WTW74: The Woke Are Coming for Your DnD! - With Eli Bosnick

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That over there is the brains of the show, Lydia Smith. How you doing, Lydia?

0:00:47 Lydia: Thank you. Wow. I thought you were going to send it over to the guest.

0:00:50 Thomas: Oh, do we have a ga - That's right, we do! It's Eli Bosnick. It's the Thrupple. We're back together. Will... Will Abos be mad if we're a Thruple, is my question to you. Or are we okay? That's the whole thing. Yes. Just want to make sure. You never know.

0:00:56 Eli: The good looks of the show, the muscle, the brawn, no, that's the whole point of - Yeah, no it's true. As I said to my dear friend Neil Gaiman, it's really important to check on these things. That's right, the two jocks, the musical theater jocks.

0:01:18 Lydia: Actually, yeah, he is the brains of this show because I don't know anything about this.

0:01:18 Thomas: Oh, man, I'm so glad that you're here, Eli, because you're going to explain some nerd shit to us. Yeah, we're the jocks of the show. I was, I don't know about Dungeons and Dragons. I was too busy getting laid and playing Magic the Gathering. Oh, man. To be fair, though, everyone who's actually a nerd does know that even within nerddom, there is a hierarchy of getting laid and musicals is up

0:01:35 Eli: I had rehearsal for my musical theater program.

0:01:38 Lydia: Yeah, I can't. I have rehearsal for straight men. Yeah.

0:01:52 Thomas: There in the hierarchy dungeon dragons yeah

0:01:53 Eli: Well, cause the theater kids figured out fucking each other. Well cause the let's, let's give credit where it's due. The gays invented musical theater and they were fucking each other and they turned to us Stratos and they Were like, Hey Stratos, um, you can fuck each other if you want within this coven of weirdness. And we were like, we can. And they were like yeah, just get in a booth at Denny's and fucking finger bang each other after the show. You can do whatever you want. And We were like oh my God, they're

0:02:03 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. This is the culture. Yeah It's that it's that and marching band like those are the the freakiest.

0:02:20 Eli: Not fucking, they're strong though. They're strong. You don't want to fuck the marching band kids are fucking they were fucking yeah

0:02:21 Lydia: Oh no No. Oh, at my school, at my school they were. Yes. No, they they absolutely. Things were crazy with our marching band.

0:02:25 Thomas: Feel like they'd be too tired all right well we're gonna sort this out everyone and then after this break everyone wanted to fuck the one guy with

0:02:32 Eli: Thomas don't interrupt what was the marching

0:02:39 Thomas: The tuba

0:02:40 Lydia: It was drumline.

0:02:42 Eli: Band nobody wants you want your ass eaten out properly a guy who walks up and down a football field with a tuba yeah no he's nott coming up for air he's no oh babe my jaw hurts he's in it to win it whenever you accidentally let me onto one of your fine radio programs I picture the person who comes to your shows for information and it's just super soakered with the vileness that is my humanity once every 20 something episodes I'm like the auto ads of podcasting guests

0:02:53 Thomas: Or oh boy

0:03:14 Lydia: Love it.

0:03:18 Thomas: Speaking of those we're gonna take a break and get to those and then when we come back Eli's gonna explain this nerd shit to us dungeons and dragons dear old

0:03:28 Eli: Dear old dads patreon .com patreon .ca with the dear old ads support the lydia edit

0:03:35 Thomas: Dads give us a teaser this is the usual anti -woke hysterics right I mean this is a thing where do

0:03:41 Eli: Yes are the wokes coming for your role -playing games no find out more after the break perfect

0:03:55 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:03:55 Thomas: We begin I saw an article that was about Dungeons and Dragons and skimmed it and was like Hila I don't understand this stuff but I do listen to D &D minus I've listened to every episode it's a great show we should I want to make sure to plug your dungeon you're like an expert we've got a subject matter expert on from dnd master dnd

0:04:11 Lydia: Dungeon

0:04:12 Eli: Expert

0:04:18 Lydia: Master

0:04:19 Eli: Yes reliable expert of truth that's what they say about me yeah so let's let's start at the beginning which is important for the historical context so thomas does a legal show maybe you've heard of it it's called opening arguments and during the paizo dnd legal drama he and his then co -host who we shall not name, blasphemed our beautiful shared hobby of Dungeons and Dragons. Oh, ha ha, they laughed. What is this Paizo I hear so much about? What is the third edition? It must be for Pathfinders? Is that using Google Maps, they said? They laughed at us. And you, the podcast listener, you rose up as one, and you told them cut it out and get on a nerd like me to talk about Dungeons & Dragons.

0:04:38 Thomas: Minus

0:04:50 Lydia: Please that

0:04:58 Thomas: Really oh yeah andrew did get a ton of shit for whatever that was I

0:05:02 Lydia: That was the craziest the reddit had ever been without you know the lawsuit suit.

0:05:06 Eli: Yeah, rightly so.

0:05:08 Thomas: Guys I wish I could remember any of what this is like I literally that was like probably the fourth biggest controversy in show history and I have no fucking idea what you're talking about Yeah.

0:05:13 Eli: The fun thing just a little peek behind the curtain podcast listener come come join me in the Bosnick zone the fun things about the very obvious ptsd my friend thomas says is that sometimes when I talk about bad things that happen to us they're gone and I don't mean he doesn't remember them I mean he has to check that I'm not making them up But I read the Bible.

0:05:42 Thomas: Wasn't there some? Yeah.

0:05:42 Eli: Oh, yeah You know that book was boring.

0:05:48 Eli: I Didn't enjoy that. Yeah, I forgot And we're gonna get into some of that drama today folks But yeah, so they brought on your resident D &D expert and now I have risen once again like the Phoenix Part two electric boogaloo to tell you about the wokes who are coming for your role -playing games So let's get into that saying Lydia. Tell us what's this controversy? What are we talking about?

0:06:03 Lydia: So New York Times ran this story about some changes that were coming to Dungeons and Dragons. And specifically, though, the one that they chose to highlight the most is this this decision that Wizards of the Coast, which owns Dungeons and Dragons as of 1997, decided to do was to replace how they would refer to the various players in the game. They would no longer be considered a race, but rather a species. And that pissed off a lot of people, I guess, to move from race to species.

0:06:44 Lydia: That's kind of like the biggest thing there. The other big thing that I saw that's part of this rule change, Eli, and I don't know if you got into this at all in your research.

0:06:45 Thomas: Eli knows everything about this,

0:06:53 Lydia: But but but there

0:06:53 Thomas: Like literally everything about this

0:06:53 Eli: I know everything about everything.

0:06:56 Lydia: Were recommendations in the new book about like consent

0:07:00 Eli: Mm -huh. Safety tools, lines and veils. Yeah.

0:07:00 Lydia: Entering into the game space. And yeah, yeah. And like and if someone is uncomfortable, perhaps you raise your hand or make an X, you know, with your arms or something to indicate to indicate. To the folks in the game that, you know, that that kind of crossed the line or, you you know, that you're uncomfortable pursuing that specific path

0:07:18 Thomas: All right I'm so sorry Eli for the me's in the audience and the Lydia's explain this game Dungeons and

0:07:27 Eli: Dungeons and Dragons is a spreadsheet that lets you pretend to play pretend. That's it. It's just a spreadsheet. You have a spreadsheet, they've ordered it differently so you can pretend it's not a spreadsheet but it's a spreadsheet and you do math with your friends and then you pretend to be gay or you are just a different version of your gayness that you are and then you trauma dump to your friends around a fantastical fire that's the point of the game that's why it exists you play these fantastical characters you go on adventures you tell stories it's also hey theater nerds let's let's bring the theater nerdς back in it's

0:07:29 Thomas: Dragons oh god there's a bunch of bad acting in it it's great Saturday

0:08:02 Eli: It's bad acting but it's exactly what brecht was describing as perfect theater like he didn't know he was describing it but like towards the end of brecht's writing he's like yeah I mean I guess if like there was a story where you could watch the actors make the story and make up the characters and then like you could experience catharsis at the same time as the actors were experiencing it because they felt like they were the characters they made up I think that's what perfect drama would be and then 20 years later and then 40 years later you get fucking adventure zone and there you go we

0:08:19 Lydia: They go. Yeah.

0:08:28 Thomas: Saturday Night Live breaks out

0:08:33 Eli: Fixed it everybody we fixed brecht uh but yeah that's dungeons dragons role -playing game it's sort of the grandfather of role -playing games it is by far the most popular uh it is currently on its sixth edition which and hey let's talk about real controversies rather than fucking calling it sixth edition they're calling it dungeons and dragons beyond or Dungeons and Dragons One depending on the version that you're talking about so they're doing the fucking xbox thing where they just won't yeah exactly they just Won't add the number to it so yeah this is the newest edition and as lydia said they have added something which we'll talk about in a second and they've also added safety tools and uh spoiler alert for every where there's woke episode this is a thing that was already happening that no one cares about except a couple of racists

0:08:58 Thomas: Spider -Man oh that too yeah for real I'm still glad I have listened to every episode of D &D minus because I actually kind of do understand it a little better than that I might of otherwise but how does this game go when normies play it there can be things that might be problematic or uncomfortable right and like what are the sort of some of the do you have any I don't know either horror stories or at least some ofthe issues around this game that some people are trying to you know make

0:09:43 Eli: Yeah so the core conversation to be had that's like worth having about this is that like we We understand, if you've Googled it, that race as a scientific concept, especially racial essentialism, right, the idea that like these people are better at this and these people are worse at that, that is nonsense, right? There's no biological base for racial essentialism. And that's why people don't like Charles Murray, right. People are like, Charles Murphy tells the truth. No, he doesn't. Charles Murphy lies with math in a bad way and he's lying for the case for racial essentialism and there's like a huge swath of white supremacy in academia that has spent their entire careers trying to prove racial essentialism. And it's just, it's not true. It's just not true and no one thinks it's true. I'm not here to argue or have that conversation. A smarter person can have that conversion. But the conversation that's worth having as it applies to Dungeons and Dragons is what does it mean when the dominant fantasy guidepost for our culture for the last 70 years has has been a world in which racial essentialism is true, where dark -skinned drows are sneaky and dark -spinned orcs are strong but stupid and light -skined elves are smart and, you know, good at the arts and the gnomes are, you knows, sneaky and dwarves have Scottish accents for some reason. Like, what does it mean? Right. How has that affected the culture and the ability of people people not to judge each other based on race, right? And this is D &D catching up to that conversation. Oh, it's 100 % true.

0:09:57 Thomas: Better charles murray oh you know why yeah I'll be honest it does kind of feel like you were doing a bit where you just picked a race for each thing. Is that kind of how it was? A lot of this stuff dates back. Yeah.

0:11:31 Eli: Everything I just said was accurate. Yes.

0:11:31 Thomas: Yeah, well, but it also feels like it's almost intentionally representative of someone's racial hierarchical view of real life.

0:11:39 Lydia: Yeah so from my understanding E. Gary Gygax, who was one of the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, he has described himself as a biological determinist and I feel like racial racial essentialism is like one step, you know, just further from that. So he he believed that gaming was pretty much just a male pursuit, like only guys like to do it.

0:11:59 Lydia: And as recent as 2004, and he died in 2008, so he didn't have much more time to correct himself on this. And I don't think he would based off of his involvement in some message boards I saw. But he said that it isn't that females can't play games well, it's just that it Isn't a compelling activity to them, as is the case for males. And I think what's really interesting about that is that when he wasn't involved with Dungeons and Dragons and we've started to see some of these changes and this focus on inclusivity, now from my reading, it's the split for men and women for Dungeons and Dragons. Folks that play the game, it is 60 % identify as male, 39 % identify as female, and 1 % as other. And that split used to be like 90 -10 or worse.

0:12:41 Eli: Also keep in mind how unbalanced those numbers are just by the amount of things, hobbies that men are allowed to have versus women, right. Like when you look at just the very basic split of like how many men men are allowed to have hobbies versus what percentage of the female population cannot have hobbies because of their family and other obligations, right? When you look at that split, it's a lot more equal. The other important thing to understand for those who understand this hobby is that diversity saved Dungeons and Dragons, right, the Dungeons and Dragons created by Gary Gygax. And look, here's my hot take on Gary Gynax. OK, and everybody buckle in because it's it's razor hot. All old nerds suck right the definition of nerd that you and I have today podcast

0:13:25 Thomas: Well but Neil Gaiman's oh no I'm just

0:13:30 Eli: Listener that you you and I have today of like outsider who was downtrodden by the popular kid and then found a community of like a neurotypical like a you know heteronormative group of friends who who like busted out, right, your Stranger Things kids, right? Your Freaks and Geeks kids, that is a wildly modern construction, right. For the most part, for most of history, nerds were straight white men who could not function within the society of 1960s and 1970s America.

0:13:57 Thomas: Kidding

0:14:09 Eli: They were so unbearably asocial that it was not their queerness. It was not there being a person of color. It was that they were so fucking antisocial that everybody hated them. And it's really not until like the 90s and freaks and geeks that this idea of nerds as the downtrodden becomes dominant. So often when you look at this old, like original D &D stuff, which I have read most of it, if not all of it. It reads like a fucking 4chan message board, right? Right. It reads like a fucking Minecraft server of kids being like, what if there was a big pile of orc poop and you had to roll dexterity or an orc's butt would fall onto an ork poop and then a big spike goes through your like it's just it's juvenile, insane bullshit. Like when everyone whenever anyone talks about there you go whenever anyone talks about like originalist dnd and we're going to talk about one of the guys who sort of tries to make that argument right they sound fucking

0:14:40 Thomas: God that sounds fun I want to play I want to play that no I'm just kidding yeah one

0:15:09 Eli: Insane because original dnd is like a child who needs intervention therapy describing a violent to do with the role playing that people love today and has become popular and we'll talk about why it's become popular

0:15:30 Thomas: Thing I like to do or try to do on the show is like I want to recognize that you're not crazy if you've had the observation that like well it seems like dnd is the thing that nerdy dudes play like yeah but there might be a bunch of reasons for that I don't I'll never understand like when you say that quote of like Like women can't play or it's not that they can't. I'll never understand why people have to be so all or nothing all the time. It can't just be like, yeah, I think more dudes are into D &D, but yeah, plenty of women are into it. And maybe I'll be wrong about that. Like maybe eventually it would be more 50 -50 depending. But like why do people, it just feels like a lot of this backlash is always people are so rigidly dedicated to these lack and white worldviews where it's like, what does it matter to you? Like, if someone told me, like, actually in a perfect Eden with no social pressure of any kind, women would be 50 -50 D &D players. It would be like, okay, who cares? What does it matter? Or maybe not. Like, maybe it's just the kind of thing that more boys would be into rather than girls because that could also be true. But why are people so insane about it? Like, why is it – I can never get past the part where why does this matter so much to you, which is true, you know?

0:15:41 Eli: Later yeah I also think that like when you're in a position like Gygax right where you are the creator of a genre and people are looking to you that message of like biological essentialism or centrist you know fucking bullshittery whatever that that the thing he thinks he's doing is right it's a way to keep people out right it's a way to keep things a boy's club right there's no scenario where you speak against inclusion for the greater good, under any circumstances, ever. Even if you did think it was biologically essential, right? It wouldn't matter because then, if you were speaking to an activity that is biologically essential, and I can't think of one, so forgive me, but like, if your were speaking to an actiivity that was biologcally essential, wouldn't you still want the emphasis to be on inclusion? Wouldn't that still be way more interesting than, you know, tall people should play basketball? Basketball

0:17:29 Lydia: Gygax has a fervent supporter, though, in the space right now, because this has kind of blown up and some people are pretty upset, especially with the language that's in the forward of the new edition, they feel like it's kind of throwing Gygax under the bus a little bit and not respectful. And wouldn't you know it, Elon Musk chimes in.

0:17:52 Thomas: For fuck's sake.

0:17:53 Eli: Oh moral beacon elon musk wow this is from the guy who said that polytopia is a

0:17:55 Lydia: Yeah. And he says, nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash E. Gary Gygx and the geniuses who created Dungeons and Dragons. What the fuck is wrong with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast? May they burn in hell. That seems a little extreme.

0:18:13 Eli: Better game than chess everybody so take his take his ideas super seriously

0:18:19 Thomas: Elon Musk, not one for a de -escalating situation. Oh, for fucked's sake, has bra. We're fucked. Yeah.

0:18:22 Lydia: No. And he's even taken it a step further. And, he said, how much is Hasbro? He's threatening. Yeah. Threatening to purchase Hasbro.

0:18:27 Eli: Because he's gonna buy it and he's going to make it not woke do you guys and I mean this from my heart this is going to sound like I'm just doing a bit do you guy's feel like you've run out of stuff to say about elon Musk. Cause every time someone's like Elon Musk did this, I'm like, yeah, someone should shoot that guy in the fucking head. Like that's what I've got at this point. Shoot him in his fucking head. The end. Yeah. Top five top five. Yeah, certainly among the non murderers along the non murderous way up there.

0:18:50 Thomas: It's over. I can't even, And it's, yeah, Elon

0:18:54 Lydia: Yeah, I'm rooting for steve bannon lately guys because he's he wants to just get rid of elon musk so bad I'm like yeah do it steve I'm on your side yeah Yeah.

0:19:02 Thomas: Musk is the worst person. Like he, he might be, well, are we talking ever? Cause currently alive, I think he might be the worst. Yeah. That while that we know of. Yeah. God, it's insane. And I've never heard him. And I mean this, I, you know, me guys, I am very fair. I have never heard them say something smart. Like ever.

0:19:25 Eli: I know the one smart thing he's ever said.

0:19:27 Thomas: What is it? Tell me please.

0:19:28 Eli: So he has said one smart thing in the history of ever which is he has a great metaphor for why your phone charges very fast when it's below 50 and then takes a really long time when it'S above 50 which is the parking lot metaphor have you heard this

0:19:43 Thomas: No, but what are the odds that he stole it from someone? A hundred percent. Yeah, that's fair. OK, I'm going to look at it. Well, I've been meaning this is a longer term project. But like, you know, when we actually listen to someone smart, like, I don't know, Daniel Dennett's really smart. You might say what you want about Dan. Dan, I forget your. Yeah. But that guy, when he would do a lecture, when that when that guy would do his lecture on compatibilism, I had to watch it like three times to fully understand what he was saying. And I have a feeling a lot of people don't actually fully understand what he said, like like there's nothing Elon Musk has ever said where I'm like, hmm, let me think about that ever, ever. This parking lot metaphor. OK, that's something that a high school physics student could come up with. But OK, then that is it does sound smarter than anything else he said. So anyway, what I wanted to ask is what level of change are we talking about? I had a tweet like, I don't know, years ago that I think it's time we address the racial hierarchy of the Breath of the Wild Hyrule universe.

0:19:46 Eli: I mean it's possible it's impossible I would love that because then I could then I can maintain it not now not anymore daniel dennett trivia contest go go right now I'll destroy him he's passed he's not with us anymore I guess yeah

0:20:51 Thomas: So many games are like, here are the four races. It's the water ones and the bird ones and The Gorons and the whatever. It's a simplistic kind of world building thing that Ithink seems to be essential to a certain amount of sci -fi or gaming. Is there a version of it that's fine? Or is it, you know, like, where's that line? Where are people trying to get that to

0:21:12 Eli: So it's funny because I actually think nintendo has done this has broken the generational curse in the zelda verse right because they have birds rock people fucking fish people and Zelda and so they have sort of broken out of that what you see in pretty much all fantasy is tokenism right which which is that Tolkien created the High Elves and the Middle Elves and orcs and all that, and that is what you see repeated over and over again, and that was very much based on Tolkien's biases and ideas about race and the popular ideas about grace at the time, right? Like, Tolkien comes from a generation where biological essentialism was studied science, so we can sort of understand where that comes from, and a lot of that has been adapted since then, and sort of that's what we're, that's where D &D comes from, right? D &E is a straight, D &DE, which is based on the fantasy novels of the time, specifically like the mill junk fantasy of the time, is all ripped from Tolkien, right, everything is ripped from Tolkein with, you know, a little bit of Aya time ripped, thrown in there, right. You know, fantasy just sort of adds to itself. There's also something that needs to be spoken to, which is that like a lot of times fantasy Fantasy tropes are based on the observable world, right, like animals and nature and stuff like that. And because racists have made sort of had dibs on comparing other people to animals, animal -like people, people who are bestial, people who have bestial characteristics, it carries a racial weight because in the past there have been people who have been so associated with animals, right? And we see this controversy in video games recently, right. Right. There was like, I forget what the game was, but there was like a race of monkey people and people were like, Hey, maybe don't make a race among people. There's just been a lot of talk about monkeys in their human counterpoints over the years. It might not be the best idea. So it's a little bit of that as well, right? It's a Little bit of racists having dibs on essentialism.

0:23:15 Thomas: So is there a good what's the good version of

0:23:17 Eli: I think Zelda is one of the good versions of it. And weirdly enough, I think what dnd and fantasy have become in the hands of a new generation are really good examples of it right so like part of what I wanted to talk about today and again you guys talk about this all the time is like the thing that happens on where there's woke most often is the writer freaking out about a thing that has been a norm since 2015 right that everyone has known about that nobody has cared about and there is now like one professor being like so what we're just not calling them kikes anymore is that what you're saying not even one what are we gonna do that's crazy how do you describe a jewish person ah this is you kids have gone too far

0:23:40 Thomas: It yeah there is literally a section of a legal reporting website called judges and law professors can't stop saying the n -word like that's literally true not even a parody I used

0:24:08 Lydia: It's just example after example,

0:24:08 Thomas: To use that as like no that's the joke it's like there's a bunch of people who want to say the n -word in class or in their courtroom and then get in trouble and like what what we can't we can't say that I wasn't calling anyone it I was just I was like

0:24:19 Eli: Right I was explaining the word knowing how hurtful it was to the people of color in the room and I had no other way to say that where I was trapped I was strapped did I mention there was a bomb stretched to my loved ones then an n -bomb specifically 60

0:24:22 Lydia: Illustrating a point. Yeah.

0:24:33 Thomas: Saying yeah yeah if the bus went slower than 60 n -bombs per hour

0:24:40 Eli: 60 n - bombs an hour I would but like so that is sort of the point to speak to which is that like it is truly two or three issues into dragon magazine before people are like hey what if orcs were smart like my character is a smart orc or my high elf is super stupid right and then you look at those tropes as they have evolved through fantasy and how they've become popular especially with the modernization of actual play podcasts which is sort of one of the things that I want to speak to which is like what saved dnd right so 2015-2016 is kind of the nadir of dnd and it's interesting because the thing that was destroying dnd was making it like an even nerdier game warhammer 40k now wait warhammer40k perverts I know you're there and I know how much more expendable income you have than me so before you take your terrible terrible revenge on me I wantto say your game is great it's a great game I love your board game and that you paint the little miniatures and you have them together nothing but respect for the troops but what they were trying to do dnd was trying to capitalize in that market with fourth edition right all of a sudden everything was on a grid-based everybody had magic because they wanted people to buy dnd minis and place them and use them for the board game of dnd and the people People who played D &D, which in the time of 2015 -2016 is this new version of nerds, the queer nerds the aneurotypical nerds the nerds who don't fit into those boxes fucking hated the board game got incredibly unpopular 5th edition comes out, it's very similar to 3rd edition which Thomas and Andrew blasphemed, right? 3rd addition was Pathfinder 3rd Edition was this incredibly creative now, you can speak about whether or not it's because Gary finally didn't have his hands on it it, but I'll leave that drama to the message boards, right? Third edition was the first time that this game really embraced the storyteller version of itself, right, and that's what fifth edition, the current, so -called current edition, went back to, but with fifth edition also came actual play podcasts. Specifically, the one that was most popular, the ones that sort of breaks out actual play podcast is Critical Role with Matt Mercer and a bunch of voice actors, and they start start telling these really interesting a stereotypical a heteronormative stories they are telling a story about people who are trapped within the fantasy system and want to break out of it

0:27:09 Eli: Huge

0:27:08 Thomas: So the podcast really had a hand in this that was like a part of the causal oh I didn't know

0:27:13 Eli: Huge percentage of it yeah I put a link in the show notes which is that like there's a bunch and truly you can just google critical role saved dnd and there's like 10 different hot takes on that but yeah actual play podcasts were a huge part of the resurgence of dnd as a hobby and dnd more importantly as a form of entertainment right imagine like overnight pretty much overnight I'm talking within the space of a year a fucking baccarat becomes one of the most popular things for people to watch on the internet right it's insane it is hard to convey if you aren't part part of this culture just how popular actual play is right it goes from critical role for me the next step is the adventure zone the McElroy brothers they do their own version which is wildly queer right it has gay characters it has Gay Love Stories it has a trans a predominantly trans character whose transness is not part of their story right they are just a trans person represented in media physically I know and that and can you believe they're not even punished for it there's no punishments for them being trapped but like that yeah surely it's the truth no they just get to be a human being who enjoys themselves and they're one of the best characters in the

0:28:11 Thomas: That's impossible sorry but surely it's their trauma from being that no they just get to be a trans person wow wow

0:28:26 Eli: Series like people people saw themselves represented in these ways and now of course the dominant force in actual play today is dimension 20 and again the reason why I think it's so fucking funny that the grandpa new york times is like I don't know if people are gonna like this whole race versus species thing is that you have never seen anything gayer or more leftist than dimension 20 has a company or any of their actual play podcasts I mean the quote laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic ethnic group in a given nation it's just a promise of violence that's enacted and police are basically in occupying harmony like that's from fantasy high season one before the main characters kill a bunch of cops and break out of jail yeah it's great this is dimension 20 yeah dimension

0:29:02 Thomas: Holy shit that sounds great what is this I'll be honest I only understand about half the words you say with this topic Dimension 20 what is that a show a thing

0:29:21 Eli: So Dimension 20 is a show on the dropout network

0:29:25 Thomas: What the fuck is this a podcast or

0:29:27 Eli: My god look at a fucking grandpa

0:29:30 Thomas: I don't know what you're talking about. Sorry.

0:29:30 Eli: Over here okay so do you know our wildest dreams they've been accomplished by people called dropout and they built a netflix for themselves which has games hey you know when you're on youtube and you see those little clips of make some noise they're on the brightly colored set and they're doing funny things come on make

0:29:47 Thomas: Hun, do we know what this is? I don' t know what this is. I'm so sorry. But I do feel like this is something Arlo would be into. So maybe we'll try to...

0:29:50 Eli: Some noice game changer dropout call do you guys remember college humor okay college humor remember it closes down right the guy who was the head of it Sam Reich started a new company with all of the same people most of the people most of the sane people called dropout and they are now a subscription service that is wildly popular and wildly leftist yes it's videos and they have podcasts as well but they they they do a ton of actual play series which are again among the most popular in the space I would say critical role is still the most популяр but among the more popular in this space and they like two seasons now of actual plays like people playing dnd show that is just drag queens yeah

0:30:14 Thomas: So it's videos. Oh, cool. Nice. Okay, we'll tell you this, Eli. We did watch the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which was really... I liked it. Yeah, okay, good.

0:30:42 Eli: And that movie ruled I'm so sad.

0:30:44 Lydia: So good.

0:30:45 Thomas: I was worried that you'd be like, oh, no, that's... OK, I liked it.

0:30:47 Eli: No, so good. And they did exactly what you should have done with the Dungeons and Dragons movie. They were like, hey, our world is fun. Come on a fun romp in our world.

0:30:56 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:30:56 Thomas: So do we appropriately talk about the freakout, which is just is it literally just about not saying race and saying species? Is that really?

0:31:04 Eli: So it's twofold. One of the complaints is valid, I guess. And one of them is absolutely not. Right. So the first, right, and this is the one that the article is sort of centered around, is that they have replaced the word race with species, which, again, these are nerds. We're supposed to care about the truth. Oh, I'm a little bit of a pennant. It's actually 3 times 4 equals 12 or whatever the fuck it is, right? They're different species. They're not different races. Different races would mean that orcs and elves and humans and dwarves are all part of the same species and they're different races

0:31:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, they're just from yeah, they're just from the north of

0:31:36 Eli: Right. The north of the country They're NOT. They'RE DIFFERENT SPECIES So it is a more accurate title that isn't loaded down with years and years of trauma and horror and slavery and death. I mean, just Again, try to imagine being a person of color sitting down at your D &D table for the first time and having someone be like, so what race are you going to play?

0:31:36 Lydia: Yeah, yeah,

0:31:36 Thomas: The country versus the. Yeah absolutely.

0:31:58 Lydia: Yeah.

0:31:59 Eli: And having to go like, huh? And then be like oh no, no, no, that's just what we mean by elf or not elf. So there's a tremendous amount of baggage associated with that kind of stuff. So that's the first thing. The second one is that a lot of the essentialism has been taken out of species, right? So it used to be orcs, strong, elves, fast, humans, kind of all -arounders. And what they have done with this new rule set is they've adjusted that so that everybody can kind of be anything. And again, this has just been called homebrew forever.

0:32:31 Eli: People have just been saying, hey, I'm going to take the orc stat block and I'm gonna apply it to my gnome because he's super strong. People have been doing this, right, it's just a spreadsheet and people just change the title at the top of the spreadsheet. Sheet this is so uncontroversial it's impossible to imagine caring about it unless you are a specific racist agitator which are the people they quote within the thing or so clueless as to the nature of the game that you don't understand this has been happening the entire time it's been played

0:32:35 Thomas: Of course. I always forget this is just a spreadsheet you get to do. Yeah yeah do we want to hear from one of the specific racist

0:33:04 Eli: Let's talk

0:33:02 Lydia: Should we hear? Yeah, I think we should hear from someone of these guys.

0:33:07 Eli: I'm actually pretty excited for our first racist agigator later.

0:33:09 Thomas: Agitators yay

0:33:10 Clip: What's going on everyone Jeremy here from the quartering and dungeons and dragons

0:33:13 Eli: It's the quartering. Wait, pause it.

0:33:15 Clip: Continues to circle the drain which is why I continue to recommend people get in

0:33:18 Eli: Pause it. Okay. So this is the Quartering. So for those of you who follow the podcast drama, AKA the worst things that have ever happened to us, uh, the quartering was one of the YouTubers during the mythicist Milwaukee fiasco, who was really, and if I may use the scientific term on our nuts, my favorite thing about the quarter ring, aside from from the fact that he tried to use a picture of me and my underwear on stage to embarrass me is that first he tweeted, Hey, let's open up New York city, fuck grandma. And then he lied about his grandma dying of COVID.

0:33:54 Eli: Uh, and I included the, uh, link to that tweet and that retraction in, uh、 in the show notes. So you can enjoy that. Um, but yeah, he's just like a, this is, I am trying to think of a mainstream example, but it would be like, if the first, and again, Again, this is the first hyperlink. They're saying, like, people are upset.

0:33:52 Thomas: My god that's amazing

0:34:12 Eli: And when you click that blue link, you're taken to a video of the quarter link.

0:34:13 Lydia: Yeah, in the New York Times.

0:34:14 Thomas: Article

0:34:15 Eli: Right. So it would be like, I'm trying to think of something that isn't for constantly online people like myself. It would be, like. If they were, like., the news has reported. And you go to OAN or

0:34:26 Thomas: Yeah wait they are doing that that shit oh

0:34:26 Eli: Fucking Fox News. Right. You're, like,. Well, come on. You said the news.

0:34:32 Clip: Into the Warhammer RPG uh the universe is a little better um the game the company is just as woke but they haven't started so whole hog uh messing with the game there has long been this uh bizarre uh fake outrage that somehow orcs are black people I don't really know any other way to like describe it but that's what white social justice warriors seem to think now to me it's super obvious that they're projecting

0:35:02 Eli: I bet you could.

0:35:06 Lydia: He's still using that word

0:35:06 Thomas: A social justice warrior a class in dnd or which race are this what's the stats on the social justice oh of course yeah duh wait but paladins are catholic so he's

0:35:08 Eli: Yeah. Social justice warrior. It's actually a paladin, if you pay attention. Fucking noob. Maybe french people think orcs are black people we don't know

0:35:15 Clip: To the rest of the world uh I don't know um and now dungeons and dragons has officially removed negative racial ability score modifiers from the rules including orcs why because orcs

0:35:30 Eli: That's not true that's just a lie

0:35:31 Thomas: Talking like his grandma just died of not covid what I'm showing a meme

0:35:34 Clip: Are black people apparently and there is just a absolutely perfect meme for this

0:35:37 Eli: That's why they did it yep I hated when they said that in the intro it really bumped me

0:35:43 Clip: We have the soy screamy person saying D&D is getting rid of the concept of quote evil races orcs aren't inherently evil just like you guys black person says wait you think I look like an orc I mean that's exactly I mean 2.4 000 likes compared to the original original post with 142

0:35:59 Eli: Out he's reading us a meme 2.4 thousand likes pretty true that meme gets to be president now let's read some of the comments I want to hear the comments

0:36:06 Clip: I mean absolutely destroyed and if you just look at these comments as a dedicated halfling player let me just say cool I love choosing halfling not to overcome my relative size and lack of brute strength with cunning swiftness and intelligence but rather to be the exact same thing as a half orc this is what dnd needed dripping with sarcasm put a lemur and a gorilla

0:36:30 Eli: So classic is good so funny it was sarcasm probably couldn't tell

0:36:35 Thomas: That was the fakest fucking JD Vance called and he wants his laugh back from when that interview and so good anyway do I need to keep playing should I keep going I don't yeah are we okay what oh but did he yeah I just want to make sure is there anything important that he says there.

0:36:40 Eli: He wants his donut charms back are we done can we be done with the quartering yeah okay no

0:36:48 Clip: Side by side and tell me that one is not physically stronger than the other

0:36:50 Lydia: We can be done with the quartering. We could be done

0:36:56 Eli: But can we guys can we talk about Kuntz for a second I want to talk about Kuntz Robert J. Kuntz the D&D creator who is also quoted in the article and says I'm just listening I'm just listening to thomas recover from a panic Robert Jay Kuntz says it's an unnecessary thing it attempts to play into something that I'm not even sure is worthy of addressing as if the word race is bad so I actually know a little about Kuntz first of all his name is Kuntz so whatever he does in life it's not as cruel as what his parents did to him you know by having a child um But if you're not aware, Robert J. Kuntz is like the guy who still wears his varsity jacket of RPG gaming,

0:37:00 Thomas: What? What? Stupid. I'm just like, what is happening? Oh, God.

0:37:44 Eli: Okay? So he does his best to lay claim to the idea that he was like a co -worker of Gary Gygax. And look, I once had a letter published in Dragon Magazine, so I feel like I could also say that I was a co creator with Gary Gygax. There's very little evidence that this guy had anything other than like a relatively normal creative relationship with him. But like Gary works with a lot of people right and to give you an idea of how bad this fucking guy is at the like nostalgia thon is he is still publishing modules for dungeons and dragons first edition the very first version of dungeons and dragons. He is still putting something on the big floppy disk of dungeonsanddragons and look if that was the worst thing about him I would forgive him with an open heart and a full mind like the christian that I am his name be praised uh but I I thought I would head on over to his twitter and see if he might uh expose himself as a virulent racist so um lydia do you mind doing a dramatic reading with me of this uh twitter exchange he recently had

0:38:52 Eli: Uh he has this epically long tweet about jordan peterson's dick or whatever it is so I'm gonna read the beginning of it and then I'm going to go yada yada you can go on his twitter or in the show notes to read his brilliant thoughts but here he goes the The Marxist mind insists that there must be an oppressor and those oppressed. It's anti -American, anti -human, and leads to division and resentment. And that is the purpose of it. Communists must always be stirring up, and he tweeted this this year, people. Communists! Must always be stirring up action for their cause, since people would never willingly adopt division as a median way of life. Humans have proven to be able to coexist for the most part.

0:38:52 Thomas: I love this. I said, what?

0:39:34 Lydia: Is

0:39:34 Eli: So the marxist way is to actively divide under the guise of inequality and injustice yada yada yada I'm a piece of shit uh so why don't you read this response that he gets there lydia

0:39:45 Lydia: This to say that inequity and injustice don't exist or rather to say that such injustices don't occur institutionally? Surely that isn't your position. If so, there's no need to make such an argument. I think it does, at the end of the day, come down to a matter of semantics. Either there are horizontal power structures, or there are not.

0:39:47 Eli: To which he replies within the american system iniquities have been steadily worked out as a part of reformed but not through investigative action such as recommended by grampsia and others that's right everybody we solved racism yeah

0:40:18 Thomas: Like, it sounds like it, yeah, like kind of solved itself.

0:40:20 Lydia: Steadily worked out. Yeah.

0:40:23 Eli: It figured it out right

0:40:23 Thomas: It was like, it was like a, it worked itself out like a hose that was a little tangled.

0:40:27 Eli: It worked itself out with the hand of the free racism market yeah this year this tweet was on january 12th you love to see it everybody you love it so yeah I do want to read one other quote from the new york times here because it's the only smart thing grandpa says in the entire article but I think it's worth saying pathfinder that's the thing that thomas and andrew misspoke about fucking jock you jock sons of bitch you wrote us off you wrote off as a people you wrote it off as human beings and we're still owed an apology curse your trauma amnesia is what the new york times has to say pathfinder the role -playing game by the company paizo that has spoken of ancestry and heritage instead of race for several years as early as 2020 the independent arcanist press published ancestry and culture an alternative to race in 5e a proposal to use words instead of race in dungeons and dragon dungeons and dragons so yeah right this is a thing that is five years old so again just like it's five years

0:40:33 Lydia: This guy this year.

0:40:36 Thomas: Entangled oh man what did we say I don't know anything I wish I understood this enough to go with your jokes like I don'T remember what yeah pretty much you know the thing that you play all the time that you're an expert in yeah

0:41:44 Eli: Old it's a it is so old

0:41:46 Thomas: Wait so why did it come up right

0:41:49 Eli: Oh because the new rule book came out so sorry that's the spurring action of this is that the what they are doing is part of dnd not sixth edition dnd one dnd beyond whatever the fuck they're calling it is they put out a new dungeon master's guide a new monster manual a new player's guide and those things have the species race dip thing changed in them it's also been changed on the website and they've also included safety tools as well recommendations for safety tools should we talk about safety tools so safety tools are really really simple there's been a lot lot made about the X gesture, but the X gesture is literally just so you don't have to interrupt someone. So lines and veils is the system that we use on D &D minus. It's the one that a lot of people have talked about, which is basically like, Hey, I would like our adventure to not contain this kind of content. And I have a hard line about this. So maybe I'm okay with like graphic violence, but I'm not okay with graphic violence against children.

0:42:16 Lydia: Yeah let's do

0:42:16 Thomas: Sure

0:42:46 Eli: Right? So in that case, violence would be a veil and a line would be graphic violence against children the x card or red carding is because very often when someone is engaging in content that you are uncomfortable with they are speaking they are narrating and it can be really uncomfortable for everybody for you to have to go hey stop stop stop describing that right

0:43:08 Thomas: Yeah, and that puts all the burden on that person who's probably trying to speak up for themselves and then interrupt the flow and yeah, okay, gotcha. It's like, oh, okay. It's, like, improv and you're not, you need to know but, but also you don't want to

0:43:08 Lydia: Ruin

0:43:12 Eli: To have just literally speak up and break character and right and instead what you do is just put your hands up hold your arms across and your dungeon master can then pivot without without drama or discomfort.

0:43:30 Thomas: Ruin the scene. Okay, so you kind of, you tell them signaling, like hey, maybe zigzag, do something a little different. Because I think what's unspoken is, and this is just me guessing because I've dealt with awful gamer nerds, Is there a lot of D &D playing that's really like edgy bullshit where they try to be graphically gross and yikes.

0:43:30 Lydia: The scene

0:43:47 Eli: Ton of that. Yeah, I recommend the RPG Horror Stories Reddit for those of you who want to see how awful it gets. But one of the things that comes up quite a bit is that people who want to tell like extreme stories or make their villains villainous is they use sexual assault as a plot line. One, because fantasy uses it as a trope, but also because like female players at tables, right, often make people uncomfortable. And so a way to make them uncomfortable is something sexual assaulty back. Right. And I want to be clear here. I don't think I think it is very rare that a dungeon master would be like, and then your character gets raped. But I do think that, like, a villain doing something to violate someone's bodily autonomy, right, is something that a well -meaning dungeon master might put into an adventure without understanding how a non -male -bodied person experiences being part of that narrative.

0:44:43 Thomas: Yeah, I've played a lot of Magic the Gathering tournaments. So I'm familiar with this kind of environment. There's often like one girl there things like this that would put someone in a very uncomfortable position as a way like you said Eli either as a way to make them uncomfortable on purpose or just because of sheer cluelessness one way or the other singling them out and of making someone feel really shitty. And then, then wouldn't you know it, it's harder to get anyone who's not a straight white male nerd to come play these games. And it perpetuates itself, you know, like maybe that could be a reason why the game was looking a little monochrome or whatever. Like, and so it strikes me that this is an incredibly basic thing that I can't imagine having a problem with. Like, by the way, these, these edgy nerds or whatever do they is there a law about dnd like where you have to now have one like sjw beta cuck woke person in every game you have too yeah like a like a hall monitor that like you could still do your you can still do you're fucking edgy shit if you want it's not not like they make you yeah yeah I can't imagine having a problem with this

0:45:39 Eli: Yeah no they changed that you you actually get assigned it in every game yeah no yeah no I applied for a permit to be the SJW of uh D&D Minus yeah yeah

0:45:43 Lydia: Yeah with your friends that like the edgy shit and then yeah it can be inclusive of you guys yeah it's also just like another form of communication right I mean like you communicate during the game if you need clarification on something that's happening right like and you'd raise your hand or something like that or or indicate in some way so this is just another way to communicate um to make the best experience for everybody as part of the game um and I yeah I don't I just don't understand it's honestly what it is is just people creating this vision of what it is in their heads and running with it and saying like that you must stand up and make an x with your hands above your head and stand there while um yeah until you're acknowledged yeah yeah oh my god yep

0:46:02 Thomas: First

0:46:36 Eli: It's just yeah but it's also and again I don't want to be like the defeatist nihilist just shoot elon musk in the head guy but like the people pretending that they're upset about this are lying right the guy for the they quote the head of the babylon b which is the right wing onion and elon musk like and Robert Kuntz's like they're not real they don't actually think any of these things they just pretend to think these things because racists like their tweet when they do it and it's so I'm just look look, we're outvoted. Bad people are the

0:46:39 Thomas: You have to do land acknowledgement when you stand down yeah yeah stop

0:47:18 Eli: Vast majority. It's an evil country. We're in 1939 Germany. We cannot change it. But can we at least stop pretending? Right? Like, I just want to stop pretending.

0:47:30 Thomas: Pretending that the third reich they just have some legitimate concerns yeah

0:47:32 Eli: Right. That like, I need just need to stay. Well, you, maybe if you spoke to your Reichman or Congressman, whatever the fuck name, he would change his mind. Like, just, I Just, I want to Stop because we have spent so much of our lives interacting with people who are just lying.

0:47:37 Thomas: In the reich diner in the midwest yeah yeah

0:47:50 Eli: So much of our energy and sanity and health and well -being has been spent on people who don't care, who are doing it for a giggle, for a fuck it. They don't, they don't think about it ever again. The things that bother them are equality and justice and peace and beauty and fairness and grace, right? Those are the things that keep them up at night, right. Yeah, Yeah.

0:48:11 Thomas: Or it genuinely bothers them. In which case, wow, there's something wrong with you. Like there's not, it's one or the other, you know, like, I think there's, there'S a mix of it. I think there are people who are just cynical. I THINK THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO IT'S, IT'S TALE IS OLD AS TIME. IT'S REACTIONARY THINKING. THAT'S ALL. IT'S ALL LIKE EVERYTHING WE COVER IN ALL OUR ENTIRE EXTENDED NETWORK CAN BE BOILED DOWN TO, HEY, SOME PEOPLE WANT TO MAKE THINGS BETTER, WHICH MIGHT INVOLVE CHANGING THINGS. AND A BUNCH OF OTHER GROUP of people that's more people that are like changing things that's communist or something like they just well

0:48:43 Lydia: Opportunists and they see that like that's gonna get them clicks That's going to get them, you know, money. That's going to give them popularity. Yeah.

0:48:48 Thomas: Yeah because people it's the same reason that people were mad that Pluto is not a planet anymore that's just a scientist an expert why did you know that Pluto was a planet to begin with was it part of your family like heritage or

0:49:05 Eli: It's right there on the crest.

0:49:05 Thomas: Did a scientist yeah or did did a scientist tell you it's a planet and later the same people who are in charge of that were like whoops wrong

0:49:16 Eli: We know more things now.

0:49:16 Thomas: Now it's not yeah and like the idea that like that's what our stupid fucking species is talk about uh races our our idiot species I'll use the correct terminology just can't handle that a thing is different than before everything boils down to that and so I actually genuinely I believe that there are plenty of cynical actors here but I actually believe there are people who just have this reaction to anything changing and it is I think it is racist it is sexist at heart but it's this feeling that like the way it's they tied up in their identity the way this was done is something I liked I did I enjoyed that means it's part of me and my enjoyment of it needs to be this pure okay thing otherwise I am a bad they're saying I'm a bad person for having done

0:50:00 Lydia: Eli,

0:50:01 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:50:01 Lydia: Can I ask your take on like like what this does for storytelling from your perspective? Because I saw somebody's piece on Medium where he said that humans are only the complaint also shows a massive lack of imagination. Humans are only one species and there's huge physical and social variation between populations and lots of conflict for all sorts of reasons eliminating the casual default racism makes things more interesting not less you aren't getting rid of bands of orc raiders they just have a motivation besides their orcs

0:50:03 Eli: Probably with a gun is what I would do. This seems quick.

0:50:34 Eli: Right? I completely agree with that. Right and that's something that we've worked to fight against with D &D minus right so like the example that I use all the time of like inclusivity is that Noah in our first season chose a southern accent for his gnome character and so a stereotype that we could have played into that is still socially acceptable is like southern people are stupid so I made his hometown because basically the first arc of our series was just going and visiting the characters hometowns right I made his hometown the most elite university in the plains right and so they go back to this school and they have to deal with the school and everybody talks in a southern accent at this super duper smart school so yeah playing against those tropes playing against these norms is always more more interesting always yeah it's

0:51:20 Thomas: I am a huge fan I love Tolkien I love Lord of the Rings but I do get genuinely like kind of bummed that it just sort of comes down to like the bad people are bad and the good people are good and it's like yeah it's kind of a bummer it's cool to have more creativity than that and to be able to and this is again it's just the fucking spreadsheet that tells you what to do you get to develop more interesting stories yeah

0:51:39 Lydia: Isn't that the whole point of dungeons and dragons too yeah like

0:51:42 Eli: To tell your own stories yeah fantasy to pretend why would you want to pretend the things you think are true that are bad about the world I don't get it yeah you can

0:51:51 Lydia: Right yeah yeah that's real life you don't have to like experience that in a game

0:51:56 Eli: Just you can just start a podcasting empire like thomas and lydia did if you want to talk about bad things that happened in real life so I did want to cover a little patreon goal which is that um if we hit two more Patreons over on Where There's Woke, Thomas and Lydia are going to do an adventure out of the Book of Erotic Fantasy. It's the D &D 5th edition supplement that includes fuck skills. So that one goes on OnlyFans rather than Patreon. Book of Erotic Fantasy. Yeah, exactly. Another double the Patreions. Yeah exactly there it's just all yeah it is what I was trying to say yeah no

0:52:22 Thomas: Hey, man, if you're going to dungeon master for us, he said another two Patreons, which in fairness, we may hit starting another two. Yeah, I think that is what he was trying to say. But remember earlier when he mispronounced Dungeons and Dragons?

0:52:29 Lydia: Too yeah two patrons that's all we need to do that oh I see I see I see I thought you were saying we just needed two more patrons so we wouldn't do

0:52:52 Eli: I said dungeons and dragons not at

0:52:52 Lydia: This and dragon only one dragon again. So how serious do you think Elon is about buying this?

0:53:00 Thomas: Oh, for fuck's sake.

0:53:01 Eli: All serious he says this every time a company does something he doesn't like

0:53:05 Thomas: And he's only done it one really important time.

0:53:07 Eli: He's only bought it once and it was because people were making fun of him on his favorite mental illness

0:53:14 Thomas: If you buy Hasbro, then at least Magic the Gathering can't get any worse than it currently is. And that's not because of like woke stuff. That's just because of pure capitalism.

0:53:22 Lydia: Capitalism. Yeah.

0:53:24 Thomas: Well, so what's the ultimate thing here? Is this just yet another bullshit anti -woke controversy that then everyone forgets about and Dungeons and Dragons lives happily ever after and we're all fine? Is that okay?

0:53:22 Eli: Platform yes yeah this is an this is a nothing controversy that nobody cares about out that will make more few players feel welcome that will cause less halting weirdness and will be a less shameful history for us to introduce our kids to right like because look here's the truth of the matter and this is what I say to my fellow gamers all the time right we're gonna have to explain history and we're going to have so much to explain I've only got a couple of years until max starts asking about who the president is and I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna say I know he's there like lord knows when we try to tell our kids about our hobbies can we at least point to a dungeon master's guide that doesn't have racial essentialism in it right that doesn'T have a forward by jerry fucking coin like we're doing what I'll say about this controversy is what we say about all controversies here on where there's woke where I am an equal partner llc this has been happening nobody but bigots cares and the old people reporting on it are 10 years late to the story of erotic fantasy I am your sherpa much as I will be your guide through the book of eronic fantasy it's nice right nice

0:53:41 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Phoebe's there. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. No, not at all. Yeah, I'm looking at it now, actually.

0:53:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a good way to sum it up. Eli Bosnick, thank you so much. D &D Minus, genuinely one of my favorite, one of my favorite shows. I listen to every episode and of course all your other shows. And yeah, thanks so much for taking us through this because we genuinely would not have the ability to do it on our own. Okay. If you DM for for us. This fucking guy.

0:55:35 Lydia: What's going on, everyone?

0:55:35 Thomas: We never actually met this guy, did we? He was at MythCon? Behind me with the camera.

0:55:45 Lydia: Right now. I'm just kidding.

0:55:46 Thomas: Yeah, I was like, fuck. Oh, right. That fucking, yeah. Okay. I don't think I ever talked to him, but yeah, what a douchebag. Okay, whatever. I've been recording for like 10 minutes. Yeah.

0:55:58 Lydia: Have you been recording this whole time?

0:56:02 Eli: What if you there was a big pile of orc poop and you had to roll dexterity or an orc's butt would fall onto an orc poop Robert J. Kuntz