What exactly is Dungeons and Dragons? How do we use it to tell a story? And what are the dice for? Dungeon Master Eric and player Amanda will help you orient yourself for your foray into tabletop roleplaying games and Join the Party!
If you’re already familiar with the rules of D&D, feel free to skip right to Episode 1.
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod
- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod
- facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod
- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod
- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com
- music: brandongrugle.bandcamp.com
- merch: jointhepartypod.com/merch
Cast & Crew
- Dungeon Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast, powered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. That means a group of friends create a story together, chapter by chapter, that takes us beyond the tabletop to parts unknown. In the first campaign, we explored fantasy adventure, intrigue, magic, and drama. In the newest story, we tackle science, superpowers, a better future, and the responsibility to help others.
Every month, we sit down for the Afterparty, where we break down our game and answer your questions about how to play D&D and other roleplaying games at home. We also have segments at the beginning of each campaign to teach people how to play the game themselves. It’s a party, and you’re invited! Find out more at jointhepartypod.com.
Transcript
Intro Music
Amanda: Hi. I'm Amanda McLoughlin. I'm a co-host and co-producer of Join the Party.
Eric: Hello. I'm Eric Silver, the dungeon master of Join the Party.
Amanda: And we're here to explain a little bit about Dungeons and Dragons for those of you who are not familiar starting with, “Eric, what's Dungeons and Dragons?”
Eric: Well, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game, where a bunch of people sit around a table, have fun, talk to each other, encounter wonderful adventures that is usually dictated by a dungeon master who has some sort of story prepared for the characters to participate in.
Amanda: And why are we using D&D to tell a story?
Eric: Dungeons and Dragons allows you to tell a story, but, also, you're playing a game. And, also, you're hanging out with your friends. If you were to sit around like you're on a camping trip or like a road trip and people were like, “Okay. Let's tell a story.” How would that even happen? It's so difficult to just go --
Amanda: It’s embarrassing.
Eric: Yeah, you would just, like, pull things from your brain and try to do it as much as possible. But there is a game system to kind of facilitate that. And you get to play as an adventurer or as a hero. It is all about playing in, like, heightened space where you get to make choices that is, like, set – it doesn't necessarily need to be in fantasy. But it's usually set in a fantasy setting. Very Lord of the Rings. I'm going to go do this quest with my allies, and we're going to defeat a bad guy.
Amanda: And what is the relationship like as we play the game between the DM, yourself, and the players?
Eric: Right. So, DM stands for Dungeon Master, which is what we said before. The players get to control the main characters. Think of this like your protagonists, your heroes. Again, we're using Lord of the Rings as a jumping off point. This is like Aragorn, and Gimli, and the elf boy, but, also, Frodo and Sam Wise. You can be any sort of character. It's more about like, if you think of it as like a movie, the cameras following that character. Or, if you're thinking about this like a comic book, like we are, or a novel, we're following that character's perspectives.
Amanda: Yeah, you can be a relatively normal person, but be thrust into an adventure. And then, on the adventure, you learn things, and grow, and defeat stuff. And you're on some kind of journey that is cinematic and exciting.
Eric: Right. But the fact is that they're following that one character means like, in a novel, you get that character's perspective. And you're following the adventures of that particular character. So, the players have one character, and they're sticking with them. On the other hand, the dungeon master, who's usually the person with, like, a screen in front of them, or laptop, or lots of books, plans out an idea or a story to start with and kind of, like, sets the stage. If we are – this is all kind of happening in our imagination. The Dungeon Master lays out the setting and the hook, but the players get to do whatever they want, because it is a collaborative story being told together.
Amanda: I always think of it like your school just renovated the playground, and then they open the gates, and everyone stands there. And they're so excited. And the principal is like, “Waaa! I can't wait.” And then the kids run in and maybe they're gonna use the seesaw as a catapult instead of as a seesaw. And maybe they're going to, like, make the swings go in weird directions or totally ignore one of the things because it doesn't interest them. And you come in with your playground. And then the way that we use things, the directions we go – if we turn around and run in the different direction, that is the element of, like, improvisation and characters and players being able to make whatever decision they want within the world that the DM creates.
Eric: The other element of improvisation and difference is the dice. So, ordinarily, we use a 20-sided dice for a lot of things in Dungeons and Dragons. That number scale – like, it feels like a lot of sides, but, honestly, you need the one to the 20 to dictate how well something goes. That dice represents, like, the whims of fate, like how good do you do something regardless of – like, you can be an athlete. And you could decide. You're like, “Oh, yeah, I'm gonna go jump as far as I can.” And, ordinarily, you do really well at that jump. But, like, you also might have tripped on a rock on the way out. And you do something poorly. Or you've jumped better than you've ever jumped before. It's kind of that – the element of chance that is a part of life. The unfeeling faces of the dice also have something to say about how the story goes.
Amanda: Right. So, instead of your friend who is being your Dungeon Master being like, “Umm, I don't think you're gonna make that jump,” you have a third party that is truly neutral and random telling you like, “Okay. Well, maybe you're pretty good at jumping and athletics.” And you can bring your skills to bear, which we're gonna talk about in a second. But, still, if you roll badly, it's gonna go badly. And, if you roll medium, you add a little bit of expertise that you have, but it's still not exactly what you want to happen. And you'll hear us talk about natural ones and natural 20s. All you have to know is a natural one is like, on a scale of one to 20, it's a one. It's the worst that could possibly have happened and not just you trip on a rock, but maybe you actually injure yourself. And a 20 is the best it could ever be. You leap onto the rooftop. You discover something you need. You leap over two rooftops, you know. And the player and the dungeon master together in both situations, depending on the group or your style or what you want to do, you guys collaborate on what happens next.
Eric: You also need kind of that tension of failure. Like, Amanda, you told me this story. When you first saw your brother playing Dungeons and Dragons, you're like, “Oh, that must be so boring, where you just say what you do and then you do it.”
Amanda: But games, I hear, are not fun unless there is challenge. And --
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: So, it is important that not everything goes perfectly well every time. That means that you have to try different things. If you can't jump over it, maybe you can go around it. If you aren't able to get somebody to do what you want, maybe you trick them into doing it. Maybe you pick their pocket. There's a lot of different problem solving elements that come into play.
Eric: Yeah. And there's also a reason why the dice doesn't just have one and 20s. Like, you need the in between. Sometimes, things go okay or then there's a consequence. And that's how the story kind of progresses instead of just people making things up whenever they want.
Amanda: Tell us a little bit about abilities. So, you'll hear on mic Eric asked us for checks or modifiers. And the exact vocabulary is not very important. But the basic idea here is that each of our characters are good at different things. And we get to sort of choose areas that we are really good at and then add a little bit of a bonus to every role we do in that arena. So, Eric, tell us a bit about the abilities.
Eric: Right. So, there are six skills. There is strength, which is like strength. Things that have to do with your body. There is dexterity, which is quickness. Your ability to do flips and jump around. A constitution has to do with your hit points. But, constitution, you would think of like, “Are you able to eat a piece of trash and not vomit?” Like, pigs have very high constitution.
Amanda: And I have very low constitution and cannot eat dairy.
Eric: Right. Exactly. Amanda has very low constitution. Then you have wisdom and intelligence, which is about the things that your – your mind is good at. The difference between the two is that intelligence is book learning and wisdom is street smarts. So, intelligence includes your knowledge of magic and includes your knowledge of history and religion. While wisdom is like, “Hey, do you know how to interact with this animal? Do you think that this person is lying or not?’ Different classes are the different types of jobs or abilities you might have as a character. Depending on if you're an intelligence-based person, you know, a lot of book learning. Like, you’re a wizard. But, if you have a lot of wisdom, you might be like a ranger or someone who interacts with animals or like a sorcerer. Someone who just, like, has innate good magic inside them. And, finally, there's charisma, which is talking to other people and also the magic that comes off of talking to other people.
Amanda: And each of these six skills has a bunch of different specialized abilities within them. So, just because, for example, your intelligence generally is rather low, if you practice magic, you might be really good at magic.
Eric: So, underneath the strength umbrella, you'll have athletics. Underneath the dexterity umbrella, you'll have acrobatics. So, flipping as opposed to just being nimble. You'll hear perception checks a lot, which is under the wisdom umbrella. That's if you're able to see. But then you can see investigation, which is under intelligence. So, your ability to look for things because of what you've seen before in your experience. And then things that happen with charisma, performance, going on stage, intimidation, getting somebody to do what you want from threatening to fight them, but not actually fighting them and then, like, persuade would be under charisma.
Amanda: So, how specifically do these checks and roles work when you ask us to, , ike make an animal handling check?
Eric: Let's say Amanda is playing, like, Guenhwyvar the brave, who is a knight. And she also loves dogs. It’s A fantasy world, where Amanda can hang out with dogs, right?
Amanda: Yes, no allergies in D&D.
Eric: Right. So, Guenhwyvar is out in the forest. She's walking around. And she sees a wolf. Amanda, you can decide what to do with Guenhwyvar as she sees a wolf in the forest.
Amanda: So, maybe I will try to say, “Here, doggy, good boy.”
Eric: Okay. So, if you want to call the wolf a doggy --
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: -- and pat them on the head, that would require a specific ability. You would do an animal handling check. So, Amanda would look on her character sheet. And there is a number that's associated with animal handling. Let's say Guenhwyvar has always loved dogs. You might have, like, a plus five to animal handling, right?
Amanda: So, I add that to whatever the dice tells me when I roll it.
Eric: Right. So, I'm gonna ask you to roll an animal handling check. Roll, roll, roll. You got a 15. So, the 15 from the dice plus the five that Guenhwyvar is already good at is a 20. That is very good. So, the wolf bounces over to you and licks your face. And what do you do when the wolf flicks your face?
Amanda: I say, “Yay, I love dogs. I'm not gonna sneeze whatsoever.”
Eric: And you give it big pats.
Amanda: It’s fantasy.
Eric: Yeah, give it big pats.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: So, that is kind of like the distillation of everything in Dungeons and Dragons. You can see that Amanda playing as Guenhwyvar decided what to do in that situation. I didn't say automatically make an animal handling check to befriend the wolf. You could have fought the wolf. You could have tried to run away. You could have climbed a tree. But, because you decided to befriend the wolf, we rolled the ability associated with the thing that you're going to do.
Amanda: And that also brings up the idea of talking as a player versus playing in character. And, because we are telling a story, we want it to be immersive. We want you to really get lost in it and get to know our characters. Whenever the players talk to one another or we talk to a character that Eric is playing as a DM, maybe a shopkeeper that we have to talk to or one of our friends that we see most weeks and most episodes, we talk to them character to character. But then we always have the ability of asking a question. Just person to person, being like, “Hey, Eric, as the DM, can I try A, B or C? Or, hey, Julia, as my co-player, do you want to try doing this? Or, hey, Brandon, did you have a magic item that I remembered from two weeks ago?”
Eric: Although I know, as the DM, what's going to happen, like, the character might not. So, it's important to interact with all these different characters and talk to each other and, like, play in the space of the story.
Amanda: Yeah, it's very show, don't tell. You don't tell us there's a heist happening at this location. You're gonna go solve it tonight or in this session. But you kind of give us clues. You give us opportunities. You entice us and our characters to go where you want us to go. And we do sometimes. In other times, we don’t.
Eric: And that's okay if you don't do what I want. Because what I want doesn't necessarily matter. Yeah. Like, I can prep things ahead of time about where I think things will happen and what's going to happen in the world. And things might happen, like, not onscreen or things that the characters don't know. Like, that's okay. It's up to the characters to control the story.
Amanda: And, to help you differentiate between when we're talking as people and when we're talking as our characters, we use character voices. So, we differentiate a little bit as well. And Eric has a whole library of voices he uses for the different non-player characters and PCs that we meet along the way.
Eric: Oi, love, this is one of my character voices.
Amanda: It's not one. And it shouldn’t be.
Eric: It’s not one. Oi, I’m the bartender.
Amanda: We have to go to more bars.
Eric: Yeah. All of the – all bartenders sound like that.
Amanda: And, every two episodes, we're going to publish what we call an Afterparty, which is where all four of us just as people making a podcast, sit down and talk about our experiences playing in that session. We debrief. We answer listener questions. We talk about news and different happenings in the world of role-playing games and D&D specifically. So, they're not mandatory to enjoy the story. But, if you like that kind of thing and you like listening to director’s commentaries on D&D, those are there for you to enjoy every two episodes. You want to hear these tutorials in action, in an actual game of D&D, the beginning of Campaign 1, our first storyline, the first two episodes have, like, annotated versions. They start with Beginners Start Here. And, every few minutes, you'll hear my voice pop in and explain what's happening, whether that's a check or roll or a decision being made or something D&D wise being referenced. And it's sort of like an applied lesson – applied theory for you. That as well as the first episode of Campaign 2 in Lake Town City, which we are just starting is available at jointhepartypod.com or in your podcast app where you're listening right now. So, go enjoy Episode 1.
Eric: Hooray.
Amanda: Yay.
Theme Music
Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil