00:00:05.25 Kurt Crenwelge Hello and welcome to another exciting month's episode of sidekicks and sidequests the best unofficial Dungeons Dragons podcast in my humbly biased opinion of the time we're recording this this should hopefully be the first episode of the ah brand new season so season seven woohoo January we're here I've been recording this way in the past, but don't let that distract you from the fabulous guests that I have for you this month. 00:00:33.08 Kurt Crenwelge But before I can get to my guests, you know I have to do it. I have to leave you suspense with the ad read. and insert here part of the show transcription readers where you get to learn all about rpg zine club and plus one exp and hey you know yeah it's after christmas you're looking for deals on beard balms and lip balms and beard themed rpgs and whatnot and you want to get signed up for the latest and greatest and indie games that are being made you should go check them out if you go to plus one exp.com use that code randolph and 00:01:04.09 Kurt Crenwelge save some coin on your purchase and give me a kickback. So all you need to know, plusonexp.com, RPGzine.club. All right, and we're back. And without further ado, I turn the microphone over to my guest and i ask, hello, mystery contestant, would you care to introduce us ah to yourself? really Introduce yourself. Tell us who it is that you are and what is it that you do? 00:01:29.20 K Awesome. Thank you so, so much for having me on the podcast. My name is Kirsten, but I go by K because it's much easier to pronounce. And I am the canine detective. i run a virtual dog training company, but I'm not going to get into too, too much detail on this podcast, but basically I am, um, 00:01:49.56 K a certified behavioral consultant. I help people with their pups. And why I'm on here is because I am obsessed with TTRPGs, not just D&D, but a whole host of other systems. 00:02:01.93 K And I had this little idea in my head of like, But what if we could role play dog training? But what if we could learn to train our dogs and learn more about our dogs within the fun little realm of D&D, which I like to spend my free time. And so as I was noodling on this and I didn't really see anything out there, I decided to create it myself. 00:02:23.75 K And um I'm really excited to create an NPC with you on this podcast that I will be using in this upcoming system. 00:02:31.06 Kurt Crenwelge Awesome. Yeah. And, uh, and Kirsten and, uh, was gracious enough to like actually reach out to me, ah through socials. So I do actually check the messages that that come in. 00:02:41.50 K Thank 00:02:42.35 Kurt Crenwelge I'll be it. They may be hidden somewhere for my older millennial brain to actually detect and see. um But I do in fact see them. And so thank you so much for for reaching out and being a guest because, you know, I feel like everyone should have their shot and be able to come on the podcast and, you know, get to have the experience of what it's like being on a podcast and getting to make NPCs and to have good conversations with people. 00:03:08.44 Kurt Crenwelge Because, you know, I think this world needs a little more conversation. ah it Wasn't that the Elvis Presley song? No, he said a little less conversation. I'll say the opposite. I think we need a little more conversations going on, but just imagine that it's Elvis singing it really catchy. so 00:03:25.02 K Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:03:26.07 Kurt Crenwelge But that's cool. So yeah, what got you into you know being a a consultant dog behaviorist and helping out with that? 00:03:33.60 K yeah Yeah. So my first dog was a rescue dog when I was in my early twenties living on my own. And I had always wanted a dog and I thought, fantastic. I'm living on my own. 00:03:47.51 K I'd cleared it with work. I could take this dog to the office. And I was like, you know what I will do, you know, the kind thing, the best thing that I thought in that moment, I'm going to go through a rescue. The rescue took a look at me and said, Hey, you know, you like hiking, you live on your own. 00:04:02.68 K you know, um you should get a blue healer. And for anybody who's listening to this that knows anything about cattle dogs, they are not the easiest dog, but I didn't know that at the time. 00:04:13.35 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:04:13.44 K um Long story short, this guy had canine OCD, chased his tail, barked at shadows. He had heartworm. He was reactive to stranger dogs and humans. So this was a lot for my first dog. 00:04:27.14 K And so it's a very old tale in the industry, but kind of when you get a rescue like that, you have to train your dog so much and learn from a lot of trainers that you kind of set yourself on the path to become a dog trainer yourself. 00:04:27.23 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:04:40.85 K And years later, certifications later, multiple dogs later, here I am. 00:04:41.44 Kurt Crenwelge me 00:04:47.24 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. And I'm on my first dog, ah too. His name is Bishop, and he is a he is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. 00:04:52.36 K Cute. 00:04:55.35 Kurt Crenwelge So if you've prowled the social media... 00:04:56.97 K It's so funny. 00:04:58.41 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:04:58.62 K no mine my, my youngest is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Her name's Lilo. 00:05:03.42 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, Lilo. Fun. Yeah. if you've If you've been on the social medias, I think like at least one 4th of July picture I took, I was drinking like a can of of Bishop's cider, which is like, i think, an Austin, Texas based cider. 00:05:13.98 K Hmm. 00:05:17.70 Kurt Crenwelge And I had my dog Bishop in my lap. So I was like, oh, happy 4th of July from Bishop. ah while we drink a Bishop. So I thought it was pretty fun. um Yeah, he's he's a good dog. And certainly what you said about like, oh, you learn a lot from your from your first dog. And ah this dog has certainly cost us enough trip ah trips to the vet. 00:05:37.38 Kurt Crenwelge um So it's like... Okay, well, we still love you, but you are, yeah, you're, ah you know, you're chasing Shadow. I don't know if he, yes he he'll hold boop his nose after Shadows, as his thing. So he likes to boop his nose and like, like go after it. And I'm like, stop. 00:05:54.40 Kurt Crenwelge Like, and then he's like, oh, i'm okay, I'm sorry. But then he'll go like right back to doing it. and I'm like, you, you goof. But he likes to cuddle and, you know, he's a good dog. 00:06:02.52 K Is he a bird chaser to. 00:06:05.12 Kurt Crenwelge Um, I mean, i suppose all the birds and the squirrels kind of flee as soon as he darts out the back door to go use the the potty and stuff like that. 00:06:13.88 K He strikes such a fearsome figure that, you know, they all know to vacate the yard. 00:06:19.10 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have enough bird feeders out there, you know, that they're ah they're comfortable hanging around and and eating and helping us with our bug population in this area. 00:06:28.96 K Hmm. 00:06:30.26 Kurt Crenwelge So we're we're thankful for that. 00:06:34.01 Kurt Crenwelge Well, cool. Yeah. So, I mean, as as you said, you yourself are a big fan of TTRPGs, not just Dungeons and Dragons. But as I said, this is kind of like a D&D themed podcast. 00:06:44.69 K Oh, absolutely. 00:06:45.13 Kurt Crenwelge So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you if you currently or if you've ever played D&D before. 00:06:45.29 K Yeah. 00:06:51.23 K Oh yeah. I've played in a few different campaigns and one currently I've just did a mental scroll in my head and like I'm playing multiple TTRPGs, but I think only one of them is actually D&D. 00:07:02.80 K I think the others are other systems if I'm remembering off and off of my head correctly. 00:07:04.81 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:07:07.47 Kurt Crenwelge So like what games are you playing? How many campaigns are you in right now? 00:07:13.58 K Four? 00:07:15.14 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. 00:07:15.26 K um I'm counting back in my head. 00:07:19.01 K Yeah. Four. 00:07:20.69 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. So one's D&D and what are the other three that you're playing? 00:07:25.37 K Uh, one is a homebrew. So that DM has made that entire system. It's his, it's his own intellectual property. um 00:07:33.79 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:07:34.46 K I think that's called Anacropia. I'm probably pronouncing that incorrectly. It's a game called sworn on the sticks. I found him on start playing and it's really, really good. It's based off of, um, Greek gods and Olympia so the the scoring system he he made it all himself so it's his own homebrew system for that uh then also with him is the D&D one I'm playing i have another one thirsty sword thirsty sword lesbians coming up and another one that's a hybrid of dagger heart and good society 00:07:52.67 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:08:07.06 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I've heard several of those and and you mentioned start playing and it's like, oh yeah, I do that too on the side when I can. So it's it's fun. Yeah. it's it's It's a good resource out there. 00:08:18.73 Kurt Crenwelge I'm not sponsored by them, but you know what? 00:08:20.21 K Oh, sorry, you can bleep that out, totally. 00:08:20.49 Kurt Crenwelge If start playing games, No, no, that's fine. You know, I don't mind throwing people to good businesses and and things that I like and enjoy. So, you know, hey, start playing dog games. If you're looking for a new ah sponsor or podcast to sponsor, rather, you should maybe maybe consider. 00:08:40.40 Kurt Crenwelge Maybe, maybe, but well ah we're happy to promote you on this podcast, ah whether or not you don't. But that's awesome. 00:08:46.96 K After this goes live, just emailing them the link to the podcast, you know. 00:08:47.32 Kurt Crenwelge So you're 00:08:50.91 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, yeah. Let me slip this under your door real quick. Yeah. So that's where you end up ah playing a lot of your games, or are you able to play in person as well? 00:09:00.00 K All of them. The i the ones in person are always interesting. I technically have one in person, but it's always tough to kind of wrangle people together. We're hoping it's going to be a monthly thing, but 00:09:15.13 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:09:15.18 K um A lot of what really allowed me to get back into this hobby is stop trying to convince people I know IRL to play with me. Not that people don't want to, but they're just not as into it as I am. 00:09:27.84 K And so they will if their schedule works. 00:09:28.80 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Yeah. 00:09:31.18 K But, you know, versus this is like, oh, this is my, I work and I have my my dogs and my fiance and then this is my hobby. You know, versus others have like other things that prioritize, totally fine. 00:09:39.59 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:09:43.24 K But as everyone knows, like the great enemy that we all need to face is unfortunately the unwieldy schedule of getting everybody together. 00:09:50.85 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. Yeah. And so having those digital resources available certainly makes it easier. And it's a way to get to make new friends from all across the country and the world. So there we go. 00:10:04.01 Kurt Crenwelge Well, ah as we're chugging along through these questions, you know, this podcast is all about the sidekicks and the side quests. So for this next question, do you happen to have a favorite NPC or sidekick character, whether they're from an RPG, a video game, maybe a movie, film, television, literature, etc.? 00:10:22.21 Kurt Crenwelge And why is this character your favorite sidekick or your favorite NPC? 00:10:28.04 K this is really hard. And I knew this question was coming up and now that it's being asked, I'm like, what am I going to put down as my favorite time? Um, a lot of the ones that are coming to my brain are a lot of the animal sidekicks from like cartoons in like the early two thousands, mid two thousands. So top of mind is like Rufus from Kim possible. This might not have been of your generation. 00:10:55.60 Kurt Crenwelge I mean, I knew Kim Possible was on TV, but I wasn't much of a Disney Channel watcher. 00:11:00.21 K Very fair. 00:11:00.53 Kurt Crenwelge But I had friends who loved Kim Possible, sure. 00:11:03.76 K So Kim Possible was one of my favorites growing up for a number of reasons. It was very much to that era where like spies was a thing. You know, you had Kim Possible, you totally spies, that sort of thing. 00:11:11.64 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. You had Spy Kids, the movies. 00:11:15.00 K Yeah, exactly. 00:11:15.78 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:11:16.14 K So that was kind of that thing of that era. I always really liked Rufus and Rufus is Ron. So but this is also funny because sidekicks from multiple layers. 00:11:27.48 K So Kim Possible is the main character. 00:11:28.54 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 00:11:29.97 K Ron Stoppable, who's her best friend, is technically her sidekick. And it's a thing throughout the whole series that he's her sidekick. And then Ron has a pet naked mole rat named Rufus. 00:11:43.07 K And Rufus is technically his sidekick. 00:11:43.66 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:11:44.84 K So it's kind of like sidekick-ception. 00:11:45.29 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Mm-hmm. 00:11:48.55 K But this brings us back into B plots. And one of my favorite B plots is when they're, this is very ironic, you know, is that like romance, like friends to lovers as the B plot as like the world is ending or there's like other things going on. 00:12:01.89 K So one of the major B plots of Kim Possible is that Ron Stoppable, the sidekick, gets the girl being Kim Possible, his best friend. 00:12:02.51 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:12:10.05 K um So yeah, that's two and one, I guess, one of my favorite tropes. 00:12:13.90 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, I was going to say, because do they know that like, oh, they have their alter egos and they're like at school together, but then they know they're spies or like. 00:12:23.76 K No, for Kim Possible, it's, I don't even know if people are going to bring me up in the comments of like, this is what she is. I don't think that she's a spy. She is, what do they call her? 00:12:38.32 K She, yeah, I guess so. 00:12:38.51 Kurt Crenwelge A secret agent? 00:12:40.91 K But she's like a secret agent of one. She like her backstory lore was she was a babysitter setting up a website and her tagline was like Kim Possible. 00:12:43.65 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:12:52.38 K She can do anything. And this kind of devolved to people asking her to like go save something from a submarine and all of these kinds of like crazy things. She has like evil villains that she fights and things. 00:13:05.07 K So she's yeah, secret agent. 00:13:05.60 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:13:07.51 K But again, secret agent of one. She works for herself. 00:13:11.07 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. Okay. 00:13:12.11 K Mm hmm. 00:13:12.56 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, i was going to say I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years and I would have had to have gone to some wiki page to to find out what this plot was all about. 00:13:19.42 K Yeah. 00:13:21.68 Kurt Crenwelge But okay. So do you think that's a twofer then? So you like Rufus the mole rat and then the b the favorite side quest or B plot element is this, you know, oh, we're work acquaintances, we're friends that eventually like we admit feelings for each other and we're going to get together. 00:13:38.23 K i think I think so. Because I'm even thinking back to a lot of my favorite like TV shows and comedies and things. Like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, another example of like Amy Santiago and Jake Feralta get together. 00:13:49.72 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 00:13:53.01 K um The Good Place, my favorite show of all time. Have you seen it? 00:13:56.66 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 00:13:57.62 K I don't want to spoil it. 00:13:57.85 Kurt Crenwelge I have, yes. 00:13:58.88 K Yes, okay. So, you know, You know, Chidi and Eleanor get together and that was definitely not the main thing because there were so many twists and turns in that one. But um yeah, I would say consistently that's probably my B-plot. 00:14:08.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:14:11.76 K Favorite B-plot anyway. 00:14:13.35 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, I like that. You know, just the trope as a whole, maybe, you know, and it covers so many different pieces of media that whenever you see it, you're like, ah, this is the thing that I love. 00:14:20.64 K Mm-hmm. 00:14:23.82 Kurt Crenwelge This is the joie de vivre that I crave. 00:14:27.48 K And it's not necessarily a searchable category. Like I wasn't even necessarily sure how to articulate it. But then as soon as you asked me the question, like, yeah, there's like number of ones that I can recall off the top of my head. 00:14:38.05 K That's the same kind of. 00:14:38.53 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, we can go to TVTropes.org, I think the website is. 00:14:42.01 K Oh, that a thing? That's cool. 00:14:43.09 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, yeah, and it's like a database website where you can type in any sort of trope that you can think of that will crop up in popular media, and then it, kind you know, like a wiki, will kind of sort of index them all and explain, like, how one trope may be opposed to this other trope, or it's related tangentially to this other trope, so... 00:15:03.67 Kurt Crenwelge It's a it's a useful website if you're like, oh, what's the thing where it's like the one guy, you know, has the stretchy powers or oh, this is the fastest man alive or whatever. And, you know, so then at least lists all the different properties that have all those similar ah things. 00:15:19.53 K well thank you i've never heard of that before but i've just put that in my browser so i know what i'll be doing after this call 00:15:25.62 Kurt Crenwelge Fair enough. And then the way that we round out the personal interview section of the episode is Kirsten, what are you passionate about and why? 00:15:37.19 K dogs and stories and all of its forms um It's really funny, actually, because while I've outwardly changed, my mother likes to frequently remind me that since I was five, I'm like, I want to work for myself. 00:15:51.55 K I want to have a partner. and i want to have dogs and my house and travel. And however many decades later, much has changed. Those are the things that I've always wanted. And those are the things I still, I strive for to this day. 00:16:05.30 K and I've always loved stories. I was a big sci-fi nerd, actually, even before I got into fantasy. So, um, It's been really fun getting back into TTRPGs really in the last five years or so. 00:16:19.48 K I was one of those ones that got back into it in the pandemic kind of thing. 00:16:20.25 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:16:23.36 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:16:23.70 K um And yeah, it's fun to kind of explore those kinds of stories in different mediums, whether that be like TV shows or video games or RPGs. So. 00:16:34.02 Kurt Crenwelge So thinking on this this passion question, it has me thinking or reminding me that, you know, kind of like the trope of like, oh, the the best friends to, you know, to romantic partners, you know, from the ah platonic ah to the romantic love. 00:16:50.99 Kurt Crenwelge there's another trope or or another type of genre of stories, you know, maybe not necessarily boy and his dog, but I was getting more to the root of like dog, dog stories. Everyone loves dog stories. You know, you know, the, the, the heart wrenching ones, the goofy ones, the cartoon ones, the silly ones. 00:17:08.99 Kurt Crenwelge And just thinking on this in the spur of the moment, I don't know. Could you, could you pitch me what you think the greatest dog story is? Like, I could name a couple on my hand that I'd be like, if I had to rank them, you know, but I'm just curious, you know, you are the dog expert in this in this matter between the two of us. 00:17:19.33 K Oh. 00:17:29.64 K So this popped up into my head and immediately. So my first fandom ever was Scooby Doo. 00:17:35.74 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, there we go. 00:17:36.14 K And my eldest dog actually is named Velma after Velma Dinkley. 00:17:40.53 Kurt Crenwelge e 00:17:41.08 K And one of the one shots that's kind of like a recurring one that I've been popping into is ah Saturday morning cartoons. And so you get to like solve mysteries like it is, like you're in an episode of Scooby-Doo. 00:17:54.81 K It's not necessarily Scooby-Doo coded. It's also like, oh, gravity falls and that kind of vibe, right? 00:18:00.63 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. Okay. 00:18:02.44 K um 00:18:02.52 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:18:03.21 K But my character for that was Jinx Dinkley, Velma Dinkley's goth emo um cousin. And she has a great Dane dog. 00:18:09.83 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:18:11.25 K So when you said that, my brain immediately went to Scooby-Doo. And I think that that would be my my top one for a number of reasons. 00:18:15.15 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:18:18.08 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:18:18.19 K um I also just like mysteries above all other genres, actually, that does beat out fantasy and sci-fi in my books. 00:18:25.67 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, Scooby-Doo certainly is a strong contender. I mean, I'm i'm an 88 baby, so like I was a kid when all dogs ka All Dogs Go to Heaven came out. 00:18:35.81 Kurt Crenwelge So like that's top tier. 00:18:35.89 K Yes, yes. so many dog So many of the dog ones are so hard because a lot of times the dog dies or like the kid or like something happens. like Fox and the hound is also sad. 00:18:48.69 Kurt Crenwelge Fox and the Hound is also another very good one. 00:18:49.09 K dogs go to heaven. 00:18:51.13 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:18:51.46 K Yeah, but like what's up with this theme of like you know heartbreak? Either the dog dies, the kid dies. so a lot of those. 00:18:58.00 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:18:58.55 K Yeah, exactly. 00:18:59.32 Kurt Crenwelge yeah Old Yeller. That was one I never watched, but I mean, that's one that ah Gen X and Baby Boomers are are familiar with and will often use as a as ah as a cultural reference of of sadness. 00:19:00.62 K yeah exactly 00:19:11.60 K Yep. 00:19:12.85 Kurt Crenwelge So. 00:19:13.34 K Marley and Me was another one that was a bit more recent, but still not that recent. 00:19:15.86 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. That one's kind of newer, but yeah, I did see yeah i did see Marley and me. It's just something, i don't know what it says to the human heart, the human spirit, where it's like, you know, oh, people can be cruel to each other all day long and no one bats an eye, but the minute that like a dog is in peril or emotional turmoil, ah oh, Homeward Bound, there we go, those are ones from when I was a kid. 00:19:38.68 K Yep, yep. 00:19:40.33 Kurt Crenwelge It's like the minute that a dog, like, how dare you inconvenience a dog? That dog is a saint. That dog would never do you wrong. sort of a thing. 00:19:49.18 K If we're going back to Disney, you have all of, like, The Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians. 00:19:54.74 Kurt Crenwelge Oliver and Company, which is my wife's, she would say that one is would probably be her favorite dog movie, if I had to ask her. 00:19:55.86 K Yep. Yep. 00:19:59.26 K That was her favorite. 00:20:04.55 Kurt Crenwelge So, yeah, there's a lot of good dog movies out there and you should you put some on your letterbox, you know, put them on your wish list of movies to watch and let the the good tears and the the joyful, sad tears flow and and connect with your inner ah your inner child with your your dog loving spirit, I guess. 00:20:19.92 K Have you know? 00:20:24.83 K Yes. yeah 00:20:29.31 K With a box of tissues and chocolate, but if you have a dog, keep the chocolate away from the dog. 00:20:32.94 Kurt Crenwelge Do not. Yes. Do not feed your. 00:20:34.11 K Yeah. 00:20:35.32 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Well, without ah diverting this into a whole tangent, grapes. And so we've so long story short, we've had to become a no grape household because of ah an incident on Fourth of July just this past couple months ago at the time of recording. So love you, son. But that's the reason why we can't have grapes in the house for a long while until you're older and more responsible. 00:20:58.00 Kurt Crenwelge So. 00:20:59.29 K some dogs though my eldest is a sighthound and can jump quite far she jumped over baby gate and onto a kitchen table and ate raisins out of ah kids breakfast bowls while she was still at her breeders so sometimes it's the kid and sometimes it's the dog 00:21:16.35 Kurt Crenwelge That's true. Yep. Perfect. Well, we've made it through the personal interview section of the podcast, and now it's time to head in to some NPC creation. 00:21:33.60 Kurt Crenwelge And NPC creation is brought to you by you, the podcast audience and our patrons from Patreon. So now's the time of the show where we give a shout out to our comfortable patrons and above with a loud hurrah. 00:21:46.20 Kurt Crenwelge So I've got a can of Dr. Pepper today. Nothing fancy. I know it's been a day, but you know what? Sometimes you just need a good Dr. Pepper. So cheers again. All these fine folks donate $2 or more a month. 00:21:59.38 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, uh, again, answer Jablinski and good old mom and dad cheers. I don't think I said the names, but now I did. Of course I got to shout them out. Uh, all these folks I named are actually, what we consider wealthy tier patrons, which means they get to introduce an element of chance to the random tables that we have here in this section of the show. We might get to hear some of their responses used today. 00:22:21.05 Kurt Crenwelge So if you want to learn more, about all the cool, awesome things we've got waiting for you on our Patreon, you should go to the show notes below. You should go to the podcast website and social medias, or just go directly to patreon.com forward slash sidekicksandsidequest to find out about all the different paid tiers of accommodations that we have awaiting for you. But you know what? 00:22:44.01 Kurt Crenwelge I've got quite a number of free people that just like to hang out and be plugged in with the Patreon, so you could do that too. no shade or nothing. And, I've got Kofi if you like that, but you know, those are all the places where you can find out about it and help us to grow and expand our operations in the levitating platter in this semi plane and worlds beyond. 00:23:03.29 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. So now we're here in the part of the show where we get to make up a character. And I know you came in, you're you know you got your you had your pitch ready, locked and loaded, and you're like, okay, I want i have an idea for a character. 00:23:17.30 Kurt Crenwelge um But it sounds like maybe you're also open to rolling some dice to kind of help fill in some details. Is that kind of what I'm sensing? 00:23:24.88 K Oh, absolutely. i um, I know the function this NPC is going to have, and I know her general vibe, but a lot of the specifics I'm very open to randomizing. 00:23:31.43 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:23:37.41 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, and so what are what are kind of like, the what's the skeleton framework that we're working for? So what are the bounds that we have to stay within, and then where are we free to play ah elsewhere? 00:23:49.50 K Absolutely. Um, so This character is going to be a dog matchmaker. So she is going to match adventurers with their would-be canine companions. 00:24:02.80 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 00:24:02.84 K um What that actually means in terms of appearance and different things is very malleable, but I thought in my head, and I'm open to being persuaded that she would be maybe like, 00:24:17.06 K an older female, like the equivalent of like retiree, not sure her race, I thought halfling, but very open, but like in human terms, like, you know, 65 and up, like, you know retiree, but not necessarily at the end of their lifespan, but has like lived a life very wise, has a lot of like world experience to draw upon in order to make these matches. 00:24:28.71 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:24:42.32 K um, why I initially thought, oh, Halfling, in addition to the fact that I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan, is I thought, like, what if this is, like, this matronly great aunt figure that, like, so I can easily p pop her in a city or pop her in the countryside or something yeah just, like, shuffle around and stay at relatives' houses, you know, easily portable, that sort of thing. 00:25:07.02 K But, again, doesn't need to be that. 00:25:07.42 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:25:09.06 K could be a completely different race. um Does need to be something that's not super... 00:25:16.77 K I don't want to pick a race where it would be one that in a world would be initially scary to people. Like, you want... 00:25:28.58 K Grandma vibes is what we're going for. Like, no one's going to... 00:25:31.30 Kurt Crenwelge you're a poet You're not okay with a Mind Flayer dog matchmaker? Blah, I have the perfect dog for you. 00:25:36.28 K I don't think that they would... 00:25:38.79 Kurt Crenwelge all and 00:25:40.47 K I just don't think that too many people would want their services, you know? 00:25:44.26 Kurt Crenwelge Look at this fine dog, and it's an intellect devourer acting like a dog. 00:25:47.60 K Yeah. 00:25:48.50 Kurt Crenwelge It's like, yes, this is a fine creature that you should want. 00:25:51.56 K Yeah. Walking brain, you know. 00:25:53.40 Kurt Crenwelge Ha ha ha. Okay, well, it sounds okay. so we've got some good guardrails to work with and everything else. We're just going to leave to chance and have some fun today. So there we go. 00:26:01.88 K Absolutely. 00:26:03.93 Kurt Crenwelge All right. The first question that we have to ask ourselves here in NPC creation is what's going to be the name of our character? If you need to randomize this, you can just roll a d20 and we can we can see what we get. 00:26:16.27 K Well, see, I feel like, and I don't want to nitpick you on your own show, so feel free to edit this out. 00:26:21.85 Kurt Crenwelge a 00:26:22.01 K Do we not need to have the ancestry, i.e. like the race, come before the actual naming convention? Because depending on the world, do races have certain like naming conventions? 00:26:35.76 K Do you know what I mean? 00:26:36.04 Kurt Crenwelge Well, that's ah that's a good question. And I know people a lot smarter than me but with bigger YouTube channels certainly have ah posited all sorts of different different arguments. 00:26:46.17 Kurt Crenwelge Our sponsor, one of our sponsors of the podcast that I've had on a couple times, Mr. Tony Vicenda, I know for his preference whenever he's been on the show, he always saves the name for last. 00:26:52.48 K Mm-hmm. 00:26:56.63 Kurt Crenwelge And that's a personal preference that I allow for. But I also kind of think it's an interesting exercise because sometimes, ah you know, you can get a name and you have like, You know, you're like, OK, so like Bob, OK, I start thinking about Bob and what is a Bob to me? 00:27:11.50 Kurt Crenwelge But then as you start rolling the other dice, you're like, oh, actually, I have to contend that this orc is named Bob and Bob is a tailor who is also a teenager. 00:27:23.75 Kurt Crenwelge And so like, OK, well, what does a Bob mean to me in that circumstance? And, you know, maybe it's a cultural thing. it may Bob may not be a naturally orcish occurring name, but Bob could be something because um I'm a teenage tailor and this is just like, but ah you know, ah of a thread in Bob and that's the nickname that I picked up or whatever. 00:27:39.62 K no one can pronounce my name in orchestra or something. It's true. 00:27:43.40 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:27:46.16 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. So, and so it's your preference. If you'd like to roll the D20 now and see what you get, that's cool. or if going to wait till later to kind of, just you know, get us inspired and, and kind of get your name later, you could do that too. 00:27:58.98 Kurt Crenwelge It's up to you. You're my guest. 00:28:00.99 K Yeah, you know what? Your sponsor has inspired me. Let's leave the name to last and kind of randomize everything else first and see where the chips lie I'm kind of weird about names I like named all my dogs after specific characters I'm very much so like figure out what the personality is and then name afterwards that's just me 00:28:17.39 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Okay. Fair enough. Hey, no, nope. All power to you. So there we go. All right. We're going to come back around to that one. So jump jumping to the next question. 00:28:29.37 Kurt Crenwelge What's going to be the ancestry of this character? Now, for this random da dice roll, you get to roll 2d10s for a d100 effect, and I've scoured every book that I possibly have to find every possible ancestry and species and race to use ah that could conceivably be you know interacted with by players. 00:28:45.23 K Cool. 00:28:50.65 K Sounds good. to Let me just bring up like the 2D Dendai on Google. 00:28:54.87 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. Always can depend on Google for random dice rolls. 00:29:09.85 K Fourteen. 00:29:12.46 Kurt Crenwelge 14 as I check the list. Okay. Are you ready for this one? yeah have You have a choice. 00:29:18.24 K Mine, Claire. 00:29:20.14 Kurt Crenwelge Not Mind Flayer, thankfully. That's a little later in the list, I think. um 00:29:24.28 K Gotcha. 00:29:25.56 Kurt Crenwelge You have a choice between standard Lizardfolk, Surin, or Terrafolk. So basically in the category of Lizard slash Dinosaur Anthropomorphs. 00:29:38.27 K Interesting. 00:29:39.60 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, I know Lizardfolk, obviously standard from the regular Monster Manual. Surins, I believe, were introduced in the Spelljammer books, but also existed in other adventures. 00:29:51.34 Kurt Crenwelge I think the Terrafolk specifically come from the Tomb of Annihilation. So in the in the Forgotten Realms, it would be like, oh, Cholt or whatever. But basically, you're some kind of Lizardfolk or dinosaur person is ah is what the di dice say. 00:30:04.24 K well 00:30:08.32 Kurt Crenwelge So... 00:30:08.50 K Okay. 00:30:09.33 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so what are so what are you kind of more leaning towards, you thinking? 00:30:13.97 K i to be completely honest with you, haven't really played with anyone who's chosen to play a lizard folk, so this is something I'll need to research. 00:30:21.98 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, fair enough. 00:30:22.70 K Not me Googling, will lizards eat dogs? Is this better productive? 00:30:26.23 Kurt Crenwelge Well, see, the thing is, we can take the lore however we want. We can take and leave what we like. 00:30:30.50 K That's fair. 00:30:31.91 Kurt Crenwelge So maybe your lizard really finds advantages in hanging out with dogs. ah Maybe was the one lizard that was compassionate and was like, hey, maybe instead of eating these things, we should work alongside them. 00:30:45.62 Kurt Crenwelge I found this wolf. This wolf is a perfectly good companion. And this wolf is my friend. 00:30:53.15 K interesting okay i will need to do some research i not me thinking do you know off the top of your head how long do these guys live 00:31:03.94 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, um you know, i don't know off the top of my head, but I have to I have to think that biologically speaking, they're probably not meant to live long because, you know, if you use them as a monster, the idea is like, oh, you know, they they reproduce fairly quickly. And that way there could be lots of them for you to fight. 00:31:25.14 Kurt Crenwelge um But as far as like a culture or or a people group or something like that, I don't know. Like I said, we can take the lore however we want. Maybe these are like, you know, Gila monster type lizards that like live however long or they're like Galapagos turtles and they just live for like centuries on end. 00:31:44.00 Kurt Crenwelge So, you know, could be ah could be interesting how you decide to take this ah particular lizard slash Shiren slash Terra folk, whichever one you firmly land on, unless it sounds like you're committing to the lizard folk. 00:32:01.38 K i am, as you're speaking, trying to Google and I'm not getting results that are being very helpful. Tarafolk, when I type that into Google, is giving me a band. 00:32:15.35 K It is a violin group. 00:32:17.24 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, well there we go. Yeah, Terra like pterodactyl. So it's got to have the P in front of it, obviously. And then Surin has a double S at the beginning. 00:32:27.87 Kurt Crenwelge So I know that one can be confusing because it's like S-S-U-R-R-A-N for for those guys. But ah Kirsten's researching there, which is fine and good. 00:32:40.47 Kurt Crenwelge And we can just keep on rolling with the momentum. So it sounds like we've already got the role or the job in society figured out because this individual is a dog matchmaker, which also kind of sounds like they're specifically like a dog or hound breeder. 00:32:46.64 K This is This true. 00:32:56.87 Kurt Crenwelge um So like they're in a community and what is it that they do? Oh, they have like a bunch of dogs and they're constantly trying to like match up Like dogs for the different adventurers that come through the area and stuff. 00:33:12.84 K is true 00:33:13.12 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. and then as And then the age range, it sounds like we've already got that figured out because we're thinking like an elderly, like young elder. Not like elder elder, but like a young elder, like fresh. Like I just claimed social security. 00:33:28.90 Kurt Crenwelge Like I'm brand new to this whole retired lifestyle and, you know, not having to worry so much. about maybe running the day-to-day of the business, that's for my many offspring and children to handle, because now I can just be the perfect matchmaker, not only with my dog breeds, but in matching them up ah to adventurers. 00:33:58.68 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. So I know, ah as we're working our way through the questions, we're coming up on the question of, uh, describe your physical appearance. So I don't know if you need me to stall a little bit longer. 00:34:07.61 K Yeah. 00:34:10.42 Kurt Crenwelge um but i don't know. what What are you thinking, uh, for our friend here? So you're thinking on these details of like, okay, some sort of like b lizard or dinosaur person. They're a dog breeder matchmaker. 00:34:23.33 Kurt Crenwelge They're elderly, but on the young side of elderly, ah and you know you know we don't have their name yet but we're going to so soon discover their name but with these details that you have in mind can you paint us a picture and describe their physical appearance 00:34:40.67 K Yeah, I think that this is going to be ah very, like, granny, matronly, terrafolk creature. 00:34:53.39 Kurt Crenwelge ooh 00:34:54.63 K And I think that it... She is going to be, i think, kind of... obviously one of these like ancient races. There's probably not a ton of them left in this world. 00:35:11.17 K um 00:35:11.59 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 00:35:13.24 K I think, you know, I'm like taking a look at the Wizards of the Coast image right now. It looks like if a pterodactyl was a humanoid. All right. 00:35:23.04 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:35:25.37 K think that maybe I'll make her a cool color or something rather than green. Maybe she'll be kind of bluish blending amongst like the night sky kind of thing. 00:35:35.58 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:35:35.67 K um She's going to have some more wrinkles because she's on the elderly side, you know. 00:35:41.52 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:35:41.50 K might have some like wrinkles around her eyes. Maybe she has like some 00:35:44.15 Kurt Crenwelge And her size category is large, so these Terrafolk aren't like, they're not small and they're not medium. They're like large, so like 00:35:50.63 K Oh yeah, we'd be a giant. So she's going to have like her big, when you come into her her, office, she'll have like her big armchair, like this big throne that she's there. And then she has like the like person sized chairs on like the other side of it. 00:36:05.31 K And she's just like, and why do you think that you're suitable to own a dog? What makes you think that you can take care of one of my creatures kind of thing? Cause she's like, you know, very protective. These are her babies that she's just trying to find homes for kind of thing. 00:36:20.81 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:36:21.06 K Um, yeah, so I think maybe she might have some like holes busted and like burnt at the edge of her rings. Like she was probably an adventurer in her youth kind of thing. 00:36:34.42 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:36:34.42 K And this is her retirement career. 00:36:37.24 Kurt Crenwelge I see. 00:36:38.05 K So she was an adventurer and this is why she wants to match dogs with adventurers. 00:36:42.94 Kurt Crenwelge Now, I'm 00:36:43.17 K And she's probably part, go ahead. 00:36:45.69 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, I was going to say, now I'm curious, you know, what kind of, if we had, you know, the whole joke about like, oh, it's all fun and games to boss around the shopkeeper until the shopkeeper reveals that they're a retired level 20 fighter and they take all of you to town. 00:37:01.49 Kurt Crenwelge I'm just curious, this you know this elderly, retired, terrafolk dog breeder and matchmaker, what was our what was her job? 00:37:12.01 Kurt Crenwelge What was her ah class that she was? Because you know dogs and animals... 00:37:16.33 K This is redacted. This is redacted. Everyone for her previous adventuring party died. 00:37:22.98 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:37:23.26 K um She's the eldest out of this guild and she's since retired from the board. So all of her files are sealed shut. So people know her names, but they don't know what adventure she was on. 00:37:35.11 K She doesn't, they don't know like who her old adventuring party was. It's very secretive. 00:37:39.82 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:37:41.19 K Yeah. 00:37:41.88 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Because I know for me, like with animals, I was like, oh, Ranger would be an easy one. 00:37:42.81 K But she's very, 00:37:47.33 Kurt Crenwelge Or if you like third party... content like mcdms the beast heart class i was like oh those would be like the eat the two easy uh classes like if i was gonna take it but i totally love this idea of like redacted you know oh i was part of a guild but like we don't talk about what i did we don't talk about what i did in the war uh sort of sort of a thing 00:38:10.55 K You know, the files are sealed shut. Maybe some were burnt down and various crusades, you know. 00:38:17.69 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, maybe she's the one who burned the files. 00:38:17.71 K is it turbulent? 00:38:21.26 K We don't know. These are turbulent times where like adventuring guilds are sanctioned. And so clearly there's enough unrest that we need adventuring parties to be like a thing that happens, you know. 00:38:32.39 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah, and we definitely, you know, these, ah you know, I'm looking at the stat block for terra folk, you know, CR1 normally you'd find them. And, you know, it's prescribing, oh, they're neutral evil. But of course, we don't have to go along with that unless you like the idea of this ah neutral evil terra folk that's like, 00:38:52.23 Kurt Crenwelge yes, my pretties. And it's like shadow mastiffs and like hellhounds and stuff that she has that she's trying to match up. But I imagine some of those, i imagine some of those breeds get a bad rap and it's like, you know what? Hellhounds, they're just sweeties. You just have to, you just have to know how to handle them and stuff. 00:39:12.16 K Part of what I'm developing right now is like a compendium of like fae mythical dog breeds of like either spoofs on dog breeds that we actually have or things like, you know, if you live in a completely underwater society, what kind of dogs would you have? 00:39:31.07 K Or like, if you live at, you know, if dogs had wings, what would need to happen for that environment? 00:39:33.39 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:39:36.19 Kurt Crenwelge She's a terra folk. Does she have any winged dogws dogs? 00:39:38.67 K Exactly. And so this is a, 00:39:40.36 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:39:41.69 K This is what I think that I'm purposely also keeping it mysterious so that way she's easy to plop in various situations, you know, especially if this is kind of an ancient breed or ancient folk of of creature that, you know, sure, why not? 00:39:55.10 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:40:01.36 K You know, maybe this is the only tarot folk that around these parts. So yeah, she's an oddity, but it's not necessarily like 00:40:11.77 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. I like it. 00:40:12.56 K Yeah. 00:40:13.39 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Okay. And so, you know, so she, she has her big chair, she's in her office, you know, her wings are showing age as far as like you were saying, there's, there may be like evidence of like old injuries and, you know, battle scars and whatnot. 00:40:29.57 Kurt Crenwelge um But as far as the rest of her appearance is concerned, is are there any other clues that we could, could have to her past life or just how she presents herself and her retired age? 00:40:42.92 K see, it's very interesting because, you know, had she been a different kind of race, I'd be like, oh, she'd be the type of like old granny that would have like a dagger hit it in her bun or or something like that. 00:40:56.99 K But, you know, terror folk don't really need to like hide daggers and stuff on their body when they have these long beaks and claws, like talons that can kind of rip you to shreds kind of thing. 00:41:07.52 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:41:10.74 K um 00:41:11.06 Kurt Crenwelge And apparently Javelin's at the at the ready, looking at the stat block here, so maybe she's got ah ah some Javelin's cleverly hidden about her office. 00:41:18.99 K It's probably, exactly, it's probably like, you know, her walking stick is a javelin in the corner kind of thing. 00:41:23.54 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, yeah. 00:41:26.11 K um i think actually on her body, it would be more like, maybe like a decorative, like, waist belt that is like jeweled colored, like looks like it would be part of a treasure hoard. Same thing with like rings and that sort of thing. 00:41:41.01 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:41:41.34 K As a tariff folk, I'm not sure, 00:41:48.30 K I'm just, I'm trying to think, I think I might need to come back. I'm i'm thinking into my head of like, realistically, what would behoove creatures of this nature to wear in terms of vestments? 00:41:59.01 K Like, you know, what wouldn't get caught up in the wings while they're flying? 00:41:59.47 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:42:03.30 K Like, I imagine something more form-fitting. You know, if they're focused on aerodynamics, are they really the type that wants to be wearing armor? So I'm just thinking, things like that. 00:42:13.46 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Well, you know what this reminds me of as we're describing this character? I just have, at the time of this record ah recording, started playing New Vegas, Fallout New Vegas again for the first time in at least a decade. 00:42:28.46 Kurt Crenwelge And of course, one of the favorites. companion characters that you can get for your courier is a nightkin super mutant who goes by the name of Lily. And she could remember that she used to be like a grandma before she was captured by super mutants. And then she was dipped in FEV, the forced evolutionary virus in one of the VAT tanks. 00:42:48.89 Kurt Crenwelge And then she mutated into a super mutant. So when you meet her character in Jacobstown, you know, she's one of the nightkins. So she's kind of got like this bluish ah tint to her skin, not the normal um ah super mutant green. 00:43:03.57 Kurt Crenwelge ah But she has like goggles. She has a big sun hat and she has what looks like overalls, like grainy, like overalls stretched over her huge muscular body. 00:43:14.88 Kurt Crenwelge So she looks like she should have a really managed voice, but she talks like, oh, dearies, don't, don't you get all worried. Grandma Lily is here. 00:43:22.89 K me 00:43:24.55 Kurt Crenwelge um You know, super mutant voice. But, you know, she, she refers to herself and remembers like, oh, I remember my grandkids, Timmy, you're getting into all kinds of trouble stuff like that. So I'm wondering if maybe it's kind of that sort of a vibe where she has a couple of pieces ah that maybe suggest like, oh, I'm adopting like this dog breeder, dog matchmaker, retired leisure wear sort of a thing. But she's got a 50 fly speed. So if she needs to, she can take off and go do what she needs to do. 00:43:57.45 K Yeah, i'm I'm thinking that she, in her idea to like lull people into a a sense of like relaxed state, she knows that like old ladies are supposed to have spectacles. So I think she's had specially made like spectacles to go on her little, on her beak kind of thing. 00:44:16.18 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:44:16.22 K um May or may not be a magical item for future players. Don't worry about it. Yeah. 00:44:21.45 Kurt Crenwelge ah 00:44:22.88 K ah But, you know, I think she's adopted the kind of, like, grandmotherly mannerisms and vestments as best she can for her physique, you know? 00:44:28.98 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:44:32.49 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Yeah, but she's like, Grandma, you're... Wow, you're really big. Because most ah players would probably... 00:44:39.04 K What big beat you have? 00:44:40.87 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, what a great bink you have. Oh, the better to bite you with, to to peck you with. 00:44:44.57 K Yep. 00:44:44.91 Kurt Crenwelge Like, what? Ow, ow, ow. Don't worry, I'll pay for the dog. I'm sorry. ah Yes, you'll like him. You'll like Fido. He's a good choice. Ooh. 00:44:53.82 K And I'm imagining her contracts have these like very specific clauses of like, should anything happen to this dog and it be your fault, you know, you know, you know, you'll have this character to, to answer to kind of thing. 00:45:03.91 Kurt Crenwelge Oh. 00:45:08.58 K Like, as in like things happen on Avengers and she understands that kind of thing. But if like, she hears that you like willingly abandoned the dog or something like that, or like mistreated the dog, she will come after you. 00:45:13.81 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. Ooh. 00:45:21.31 K And these are all like magical contracts. 00:45:21.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:45:23.07 K So they are enforceable kind of thing. 00:45:25.25 Kurt Crenwelge You know, she's she's raised all these dogs, ah you know, probably, you know, she can easily scry on them, whether it's their collars or just the dogs themselves, because she's familiar with every dog she's ever sold. 00:45:37.66 Kurt Crenwelge you know So she can maybe, you know as again, redacted records, so we don't know exactly what she did back in the war, her adventuring days, but maybe she's got some spellcasting maybe that she can do, and she is she can if she can't do it herself, maybe she has a device that lets her scry, and she's like, oh, I wonder how Fido's doing, and then you know she's able to ah keep tabs on all the dogs and stuff. 00:46:01.99 K She has friends still in the adventuring guild kind of thing. Like she would have been mentors of people now running the adventuring guilds and that sort of thing. So for the adventurers that are like the new ones being like, yeah, I want adopt the dog. 00:46:09.86 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:46:14.13 K They would be, the head of the guild would be referring them to her. So all the way she can go back to the head of guilds and be like, so, you know, how is this adventuring party doing? 00:46:26.60 K How is the state of this dog? That sort of thing as well. 00:46:28.72 Kurt Crenwelge They're on their third dog. Like what? What is this third dog? What happened to their first two dogs? Glee. There we go. Fun. 00:46:40.72 Kurt Crenwelge ah So I'm. 00:46:41.82 K one of the I'll just say like one of the rules for ownerships might be something like she takes a look at oh it's like what level is your party at and like oh tell me do you have a healer in your party you know do you have like if if everyone's a barbarian it's like what level it's like she might be like sorry but 00:46:43.32 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, no, you go ahead. 00:46:52.78 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. 00:47:02.77 K you're not strong enough to have a dog if you're going to take them out on an adventuring party. 00:47:05.20 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:47:07.31 K So she might challenge some people to duels or things like that to prove that they're strong enough or, you know, they need to prove that they have health insurance for the dog by way of healer in their party or things like that, you know. 00:47:18.29 Kurt Crenwelge You say healer and it made me it reminded me of your earlier story about the blue healer. And so now I'm just thinking of like what dog breed best goes with which D&D class you are. And so it's like cleric would obviously get a blue healer. 00:47:32.32 Kurt Crenwelge ah Paladins would get a pincer. ah You know. 00:47:35.78 K Have you heard of Pugmire? 00:47:38.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, I have heard of Pugmire. Yes. 00:47:39.89 K Yeah, so that's one of the but games that I'm going to be running, but retrofitting with some of my friends to kind of, you know, to that effect of like, not, yeah, they're evolved dogs, but let's really play into their strengths. And so that's kind of the element I'll be adding to a lot of my campaigns with dogs of like, 00:48:01.25 K Sure. The dog can do that, but you have to like justify like why a dog would behave that way, you know? 00:48:07.34 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. Okay. All right. And it so as we're talking and discovering this, uh, this Tara folk individual, you know, it helps us with role playing this particular NPC. 00:48:20.88 Kurt Crenwelge Can you describe her with three adjectives? What three ad adjectives are best going to describe her? 00:48:29.15 K Um, 00:48:33.88 K matronly fierce 00:48:35.98 Kurt Crenwelge Solid. 00:48:39.84 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:48:49.00 K I wanted to go like all knowing or omnipresent without actually like she's not god she's not godlike but like she knows things she shouldn't I don't know what a good word is 00:48:58.79 Kurt Crenwelge o and okay So it sounds like, I don't know, it may is she a Harper? Like the equivalent of like a Harper or like some, you know, some sort of of faction or organization that exists in the world that's like, oh, we have tabs on everyone. 00:49:13.79 Kurt Crenwelge It's like we're like D&D CIA. It's like we have agents. 00:49:16.54 K She may or may not have a spy network. That might be what her real, you know, retirement plan is. But ah this is more of a hobby. 00:49:26.31 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:49:26.55 K But a front, you know. 00:49:28.26 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, certainly, you know, people love dogs and, you know, people are going to be open and vulnerable 00:49:33.65 K Oh, this is what she cares about, you know. But I i feel like... I don't feel like someone of her caliber could have gone from, you know, fearsome adventurer to having a totally civilian life, you know, so I feel like Intelligence Network might be an offshoot of her previous guild work or something like that, you know. 00:49:54.32 Kurt Crenwelge So is all of what she's doing now in her retirement years still in service to this organization, but it's kind of taken them a more subtle approach, like soft power instead of like, oh, I'm actively in the field, like doing the work and all this stuff. 00:50:10.96 K I think she's a consultant. She doesn't report to anyone in her old age, but you know, she works alongside, she provides Intel. 00:50:15.52 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. 00:50:22.06 K People don't bother her because a, she has a lot of knowledge and B they aren't quite sure what all the redacted things are. So people are rightfully like cautious. 00:50:34.76 K Um, Yeah, I see her being like adjacent, but not necessarily like she needs to apply by the rules of the guild. Because in the world that I'm building, the adventuring guild is also somewhat of a bureaucracy where like, actually, you need to have a license to be an adventurer. 00:50:51.07 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 00:50:53.46 K Like, we're not just having like, we're not just sending anybody out to like go fight the dragon. This has a whole bunch of like legal and ethical repercussions because if you fail, this town is destroyed kind of thing. 00:51:09.55 K So it's a much more like you need to have a license. 00:51:10.41 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:51:12.18 K So similarly with the dogs is like, Oh, these dogs have been certified by her that like they have the capability and peppermint that they could go on adventures kind of thing. 00:51:22.22 Kurt Crenwelge That's cool. That's interesting. So yeah, we're not going to send a Chihuahua out in the field, but like, you know, a Shadow Mastiff 00:51:28.73 K It depends on the Chihuahua. It depends on the purpose. And this is why like I could talk a whole episode on just what this is. And so this is back part of her interview process. Is your adventuring party like the break in sneaking and steal stuff? 00:51:42.75 K Are you the going to save the dragon type? you know Because again, you need to be licensed to do different things. You need to have a proven skill set in different things. And so the dog that you'll be matched with will be based off of also the kind of adventures you are the kind of adventures you will be doing. 00:51:59.38 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. um i I only have watched the first John Wick movie, but ah am I am I correct in remembering that like his code name or code phrase was like the Baba Yaga or something like that? 00:52:13.72 Kurt Crenwelge Because I feel like her spy code name totally would be the Baba Yaga. 00:52:14.50 K Maybe. I'm not sure. 00:52:19.03 Kurt Crenwelge Like people would refer to her in the spy world like, oh, the Baba Yaga. 00:52:19.04 K Something like this. Yeah. 00:52:22.89 Kurt Crenwelge It's like you better watch out. Like you don't want to get on her bad side. 00:52:24.62 K Yeah, I may or may not. I may or may not need to work on my Russian accent for this character. I'm not traditionally good at character voices, but ah this is something I will need to work on for her for sure. 00:52:36.20 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. So we've got we've got these adjectives and we're learning more about the character. And this is the part where I say, and now we get to go back to rolling some dice. 00:52:45.22 K Mm-hmm. 00:52:45.35 Kurt Crenwelge And we want all of our NPCs to have something cool on their person. 00:52:45.38 K Cool. 00:52:49.39 Kurt Crenwelge So this is a combination roll. 00:52:49.35 K call 00:52:50.67 Kurt Crenwelge So what is going to be a valuable item, piece of lore, secret, or ideal or concept that she would ascribe to? So in randomizing it, we do a combo roll where we do a D4 for the category and a D6 for the particular thing. 00:53:05.28 Kurt Crenwelge And it sounds like we've maybe got a couple of things that we can just kind of throw in there for a bonus as well, because she's got like some kind of tie to a spy organization in the world. And, you know, so she had some rank and prestige in that organization before she took a more relaxed, retired sort of a role. So that's that's just a freebie. 00:53:25.69 Kurt Crenwelge um But like, what's the unique thing on her person ah that she's going to have? And let's see. 00:53:31.70 K So ironically, the D4 was a four and the D6 six. was a 00:53:37.50 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, interesting. So this submission was from our good friend Matt from Roleplay Chat. ah The ideal or concept that our TerraFolk ascribes to steal from the rich to give to the poor. 00:53:54.39 Kurt Crenwelge So how do you think that kind of factors into her character when it comes to matching dogs with ah newbie adventurers and such? 00:54:05.80 K Well, see, everything's a secret, right? So it's not like she's got her prices listed and things like that. It's you come to her, she sees whether or not she's willing to give you a dog, and she selects the dog for you. 00:54:20.24 K Meaning that what this dog actually ends up being and their pricing and all that sort of jazz is totally determined by her. So... Might be so for the more well-off adventurers. 00:54:31.40 K They might get charged a higher fee and maybe the less affluent adventurers might be some scholarship free to a good home situation. 00:54:41.00 Kurt Crenwelge o Okay. so she she is the market. 00:54:44.64 K ah socialism, you know? 00:54:47.21 Kurt Crenwelge She is the market. She determines what the prices are. 00:54:49.57 K Yeah. 00:54:51.72 Kurt Crenwelge Again, feeding into this idea of like the Baba Yaga sort of a vibe to her character. So she's kind of scary, but somehow sweet as like this older retired person that you're just kind of like, I don't. 00:55:07.00 K She's very genteel. She she has amazing mannerisms and treats you very nicely, is very much with the granny of like, feel free and take a cookie from the desk, dear, freshly baked until they say something she doesn't agree with. 00:55:08.88 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. 00:55:22.75 K And then the demeanor changes. 00:55:23.24 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:55:25.67 Kurt Crenwelge I see. And then the way we round out our NPC is we have to give them a bright gold exclamation point to put over their head. So obviously this character is going to function as a merchant, ah you know, someone that they can go to to be able to get these dogs, certainly. 00:55:43.22 Kurt Crenwelge um But, you know, every NPC has problems or issues that they need the players to go and help them out with. So if you want to randomly roll for and determine a side quest that she could offer up. You can roll the last dice we have, which is a D12. 00:56:00.16 Kurt Crenwelge Or if you're inspired, you can just kind of go ahead and lay it on us. What you think the side quest that she would offer up to a bunch of characters to go and do. 00:56:08.56 K So this actually came to me like 10 hours ago when I was listening to one of the more recent episodes, um listening to your guests then answer this question. 00:56:19.61 K And I think it would be something of some sort of clause in the contract of, and if you find stray dog along the way, you need to write to her immediately so she can find that dog a home kind of thing. 00:56:35.74 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:56:35.68 K And more specifically, there's going to be a finder's fee. So if you encounter, cause some of her dogs are not easily placeable, you know, the dog that's constantly catching fire, the spire hound might not do well with a farmer in their field kind of thing, right? They might need a very specific home. 00:56:57.21 K So she always asks all the adventurers and part of the adventurous guild again, cause she has, you know, her her talents in many pies part of the the requirement when you sign up is like oh and if you find any interesting homes you know a dragon all alone at the top of you know a mountain with their hoard of gold that is looking for companionship or like this witch in the middle of the wood or Etc, etc. If you find anybody interesting that is looking for companionship, ah you're right to Baba Yaga. She gives you a finder's fee um if a dog gets placed with that person kind of thing............. 00:57:37.71 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so her so the side quest is kind of like a it's not a specific fetch quest, which, you know, tangentially, that was a fantastic three episode series from Dungeons and Daddies where they all play dogs. And it was called fetch quest, which was a fantastic ah series of episodes. 00:57:57.53 Kurt Crenwelge But So it's not a fetch quest. It's not a I need you to do X in order to make Y happen for Z purpose. It's a it's sort of like a ah passive daily. 00:58:09.52 Kurt Crenwelge If I had to use like some MMORPG terms. 00:58:12.20 K It's like, so like for a video game RPG, it would be something like, oh, depending on where you go on the map, there are like, say 15, you know, like over the course of the adventure, it's like, oh, and if you encounter so-and-so, the chat option would come up of like, you know how you can choose like what you say? 00:58:35.12 K like if you're playing a video game, there would be like, you know, the secret third option sometimes for some of these encounters being like, 00:58:35.75 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:58:42.10 K Ask them if they're lonely or like ask them if they want a dog kind of thing. 00:58:46.28 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:58:46.55 K And then. 00:58:46.68 Kurt Crenwelge Kind of like in Baldur's Gate 3, depending on your background or your specialization, it's like you get a unique dialogue option where it's like, oh, hey, you look like you're a little down in the dumps. 00:58:52.68 K yeah 00:58:56.86 Kurt Crenwelge Would a dog cheer you up? Sort of a thing. 00:58:59.77 K Exactly. So like me as the GM, I would have like NPC characters like baked in of like, you came across this tavern and the matron is sobbing because her dog died recently. 00:59:13.22 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:59:13.18 K You're like, there'll be situations where the players, it's up to them of like, I'm not going to say, hey like ask so-and-so it's like of their own volition. So, and then the actual like finder's fee, 00:59:24.60 K again, because Baba Yaga, nameless, so we keep using this, um might have, exactly, she might have various things of like, oh, wow, this was super rare, or like, I've been trying to place this home, this dog forever, here you go, magic ring that does magic powers, or it might just be a standard, like, okay, he's 200 gold coins, like, depending on the situation, the dog gets gets placed, things like that, so it's kind of like a, yep, 00:59:30.29 Kurt Crenwelge Her code phrase. 00:59:48.96 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, so tiered results. Like if you get like an S tier result, then it's like, hey, yeah that plus two sword you were looking for. I just happen to have one of those. 01:00:01.43 Kurt Crenwelge Or it's like, OK, you find like a D or C grade match. 01:00:01.37 K Yeah. Yep. Oh. Yeah. 01:00:05.03 Kurt Crenwelge It's like, OK, well, here's 100 gold, I guess, for your troubles sort of a thing. But it's always just an open thing in the background with this character. Okay, so like a good sort of dependable source of like, man, we really need to you know, I'm really in the market for some magic items. 01:00:23.10 Kurt Crenwelge All the dungeons have been plundered and no one is extending me line of credit. 01:00:23.70 K oh 01:00:26.08 K yeah 01:00:27.95 Kurt Crenwelge You know, if we could just find a dog. She's been trying to put this dog with this one set of circumstances. Surely there's someone in this crazy old mixed up world that we can find them. 01:00:38.28 K I can foresee many a side quest where it is people literally just like, we found this dog and now we need to find it a home or a like, you know, yeah, a lot of side quests like find this one particular dog a home or what have you. 01:00:53.88 Kurt Crenwelge Never mind. Put the war on hold. Stop that. 01:00:56.20 K Exactly. Yeah. 01:00:57.19 Kurt Crenwelge We found a dog in the middle of the trenches. This dog needs a home immediately. And then the DM's like, what? ah oh Okay, I guess. Oh, here, Baba Yaga happens to have the the the the magic item that you needed to get your ah yourself out of your problem or whatever. 01:01:14.01 K Yep, exactly. 01:01:16.19 Kurt Crenwelge Fair enough. 01:01:16.18 K this This jam will always reward ah putting the dog as the number one priority. 01:01:21.70 Kurt Crenwelge Ha ha ha. Okay, alright, so a good passive constantly open side quest, so depending on how much your players want to turn that valve on and off, you know, can yield different rewards, and the better of a match or a result means the better of a reward you're going to get, because that obviously leads into the question, or we've already answered it as far as what's going to be the reward, well, depending on how good the match is, depends on how good of the reward it is. And you imagine that there's no point in time where this side quest would ever end. It would just always, once you meet this character, it's just, you know, you can always go do this thing. So if you decide that plundering dungeons and fighting necromancers is too much and you just want to turn this into a dog matchmaking RPG experience, then you can totally do that. And that's what your game is now. 01:02:13.71 K Yep, absolutely. 01:02:15.13 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. And then, um, all right. So that question's easily answered. Uh, but now we have to go to the flip side of the equation. What's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure. So I guess somehow they managed to get a dog, but if they never honor this part of the contract or they're not very good about noticing or keying into the fact that, 01:02:37.70 Kurt Crenwelge There's people that would like to have dogs, but no one bothered to ask them, or, oh, this match would have been great if we had remembered, but we had, like, five things on our plate. So, what's going to be that consequence? 01:02:52.10 K There's no negative consequence for not matchmaking a dog, but there is a negative consequence of, like, if you find a random dog and just leave them kind of thing. 01:02:56.57 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:03:02.62 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 01:03:03.19 K So, they like, Babagoga's got a spy network. got a network. The guild, the guild's got a network. All you needed to do was drop this dog off at a random guild outpost, and that would have been, that part of the contract would have been satiated, you know, like, the dog has been saved kind of thing. 01:03:19.61 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. yeah 01:03:21.95 K um So the only negative consequence would be like, if she knows you abandoned dogs in harmful situations, or if she had placed a dog with you and you had mistreated the dog. 01:03:35.31 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. And then that's when she reveals the stat blocks of, uh, I think I just used this NPC of like a, a CR 10 spy master. And suddenly this large terror folk is zipping around and shooting at you at three multi-attack hand crossbow shots where she's doing, uh, piercing and poison damage for every shot. 01:03:56.98 Kurt Crenwelge So, uh, yeah. 01:03:58.67 K would instantly turn into final boss, total party kill. 01:03:59.06 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:04:03.09 Kurt Crenwelge She goes full John Wick and she will just undo your party. 01:04:04.96 K Yeah. 01:04:09.37 Kurt Crenwelge Congrats, party. you've ah You've reset the campaign because now all of you have been bereft of life. 01:04:18.56 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. So, you know, we've made it all through this way. We've been using a code phrase of Baba Yaga, but we haven't actually named our our fair former spy now turned dog matchmaker breeder. So what is the name of this character or what name is she going to share with people like common folk? 01:04:41.20 Kurt Crenwelge Newbie adventurers are like, oh, what do we call you? And she gives them a name. What name is she going use? 01:04:50.94 Kurt Crenwelge Like Gladys, Lily, or Bea Arthur, or any of the other Golden Girl names or something like that. 01:04:57.87 K yeah I don't know. So ill on the one hand, 01:05:00.74 Kurt Crenwelge Blanche. 01:05:06.81 K I feel like she's going to have multiple names because I feel like Baba Yaga or something of thequi the equivalency needs to be her like spy network name, like what she's really known as kind of thing. 01:05:17.21 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. Sure. 01:05:19.48 K And then she'll probably have something in her people's native language. But I feel like when you walk up to her like office, know, 01:05:29.96 K There's going to be like a little placard with the name. It's not going to be this, but something like Blanche or Gladys or like, you know, those like little old lady names. And I'm not sure. 01:05:42.49 K Dorothy, maybe Betty. i don't know. Can the randomizer help? 01:05:50.86 Kurt Crenwelge ah Well, let's see. I tried to just do a ah Golden Girls name generator. um Well, Fantasy Name Generator came up as the top result for Victorian era names. 01:06:03.52 Kurt Crenwelge So if you wanted to give that a spin, we we can give that a few clicks. 01:06:04.09 K Well, okay. Yeah, let's do it. 01:06:08.05 Kurt Crenwelge So I like go doop, doop, doop, doop. So let's see if I go down the the list. We've got um ah you, you lately Albertina Albertina. 01:06:18.97 Kurt Crenwelge XE, Twila, Victoria, Samantha, Alpha, Mady, Lenny, Mady? 01:06:26.00 K I thought maybe Victoria and her friends call her Tori because Tori pterodactyl kind of thing. 01:06:34.60 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. So you you want to land on Victoria? 01:06:38.51 K I think so because I think if they say, oh, head to Victoria, dear, she'll sort you right out and then you come to Victoria's desk and it will say, you know, on the front door, you know, like, Victoria, a canine matchmaker, whatever her title is. 01:06:52.55 K And you come in and there's just this Tarafolk there. 01:06:57.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:06:57.71 K I just think it would be funny. 01:06:58.98 Kurt Crenwelge The terrifying Terrafolk. 01:07:03.02 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:07:03.18 K And I love a pun. 01:07:04.90 Kurt Crenwelge And you love a pun. 01:07:04.98 K I'm yeah. 01:07:06.79 Kurt Crenwelge you but You become a dad and it's just ah it's part of the contract when you become a dad is that ah you're just obligated to dish out puns whenever whenever possible. Okay, so it sounds like we've made our way through all of the questions and filled in all the blanks, and we got to use some dice rolls, which is fun. 01:07:24.72 Kurt Crenwelge But the the ah question I have now at this point is, do you feel like Victoria is pretty well rounded out, or did you want to explore some optional questions? Are you ready to move on to the next part of the show? 01:07:37.22 K You know what, if you have optional questions, feel free and throw it on me. I had one idea coming into this. And this character turned out very, very different than I thought, but I love her more. 01:07:49.03 K So I'm really willing to any auxiliary questions you have to kind of like help flush her out. i'm I'm very eager to hear. 01:07:59.90 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so we've got like about six optional questions that if you wanted to breeze through them, we can. Or if you want me to pick a couple of them up to you. 01:08:07.92 K You're the expert here. It's your show. You tell me what you think you've, you've interviewed or or talked through so many people um through this process. So what, what, what else do you think Victoria needs to be kind of the well-rounded NPCs that come off your podcast? 01:08:25.13 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I know, let's see. So ah for this character, i don't know, I'm kind of looking at these optional questions and the ones that kind of stand out to me, the ones being like, how does she interact with people? 01:08:39.29 Kurt Crenwelge So, cause there could be nuance or she could be, you know, across the board. She sounds like she'd be a very nuanced character. So she would have specific ways in which she would speak with specific people. 01:08:50.04 Kurt Crenwelge Um, there's the language question, like, does she have a particular accent or language? And are there any idiosyncrasies in how she acts or speaks, which could also be very telling for someone who's like, oh, I'm putting on this act of this doddering old retiree. But in secret, it's like, oh, actually, I'm studying everything about you because I'm like a level 20 assassin. And, uh, the minute that you, uh, sour this conversation, I will end you sort of a thing. 01:09:18.21 Kurt Crenwelge Um, And then and then it sounds like the obvious ones of being like, what impact has she made on the world? How has she shaped the local area? And then does she have any current problem problems that prevent her from being a bigger player on the stage? So of the questions, I think those four, I think, kind of stand out the most. so So if you want me to ask them, I can do that to make it a little more easier to edit in the in the post production. 01:09:42.27 K Whatever makes your life easier editing. i'm I'm happy to ramble or if you want to ask the question so it's easy for you to cut and paste, happy for that as well. 01:09:51.19 Kurt Crenwelge Sure thing. So for Victoria, how does she normally interact when it comes to different people, ah like with her you know family and friends and peers versus enemies and rivals and the people that she's working with to try and match up these dogs and such? How does she present herself? Is she pretty nuanced or she ah you know the same across the board? 01:10:14.45 K I think when it comes to people that know, it depends. I think how she comes across really depends on in what context you're encountering her. So I think she code switches a lot. 01:10:31.58 K So the community she's living in where she's set up this, this business, this private practice where she's this dog matchmaker, all her clients that's coming through, i think very much, 01:10:43.98 K daughtering kindly retired old lady she doesn't necessarily tell people that she's a retired adventurer or anything like that i think she's very much so leads leans into like the grandmother archetype she probably even like hunches more than she actually needs to like i think she adopts that kind of old 01:10:52.02 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:11:05.64 K um grandmotherly mannerisms when encountering ah people in this context. um And so I think that absolutely her accent when I don't think her accent comes into play when she's kind of in her ah grandmother matronly like state And I think that when she's kind of working with the spies or especially the people in the guild, you hear like a heaven heavily accented inflection. And I think that partly becomes, comes from common is probably not her first language. Her first language is probably whatever the native language is to Tarifolk, which will take on a particular effect. And I imagine that she naturally speaks common with that kind of effect, but she puts on on a completely different leg. 01:11:56.89 K accent in air when she's talking like her grandmother. 01:12:01.49 Kurt Crenwelge o And, you know, that, yeah, that leads beautifully into, you know, any particular accent or language or idiosyncrasies and how she acts or speaks. And being a spy, she probably knows more, you know, again, just the the base stat block is like, oh, you know, they just don't comment. 01:12:19.62 Kurt Crenwelge But yeah, it makes sense that, you know, Terra folk probably have their own ah cultural native language. And then based on wherever she's lived and she's been a spy, wherever she's been planted, she's been ah deep undercover 01:12:30.48 K picking up language. Yeah. yeah 01:12:31.78 Kurt Crenwelge She's picked up languages, so it's like you're your party of dwarves just thinking and talking out loud in her shop, and you think that she doesn't understand what you're saying, but she knows she knows three different dialects of dwarvish. She can tell exactly which clan that you're from, and you haven't even told her your name. 01:12:51.67 Kurt Crenwelge I love it. Okay. All right, cool. and do And do you think, you know, you were alluding to earlier, like, oh, I might have to brush up on my Russian if I was going to, like, accentedly talk as her. So you think, like, oh, just like, s sweetie, grandma. 01:13:07.18 Kurt Crenwelge But then it's like, I am the cold. I am the Baba Yaga. You have come to me. 01:13:10.67 K Yeah, pretty much. 01:13:11.56 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:13:11.88 K And i'm not sure I'm not sure if it will be Russian, but it was just the first thing that came to my mind due to pop culture. When you think spy, you know, you think... 01:13:22.52 Kurt Crenwelge KGB. 01:13:23.42 K Yeah. 01:13:25.12 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, the KGB. Yeah, yeah, no, I could, you know, yeah, I could definitely see her fitting in with that organization. Okay. And then ah so impact on the world, what kind of impact has she made on the world and how has she shaped her local area specifically that we're going to find her in? 01:13:43.44 K um so why she will be well totally totally so what's really fun about her is because of this world i am building she will be and npc in different campaigns and one shots one of the campaigns will be 01:13:46.47 Kurt Crenwelge I know it's redacted, but like, you know, do we have some clues as to how she shaped the local, the the history of the area? Yeah. 01:14:06.09 K people who are going to adventuring school to get their adventurer's license and also needs to get their dog adventurer's license. So she matches these adventurers with the dogs. 01:14:17.45 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:14:18.10 K The dog needs the adventurer's license. The human needs, or the player needs the adventurer's license. And she teaches one of the classes that's like, specifically how to work with your canine adventuring companion kind of thing so that's one of the ways she's like a pillar in that community i'm imagining it to be kind of like the equivalent of like maybe a university town the academy's there it's one of the eggs and not even just that because it's also like where and might be the main city i don't know like it's where the bureaucrats are too of like where are you go to school where you get your license stamped 01:14:32.89 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:14:42.33 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. Strixhaven. 01:14:54.53 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. Yeah. Okay. 01:14:57.59 K where you can do the testing. 01:14:57.84 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:14:58.79 K It's like, yeah, it's a big trade market. So actually anything to do with the adventuring brings a lot of trade to a particular town. 01:15:07.57 Kurt Crenwelge okay Okay. All right. So that's how she's in the the local area. and And as we've alluded to earlier, she may be from an ancient or on the way out group of people. 01:15:19.14 Kurt Crenwelge um So she's definitely going to be a rarity, you know, maybe even like a singular entity in this local population. She might be the only terra folk around, like on this continent or something like that. 01:15:31.57 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:15:31.87 K Yeah, I think that they're still clans, but they're not as prosperous in number as some of the other folk in this realm. 01:15:32.09 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:15:43.35 Kurt Crenwelge Maybe even they've gone to like the elemental plane of air you know because they can just fly in chilled air. No one bothers them there. But she's decided to remain on the material plane for you know her reasons. 01:15:56.12 K Exactly. Exactly. 01:15:57.13 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And then as far as you know does she have any current problems that prevent her from being a bigger player on the stage? It sounds like she used to be an even bigger player on the stage, but now she's moved into this different cycle of life for herself. 01:16:12.68 K Yeah, I think it's more about... i think her problems are actually more interpersonal. So she's very much so in the adventuring space, right? 01:16:23.29 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 01:16:26.32 K She helps a lot of, like, up-and-coming adventurers. She helps people in the administration. But the people like, her era, adventurers don't live long lives a lot the times, right? 01:16:36.73 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:16:37.18 K But she's one of, like, the older ones left, right? in the area so never married and saddled down so it's not like she's got a partner or grandkids or actual kids you know so she's kind of one those like matronly everything they called everybody dearie and everybody of a certain generation kind of like her grandkid kind of thing um a lot of her old adventuring party friends are dead like you said her family might not be around or things so i think it's a lot of like what many of 01:16:41.35 Kurt Crenwelge Mmm. 01:16:49.13 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:16:56.17 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:17:06.56 K You know, some of the retirees or the elderly when they get to a certain stage of life of like, oh, and like, what do I do now? Because all of my loved ones are gone. So I think one of the reasons why she's doing what she's doing with both like the spy network and the dogs is... 01:17:23.04 K bid for connection of like still trying to be relevant in this age and, you know, still getting to interact with people. 01:17:27.35 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:17:31.62 K It's one of the reasons why she took maybe like one of those professorships at the university or to like teach some of the classes is to like still be involved in the community and fulfill that role because she doesn't probably have too many like close interpersonal friendships. 01:17:46.16 K She's very accomplished in a professional sense and has a lot of respect, but probably doesn't have a lot of friends. 01:17:52.83 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Very interesting points that you're raising. Cause it makes me wonder, think about like, you know, like, Oh, I'm the civil war veteran that lived well into like the turn of the century. 01:18:05.87 Kurt Crenwelge And so it's like, people don't relate or understand. I was, you know, I was in this, I was in the heyday of it. I was in the thick of it. And, uh, you know, she, you know, outliving everyone else. And, uh, you know, I just wonder, you know, again, you know, 01:18:19.26 Kurt Crenwelge ah dungeon masters can take it however they want especially in in regards to this spy network or this organization I wonder if it you know you said like a bid to stay relevant or stay connected I wonder if it wasn't also just kind of like ah oh we need to put Baba Yaga to pasture because like she just can't cut it anymore she can't hang with this new generation and so this is like her her protest yeah and 01:18:42.88 K They do things differently now, you know, especially i imagine this might come into play a lot with um maybe regulation as a new thing. 01:18:53.25 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:18:53.27 K You know, maybe maybe when she started to be an an adventurer, there weren't all that all these rules in the same way. um And maybe he was. 01:19:00.97 Kurt Crenwelge Back in my day, you got gold and you kept it. You didn't have to pay a cut of it to the king. Sort of a thing. 01:19:05.55 K Yeah, could be. 01:19:07.95 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, back in my day when we did things, it was this way. Yeah. Okay. Alright, so it sounds like we got a character then. And you know what we do with 01:19:18.62 K No, I'm really excited. 01:19:20.08 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, you know what we do with characters on this podcast. We throw them into ah random encounter. 01:19:25.41 K Whoop, whoop. 01:19:32.62 Kurt Crenwelge And the final ad read insert here for Zencaster, the thing that lets me record the podcast. So thanks everyone for listening to this podcast. And you know, you're going to start your own podcast, do your own actual plays or or whatever, and you need a service. I would recommend Zencaster because it's pretty cool and has a lot of nice tools. 01:19:52.65 Kurt Crenwelge And it's how I sound as good as I do. So if you're looking to get that start on a paid plan, Go to Zencaster.com forward slash pricing. Use the code PsycheKAQpodcast at checkout to save 15% off your first month of any Zencaster paid plan. 01:20:10.26 Kurt Crenwelge It helps to support the podcast. So I certainly appreciate it. And now we're back to the show. All right, so we've made it here to the random encounter section. So this is where we get to do a vignette, some role play, a scene with Victoria, the terror folk, a dog matchmaker, ex-spy, Baba Yaga, terror in the night of of the espionage world or what have you. 01:20:34.91 Kurt Crenwelge So the question I have for you is what sort of scene are you going to want to ah present Victoria in today? Is she going to be meeting one of the podcast guests? adventuring characters and they're going to get this side quest to get a dog companion which could be exciting um is it uh her meeting with another member of the organization someone from um the adventuring school uh or is it like a flashback to her last mission or i don't know what sort of scene are you interested in showcasing uh victoria often 01:20:49.49 K yeah 01:21:08.28 K You know what? Why don't you pick the podcast character and they they stumble into Victoria's shop up to you whether or not they had an official letter from the guild referring the character on or if they just like to look at the shop and they wander in and we'll see whether or not this Baba Yaga-like character deans them fit to have one of her canines. 01:21:37.90 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. So let's unfurl the Rolodex and quickly go through the list of podcast characters we have. So we have Duncan, who's the recklessly brave adventure for hire. Happy go lucky. 01:21:50.01 Kurt Crenwelge No feet too daring. No task too small. Sort of a guy. We've got Sonya, who's the warrior woman who started off as a barbarian and then multiclassed into a paladin who serves a god who wishes to redeem the undead. 01:22:02.70 Kurt Crenwelge We have Korak. He's the lawful, evil, arcane trickster, roguish dwarf. We've got Chrisley, who is the herbalist botanist wood elf druid, who then multiclass into a cleric who serves living memory. 01:22:16.81 Kurt Crenwelge We have Orion. He's the astral elf illusionist wizard. We have Agape, and she's the lilac colored tiefling sorlock. Started off as a wild magic sorcerer and then made a pact with good old Prosperpina. 01:22:32.99 Kurt Crenwelge She refers to as Prosperina. Not actually correct how she says it, but she's kind of funny that way and that's what she says. um We've also got Lifespell, the Necromancer. He's a forest gnome old man and he's got a crew of Skellybros with him. 01:22:48.58 Kurt Crenwelge And then we've also got Amblin Mithril Shaper of Dwarvish Bard extraordinaire. She's a greenhorn. She's only been on one adventure. But all these other characters are here, and if none of them sound interesting, then we can totally roll up a new character. 01:23:04.30 Kurt Crenwelge Up to you. 01:23:05.78 K I'm blanking on their name, but either you pick either the person who serves the God of the undead or the guy with the skeleton crew. 01:23:16.34 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:23:19.04 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, that, see, you give me two really good choices of Sonia or Lifespell. Lifespell has been on a roll lately, and it's also been, it's been a little while since we heard from, so well, Sonia was featured most recently at the time of this recording ah with Alexander, the Mercurial Paladin, um and then, you know, we've had Lifespell. 01:23:41.63 K That was one of the ones I was listening to this morning. 01:23:44.22 Kurt Crenwelge There you go. um I don't know. They're both good. They're both good. So I don't know. Up to you. Sonya Lifespell. Who speaks to you more? the The Barbarian Paladin Multiclass or the Forest Gnome Old Man Necromancer? 01:23:58.00 Kurt Crenwelge Do you think... 01:23:58.16 K For Sonome Old Man, I think would be very fun to have with the old lady at Terrapoke. 01:24:04.56 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. Okay. Alright, so would you care to set the scene or shall I set the scene? 01:24:11.35 K So Victoria's 01:24:16.45 K canine matchmaking emporium is ah located. It's one of the many shop fronts on this kind of cobblestone street. Very, very Victorian. Very, we have gas lamps on the side. 01:24:32.57 K You know, there's a bakery across the street and a bookshop and a pub and a hostel. You know, this is the market street. This is where you go in this town to procure whatever kind of goods. 01:24:46.95 K So maybe this gnome was on the way. to the bakery or something or other and he comes across ah this big gilded sign that says you know ah Victoria's canine matchmaking emporium in kind of gilded letters is one of those hanging street signs and then you see the same thing on the glass placard of the window shop front. 01:25:15.55 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, and yes, where we last left our hero, question mark, life spell, the Necromancer, well, he had finished up on an adventure. he had met the Quagoth Renglion when he was making his way to the Dwarven City, 01:25:31.73 Kurt Crenwelge And he was tasked with the mission of clearing out the sewers. And that was a whole adventure that he went on with the Skelly Bros. Some of them broke apart. He had to resurrect them. And do you know what? I think I think maybe at this point he's acquired at least one new skeleton. So he's rolling three, four skeletons deep now. 01:25:51.54 Kurt Crenwelge um So he's got a he's got a dwarvish skeleton ah in tow now, and he has interesting names for all of them. And I don't know, just kind of curious guest of the podcast. 01:26:04.92 Kurt Crenwelge What's a what's i don't know. What sort of interesting name do you think he gave this dwarven skeleton that he's now picked up in his crew? 01:26:12.79 K the first thing that came to my brain was Bonebreaker for some reason. 01:26:17.38 Kurt Crenwelge Bonebreaker. That's cool. Yeah, Bonebreaker. That sounds like... Yeah, that sounds like... 01:26:21.87 K The barbarian dwarf skeleton or something like that, you know. 01:26:24.55 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, Bonebreaker. Okay, cool. Alright, so yeah. At this point, he's rolling deep with his Skelly Bros. So he, of course... As he enters the shop. 01:26:35.39 Kurt Crenwelge um Well, it's it's it's interesting because there's like, you know, like a whole skittling bubble. I don't know that's not the right word. Well, he's an old man. That's something he would say. 01:26:45.68 Kurt Crenwelge But there's a whole group of people that come into the shop, you know, tingling. He enters the door and it's a forest gnome. And he's an old man wearing robes and, you know, kind of given off a goth sort of old man. 01:26:57.36 Kurt Crenwelge if i guess if an old gnome could be goth, but a necromancer vibes. 01:27:00.51 K Totally. 01:27:02.09 Kurt Crenwelge eat i don't know. 01:27:02.15 K The OG. 01:27:02.70 Kurt Crenwelge He Yeah, he's OG. He's like old school goth. So he comes strolling in, but he's got some so other folk trailing behind him as his entourage. So he of course has ah Octavius, who's his manservant, who's well-dressed in like a very cloak, 01:27:19.93 Kurt Crenwelge He's got a mask and a top hat. So, you know, he, of course, has to like, you know, keep up the ah fastest ah to like, you know, play the part of the manservant. um But he's also got some ah two big guys with him. So there is a minotaur skeleton with him that is named Get Over Here. 01:27:39.42 Kurt Crenwelge Um, he kind of serves as the pack mule cause he's got like a big chest strapped to his back. And so he's just, you know, kind of cruising along and he's worked to try and get like a robe or something rough put over him to not make it seem like, Oh, a big walking skeleton. 01:27:54.93 Kurt Crenwelge Um, and then there's also a bug bear skeleton, that he calls slipping Jimmy. 01:28:00.07 K Thank you. 01:28:00.26 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, that's with him too. Uh, what, what's different about him? He's he's, he did at least, He's not an artificer, but at least maybe he experimented or he he made an impulse purchase. 01:28:11.05 Kurt Crenwelge He got an arcane arm attached to the skeleton. So one of slipping Jimmy's arms happens to be like this, you know, powered up um arcane arm. So it does like a little bit more damage when he punches. But he was really happy after his last adventure with you know, at Wranglion's prompting, because now he has Bonebreaker, who's like a, you know, true blue-in-the-blood, uh, you know, fighter, uh, like a dwarven fighter, so that he, like, resurrected up, he's stocky, he's, like, a little bit taller than him, so he can, like, kind of hang with him, and, uh, so he's more like, you know, 01:28:45.52 Kurt Crenwelge ah you know, so if slipping Jimmy's the muscle, then like a bone breaker for sure is like his bruiser that he wants like right at his side. So if someone starts giving him guff, he could just be like, get a bone breaker. And then he can charge off with his battle axe and stuff. But you know, he's worked with costuming. 01:29:03.82 Kurt Crenwelge He's tried to make these skeletons look presentable in society, but people, most common folk look the other way. They're scared. They're terrified. ah but But maybe more discerning eyes are able to pick up on the fact ah that he's a necromancer and he's rolling deep with Skelly Bros. So he's in the shop. 01:29:21.78 Kurt Crenwelge He's ah puttering about and making old man noises. And he's like, look here. Fascinating. Hello, the proprietor this Hello? Hello? Hello? is ah the proprietor of this store hello hello and know 01:29:38.24 K and i 01:29:40.83 K I think he just hears this rustling from above, and if you turn and look, the shop is actually quite deceptive on the outside because it extends up and there are rafters. 01:29:54.01 K And he sees some sort of wings c flapping in the rafters as he's calling out. um And upon hearing this, the proprietress of the shop will just swoop down from the rafters and land seated in her big armchair behind her desk. 01:30:12.66 Kurt Crenwelge but Oh, oh, good lord. oh er gi get Give me a heart attack. Why? yeah Markavius, my vapors, my vapors. And he... Octavius like pulls out a box and I guess he takes a huff of something that he's picked up in his travels that kind of helps calm him down. 01:30:30.14 Kurt Crenwelge And he's like, ah, very good. Yes. Ah, yes. You are proprietor of the shop. Yes. Very interesting store. I see here. What? It smells interesting. 01:30:43.26 Kurt Crenwelge ah Yes. Do you have any thing for me to purchase? I'm. well, I have some... Get over here! Get over here And the big minotaur skeleton kind of lumbers over, and he's like, the goods! The goods! 01:31:00.39 Kurt Crenwelge And so he starts pulling out some of the looted stuff that he picked up in his last adventure as as to offer up, like, proof of payment or something. he's like, yes, I, uh, well, I heard rumors or tale when I asked, and they said that you had some of the best hounds about, and I'm always on the hunt for Skeletons. 01:31:22.48 Kurt Crenwelge Don't ask me why. i' am an archaeologist, don't you know? And I'm always interested in finding skeletons, you know, ah for history's sake. 01:31:33.84 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, so I need a good hound that will help me find more skeletons, because, yes. 01:31:42.25 Kurt Crenwelge She can roll her insight check and she can naturally ah critically succeed until he's lying through his teeth. But he's trying to do his old man best of duttering and muttering and trying to play it off like, oh, I'm a sweet old man who's an archaeologist, apparently, but I look very OG goth and have some jerking ah servants and and posse with me. 01:32:06.11 K And I think Victoria knows this con or or knows this act because she too herself puts on ah the same kind of facade when, when speaking to others. And so I think she just kind of puts her elbows on the desk and kind of leans with her hands folded and puts her, her large pterodactyl beak on her hands and says, 01:32:29.09 K Well now, you heard correctly. Yes, um here in my Humple Shop I help many an adventurer find their their proper canine adventuring companion. 01:32:42.08 K princes Have you Have you owned a hound before? 01:32:45.60 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Hmm. Let's see. Oh, what was it? 40 years ago. had I had a, I had ah i had a companion. Yes. He was a good dog. Uh, quite sad when had to go. 01:32:59.56 Kurt Crenwelge um yeah. yeah Uh, and he starts putting on the act of like the old man who's sad about his dog, but he maybe genuinely is very sad. The best blink dog I ever had. 01:33:11.20 Kurt Crenwelge ah he was a good, he was a good boy. He was a good boy. Yes. 01:33:16.52 K is this your adventuring party behind you? I'm sorry, my dear, my eyes aren't quite what they used to. And she kind of fumbles with her, her spectacles dramatically being like, ah you know, I'm an old lady and i'm not quite sure who it is that you have behind you. 01:33:31.99 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, oh, yes, yes. Well, this is my manservant, Octavius, and Octavius will do the thing where he takes off his hat and bow because he has that command figured out. This is Get Over Here. he's His job is to get over here, and he hands me... He's my personal valet. he He carries all the heavy things for my bones. My bones are not quite as strong as as's his. 01:33:55.71 Kurt Crenwelge And then we have Slip and Jimmy over here. ah he is he is my muscle. And ah so Slip and Jimmy does the program thing of like he shows off the arcane arm and does like a muscle pose. 01:34:07.01 Kurt Crenwelge And oh, this is my newest recruit, Bonebreaker. I found him in the Dwarven City just over there. And, you know, he was hankering for... 01:34:17.63 Kurt Crenwelge and adventure and, uh, and, and all that good stuff. So yes, you know, I think a dog would be perfect to round out my crew. Yes. 01:34:29.49 K Well, it sounds like you you have quite very crew with you. And um which would you be looking after canine or would would your manservant perhaps? I just like to get a good idea of, you know, who's looking after the dog and um what that would entail. 01:34:48.09 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, I suppose it'd be me. I mean, i as you can see, i happen to be ah the smallest of my troop. ah It's nice to ride up on Get Over Here's shoulders, ah but, you know, i I'm quite comfortable being low to the ground. Sometimes it's a little scary being up there, don't you know, being this old. 01:35:09.55 Kurt Crenwelge ah And it might be nice to have a mount ah for myself, for my size and my age. ah to be able to go about on my way in the world and look quite dashing in the process. 01:35:22.35 Kurt Crenwelge Ha ha! Anyway. 01:35:23.91 K Ah, so would you be looking for one of our our larger canines? You would like one that is rideable to you? 01:35:31.06 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, that would be quite fancy. Yes, a shadow mastiff, a hound of hell, ah hear yeti, yet, yet, yeti, yeti hounds, something of that nature, a warg, ah, something, something with bravado and gusto and finding bones would be quite apt for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:35:56.16 K Ah, so some sort of scent hound, it sounds like, if you want them to be able to do some nose work. This I can do. And what kind of adventures would this hound be going on? 01:36:08.99 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:36:09.90 K I just like to match them on a basis of, you know, energy and durableness. You know, the hound that goes with the crew that's going to slay the dragon is very different than the hound that is going on the spy missions, you know. 01:36:24.84 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Yes. Well, um, hmm. Ah, well, I'm always seeking more, uh, employment, uh, for my merry band. 01:36:36.37 Kurt Crenwelge ah so really just, you know, archaeology and finding skeletons for the army museum. The army museum, yes. 01:36:48.51 Kurt Crenwelge The, the great historians who like to find the bones and set them up in their, historical poses in their wardrobe and costumery. and he starts like a old man, like where he's starting to give away his plan, but he's trying to cover it up as he goes along. So I'm, I'm Mr. Magoo befuddling my words and trying to, you know, just push my way through it. 01:37:11.49 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. So just, ah you know, that is a, the day in of it, my life is just, you know, finding, know, The bones for the army museums. 01:37:22.72 Kurt Crenwelge for That's what I've been charged to do. and that's my plan. And I'm saying those words, yes. 01:37:30.12 K And do you have much experience with taking care of bones then? Do 01:37:41.86 K you have any way of reanimating bones? Because, of course, some of the dogs in this emporium, some are quite alive and there are others that are quite dead. 01:37:52.10 K Are you looking for canine companion? 01:37:54.58 Kurt Crenwelge his light his eyes light up when you say dead dogs. Like, he could have, like, a skeleton dog. ah he He's, like, he's trying to contain his joy when you say that. And he's like, oh, you well, I mean, I need good skeletons for the museum, of course. they mean I mean, I don't need a dog who will we'll chew them up. But I mean, you know, if ah i mean if a hound of bones can find more bones, I mean, that would be That would be very fine indeed. 01:38:25.83 K It's been... ah poor Bonesby has been at the Emporium for for many a year. See, the challenge I've been having is really I can only let him go to a home that has some some skill with necromancy, you know. 01:38:42.45 K He was he was and revivified by a necromancer and then that necromancer unfortunately perished himself. 01:38:47.26 Kurt Crenwelge ah 01:38:49.75 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:38:50.96 K He was an adventurer and so I'm reluctant to let him go with just anyone because shoulds 01:38:52.65 Kurt Crenwelge Ah, yeah. Oh, the fool. He is a half-rated necromancer then if he died. oh, yeah. 01:39:02.25 K Because if something, of course, were to happen to into poor Bonesby, I just couldn't forgive myself. 01:39:06.46 Kurt Crenwelge oh 01:39:07.04 K So I could only let him go with somebody who would be able to, you know, keep him alive and revivify him if something were to happen to him. 01:39:07.52 Kurt Crenwelge oh yeah 01:39:15.57 Kurt Crenwelge I think at this point his like Mr. Toad mania has now finally been revealed. He's like, yes, with Bonesby, I will be on my way to my army. And he starts climbing up. He has like help of to help him get on the desk and he's monologuing. And it's like you can see like the spot, like zooming in on him and as he's like monologuing his evil plan. He's like, yes, with Bonesby at my side, I'll be able to find skeletons twice as fast. 01:39:40.65 Kurt Crenwelge And then i will be on my way to my army. Yes, my plan is coming to fruition. ah And he starts cackling and then he realizes where he is. hes oh oh, I'm so sorry. my li My lady, my Octavius, I need my mints, my mints. Give me my mints. 01:39:54.84 Kurt Crenwelge Damn it. yeah 01:39:55.94 K It's quite all right, dear. It's quite all right. Would you like to meet Bonesby and see if you get on? 01:40:00.07 Kurt Crenwelge ah Yes, please. This is like the most sweet he's ever been. He's like, yes, please. I must have this dog. Give me him now. 01:40:09.47 K So I think she takes her her talons and like puts them in her mouth to do this big like whistle. like Like very, very loud. um And you just hear a rumble. 01:40:21.95 K And the stonework in the building, like it's not, it's not going to fall or anything, but it's like, it's an earthquake. There's just something and it gets louder, louder and louder and louder from down the hall and bursting in through this door. 01:40:29.93 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. What? 01:40:36.20 K This skeleton dog is taller. than even the Minotaur. He is huge. 01:40:42.60 Kurt Crenwelge walk 01:40:42.82 K This hellhound-sized dog very clearly was scent hound, perhaps for a giant race or something. you know, very unique, but very unlikely that he would have seen anything like this before. 01:40:57.22 K But it is scent hound, totally boned and huge. 01:40:57.92 Kurt Crenwelge ah 01:41:01.81 K And he's just staring at the group of skeletons being like, huge, thumping, wagging, bone-tailed. 01:41:08.95 Kurt Crenwelge ah This is the happiest that Lifespell the Necromancer has ever been in his entire life. Forget the other skeletons. He only has eyes for Bonesby right now. 01:41:20.13 Kurt Crenwelge And you said he's a hellhound, but he's like category huge. 01:41:24.26 K Yeah. He's like taller than the, think of like, you know, like the really big horses. 01:41:31.70 Kurt Crenwelge So he's like Clifford. 01:41:31.76 K He's like, yeah. 01:41:34.24 Kurt Crenwelge He's undead Clifford. 01:41:35.79 K Yeah. 01:41:36.65 Kurt Crenwelge Oh my gosh. this is This is everything. 01:41:37.81 K He was like a giant, this was like a breed of giant dogs that were bred for a breed of giant people kind of thing. Like this, this has, yeah. 01:41:45.62 Kurt Crenwelge A death giant's dog. 01:41:47.32 K Yeah. 01:41:48.24 Kurt Crenwelge Oh my gosh. Oh, he's... He's... He... he's he Lifespell yells at get over here to empty everything in his chest. He will dump his entire war chest for this dog. 01:42:00.89 Kurt Crenwelge He Lifespell is just beside himself. He's Mr. Toad mania crack cocaine an addiction, whatever like every single emotion and mood that he can express. 01:42:13.79 Kurt Crenwelge He's just losing himself. He's just like this is the greatest. ah Yes, my prayers have been answered. And he's just so excited. 01:42:23.88 K Oh no, no, dear. There's no need for all of that. Uh, we have a contract here if you'd be willing to sign it. And the only stipulations are that if for whatever reason you could not care for Bonesby, he would come back into my care just because I don't want him roaming around out there in the world all on his own. But I think he will be in good hands. I think you have a unique skill set to look after Bonesby. 01:42:51.53 K Um, 01:42:51.82 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:42:52.54 K Other stipulations in the contract are If you come across any other dogs while out on your adventures to just that need a home, just drop them off at an adventuring guild and they'll find their way back for me. 01:43:05.64 K Of course, if they are of the skeletal variety and you feel like you can provide them a good home, feel free and keep them as part of your crew. But I just have all of the adopt adopters at the Emporium ah sign kind of a goodwill to canines clause where if they find an abandoned dog, they will drop them off or find them a home somewhere. 01:43:26.05 Kurt Crenwelge i you know I do play life spell. like He is like lawful evil. I don't know if this would necessarily force an alignment change of him. But like there's just something sacred. To when it comes with a dog. 01:43:39.24 Kurt Crenwelge And him having gotten... Bonesby, the undead Clifford dog, he will agree to whatever. You say he doesn't need to empty his war chest, but he's not going readily ah scoop it all back up just yet. 01:43:55.00 Kurt Crenwelge He's like, fine, whatever. Octavius, give me the contract. And so like Octavius like wobbles over, gets the contract, and hands it to him, and Lifespell, with the biggest, most flourishing of signatures, signs it, Lifespell. 01:44:08.56 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, and then, you know, hands the contract back and he's just like, he's got the gimme gimme hands and he's ready for this dog. 01:44:15.77 K Okay, Bonesby, are you ready to go to your new home? And you just see this giant skeleton Clifford thump thump thump being like so excited. Okay, go ahead, greet your new master. And a bony tongue just goes up to Liesbill and gives him a lick. 01:44:41.96 Kurt Crenwelge And scene. That was brilliant. That was, I didn't, I was thinking like, oh, how is she going to do this? It's like, you know, it'd be really cool. You know, Life Spell gets like a Shadow Mastiff. He gets like a Hellhound. 01:44:54.39 Kurt Crenwelge That seems up his vibe as a Necromancer. But then you just pulled out, oh, this was a rare breed of dog that a Death Giant once bred. And now Life Spell, who is a categorically small creature, now has a huge sized Clifford as part of his crew. 01:45:11.16 Kurt Crenwelge Amazing. This was everything that Life Spell ever wanted with his life. 01:45:15.90 K well I'm glad you have added to his entourage and to found have found bones be the right home and that's why Victoria has that clause of like if you find these strange people that need dogs to write to her because she might just have the dog for them 01:45:31.26 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. And now I'm just very curious of the stat blocks for this huge sized skeletal dog. So that way, if we need to introduce a bones, be the dog in our campaign, then we could do that. 01:45:43.92 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, might have, 01:45:43.96 K Absolutely. i will have him because like I said, I am creating like an index of these various like mythical dog breeds. So I will absolutely write something up for Bones Bean send that to you. 01:45:56.71 Kurt Crenwelge That is amazing. That's awesome. Yes. So we've made it through the random encounter. And how do you think it was getting to be Victoria? You had this idea coming in We rolled some dice. We kind of hemmed and hawed back and forth and traded ideas. And we made through random encounter. So how do you think it was getting to be Victoria? 01:46:13.86 K This was so fun. Honestly, i I'm not going to lie. I was a little bit hesitant when I got like the Terrafolk. I was like, I had Halfling in mind. You know, this was a very much so a different direction. 01:46:25.86 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:46:25.87 K But I was thinking like... benevolent smog like I know they're not quite the same but it's kind of like the dragon with their horde she like hoards dogs and has like the contract and that sort of thing so this was really fun this was way cooler than I thought uh when I thought about like a dog matchmaker this is awesome 01:46:45.78 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And, you know, with the statistical averages of dice, sometimes I'm curious of like the, thela the you know, the occupations that we get on an episode or even um the most common ah races and species and ancestries that we get. 01:47:02.73 Kurt Crenwelge So this is the first time having got a Terrafolk. And I know some years ago with ah Melanie Doucette, we got, you know, the Yikiria, the Yak folk. So like, it's another, it's another big, a big guy ancestry. So that's really cool. 01:47:17.65 Kurt Crenwelge And now I'm just eager, you know, to introduce, Victoria my game somewhere and just like oh yeah dog Emporium you want to have like a cool beast hound in your party and this is the way to do it of course you know if we can get a Bonesby in our game like why wouldn't we want the undead giant sized hound in our party 01:47:39.96 K He won't help you with stealth, but you know. 01:47:43.25 Kurt Crenwelge Right, but if you need to smell like the undead or you need to find something that's undead, he's your dog. 01:47:48.13 K Yeah, he's your he's your dog 01:47:51.17 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. So yeah, we're here in the final thoughts section of the show, so certainly we like to get you know feedback and critiques and you know other words that come to your mind that you want to share, but ultimately this is the part of the show where you know you get to plug all your stuff, so you know where can you be found on social media? Where can we go to support you and catch you and all the things that you're doing and then any passions or causes we need to be made aware of. This is your time to shine. 01:48:18.52 K That was very kind. Honestly, Kurt, thank you so much for having me on. I'm now just sad that I don't get to have a brainstorming session with you for all of the rest of the NPCs I'm going to create. I think I'm just going to keep the questions up and do the dice modifier because what I had in my brain for the dog matchmaker is not nearly as cool as Victoria. So I think I'm just going have to recreate your process for the rest of the NPCs going to have in this campaign. 01:48:46.00 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:48:46.65 K um i guess plugging uh on both discord and instagram i'm at the canine detective that is also my name on start playing so by the time this comes out uh victoria should be alive and well and in multiple one shots and campaigns on discord um for adventurers that would like to have canine companions. And yeah, I'm looking forward to it because really I am just trying to blend my love and knowledge of dogs and dog training into the RPGs. And so I think it will be really, really fun to to have her to play with. 01:49:26.57 Kurt Crenwelge And there we go. So ah Kirsten K, the dog canine trainer. Thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast and the show. And I can't wait to have you back on making even more interesting NPCs. 01:49:40.43 K Thank you.