, it's quarter to shroom. So I think we should let's 01:40:34.03 Kurt Crenwelge All right. Well, without further ado, let's head into ah Random Encounter. 01:40:46.78 Kurt Crenwelge And then the final ad read that gets inserted here is for Zencaster. So make sure you use Zencaster. If you're going to start a podcast, Zencaster dot com forward slash pricing side KQ podcast, get your savings and your discounts, all that good stuff. 01:41:00.55 Kurt Crenwelge Cha, cha, cha. Okay, so now is the part of the show where we get to do vignette, a vignetteta scene, some role-playing with the character we've made here today. So I think Britt is going to do a fantastic job with breathing a life to Thorsten. 01:41:13.26 Kurt Crenwelge ah But the question becomes, who am I going to be in the scene? Am I going to be one of my podcast adventuring characters that comes across Thorsten to get the side quest? um And am I going to be another ranch hand? 01:41:25.25 Kurt Crenwelge And we're both talking about like, hey, where's the third guy? Where has he gone to or something with ah his backstory or or even the guy who owns this branch? Or I don't know what sort of scene are you interested in presenting Thorsten? 01:41:40.69 Britt Anderson Oh, uh, I don't know. Uh, you gave a couple of different options. How many did you give? 01:41:51.16 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, you know, it was. 01:41:51.59 Britt Anderson We've got a D4. 01:41:52.74 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. We've got, um you know, if you wanted to do one with the the podcast characters, if you wanted to do one with another ranch hand, maybe one with the owner or something with his ah from like a flashback backstory thing. 01:42:08.80 Britt Anderson Okay. Yeah. Let's, we'll do one, two, three, four. I got a D four here. Let's see what happens. 01:42:13.62 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. 01:42:15.86 Britt Anderson Oh, we got a four. 01:42:17.47 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, okay, so something from Thorsten's backstory. So what sort of scene do you think it should be? 01:42:28.96 Britt Anderson Ooh. 01:42:29.70 Kurt Crenwelge is it going to be him like... you know, like we talked about earlier, like him playing the song to like escape the attack, or is it going to be something even made me, know, maybe like we fast forward past that point and it's him first coming to the town and maybe beginning the whole idea of like, Oh, I'm the only troglodyte here. And like, who's going to take me in. 01:42:51.72 Kurt Crenwelge And then like, you know, the ranch guy comes up and is like, I got a job for you. And you know, you look strong. You can come work for me sort of a thing. 01:43:00.68 Britt Anderson Yeah, I kind of like that idea. How how old do we think Thorsten when he first gets to this get this down? 01:43:08.65 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, I'm trying to think. Like, if we're imagining him when the players meet him as the equivalent of 16, and we think of the movie, the idea of the movie montage, or the the backstory thing happening, so... 01:43:23.97 Kurt Crenwelge I could easily see like maybe he arrives at town when he's like the equivalent of like a 10 year old. And then when he fast forwards, it's like, OK, he's 16. 01:43:31.95 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:43:34.46 Kurt Crenwelge He's been doing this a couple of years and now he's like more settled and like actually cemented in the town. 01:43:41.11 Britt Anderson Yeah, I like that. I like that. About 10 years old. Sounds good. 01:43:44.66 Kurt Crenwelge And then just, I'm just curious, like, who is the guy? I feel like, you know you feel like a dwarf or a dwargar is the right call to make for the guy who owns this ranch? 01:43:56.19 Kurt Crenwelge Or do you feel like it's something, like someone else who would be the owner of the ranch? 01:44:02.38 Britt Anderson I think a dwarf sounds pretty good. 01:44:04.60 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, a dwargar, one of the underdark dwarves. A lady or a dude? 01:44:09.58 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:44:09.85 Kurt Crenwelge Because I'm okay with either. 01:44:13.60 Britt Anderson Ooh. Hmm. 01:44:16.46 Kurt Crenwelge I was thinking of Bonnie earlier from Red Dead Redemption. So it would be kind of nice to have like ah ah bearded underdork lady ah who's like, you know, okay. 01:44:24.21 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:44:26.14 Kurt Crenwelge All right. so ah So would you care to set the scene or would you care for me to set the scene? 01:44:27.40 Britt Anderson Yeah, let's do that. 01:44:31.92 Britt Anderson Yeah, okay. ah I'd say there's a lot of kind of rivulets that flow throughout the Underdark. 01:44:44.98 Britt Anderson And it's fortunate that a lot of creatures down here are adept at swimming. You wouldn't think they are, but they are. lot of smaller boat travel. And maybe it's because he's small. 01:45:00.06 Britt Anderson Maybe it's because he was able to blend in with some other creatures around well, it's probably because he's a little small for his age. 01:45:13.19 Britt Anderson He was able to kind of sneak on to the back of some type of smaller barge. And just outside of the town, he kind of lets go in the water to let the barge continue and instead of going to the dock he kind of climbs up onto the bank and kind of shakes out tries wring out his can can't do much because he's soaking wet but you know tries to wring out some stuff trying to stay away from the general populace because things kind of went crazy back where he was from 01:45:42.47 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:45:56.82 Britt Anderson a little weary to be around some other people right now. I'd 01:46:01.85 Kurt Crenwelge And so he's come up on the outskirts of the town and ah we're imagining the ranch is a little ways off or is like on a or not too far away, maybe from the location that he that he popped up, popped up at. 01:46:16.53 Britt Anderson say yeah, I'd say kind of close to where he popped up at. 01:46:21.27 Kurt Crenwelge OK. 01:46:21.66 Britt Anderson Pops his head up, takes a look around around a Rocky Craig every once in a while trying to see. it's been a long day. He's a little tired. 01:46:33.37 Britt Anderson Kind of starting to get hungry. Thinking maybe he could find some place to hunker down for the night something. So he's kind of looking around. 01:46:48.38 Kurt Crenwelge And about that time, there's ah like like the the subtle vibrations and the sounds of like a bunch of things starting to head his way. And he's starting to hear some like calls of like, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, yo yeah, yeah. 01:47:01.75 Kurt Crenwelge and And some grumbling and stuff like that. And ah I like to think ah that Brolwyn Trolldust is this ah rather regal looking ah Dwargar lady. 01:47:08.73 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:47:14.76 Kurt Crenwelge ah She's married and in my setting, ah and maybe it is for other people's settings, um but I like to imagine that matronly married well off Dwarven women uh grow their beards out because it's cool and awesome so she's rocking this full elaborate lustrous uh beard and she's riding yeah yeah i get it and she's riding a bullet so she's riding like a bar this big uh you know bull uh 01:47:27.30 Britt Anderson yeah 01:47:41.28 Kurt Crenwelge She's riding a bullet, which bellows low and loud ah the the vibrations through the the ground as she's riding along. And maybe this is an early point when like her range is really starting to get up, but she doesn't quite have, um you know, but one or two ranch hands. 01:47:56.97 Kurt Crenwelge And so there's like all these guinea pigs that are starting to come in because they're getting them into the pens. 01:48:01.83 Britt Anderson yeah 01:48:01.82 Kurt Crenwelge Like they've gone out and fed and now they're trying to get them back into the pens to get them corralled ah so they can rest easy and stuff like that and so ah how does thorsted react seeing like all this noise and all these little creatures that are starting to get in through the gates and get corralled into where their their pens and stuff 01:48:19.82 Britt Anderson I think ah it's a time where like, because when guinea pigs herd themselves, they kind of, they'll form like lines. They don't just travel in a big group. They usually fall into a couple single file lines that are separate. 01:48:35.87 Kurt Crenwelge hmm 01:48:35.94 Britt Anderson And then if one deviates, then they all kind of will deviate and then come back. So it's like, he feels the rumbling. was like, what the, and then he goes to look and he just turns to look and and he sees the bullet, but he's, 01:48:50.50 Britt Anderson suddenly is looking down at a mass of these little furry creatures. I'd imagine he's seen a boulette before. 01:48:57.41 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:48:58.25 Britt Anderson Not guinea pigs. So he's like, ah, he like kind of backs up against the wall. It was like, and they like, mean, they don't attack him. So he's, 01:49:09.77 Britt Anderson ah ah and like one of his, his tail is kind of out a little bit in the way for a second. So like they'll come back. We, and like a couple of them hop over and he's like and he like moves his tail a little bit to see how they deviate go around it and hop over it so he's like he went through this moment of like a kid being scared and then be like whoa cool it's just messing messing with him a little 01:49:30.46 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:49:39.61 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, the bullet kind of bellows as ah as Brolwin pulls on the reins and bo this thing bellows as it's being stopped. And she's like whoa, whoa, whoa. Good, good lad. Good lad. 01:49:50.68 Kurt Crenwelge Good. Oh, it's OK. It's OK. And she gives the bullet a scratch. And as she 01:50:00.00 Britt Anderson kiss me 01:50:01.49 Kurt Crenwelge you're You're good. She works to give, ah well, you know what? I'm staring at the can. Blackberry. She's like oh, Blackberry, it's okay. And she gives the bullet a scratch, ah you know, gets this creature to settle. And she looks down and she's like, 01:50:14.36 Kurt Crenwelge ah you're a curious little lad. Where'd you come from now? And she's watching as his this kid is amused with all the guinea pigs. ah But she's like trying to like, you know, strike up a conversation, be friendly as maybe like one or two ranch hands off to the sides or, you know, a drow. 01:50:32.53 Kurt Crenwelge And then we'll say like and a half drow are making their way over um to to come see the scene. 01:50:40.41 Britt Anderson Yeah, I think he addresses her and kind of, and he like shrinks a little bit more up against the wall. He's like, nowhere. And then his eyes look to the river and the back to her. 01:50:52.87 Britt Anderson So it's someone to be like, I wasn't doing anything. Obviously looks at the thing that they were just at because he's still wet. So he's like, nowhere. 01:51:04.38 Kurt Crenwelge well troglodyte hadn't hadn't seen one of you in quite a while and and golly come down this these parts of of the underdark wow we don't i and then she'll roll her insight check and she notices like oh you know he's wet he's by himself he's scared or like unsure and she's just kind of like she's good yeah and 01:51:05.06 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:51:24.99 Britt Anderson Maybe got a couple bruises from like clearly he just went through something. 01:51:29.65 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, and she's, you know, she's going to soften. She'll be like, oh, Blackberry, hold still. And then she, like, calls over to, like, one of, ah she calls the half-drought to take, like, ah take Blackberry back into the barn and, you know, get him situated. And so she comes down, so she's a little more on his on his level, and she's going like, Ladder, Ladder, are you all right? It seems like a seems like you've gone through some stuff. 01:51:52.75 Kurt Crenwelge You're safe with me. It's okay. 01:51:55.91 Britt Anderson the The gesture out of the hand does kind of get him to flinch back a little bit, but he doesn't move. 01:52:01.09 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:52:03.13 Britt Anderson His hand does go to the so pan flute that he's got on his waist. It's like, yeah. 01:52:15.66 Britt Anderson Just, you know. 01:52:21.67 Britt Anderson Had to to get out of town for a little bit. 01:52:28.90 Britt Anderson because of stuff. 01:52:31.48 Kurt Crenwelge I see. And then, ah you know, she'll she'll take a beat and ah look over the demeanor and, you know, she's, you know, and she's not going to push it yet, you know, because she just met this kid, not not wanting to get, you know, force him to tell his whole life story. 01:52:46.35 Kurt Crenwelge ah She'll try and spin it ah to be like, you think you can help me with this gate? um And she's going to like, you know, the guinea pigs are just about all in the pen of where they need to be corralled. 01:52:57.40 Kurt Crenwelge And she's going be like, come on. Yeah, you know, you look strong. um you You know, I'm pretty good myself, but, ah you know, i I think you could do a better job than me. And she's going to start making her way over to the gate to close it. 01:53:09.37 Britt Anderson his his chest His chest kind of puffs up a little, at getting a little like positive reinforcement. like, okay, yeah. And thing about guinea pigs is, if there's a leader, they'll follow it. 01:53:20.42 Britt Anderson So when he walks off one direction, there's like, not a bunch, but like a couple that follow into line behind 01:53:22.78 Kurt Crenwelge Mm 01:53:28.70 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. Mm hmm. 01:53:29.13 Britt Anderson And he's like, okay. cut And he like keeps swiping his tail a little bit to try to get them to stop following him. But there's like one that keeps dodging it a little and like Q's like, okay. 01:53:42.62 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, they like you. 01:53:42.73 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:53:43.87 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, they know a natural when they see one. 01:53:47.55 Britt Anderson What are they? 01:53:49.28 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, these are guinea pigs, you know, gotta give this is Freetown. 01:53:54.25 Britt Anderson Those are pigs. 01:53:55.44 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, get well well, it's what they call them. It's what the common tongue calls them. n In Dwarvish, they would be, and she says the Dwarvish word, which sounds like harsh consonants and Klingon and whatever else. 01:54:08.62 Kurt Crenwelge ah But she's like, yeah, the guinea pigs, you know, is what they call them. 01:54:09.08 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:54:12.16 Kurt Crenwelge ah you know we're here in Freetown and she does the cinematic thing where she gestures to the wider town and she's like yeah you know we got all kinds of folks here Dorgars, Drow, Half Drow other Brickaback and Riffa Raff that fall their way down from the surface even a couple Mind Flayers the Illithids in the town but though the nice ones they either they do the magic or they've been separated from their brains and they're not bad folk anymore but you know We're all just here trying to make a living and you know you need a stable source of meat and protein and you know the troll dusts. 01:54:41.18 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:54:46.82 Kurt Crenwelge you know We wanted greener mushroom pastures as it were and so we decided to start this ranch up and you know, old, oh my my old man, my old husband, you know, Thomar, you know, he, he suffered a bad injury, so he can't do as much of the work. So that's why I have to do most of it. And, you know, I need some strapping young lads to help me do the work. You, you got to play, you know, you, you stay with me, ah you get a, you get a bed, you'll get fed and you'll have a a clear bit of sealant over your head. 01:55:22.91 Kurt Crenwelge you are stick with me. 01:55:26.73 Britt Anderson he kind of takes a second to like look down at the guinea pig that keeps like nudging his tail and he looks back to the river you can kind of see like the damp earth from where his clawed feet were and you also see like of course you see all the little footprints of the other creatures you see the drow you don't see how any other footprints like his doesn't see any others in the ground but 01:55:58.75 Britt Anderson kind hesitates for a second, looks back at her and he goes, yeah, yeah, I think I can help you with this gate. And he like kind of rolls his shoulders a little bit and then 01:56:13.01 Britt Anderson and he like kind of got to give it a bit of elbow grease, but he's able to like kind of, I got just, what's that? yeah And it like gives and ha, gate. 01:56:27.60 Britt Anderson yeah 01:56:28.62 Kurt Crenwelge She gives a hearty chuckle and she approves and she's like, yeah, I think you've got i think you've got a career here for you yet. You know, I, I think you're a good kid. What's, what's, what's your name? What might what might I hail you as called you as? 01:56:44.07 Britt Anderson Thorsten? 01:56:46.24 Kurt Crenwelge Thorsten. Ah, good lad. And she, you know gives him a nice slow pat on the shoulder, you know, doesn't want to like alert him or anything like that, but, Come on. I think I think Tomar had some food up on the up on the stove and, you know, our work's done for the day. And i think I think they're all ready to be fed. 01:57:07.35 Kurt Crenwelge ah We'd love to have you at the table. 01:57:12.11 Britt Anderson okay okay and he like starts to follow he's still got that one guinea pig that's behind him and he like instead of trying to shoo him away with the tail he kind of like pats it with his tail a little bit like he's giving him little butt pats he's like going he's like okay i guess they're kind of cute weird but cute 01:57:33.01 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, go on, go ahead, bring, bring them in more the merrier. ah You've fattened them up that way too. You know, the prize pig of, of the town before too long. And she gives a, she gives a hearty chuckle at that. 01:57:45.30 Kurt Crenwelge And ah what's, what's the final thing that, ah that we see in the scene before, it before it closes out, what do you think is in Thorsten's mind as this Dwargar bearded woman has invited ah him to stay at this place without so much as a second thought? 01:57:45.79 Britt Anderson yeah 01:58:03.40 Britt Anderson i think he kind of like he looks in and he sees like there is truly a wide variety of people that are coming into this table like yeah it's the drow and the half drow and it's her but then there's like maybe there's another mind flayer and there's like a couple other and she's like man she wasn't kidding it's really a mix of a whole bunch of different people and kind of kind of hovers on the outside of the table like he hasn't quite sat down yet but kind of gets this feeling of well there's lots of different people 01:58:40.30 Britt Anderson Who's to say? I can't be one of them, right? 01:58:44.22 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. There's like another couple guinea pigs that run in under his feet. like And there's that one that still won't leave him alone. That's like where he's like kind of reaches down, picks it up because he doesn't really notice it, but then it starts doing that little noise. 01:59:08.65 Britt Anderson Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're kind of cute. Kind of ugly in a cute way, I guess. Yeah. And he like kind of keeps that one and like sets it on his lap and like kind of pulls up to the one corner of the table and, and it nods. 01:59:27.11 Britt Anderson Might give one last look out a nearby window towards that. Craggy Valley that leads down to the river. And he just kind of like, turns turns his back to it a little bit to like look at other people as they're bringing out a dish and he's like wait you eat them because he just sees the guinea pig come out of roast he's like you eat he like kind of does little protective hand over the guinea pig like that's the one he's like no don't hurt don't hurt blue bear type of deal gotta land on a funny note 02:00:02.04 Kurt Crenwelge but 02:00:09.73 Kurt Crenwelge and scene so yeah we did it we made it through random encounters so what did you think it was like getting to be Thorsten in his flashback as opposed to like how we would meet him presently 02:00:20.64 Britt Anderson oh was adorable i loved it i love playing a little angsty angsty preteen boy it was adorable uh it's definitely making me want to draw this character now 02:00:30.74 Kurt Crenwelge yes 02:00:30.89 Britt Anderson draw this character now so i might need to i wonder i wonder if i can move some things around in my schedule to be able to finish a sketch for this ah by the time the episode comes up because that would be kind of cool 02:00:32.55 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 02:00:43.87 Kurt Crenwelge Woohoo. That'd be great. It would be, I would think. Yeah. So, ah so overall impressions of the podcast. Now that you're, you know, now you're on it. You've, you listened to it. 02:00:56.55 Kurt Crenwelge That's one experience, but now you're on it. 02:00:57.37 Britt Anderson yeah 02:00:58.39 Kurt Crenwelge So how do you think it's been? 02:01:01.09 Britt Anderson Oh, this has been great. Absolutely would come back and do it again. i got to recommend, I know a couple of people who would really enjoy this. so 02:01:08.15 Kurt Crenwelge I'm always up for more guests. And, you know, it is a it is a delightful burden to have an overabundance of of guests and recordings in the wings ready and waiting to go. so So, yeah, we've made it here to the final thoughts section of the show. So, obviously, you know, we'd love to hear all your ah feedback and critique and and just experience and how you feel that your time on the show has been. 02:01:31.79 Kurt Crenwelge um But certainly, yeah, you know, just want to you know leave it here to the end for you. So if there's any ah ah plugs or, you know, where can you be found on social media and any projects or things that we can be made aware of by the time this episode comes out in May and then any other passions or causes that we need to be made aware of, feel free to let us know. 02:01:53.08 Britt Anderson Yeah. Okay. ah So bit of a personal plug. You can find me on most social media under the handle BrittaJJ26. That's my username for ah for X, for Blue Sky, for Instagram. 02:02:07.87 Britt Anderson um I did have a TikTok at one point. I don't really update or do anything with it anymore. I think I may actually have it ah turned off currently. Yeah. can also find me on... but I'm also on Tumblr. the once upon the times of Tumblr. 02:02:24.66 Britt Anderson ah There aren't currently... any projects that I have sitting in the wings. I just, I'm constantly doing a lot of fan art and a lot of personal art on the side. 02:02:36.91 Britt Anderson so you'll probably be seeing a lot of those. Um, I'll be traveling for work right around the time that this episode comes out with the Dice Throne guys. 02:02:47.85 Britt Anderson Um, I do know uh, 02:02:51.90 Britt Anderson You know, Dice Throne does a lot of ah does their Kickstarters. So if you want to know more about what's coming up with Dice Throne, you can follow them on social media or even join their Discord server. That's where you can get a lot of their updates. 02:03:04.90 Britt Anderson um I'm in that Discord server, along with a bunch of others for Beacon and Critical Role, Dimension 20. ah and I mean, if you're in Los Angeles and go to do D&D stuff, 02:03:22.35 Britt Anderson you might find me at a couple of those but those places because I live and work in LA. So yeah. 02:03:30.34 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. Perfect. So ah awesome and amazing to have you as a guest. I thank you so much for for saying yes and and taking the time to spend this time ah making a wonderful NPC and just getting to know you a little bit better. 02:03:44.38 Kurt Crenwelge And I feel like we would be fast friends. 02:03:45.74 Britt Anderson Yeah. 02:03:47.48 Kurt Crenwelge So in the spirit of that, I certainly want to again, thank you for your time and and and making this episode magical. And I can't wait to but have you back on this podcast. 02:03:58.34 Kurt Crenwelge making even more interesting NPCs. 02:04:01.47 Britt Anderson Thanks. Yeah. First time being on a podcast. So this was, this was a real treat. Thank you so much for inviting me. 02:04:07.89 Kurt Crenwelge You're welcome.