E20: Always Adapting

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you're listening to No plot only lore a podcast about games and the tables we play them at your DMs tonight and every night are Josh and Chris you can find us on all podcast platforms or check us out at nolot only.com if you like what you hear today please rate and review the show and share it with everyone you've ever met welcome back to no plot only lore Josh's mom's favorite DND podcast does your mom listen to D and podcast does she listen to our podcast she should start she's laid up in the hospital for the next I don't know how long so she's got nothing but time on her hands so uh yeah got the time of recording we've got like 16 17 episodes yeah up and ready she yeah we've got like hours of content that she could just be perusing she you're in the hospital right now thanks for listening if you're in the hospital let us know if we put you there due to our incredible hilarious jokes that made you fall down the stairs and break things super hilarious and informative that's what we aim to be lethally hilarious you know I don't think anyone has ever accused me of being that funny has anyone accused me of being funny oh no uh no what I mostly hear is that like I'm the comic relief and you're the like um more stoed borderline pretentious one of the Pod so borderline I mean I need to get way more pretentious Jesus yeah this is you at half strength yeah yeah no you don't you haven't even seen my final form let's fucking go I'll show you pretentious yeah so uh let's talk about adaptation and homage today yeah yeah this is just like a roundabout easy way for us to talk about everything that's D and D that isn't actually DND d by you know pop culture wise mostly this is just an excuse for me to finally talk about my balers gate character on on the Pod yeah yeah yeah there's there's the truth there I man you've you've been deep diving I it's not that b balers gate bounced off me it's just I chose maybe the worst way to play it and so I still just can't get like sucked in like you have what is the worst way to play how did how did you approach balers Gate 3 as I I am playing a co-op campaign with another person who has already beat the game and has as wonky of a schedule as I do so I play I play balers gate for 2 hours like maybe every 3 weeks um so I got through act one that's I've got like 300 hours on this game yeah I I bet you if I pull it up I've got less than a part-time job's worth of hours um you should absolutely stop doing that and just fucking play the game I'm deeply committed I have played 14 hours wow okay so seven 2hour sessions yeah of balers Gate 3 okay yes um that's I didn't do that I played it the fun way yeah this it's really bad for engagement and like immersiveness um yeah to do what I'm doing uh also I realize now it's currently not installed because uh uh I play it so infrequently I it like sort of Auto uninstalled to save space yeah yeah uh all right yeah I really horrifying well you know what it's uh self-defense mechanism because I can't afford to lose any more time out of my week to some new hobby SL addiction 300 hours Josh I need you to join me in this heroin please no I Chris Chris I can't there's so do you know how many games I have with 300 plus hours on them like I too many it's way too many get rid one of those get rid of one of those and start playing some bers gate instead I I fucking loved balers gate I bet you did and part of that is that I am playing it in a way that is not the worst okay uh um I started playing a few months ago many months ago and just like went in completely blind hadn't read any reviews of it or anything I just saw that there was a new balers gate game and I'd already played one and two and loved them both yeah um and like those came out I think balers Gate 1 had a very heavily edited version of the DND d 2 mechanics yeah gate 2 was built with Third Edition yeah like I remember putting a significant amount of time into older balers Gates and I think the wonkiness of the rules set they were adapting is what kept me from having fun um for balers gate one it was real wonky yeah but balers gate 2 and then never winter nights after that yeah both of those were I think made with the the Third Edition rules for d and d and both of those got so so many hours of play out of me and then I also started playing a bunch of like the fan-made content right right afterwards um so I I put like probably a thousand hours into Neverwinter Nights over the course of multiple years and see I think I think my problem was that like I at the time those came out was were I was playing some like the of the what isometric RPGs um but they were designed from the ground up to be you know played on the computer and using their own rules sets that didn't like have to conform to some arbitrary design um logic you know like right it's unfair to compare other isometric RPGs to things like uh to things like Fallout one and two or um well that's funny cuz Fallout one and two were both made with gerps yeah which is hilarious because I hate gerps uh like the the entire system that they put together is just like a a kit bash of gerps and it's great it works real smooth when you've got a computer doing all of the Rolling In Math for you right that's maybe that's their problem is that they shipped a thing on paper instead of silicone and it just didn't work what else was I playing at the time that worked really well um oh I did play a bit of plcape Torment um okay there's odd I never got into that one but I think it was mostly just the I never got a copy of it yeah I played some do you remember Divinity original sin yeah yeah I played some of that I'm pretty sure that's the same company that made this that made balers Gate 3 oh that makes sense I played some Jagged Alliance I'm trying to see what else I played at the time I remember playing I can't tell if it was a shadow run modification or not but there was some I I sunk too much time into some weird stuff that was like um steampunk e that like wasn't crazy Arcanum here we go I I found it I found it on the internet Arcanum of Steamworks and Magic obscura uh everything that you just said gave me like weird 2005 flashbacks to people wearing gears on their top hat and I'm having none of it Josh having none of it so this game came out in 2001 no yeah um I'm trying to see if it was based on anything or if it was just their own system oh Al it was it was a Sierra game and Sierra really influenced my Sierra games yeah they really influenced my my RPG stuff for a long time um yeah yeah I can't figure out no whatever it's probably not that important um cuz yeah it doesn't seem oh I see uh I guess this was all developed by former Fallout people uh it was a bunch of people from from interplay and including Tim Kane who okay that tracks yeah so yeah yeah follow team was good the the first two Fallout games I actually think that the first two Fallout games are some of the most important role playing games ever done on computer yeah like I have a whole rant about how important Fallout one and two are okay and how going back to play them now they feel really quaint yeah but that's because they were the first ones that did a whole bunch of really important shit right like the the plot lines and the the branching dialogue that you were seeing like the incredibly complicated branching dialogue relationships between um characters uh social skills used in interesting and complex ways um yeah just there there's so much that they got right in those games that had never even been attempted yet and it just kind of set the form for what we were going to be doing for computer role playing games going forward um yeah yeah anyway we we're not here to talk about that though we're here to talk about how balers gate isn't actually D and D right it's it's very close to DND in fact it steals a lot of things from DND um but you really have to remember that it's it's aware of and taking advantage of uh technologies that don't exist on tabletop um I would even back up a little further than that and say that it is a game that has many of the same rules as DND but it's a completely different game yeah yeah yeah that makes sense like the the the format is completely different right like you are playing through a story that has already been created and is all being dictated to you by voice actors who were in a studio who recorded all of their lines there is no ability for improvisation yeah there is no um like you never speak as your character you make dialogue choices right you never speak as your character this is not Dungeons and Dragons this is a an attempt at at an approximation this is Dungeons and dialogue trees Dungeons and dialogue trees and double crossbows yeah um and like there are some differences the rule set as well just to make it flow better in a computer role playing game cuz like there there is some shit in Dungeons and Dragons that if you were trying to handle it automatically would just be clunky as all hell um I think probably my favorite example is the fact that uh guidance works on skill checks and yeah yeah yeah some other checks yeah that I mean that's come up even like not that far not that long ago I was like oh yeah remember this only works for certain things we can't use this at the table cuz we've all been playing too much balers gate yeah yeah and like the the one thing that I will get for it is that it's been a fantastic like gateway drug to DN like I've already got players at my table who would never have played D and with us except they'd played balers gate beforehand yeah yeah then one of my players go ahead one of my players um had never picked up a set of dice before and had no interest in Dungeons and Dragons at all but he got 35 hours into balers gate and was like Hey is balers gate kind of like DND D and we were like it basically is the same thing and he was like sweet sign me the fuck up yeah yeah exactly like there's there's a new player that's joined our campaign that I am 99% sure his entire exposure to like the world of tabletop RPGs was wow balers Gate 3 sure is popular that looks like fun and now he's and it is he's deep we've ruined that man so fast it doesn't take long yeah you start uh start buying books and trying to figure out character builds that's the thing I do the mo okay so my confession on balers Gate 3 is I haven't finished the game I keep going back to the beginning to try new character builds yeah over and over and over again and now I'm at the point where I'm just just like tweaking those character builds and I still haven't finished the fucking game and I just I need to I need to buckle down and actually get it done but every time I do I'm like but if I play an abjuration wizard with armor of agius then I get like better Shield points yeah become basically Invincible there's there's so so much of that and that that's another I think Point against it being Dungeons and Dragons and I'm not dragging the game for that that's actually like the thing that I kind of want to talk about is like the nature of adaptation and like the ways that DND has been adapted in the past but like it is very much an adaptation and so the ability to go back and just retool your character completely from the ground up and then play through all of the exact same scenarios again is something that you will never have in Dungeons and Dragons yeah like you can go back and like rebuild your character you can play through the same campaign again but there are going to be different choices that were made and your DM is going to improvise in different ways and you're going to improvise in different ways and it's going to be a different experience each time where that just isn't the case in yeah for sure like I I the thing I love most about any RPG system like that it's just like because you know I'm at the point where I just want to be like Goofy and iterative so MH you know having that freedom just like ah let's just start again do it again whatever like that's that's that's the best part for me well they also have a mechanic for changing your class in the middle of the game so like you can go and talk to um Withers who's just a a skeleton guy who hangs out at your Camp oh right gold and he will reset your class completely I I have not investigated that because I got I I saw him and I was like oh he's there if you like die or something I don't know and then I wandered off because I uh I'm really bad at like fully paying attention to the amount of dialogue that this game will throw at me um it's so much and but and okay if I can sidebar for a second there is simultaneously way too much and not enough dialogue in some cases where like it didn't fully explain to me that Withers could turn me into a completely different character but also so after like learning after taking a potion that let me talk to dogs I did not get enough information from my con from my like conversation with a dog to know that if I defend myself when he attacks me I will no longer be a paladin like yeah yeah um yeah like I you find you find a body in the woods and you talk to the dog the dog's like d I'm real scared I'm worried about my dead Master don't you come near I'm like hey man it's going to be okay no it's not he bites me I kick him back and suddenly I'm the bad guy yeah now if you uh if you pass that skill check you can actually get that dog in your camp and he becomes summonable as a companion I mean he's also talk about yeah good luck getting him as a companion now but like I okay I I kind of like the idea that like you have to pay attention to every interaction you have because you might wind up with a companion accidentally if you're nice to everybody or whatever um but obscuring something as important as becoming an oathbreaker Paladin behind a conversation with a dog that you probably can't actually talk to doesn't seem very fair to me yeah no it's uh like am I just supposed to objectively know that kicking a vicious dog is a bad thing it's biting me I mean what do I do run away dogs is generally not something that is going to be rewarded these are life ands and you're supposed to kick them yeah um no but like yeah I get where you're saying like as with any computer or console roleplaying game sometimes your dialogue options don't match up to the reality of the thing that is happening yeah or like there's is something that you know must have made sense to the writer of the situation that doesn't make the same sense to you and so you pick a dialogue option that you think is going to be like neutral or good and then somebody has like a crazy off the chain reaction to that yeah right they like get really mad at you or you um have like a mildly insulting answer for a thing and they take it as playful yeah right and like you have no idea what the tone is going to be like before you choose those dialogue options but once you've made them oh boy you're an anti Paladin now yeah character has changed fundamentally because of your interaction with this silly dog right and I was very much trying to like play the straight laced Paladin the whole time and all I did was defend myself against what I thought was a hostile creature cuz I'm playing a video game they didn't make it clear that the option is to just like run away from a Mad Dog yeah or you could do uh non-lethal damage but non-lethal damage is hidden behind a weird submenu right like were you aware that you can do non-lethal damage I am now I okay I I had a there was there was apparently at some point in this like weird integrated tutorial where it was like select non-lethal damage to knock this person out I'm like all right cool and that was like 10 hours ago so right that information is gone because for the most part I kill the Goblins I don't just run around punching them like to sleep there is one character interaction um to the the Dr lady in the goblin Camp um depending on the plot options that you decide to go through you can I either side with her and like light the Druid Grove on fire right or you can kill her to save the Druid that's in the the dungeon and most of the time if you're playing a good character that's going to be the choice you go with right like you're going to clear out all the the bosses fucking Goblin camp and call it a day but if you do non-lethal damage on her in this phase she actually shows up in the second act oh and you and you can recruit her as a companion without having to light the Druid Grove on fire well I didn't know that me either until somebody on the internet told me and so I started a new game well and that's H that's simultaneously like the blessing and the curse of a game like balers Gate 3 it is right some of the most intricate game development you've ever seen um but like it's basically the antithesis of completionism cuz yeah you're never like when I played let's say Skyrim I have hundreds of hours in skyro it's all on one character I did everything on them and all of the choices were so binary that I understand the directions they could have gone so I have made a secondary character that's done some of the major stuff from the other side just to see what it was like and honestly I don't feel like I missed anything because again it was so binary just like oh yeah this side won the fight or whatever like no big deal well I think that's something that like if I were to take something away from this design Choice it's that no two people playing this game blind for the first time are going to have the same experience with it oh yeah yeah yeah right like you could be having water cooler talk about this game and we we did at my workplace cuz like I'm not the only person who's playing it yeah um and we would discuss like directions that we had taken in the game and I would be like well hey did you do this thing and they were like no I did this other thing instead I had no idea that that existed and I was like I had no idea the thing that you just said existed and so we have to like go back and like take a look at what uh the other path was looking like and I think that's really interesting as a game design Choice um I don't think it's sustainable in the the media environment that we live in no like I found out that I can recruit Menara that way by watching a YouTube video which is also like in my mind like a very big Point against balers gate is that there is a lot of stuff like some people really like discoverability or whatever but like it feels like they went too far does that make sense like yeah they've hidden too many things under like non-obvious interactions um mhm to the point where like you need almost to like sit down and spend a couple of hours watching YouTube to find all the weird options that you could have had for your playthrough that aren't like you know expressly manifest as you walk through the the storyline of the game um my recommended videos right now is just a fucking M of like yeah Chill Vibes to study to and then balers gate content it's just ridiculous yeah welc welcome to the age of the algorithm where if you watch two or three videos they suddenly decide that that's your entire personality for the next week and that's all you get served up you know what I haven't seen a Jordan Peterson video in a while though I'm feeling pretty good about that thank God for that yeah yeah so I think like as as an adaptation I think balers gate is probably the closest you're going to get to an actual session of DnD until we have aidm right like and even then like the aidm scare me so we're not going to get too hard into that but like if you're going to be playing D and D on a computer by yourself I think bers Gate 3 is probably the closest you're going to get to that kind of experience yeah but it's still an adaptation and it still has right like the the disconnects that you would expect to see from uh like adaptation of a thing so sure the rules are slightly different and and also it it's got to re in like complete Freedom right into like a certain a certain box that can operate in because it's not like you're sitting there with like literally AI procedurally generating like consequences to your choices or or whatever stupid thing you could decide to do like it's it's you know it's a game it's not you know it it it it can't be 500 gigabytes on your computer just like what ifs right um that would be kind of cool though I sure in theory in theory that would be kind of cool but also like you know for a fact they don't have play testers like me who will make that game scream for Mercy within 10 minutes yeah no that's true and I do that to like normal like well-designed functional games just by being myself let alone having an infinite you know uh sandbox to play in yeah no that's true what about uh other adaptation types like did did you see Dungeons and Dragons onor among Thieves I did I I saw it in theaters like a good boy because I firmly believe in voting with your wallet and I was also trying to get that big empty D20 popcorn bucket which it turns out never really made it to Canada which is God damn it BS what I I I just said God damn it uh yeah I think the same thing happened with the uh the fuckable bucket came out with for Dune right the I didn't see any of those the dun worm flashlight bucket yeah yeah yeah yeah um yeah I didn't see any of those at the theater when I was there could have just been run out no apparently like the the D20 bucket only made it to Toronto which is like oh okay the most frustrating part of being Canadian is that we only have three cities according to the rest of the North America so what's the third one there's Vancouver Toronto and Montreal that's it oh I forgot about Montreal well I it's burned into my memory because every band I want to see only goes to those three cities on their Canadian tour right yeah I I have the benefit of living across a ferry from Vancouver so I do have the opportunity to get over to Vancouver for a lot of those things if I want to I don't want to pay fairy costs for it necessarily but like no but I I can get there it's like I don't want to go to the party but I want to be invited you know then I can choose yeah um so what did you what did you think about D and D honor among Thieves um I thought it was it was a good way to sort of introduce what at its like core D and D is about without getting to like mechanics heavy like there's there was lots of times where you would see like a puzzle or some sort of spell or something like that and people who had played D and D could be like oh I know what that's referencing haha good for me I'm so smart but like the average movie goer didn't get bogged down with watching like Jonathan roll a D20 to see if he made his Athletics or his acrobatics check to avoid getting taken out the window or whatever like right yeah it's um yeah I I thought it was also very smart of them to like really cut like a I think a pretty broad swath through like things to introduce um MH in a way that like didn't get it bogged down like you see those um oh what are they called the little brains on four legs intellect devours int I knew it was a devour of some sort intellect devours um you see them but like they're not like first of all they don't Point them like oh my God that is an intellect of hour I better watch out because blah blah blah blah blah Exposition rules that's funny they actually they absolutely do well kind of it's funny that you say that because like the the Paladin is like intellect of ours they'll only eat like something of intelligence and then the like intellect of hours just walk past them like is that the intellect of hours just like ignore them because they're not intelligent enough to eat right right but like the they were a quick gag and then gone yeah right and there was lots of things that just like popped up for a brief Flash and made the world feel richer and more true to what like D and D is and then left and we're it's like hey no remember we're trying to tell a story about this adventure like there's lots of lots of opportunities to explore other stuff in other games right yeah and and I I appreciated that they were coming away from some of the stuff that we've seen all the time right right like there there is a dragon in this movie and he is very very fat and it's hilarious and it's a great visual bit but it isn't like the stand dragon that you see in Game of Thrones right right like it's it's big and it's scary but it's big and it's scary for completely different reasons than the Game of Thrones dragons would be but right we're we're all used to dragons we all know what dragons look like right but also but this one he's lore accurate which is the best parts like yeah they they dug into the weird corners of d and d and brought them out to the light be like hey by the way like it we're not all about because so I think that's my big problem with like previous D and media is that it stayed in the very like safe and familiar zones and stayed in a lot of tropes and like didn't differentiate itself from like other high fantasy offerings in a way that made it memorable other than by being incredibly bad right yeah yeah there's always that the the the first Dungeons and Dragons movie with one of the weigh-in Brothers I don't remember which and Thora bir they're the same person and Thora Birch and the way the way Brothers no all all of the wein brothers are the same person it's okay you just hire the wein brothers and somebody shows up and you're like that looks like a wayin and uh Is It Michael Ironside it probably was irons Jeremy Irons oh okay um just Che scenery that actually sounds like J yeah he was just like he he took his scar performance and dialed it up to 11 yeah yeah he was just so campy and Goofy and was the best part of that movie which is not hard for that movie no no low low bar to clear yeah I don't even remember the name of the kid that played the the lead I don't think I've seen him in anything since yeah there's probably a good reason for that well and I'm sure it's one of those situations where like hey you this is your first for into acting here's a this they're like billing it to him as like this is a major IP and you know blah blah blah then like it just kills his career right yeah yeah did you ever see the second one no God no I didn't I didn't see the first one for a very long time and I don't even fully remember it like yeah um the second one was a direct to DVD sequel oh that's already bad yeah um it was a significantly more serious movie yeah and the only through line between the two movies was that the guy with the tentacle ears came back oh good he was the only actor to return from the original movie that's the guy you want definitely main billing on that one he was he was the main villain he did a great job um movie itself was better than the first one that's okay good good for him I will say like for the record it was Marlon wayin um oh okay because he kind of does everything um I don't really know why they refer to the WAN Brothers anymore because like it's just him I think I refer to the wein brothers because I am from the 1900s right that is how I remember them is as a Duo doing haha funny us doing drag oh right like that that's my exposure to their work outside of like the geek stuff that I've watched so and like Not Another Teen Movie but again I think it was only like one of them one might have been the same one um yeah so like my my exposure to their work is fairly limited but I largely remember them as being built as the weighin brothers yeah yeah that's fair White Chicks did impact the culture in a significant way okay it what didn't White Chicks give us that like Terry Crew um car singing gift like that's a pretty important gift culturally pretty important gift culturally and also um Terry Cruz just being like open and cool that his date was either a trans woman or a crossdressing dude very clearly yeah yeah like a super chill with it thanks Terry I also always an ally I I forgot the D and D movie had Tom Baker in it oh yeah yeah you know the fourth doctor and his iconic scarf were also in the D and D movie scarf wasn't well okay whatever he was wearing a scarf though he was playing like a druid or some shit close enough I don't remember much about that movie it's been a very long time since I've watched it and it's going to be a very long time before I watch it again oh you the first time we do like a live stream it's going to be a movie night with the first D and movie we'll have to watch the second one as well we'll do like a 4 Hour stream we watch both of them and I will torture you with the second one as well great do I get like rewarded later with the third one or uh we could watch Battleship after speaking of adaptations oh God okay yeah so all right like behind the curtain a little bit we were discussing you know the idea of talking about like d andd in Pulp culture in general and I was like well hey are we just going to talk about D and D are we going to talk about like all sorts of tabletop stuff cuz you know there's lots of media for like we've discussed 40K before there's tons of different 40K media um there's even been like there are Pathfinder board games and and stuff like that and video games um because we're talking about video games and what's the first thing that Christopher suggests it's it's Battleship the movie ah so good H have have you seen it I have seen some clips C because I watched the full movie like as did you as an unabashed chanting Tatum Stan uh oh yeah yeah great oh sorry I keep forgetting it's not actually chanting Tatum um it's no it's fake chanting Tatum it's it's wish.com chanting Tatum Taylor kitu oh right I forgot wish wish and Alibaba died now it's just Teemu or whatever yeah freaking Taylor kitch remember when Taylor kit was supposed to be the next big star and then they did that like the the um uh John Carter movie and everyone was like oh they're finally going to try new Princess of Mars and they did that and they were like oh no it's would have been an okay Mo like I didn't hate John Carpenter of Mars John Carter I probably should have John carp wait John Carpenter of Mars would be fucking incredible' be so good that happen I love that idea so much John call my agent we got some talking to do no John Carter I I watched it in the theater on a date and I liked it significantly more than my date did it's a fun movie it's it's a they shot it in the knees like almost immediately first of all changing the name to something boring ass like John Carter which does nothing to tie it into like the history of the novels or just like the fact that it's a cool sci-fi movie there's like no Steve the dude guy you're like all right well that doesn't sound boring let's like like Jos vs hey that's a great movie how dare you I like legitimately curious what else opened on the same day with it that would have drawn more people cuz they really just did everything they could to tank it like a March release is so close to that like February Wasteland that I don't remember I I remember that I was pretty excited to see it and then I actually had a pretty good time because it was like Goofy and kind of tongue and cheek and I was taking it very much in like a I I was accepting it in a Starship Troopers style of movie right like I was I was accepting that it was a bit of a PTI and that it was wasn't going to be taking itself too terribly seriously um and my date was very concerned about my taste after that which like yeah like honestly good on her having good judgment that way but no fair it's just okay um looking at what else came out that day all John Carpenter had to do was just say like John Carpenter of mars or something like that H cuz it was competing with um an Eddie Murphy like dumpster movie called a thousand words I don't know if you remember that one and then like nothing at all I recognize whatsoever until uh salmon fishing in the Yemen which is like just yeah if not a great comparison and then uh Juro Dreams of Sushi title yeah yeah jro of sushi was great unbelievable documentary but like fantastic the kind of it's It's not competition for John Carter right no very different kind of movie but yeah I've really enjoyed jod dreams associ and then literally nothing else released that day have I ever even heard of at all right uh they they hamstrung that one real hard and I think it's because they realized that like it isn't a good movie yeah it's not it's a fun movie it's fine enoyed the movie It's adequate it's not a good movie no yeah um but you do get to see Mark Strong at is like Mark strongest he is very Mark Strong yeah and I I love everything that guy does I I'm not super familiar with his U uh the gentleman uh okay hold on what's J's fine it's great uh he was in sorry yeah the the kingsman uh he's in sh Sherlock Holmes uh Shazam as he's the villain in Shazam okay yeah he's in the imitation game he's yeah he's in yeah he's just so good Green Lantern rock and roll ah kickass now now that I've now that I've got his head in my head yeah now that you're thinking about who he actually is you're like oh yeah actually this guy is a great character actor yeah he he makes every movie he's in Better yeah um yeah except for John Carter except for John Carter yeah his his rolling Kingsman was really strong yeah it's it's awesome yeah anyway we're real off track yeah sorry we got we got talking about weird adaptations of of tabletop stuff and you had to bring up battleship bring up battleship I think I think my favorite thing about that I've ever seen about Battleship was it was used as an example for how to like how Michael Bay is very good at one specific style of thing right yeah because when you try to imitate it it doesn't work right and like battleship is very much trying to be a Michael Bay film yeah and failing right especially like with like swinging low around your protagonist with the telephoto to get like the the big like move of the background uh was used as an example of just like when Michael Bay does that there's a lot happening in the frame right like there's a lot of movement that's occurring in the frame right and in Battleship it's just a lot of the ocean well also famously in the game Battleship which they were weirdly slavish to none of the Waring pieces move whatsoever good good um yeah so adapting a role-playing game into a movie has taken a couple of tries yeah to get it I think right in tone like I I think that's the thing that honor among Thieves did really really well yeah was the the tone of that movie was Pitch Perfect yeah right it it felt like a campaign that me and my friends have played yeah um the first one tried to take itself too seriously when it wasn't doing off-hand jokes and then the second one tried to take itself too seriously way too hard um and then honor among Thieves was just a good fun movie about going on an adventure and having relationships with people yeah and I think it what it did well was get to like the heart of what D and D is it's the relationships between characters and a bit of fun highp speed problem solving yeah um and I didn't realize that we are we are currently kicking at like the 50 minute Point um we've got a lot of stuff to cover this might end up being a two-parter that's fine um um books yeah oh God books we want to talk about books if we have to okay listen let's let's talk about the big one that everyone probably recognizes immediately DFT still fucking deran whatever his name is and the med you gave me shit earlier I called him driz and you said drist yeah very like very firmly and then you're GNA come back and like mispronounce his fucking name come on bro I I don't care about the rest of it just being pedantic about the first word um listen ra salvator has gotten better at writing I will say that so I accidentally read a uh Trilogy of drist uh set when he was still initially in meno bonen um and I understand now that those books were written much later in the series um I went back and tried to read the first book in the series because that's what I do and it was I don't often describe books as like unreadable but that thing was campfire fuel it was just I I'm not an elitist when it comes to books I chewed through like the hunger gam stuff which is just like very light ya stuff you know I I read the schiestl library Publications um and to say that it was amateurish is I feel like a direct insult to nanor rimo all right yeah I I Okay small confession yeah I have never read an RA salvator novel okay not one good for you um I read the dragon Lance books yeah when I was a young yeah uh really enjoyed them when I was young yeah um started reading one of them to my son and I was having a good time and he was bored yeah I I remember I I've only read one of them that I picked up from like a used bookstore and some of the characters were sort of interesting and one of them was so off-putting that I didn't bother to read another book um Rin no Racin was fine you know who it was we've talked about him before oh it was oh yeah it was fucking tasslehoff burfoot yeah that's the one um Taz so to like slog through how slow those books can be and then be punished with the appearance of Taz really put me off that whole series oh my gosh all right um I have occasionally hung out with Dave gross at the store CU he's he's an edmontonian yeah and would come in every once in a while I've never read of his books I hear they're great like that um the fact that I like I read a lot of fiction and I've never heard of this person probably tells you something about the quality of them um the first time his name came to my attention as an author because like for a while he was just coming in and he was a a client a guy like he was he was just a guy and like he was fine to talk to and he was fun and he told me that he was a writer and I was like fucking cool and uh but the first time his name came to my attention is was actually Penny Arcade this back when they were doing the uh like the the actual play stuff that they were doing and there was like a whole write up about how great his D and D books are and so I I mentioned it to him when he came into the store and he was like oh yeah that's really flattering and I was like okay maybe I should read this guy's books and then I just never did and I feel kind of bad about it because he is a really sweet dude but just NE literally never picked up one of his books I mean he seems like a nice guy but I'm just looking I don't know he's got stuff on good reads I guess that like overall his books are average like four stars which seems okay three and a half four it seems like he's switched to writing primarily about Pathfinder um yes that has been a big thing like um when I knew him it was during the uh the fifth edition sorry the fourth edition transfer um where everybody was up in arms about D and D changing their edition okay so a lot of the people that I knew in the industry moved over to Pathfinder because they were uninterested in doing whatever fourth was up to I see um and I think Dave was one of the folks that uh that hopped on that train okay yeah literally never I actually have a bit of a prejudice against DND novels m and like to to be clear it is not a matter of quality because like I read some of the absolute worst bullshit right books right like I I am a huge proponent of progression fantasy novels that are FanFiction level at their best and at their worst are just absolute fucking schlock yeah yeah yeah I and I can't read D and D books yeah so I don't know we've we I don't think we've discussed this on the Pod before but a couple of years ago I found someone on like an upcycling group local to me that was just giving away a bunch of D and D books and I got well not stuck with I stuck my neck out because I was curious and I got a combination of things most interestingly a bunch of old Forgotten Realms novels including stuff about like elminster and his early days and stuff like that I think that stuff maybe has value in like just wanting to enrich the world you're in but it's so just I don't it feels like homework it feels like a chore to read to get that history I I tried there's so this lady apparently had a very specific taste uh in what she read there's a lot of stuff from this uh Christopher Rowley guy um who I think his writing like DND D adjacent stuff but like the titles of the books are like a sword for a dragon and like right on the cover of the book is a dragon holding a sword and by chapter 2 this dragon has received no less than three new swords um that is so many swords it's far more swords than he has hands yeah and it turns out I'd never thought of dragons as having hands but this guy is really break the mold in my in my head now he's doing that thing from One Piece where he's got like one sword in either hand and then he's got a third one in his mouth I think I think he just I think he I didn't even get far enough into him to like okay look the whole point of the the series is that dragons are like intelligent and you can have like handlers for them and they'll join the Army except the kid the person who handles them is like 15 16 17 so two chapters in he is as horny as any teenager you've ever met and has multiple times been like boy howdy I can't wait to go to the big city and visit the brothel and I'm like this is odd like it's just I'm not normally like squeamish in fiction but this is just weird behavior for this child you read the Warhammer 40K books like you you're fine doing some Grim dark like a fulness that's just some deviant nonsense oh yeah deviant is the word for it yeah um I think we're going to have to do a like second installment of this for all the homages I I did not expect us to take this much time talking about uh the D and D movies well I mean yeah like you know us we get down a rabbit hole Yeah and we vary and whatever there's I I think we do need to do a part two where we talk about specific ially like live play stuff um adaptations of that live play you know obviously there's plenty of referential work in like other media so yeah like let's put a let's put a pin in it for now we'll come back to it next week and continue talking about all the fun ways that Society likes to talk about d and d and that means that I get to uh assign you homework of watching the delicious and dungeon anime because it's a double kick in the think I don't want to watch anime at the best of times and now I have to for my like not job homework mean hey thanks for making it all the way through this episode of no plot only lore if you're looking for more you can always find us at no ploton lore.com and at all the very best podcast platforms if you like what you heard today please 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