The End? The Apocalypse, Star Wars, and Why D&D Campaigns Never Finish

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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

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night are Josh and Chris. You can find us on all podcast platforms or check us out at

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noplotonlore.com. If you like what you hear today, please rate and review the show and share it with everyone you've

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ever met. Welcome back to No Plotton Only Lore. This week brought to you by the

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apocalypse. Josh, what's your opinion on the apocalypse? Uh, it's coming, but I'm not super worried about it. I'm not like

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a doomsday prepper, but I feel fairly confident in like the little bit of like

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outdoorsy bushcraft skills that I have. Uh, I hunt, I fish, I can make a

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shelter, I can make fire, uh, and I know some basic first aid. So, I think I'm

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I'm I'm ready for the apocalypse. If a zombie comes though, I'm toast.

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What's What's your preferred apocalypse? Like there's there's a lot of apocalypses to choose from. Uh if one of

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them is going to happen, which one are you looking forward to the most? Nuclear. Nuclear apocalypse. I like the

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uh the Fallout aesthetic. Um Okay. And I like the idea of living

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in a bunker for like a long time avoiding people.

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That is my nightmare. Um, not just like the the no people, but

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like living in a small confined space. I've been working from home a lot lately. Yeah. And it's getting to me.

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Um, I need to start like taking my work outside and touching grass occasionally.

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Um, I would do that if I could have a second monitor outside. Fair. Fair. I don't love radiation.

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Okay. That's probably like the idea of dying of radiation sickness is more concerning

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to me than dying in like the initial blast of a nuclear apocalypse, right?

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Um, and starvation also not a big one. Did you ever watch The Road? Yeah, I did

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actually. The uh best movie I'm never watching again. It's haunting. That's

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for sure. Um, it is so good. so incredibly good. Like the cinematography

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is beautiful. The script is fantastic. The acting is wonderful. I'm never ever watching it again. So my favorite

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version of that that I can watch over and over is Book of Eli.

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Okay. I have not seen The Book of Eli. Oh, buddy. You need to watch Book of Eli. First of all, Denzel doesn't make

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bad movies. Period. That's true. Um, second of all, the writer of uh Book of

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Eli, uh, Gary Whitta was the uh uh was it the the

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the editor-inchief of PC Gamer magazine for quite a while. Um, so he's been out

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there just cranking out solid work for a while and Book of Eli is like kind of

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brilliant and underappreciated. Yeah, I remember seeing trailers for it and not being particularly impressed. like it it

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looked um biblical in a time where I wasn't super into that. Okay.

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Like it it seemed like I already knew the book was the Bible, right? It's not exactly like a secret. Like it is. No,

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it's not it's not a secret. The the the fact that it's a Bible is not a secret. I haven't seen the movie. Yeah.

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So, like going into it knowing like I don't know if it was supposed to be a

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twist, but like I I wasn't really looking for a Jesus in my life at the

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time or kind of ever. Um, and it's it's not like you need to understand that the

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book of Eli is just like the I don't want to say red herring, but

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it's just like the mcguffin that he needs to carry to his destination.

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Okay. See, cuz I was expecting that to take a very like biblical turn by the end of it. like

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y'all need Jesus before the apocalypse or we're going to lose Jesus forever or some [ __ ] N and like that can't happen

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cuz Jesus is everywhere watching you shower. Um yeah. No, that is that is not

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first of all it's not the twist the book goes and sec second of all that's not the thrust of the movie. Um I guess I

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guess if anything the movie is trying to say that like preserving literature is

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important. Uh but that I can get behind that. Yeah. That and that comes

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secondary to like seeing how, you know, people in that world have adapted to

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this post-apocalyptic scenario. Um it Yeah, it's it's got a lot of the vibes

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of the road without being quite so bleak. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my

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favorite terrible apocalypse movie is Water World. And my second favorite

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terrible Apocalypse movie is The Postman, which I actually think is a better talking point. I haven't seen The

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Postman. I've seen Water World. Uh I was going to say like Water World's

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good. Water World is I like Water World. Water World's bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are

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two very different things. Very different things. It is not a quality film. No. Water World is fun in its own

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weird way. Yeah, I I appreciate that it was doing a take on the apocalypse that

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hadn't been done before. Yes. Um, did it succeed in its goals? I

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do not believe so. Um, yeah. I I don't think that they necessarily told the tale that they were

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looking to tell. Well, and and the entire thrust of the movie was what if Mad Max was on a boat? Like, that's the

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whole thing. Now I really want Okay. ADHD moment. I

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need Lonely Island to remake Water World. Yeah. Yeah. Water World

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2 done entirely Lonely Island style. Make it happen. [ __ ]

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Hollywood. Call us. Um we will we will get on board with that project. Actually, I will play whatever bad guy

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you need me to play. Uh do you want them writing it or just like starring in it?

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Yes. Okay. I I want them to show up with like a script that's terrible and then

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fix that script as we're shooting. Okay. Cuz I mean like sorry, but like your boy Gary has

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done a couple of post-apocalyptic movies and like The Book of Eli was great.

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After Earth was whatever. I mostly blame the fault of that on Shyamalan.

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That came out of [ __ ] nowhere. God damn. Oh, wow. I was expecting like I

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was expecting you to follow up Book of Eli with like another quality apocalypse though.

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Holy [ __ ] Yeah. Although Although Although like the next thing he did

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Rogue One. So Oh, Rogue One was good. Yeah. Like I keep trying to get my son to

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watch Rogue One and he keeps refusing. Why? I don't know. I I think he's a little

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Star Wars out right now. What have What have you been watching that's Star Wars?

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Um Well, we watched like last year we watched the entire original trilogy and

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prequel trilogy. That's only six movies and that was a year ago. It It wasn't like a year ago. was spaced

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out over the course of a year, but like and I think he also watched The Mandalorian with his mom, so he watched

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one movie every other month and that was exhausting. Um, I think he's just kind of over it

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right now. Sure. Um, we've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead. Speaking of

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apocalypses, um, I I will that's been fun. I will say like if you want to watch Star Wars that doesn't feel too

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like Star Warsy, Andor is great and leads into Rogue

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One. I have heard that andor seasons one

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and two and Rogue One are like the the prequel series that we should have had.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They are incredible. Incredible. Like the season two was just

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next level good. I haven't finished season one yet. Okay.

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I I started season one and was like, "This feels like an investment." Um like I'm actually gonna have to like sit down

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and pay attention to this. Yeah. Yeah. Where like it's it's not a background show. Yeah. You you can put Mandalorian

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on in the background. You're like, "Oh, now he's hunting a dragon or whatever." But you cannot do that with Andor.

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I had just gotten off of Ahsoka. Yeah. Where like I was in it for the lightsaber fights and literally nothing

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else. Um cuz like I I didn't watch the animated series that it's based on. Um

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so I had no idea who half of these characters were and was not invested at all. But

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um yeah, coming off of that and trying to jump right into Andor Yeah. was a big

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tonal shift. Definitely. That's Yeah, that's definitely a harsh 180.

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Um, I I will say like I have not enjoyed Ahsoka except for

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um what's his name? The Christian. No, no, no, no. I mean, he's fine. Uh the

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other uh Sithy type guy. Skull. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. The guy with the the guy with a good beard game. Yeah. Uh yeah, that guy. I He's getting replaced by the

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Hound. Yeah. which like I love that actor, but like I he's no replacement for Ray Stevenson,

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that's for sure. No. No. Um and I wonder what his approach to that character is

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going to be. Yeah. I will say like those two guys

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can like at least the Hounds like fighting style will be pretty close to

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what they were doing with Balon. Um, because I would hate I really I liked the like in a lot of ways he very much

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was like a a knight in the way that he fought. So that'll be cool. But like I

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don't really trust that series with much of anything. So yeah, I really liked

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the scenes specifically with Anakin. Yeah. mostly because I felt like

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they showed Hayden Christensen's ability and understanding in that character.

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Yeah. Like watching him go from the incredibly

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acrobatic, beautiful choreography of the like prequel trilogy. Yeah. to like

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slowly turning into the hacky choppy like I'm just here to beat you down with

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my lightsaber and my pure strength style of the original trilogy was just [ __ ]

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beautiful. Absolutely beautiful character work from Den Gresensson and then the rest of the series was so

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[ __ ] bad. Yeah, it's was really to get through. I started watching that

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that um uh what's the stupid uh Obi-Wan

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series just to see little glimpses of Anakin because like having seen like behind the scenes stuff of how he's

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understanding the transformation into like dismissive contempt for like he's

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so good at what he does that he just is not going to put in the effort to show

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you how good he is because he doesn't have to and he can literally swat you aside like a child.

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Yeah. And some of the like all of the scenes that involved Vader in

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Obi-Wan were pretty good. Yeah. Right. Like the How far are you in it? Like one two

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episodes. Okay. I don't recall where exactly it

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happens in the series, but the first interaction between the two of them where like Vader is chasing Obi-Wan

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down, I mean, I say chasing, but really he's just like stalking him like a horror villain through like using mist

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and obfuscation to his benefit. Mike Myers again, just just [ __ ]

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beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And the the final fight between the two of them is like clipw worthy all by itself.

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Yeah. Um definitely a highlight. And again, the rest of that series was unfortunately really bad. Yeah. Um that

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chase scene from the first episode where Leia ducks under a tree and everyone

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else loses their goddamn mind. Yeah. Yeah. Was just like, "Yeah, I know

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exactly what I'm getting into now." Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Joe. Anyway, this isn't what we were supposed

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to be talking about. No, we we're supposed to be talking about finishing things, which is hilarious because we barely finished a thought this whole time. We We haven't even started this

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episode. What the [ __ ] We're incredible at this. Yeah, we're so good at podcasting.

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My apologies to the six people that listen to us. Um, okay. Finishing a campaign. Uh, finishing a campaign. I

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I'm pretty sure. Have you done it? No. I was gonna say I'm about to like uh I'm about to to pop my campaign

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finishing cherry. Like I I have played this game for what beauty. Yeah, I have

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played this game for a long time through a couple of editions now and every single group that I have been in has

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fallen apart for various reasons and not actually finished anything. Um, and like

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the group I'm in now, God, we're so close. We only need like a few more sessions and it's going to be July when

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we play again. Oh my god, scheduling is a nightmare.

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And it's all my fault. I know it's my fault, but you know, I'm working on it. But yeah, we are finally about to do

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it, and I'm so excited. Now, that being said, like, you know, I I am not counting like we we've done a couple I

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wouldn't call them like one shots, but like one and a half shots, you know, where you like have a couple days of it.

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That that doesn't count. I mean, like a full-blown campaign. This is our first one. How what's the shortest like full

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campaign have you done? What's that? Oh, I guess I guess you were saying that you haven't actually finished one

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because like I've I've done like full campaigns over the course of a month. Yeah. Like would you consider that

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having an ending or would that be like still in the like shot range? Not one

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shot but something shot. Did you complete the full narrative arc that you were intending to? Yes. Then yeah, it's

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done. Like some people just get stuff done faster. Like frankly, most of my

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stuff happens like once a month or right at most twice a month.

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So, cuz I did have a couple of campaigns where um especially when I was like

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younger and had no responsibilities um where we would play a couple times a

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week. Yeah. And it was pretty easy to bang out a a narrative over the course

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of that, especially when everybody had the understanding that it was a a shorter term game. Yeah.

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Um, and that kind of lends itself to epic endings if everybody knows that

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it's going to be over because like nobody's holding back. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like everybody is going for the

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gusto and if they happen to die a session early, well then now they get to be the rallying point for the big harrah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Um,

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so yeah, I've had I've had a few of those. Um, I have a

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tendency to wander away from games and then never come back. Oh, no.

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Um, I have a whole lot of halffinish narratives out there that are still spinning in my head for like when we're

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going to do our next session for people that I haven't spoken to in 15 years.

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Um, so that's definitely more of my long-term campaigns. I don't I don't recall the

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last time I finished like a multi-month campaign. Right. Right.

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Yeah. Like I've had campaigns go on for years that didn't finish. Yeah.

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I think that's mostly the norm. Yeah. Like if you're going to be investing

17:12

years into a thing, I think like Okay. Part of it is the understanding that D and D and role playing games in general

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are open-ended. Yeah. Right. like they they don't have a set end point. They

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don't have a an end goal that you're going for that isn't like defined by the game itself. Right. Right. Like

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obviously if you guys have the goal of like take down the dragon Lich King and then you take down the dragon Lich King,

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then you could probably have a session after that where everybody's like, "Okay, what the [ __ ] do we do now?" Yeah. But you don't have to, right? Like

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that game can be done. But it's it's all within the game itself. And so like D and D you can play forever.

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Um like I I've talked to people who had campaigns that lasted decades. Yeah.

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Right. Like they were all level cap. They were all sitting at like 20th level, but they would still show up

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every week on on the regular snacks in hand, ready to play. Yeah. And it's

18:15

usually like I I don't know how much of this is just like stereotyping or whatever, but like every time I've met

18:20

somebody who has a game like that, they're always an older gentleman who dresses up for his games.

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Yeah. Every time. Not every time. The vast majority of the times it's been a

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gentleman of a certain age who is not afraid to dress like an elf on Saturdays, right?

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Um, like I've seen Yeah, like there is I was say I've seen a couple of like little mini documentaries about like

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some of these longstanding games and it really does feel like it all comes down

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to like one person who's just willing to keep this narrative going for themselves

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and force a bunch of people into it and it doesn't doesn't mind swapping them in and out.

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Yeah, I mean there is that, but then you've also got like the the games that have been running since the 70s, right?

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Like that they're still playing it mostly as a war game and like they've

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been playing since Gary Gyax graced their table that one time, right? Um, so

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like there there's there's that aspect to it. And so I think that like there's a a cultural expectation in role playing

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games that they just generally don't end. I

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guess like here's what I think. I I genuinely feel like

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um those groups just never never had the opportunity to

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discover like Magic the Gathering. Like, no. Here's what I mean. Here's

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what I mean. Maybe not specifically Magic the Gathering, but often specifically Magic the Gathering. They

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needed an excuse for to socialize with their nerd friends on a weekly basis.

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And Dungeons and Dragons happened to be the thing that allowed them to do that

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with like minimal load on the rest of their lives. So like their significant others and families could tolerate, hey,

20:24

dad's going out one night a week to hang out with his buddies. At least he's not drunk. He might be drunk. He's probably

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not drunk, but it, you know, it was it was his social time. And so like the

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role playing itself was secondary in a lot of ways, but there was like one guy in the group who's like, "Hey, what if

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we just like essentially talked about Lord of the Rings for 30 years?" [Laughter]

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Yeah. Yeah, I I I definitely think that's part of it, but like also I think

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that just the the open-ended nature of the game promotes the idea that you can just keep playing. And so most of the

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groups that I've talked to have the expectation that they're just going to keep playing forever. Yeah. Um or until

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everybody gets tired of it and stops playing, which is what usually happens. Um, but when you've got like I I think a

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large part of that just comes down to your campaign doesn't have established goals,

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right? But Right. And like I think that's what I'm saying is that like the the goal has been established outside of

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the game that keeps the group together. Right. Like the goal is to hang out with my friends and then the game is

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secondary. And I I think that's what we're seeing is that like in this era of like, you know, online D and D playing

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and like digital tabletops and stuff like that, the game itself is not a strong enough glue to hold a group

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together. Well, that's interesting, too, cuz the

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the way that actual play entertainment is

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structured is very narrative. Right. Right. like the the Critical Role crew has a beginning and ending,

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middle and an ending kind of established through both like Mercer's DMing and

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through I I feel probably some discussion with the group, right? Like

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regarding their own character arcs and like what they're hoping to accomplish and like the the beats that they kind of

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want to try and hit. Mhm. Um just like my understanding of that style of DMing

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is very collaborative and so like you you want to make sure that you're talking to your players and being like,

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"Okay, so um we're we're going to have your incredibly sophisticated aris

22:39

aristocrat character uh trudge through sewers for this entire campaign, right?" Um and you're like, "Well, cool. I was

22:45

kind of hoping to do something aristocraty." And you're like, "Nope." Yeah, just sewers. Sewers forever.

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Um, so like having those narrative concepts kind of around the the hobby or

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or at least like around the the entertainment product that they're putting together encourages an ending,

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right? Well, it encourages goal setting early on and then it also encourages the idea that it's going to have like a a

23:15

satisfying conclusion, you know, now that I like sit back and examine like

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your specific example and and the idea of like how these pe how this this game

23:26

is is functioning as a whole. like it feels like there's been m and I don't want to specifically

23:33

blame like uh live you know D and D or whatever but there's been a shift in the

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players expectations from like hey I am going to

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like inhabit a character and like build this world with you and and be a you

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know living part of this story to like I want to show up and be entertained by the DM.

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um there's less like individual ownership of creating the experience for

24:02

everybody. I've definitely seen some of that, but a

24:09

lot more of what I see is an attempt to be like the people that they are

24:18

emulating, right? like they're they're wanting to recreate the critical role or

24:23

D20 environment in the games and so you get like I I get a lot more people acting

24:29

bombastic and like going for big swings um or doing bits. God, the bits. No, but

24:36

like even the bits are out of control. even those actions like the the the bombacity, the the the bits are like

24:44

kind of inherently selfish in the context of the group. Like they're they

24:52

want to be somewhat entertaining and be appreciated for that without

24:58

understanding like the subtleties that need to go into building a world or building a narrative. like uh a bit is

25:06

not really narrative, you know? It's just it's it's it's a YouTube short

25:12

essentially, right? And and it's a Montipython quote. Yeah. And that's what like a lot of groups are devolving into

25:19

right now is like really um characterized role playing where it's

25:25

like, hey, my my character is defined by like one or two things and never shall

25:31

that change. And I I think they don't realize like how much you know if if

25:37

they look like look at the characters in in Critical Role for as an example like as much as I don't really watch the show

25:43

I have seen stuff and I do understand how they grow and develop as a character

25:48

well as a person at the table and that's because you know these people's

25:54

full-time job is to work in conjunction with a writer to write a story and so they they think about character

26:01

development and character arcs as part of their overall larger fetch

26:08

quest or whatever. And like the average person just doesn't have the time to do

26:13

that, you know, or the person that does is like probably hiding some other

26:19

social ineptitude. Uh well, they're also professional performers, right? And I think one of the things that one one of

26:26

the aspects of that that I think kind of gets lost in translation is the idea of

26:32

character work. Yeah. Right. like figuring out who your character is, figuring out your motivations, inhabiting your character. Um, becoming

26:41

your character through like convergent feeling and like embodying character and

26:48

uh like physical ticks and all of the things that we see actors get trained to

26:54

do through classic acting um translates differently at a table, but it's still

27:01

evident. Right. Right. Like you you can watch Sam Regal go

27:07

through like very established character actor decision making, right, on a

27:14

fairly regular basis. And like what one of the things to his credit that he's doing incredibly well is that he is improvising that on the spot, right? But

27:22

it's still trained and it still has like that background in the thing. And

27:29

so I I feel like attempting to emulate the Critical

27:36

Role D20 cruise. Also, like shout out to Dungeons

27:43

and Daddies and right like Nadpot and all the other ones, but like

27:49

the the thing that I'm seeing I I I think the thing that I see the most where it applies to narrative is that

27:56

the focus of the players has shifted from

28:01

let's play these characters in these silly situations forever, right? Like

28:06

we're we're just going to show up. We're going to play. We're going to have some fun. throw some dice to having a much

28:12

greater focus on narrative and a greater expectation for a narrative which again encourages the possibility of conclusion

28:20

and ending right and so like the I I feel like over the course of the last like 15 20 years the ending of a

28:27

campaign has actually grown quite a bit in its importance as far as its um like

28:33

placement in the the campaign is concerned. So then why do we never get to them? Is it literally just because

28:38

like our lives are so fractured at this point that like it's just about impossible to maintain continuity for

28:44

more than like a couple of years or like is there Dude, being an adult is so hard. It's true. It's true. It's so hard

28:52

to be an adult. I was going to say like compared to like the 70s and 80s like there are so many more things vying for

28:57

our attention. And I was I was going to say like I think part of the problem with like the the characters themselves

29:03

and then more so like the the conclusion of this campaign is that we have less

29:09

ability to focus on one thing in our lives than ever before. And there's you and that's even with like within people

29:15

who have like a pretty narrowly defined range of hobbies even within like the

29:20

the nerd space like yeah I play Dungeons and Dragons but then everyone else who knows is like oh do you also play magic?

29:27

Have you also dabbled in like miniatures or tabletop games? Do you play board games? Like and and no one is just like

29:33

one thing anymore? And I think that has sort of like diluted our capacity to

29:38

really invest our our creative energy in characters and then ultimately in in the

29:45

storytelling and the conclusion of those stories. I mean, there's I if if you can

29:50

get the dopamine hit that you need from like any number of sources, why invest

29:55

in one for a bigger payoff when you can just get a bunch of little payoffs constantly? You know, YouTube

30:02

shorts and in the spirit of this like

30:07

entire thing and like the in the spirit of endings that that's where I'm going to end it. And I'm actually going to include this, including the stumble uh

30:15

and this ramble that I'm doing afterwards in the podcast because I I don't [ __ ] know how to do an

30:23

[Laughter] ending. Hey, thanks for making it all

30:29

the way through this episode of No Plot Only Lore. If you're looking for more, you can always find us at

30:35

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