Get to know us a little before going all the way.
Cap:
[0:14] Alright, alright, alright. Hello, our darling listeners. Welcome to our Get to Know Us episode, titled ASL, Age, Sex, Location. Where is our location? In your darling ears. I'm here with our lovely DM, Dylan, and our beautiful half-elf, Asteris, also known as Crit. ASL, baby. And it's me, your bardic MC, Thea, also known as Cap. Hello. Say hello, everyone. That makes it sound like you're Cap. Hello. You could be Cap for tonight. Hello. Hello. Hello. But we are bringing you this sort of introductory mini episode, just as sort of a, hey, how are you? Just to get to know us a little bit, sort of know our backgrounds in the game and our play styles and what have you. um so uh who who uh who wants to go first i can go first anyone want to go first i'll go first hit me sick all right oh so our darling dm dylan he's showing nipple, slipped it what uh tell us a little bit about your your tabletop history and sort of uh you know History with gaming.
Dylan:
[1:38] Well, I was first turned on to gaming by my neighbor who had a second edition Shadowrun book.
Dylan:
[1:48] And I was like, what? You can do all this crap? And I couldn't understand the rules. And I thought that was just because I was too young. But every time I look back on it, it's not because I was too young. The rules were just really confusing and stupid. stupid um the shatter run setting was a modern day earth fantasy magic awakens like all the fantasy stories are real dragons wake up magics real trolls everything and they just populate the earth oh and then they have to make like country they have to redraw all the like you know nations and everything basically and like the president of the united states of canada and And Mexico is a dragon who like just is in human form all the time. I just thought it was so cool. I was like, hell yeah. And then, uh, I didn't really do anything for a while, but I ran into what is now, uh, some friends that I still have when I was about 16. a crew of people who all played D&D at the game store, an older crowd. And our group there were known as Daywalkers because we could all socialize and we all had jobs and weren't just hanging out at the game store all day. But we'd blow in there at night, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and they're just like, ooh, those guys.
Cap:
[3:09] Like cool guys.
Dylan:
[3:10] Yeah, we're the cool nerds. Not like other nerds. Not like other nerds. Don't you want to shake my hand?
Crit:
[3:17] Wow.
Dylan:
[3:19] Anyway, aside from my street cred. Yeah, we did a lot of cool stuff. We had an open Undermountain Dungeon Crawl where anybody can join. And at one point we had four tables going and it was all one world living together. We did an open dueling tournament and we had over 100 people doing that. and that was back in third edition oh wow dnd and yeah that's how i learned combat on like the most munchkin scale and yeah i kind of took a break around fourth edition played pathfinder and.
Dylan:
[4:01] Did some game design myself and then i've just been off and on since but i also had a heavy the influence of white wolf games world darkness horror supernatural uh story forward organic progression type games are my favorite which brings me to my next point i don't really run strictly by the rules um i like to create a story and create cool characters and um i'm a fan of the players i'm a fan of the story and it might be because of my uh abused background playing with a bunch of the 80s boomer style uh kill you because you're worth xp um type gamers but you will likely hear me uh saying bringing up rules from game editions from third edition or like touch ac like touch ac and um you know combat reflexes stuff like that what's.
Cap:
[5:08] Your uh what's your reflex save.
Dylan:
[5:09] Right um right they don't even call it that anymore right no they do yeah so i i'll say stuff like that and then anyway but i run a good game i hear so you.
Cap:
[5:21] Do you do run a a good game we.
Crit:
[5:23] Laugh we cry.
Cap:
[5:24] It's it's a fun time i will i will say that um this is the god what third game that i've been in that you've run and they've all been absolutely fantastic and very very fun some of my favorite games i've ever been in legit.
Dylan:
[5:41] Thank you it's an honor yeah man.
Cap:
[5:46] Alright, Crit, you want to give us a little something something? A little tell us about your gaming background?
Crit:
[5:52] Yeah so i'm crit um i've been playing i mean i've been playing video games like my whole damn life uh but yeah uh let's see i got turnt in college i played a game of um dungeons and dragons 3.5 edition uh and i i think i started off as like a like a halfling rogue or something just like like, you know, peak, peak, uh, gremlining. Um, and you know, no, uh, we, we also did play a lot of munchkin. Uh, so I learned a lot of things from that game.
Cap:
[6:31] Um, that's such a fun game.
Crit:
[6:34] What's that?
Dylan:
[6:35] It's a gateway. Yes.
Crit:
[6:36] Yeah, precisely. It teaches you how to behave in.
Cap:
[6:39] That's how I'm using it.
Crit:
[6:40] Yeah, exactly. Uh, yeah, I ran like a game for fun once. Uh, I, I found it terrifying and I didn't do it for like 10 more years.
Cap:
[6:50] I was in that game as well. It was very fun. Or like, are you talking about a different one?
Crit:
[6:53] No, no. I'm talking about a game I ran in college. Like a one shot that I was like, oh, I'm going to get these two monsters and they'll be boyfriend, girlfriend. And then they're like one monster will be like mad because you attacked her.
Cap:
[7:03] That sounds fun.
Crit:
[7:05] Yeah. And she's like, I'm going to summon my daddy. And that happens. And so, yeah, I yeah, it's I've always wanted to play in that game. uh yeah and then um many years later uh i was i was doing roller derby with cap here and uh we all just kind of like i feel like the topic of dnd got brought up and it was being whispered about and.
Cap:
[7:32] We all just skated over.
Crit:
[7:34] Exactly like hello suddenly there was a cabal and uh yeah and so then i was running a game of curse of strahd for uh i think there were like five or six of us maybe There's a ton of us. There's a lot, actually.
Cap:
[7:46] There's a lot.
Dylan:
[7:48] Just to interject real quick, some of the guys that I gamed with gamed with Gary Gygax.
Cap:
[7:57] Oh, so, like, deep nerd.
Dylan:
[8:00] Yeah. Nice. Like, Monty Hall, awful. Like, I wish I could describe the types of games they run, but they're not. You'd be surprised. All those original devs, yeah, their games were fucking crazy.
Cap:
[8:13] I bet they were. My God, to be a fly on the wall of that game.
Dylan:
[8:17] Well, I tried to join one of those games, actually, and they were like, yeah, it's an epic level game.
Cap:
[8:24] Sit down, Junior.
Dylan:
[8:25] You're huh yeah and i was like okay yeah i'll make it i'll make a character and they're like all right it's gonna be crazy um you know and i was like i i believe you i'm really into it and they're like and they kept like dropping hints but then they were just spoiling it at one point you know they're like uh yeah you know like uh just a hint mistress dead i'm like okay fuck what okay well okay and they're like yeah and you know like all the other players were in in the existing games they're all like clapping they're like oh like they know something they're like okay i was like well i'm gonna play a rogue and he's like absolutely not you can't play rogue i was like why not he's like they're not powerful enough you can play one of these three characters i was like i'm not gonna play with you fuckers that's.
Cap:
[9:13] Hilariously gatekeepy my god my god.
Dylan:
[9:17] And that's where i.
Cap:
[9:19] Feel like the like all women all queer uh strad game that you ran crit was It was very fun in that way because we had so many new people that didn't know what was going on at all.
Crit:
[9:31] As I was saying.
Dylan:
[9:33] Yeah, how can I make this about me?
Cap:
[9:36] Listen, that's what I'm here for. I am here to gently segue us to and from.
Crit:
[9:41] I'm here to make it awkward.
Cap:
[9:45] That's the energy I bring to the room.
Dylan:
[9:47] I'll just apologize constantly.
Crit:
[9:50] It's okay. We get to rip you for it. i get to be an asshole.
Cap:
[9:55] So uh so yeah um so you you ran that game with us crit and then we were in a bunch of other games together yeah we uh sigil yes um i think we did like strad try it twice because jen ran it oh that's.
Crit:
[10:12] Right yeah yeah so we we met in roller derby and then we We were like in a big group game together. And then like that group kind of morphed and changed and we continued to be in that group. Dylan was also kind of in the same group for a long time. So like, I feel like we've been playing together for a long time. And I think like, we've just found that we have such good chemistry. Like we're like, I love playing with you guys, like, however it is. So we've played, gosh, like, yeah, so Sigil, Curse of Strahd a couple of times. We did Monster Hearts, like, kind of a homebrew. That kind of inspired this. It was Monster Hearts and Monster of the Week we kind of combined some rules for.
Cap:
[10:54] Oh, okay.
Crit:
[10:55] But it was mostly Monster Hearts. Let's be real.
Dylan:
[10:58] I thought the Harry Potter game inspired this one.
Crit:
[11:01] Yeah, that's what we're talking about.
Dylan:
[11:02] Oh, okay. That's what the... Oh, yeah, sorry. I forgot the... I was like trying to run I was like did I play in that one.
Crit:
[11:07] Yeah no I ran that one and I rulesed it we like co-DM'd it right it was very cool it was very chill.
Cap:
[11:15] And we also did Vampire we did Vampire the Masquerade.
Dylan:
[11:19] Yeah my baby.
Cap:
[11:20] That was my favorite thing to run.
Crit:
[11:23] Yeah yeah I ran a Powered by the Apocalypse I ran a Powered by the Apocalypse game for work as well it was like a work themed game which was a fun way to take out some um feelings.
Cap:
[11:40] Tgif am i right.
Crit:
[11:41] Precisely yeah that's freaking awesome it's like what if this company was um run by a psychopath and it wasn't and also what if it was set in an alternate reality.
Cap:
[11:56] Oh i love that.
Crit:
[11:57] I love.
Cap:
[11:59] That oh man all right so i guess uh um as far as my tabletop experience goes um i do have a lot of overlap with these two fools so i won't go back over that shit um but But I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, God, in like 2001. I was in sixth grade and the boy I had a crush on down the street invited me to the house to play D&D with him and his brother. And I was like, holy shit. And it was the coolest thing. I was obsessed. I'd always really liked fantasy and storytelling. telling so I um you know I saw that I saw that elven druid girl with the wolf uh in 3.0 and I was like her her I'm her yes you know as we all did um but you know we we played um a few times and it was one of those things where I thought it was really cool but like.
Cap:
[12:58] Man as like a what like 10 11 year old probably 11 i could not it was an impenetrable set of rules i was like i do not know we ran games me and my friend my other friend down the street and we would just be like all right listen even you hit odd you don't and like those were our rules it was really fun coin flipping yeah pretty much i was just like fuck this i don't know um and you know so i didn't um i didn't get to really play for a while until i um found some some guys in high school that ran games and uh we had a game that we ran during our study hall for a while which was really fun you know we kicked down open doors and and shit like that oh fuck yeah so that was great you kicked down open doors oh yeah like it was just a door and it was completely unlocked it was totally unlocked but like someone's just like i kicked down the door and our dm's like all right well it was unlocked but you kick it down my hero tired exasperated high school nonsense as it were um and uh i guess after that i had quite a dry spell um and i didn't really pick it back up until my mid 20s mid or early 20s or so um and i tried um I'm doing a game of Star Wars, the role playing game, because I was obsessed with.
Cap:
[14:27] SWOTER, Star Wars, the Old Republic, the MMO. And I was just like, excellent. And that's when I found out that my husband's DMing style is not my playing style.
Cap:
[14:37] He's a numbers boy and I am a plot girl. What edition was it? What was? Oh, no, it was the old one. The like the D20 system, not the D6 system.
Dylan:
[14:48] Was it revised?
Cap:
[14:49] I don't.
Dylan:
[14:51] Or was it Legacy or something?
Cap:
[14:55] I don't know. I have them in the basement. Okay.
Dylan:
[14:58] Because there's some really, there's some good ones and there's really, really bad ones that are super number crunchy and annoying.
Cap:
[15:05] This was probably, this, it felt, it felt a lot like 3.0. So I have a feeling it was pretty number crunchy.
Dylan:
[15:13] I was just like.
Cap:
[15:14] Oh, wow, look at this fucking list of skills. This is impenetrably huge sort of a thing. But it was, it was a fun time nonetheless. We had a good time. We had a Jedi that couldn't hit anything. Which was hilarious. He just kept dying. I was like, good job, B. And then I didn't really get to do too much until we met up in Roller Derby. And then we played a lot of 5e, Vampire the Masquerade. We mentioned Monster Hearts. I played a game of Eclipse Phase, which was really fun. That was like sort of my first cyberpunk game. And I think my first time using a D100 system, which at the time, I must say, confused the ever-loving shit out of me. But I've since been in a few games of Call of Cthulhu, which has been really fun. And I understand that much better now, and I quite like it. Um, so that's, that's, I think most of my, my tabletop history. Um, I'm a gamer, a video board and table. Um, I think the, uh, you know, Bioware is, uh, got me where I am for the most part, uh, kind of taught me the ropes. So I felt like I was already pretty acquainted with D&D rules before even getting back into 5e.
Dylan:
[16:33] I feel like if you were 19 in 1998...
Cap:
[16:39] Hmm you.
Dylan:
[16:40] Probably would have been a big larper vampire larper.
Cap:
[16:42] Oh um i i was i was that girl who wore um vampire fangs to um school in high school because you know i wanted listat to be my boyfriend um right and i was when i found out about vampire the masquerade i had never been more jealous of a thing in my entire life i wanted to play it so fucking bad like larp style um but i i was a larper for a time i actually fucking forgot about that until right now i used to play dagger here, um and uh that was that was quite the thing i i made my own foam weapons and coverings and uh went and um hit boys i got a concussion one time and uh discovered what it was like to just get absolutely nailed in the stomach with a javelin or some shit oh man i was just like i'll be right back i'm just gonna go throw the fuck up off the field so that was that was fun uh but yeah no so i i've done a little bit of larping it was fun nice nice oh man but uh yeah Yeah, I guess outside of gaming and tabletop gaming in general, I'm I'm the world's OK-est cosplayer.
Cap:
[18:06] I like I like sewing and I like making things. I'm just not my decks is pretty low. I feel like as a human. So I do struggle with like fine finesse work, but like I've done some cosplays that I'm proud of. I did Bombshell Wonder Woman, Punk Sailor Mars, Morrigan from DAO, and most recently, Aizawa from My Hero Academia. Those are some of my favorites.
Dylan:
[18:35] I don't think I've seen any of those pictures.
Cap:
[18:38] I'll have to send them to you.
Dylan:
[18:40] Yeah.
Cap:
[18:41] I'll have to dig up the Morrigan one. That one's old.
Dylan:
[18:44] That was the one that really piqued my interest.
Crit:
[18:47] Yeah.
Cap:
[18:48] No, straight up. I wore that to New York City Comic Con in like 2011, I think. And I literally get, we take the path in from Jersey City. And literally, we come up the stairs. First thing out of someone's mouth. hey nice tits and.
Dylan:
[19:10] I'm like.
Cap:
[19:10] Cool cool that's gonna be my day nice.
Dylan:
[19:12] Fucking gremlin new york i swear i swear to god the.
Cap:
[19:16] Less clothes you wear as a cosplayer the more people want to take your picture i have cosplays that i'm very proud of that no one has taken pictures of but if i'm showing cleavage or am wonder woman people want pictures i.
Dylan:
[19:26] Mean yeah it makes sense it's funny yeah i did uh i did the joker i did um he fled your joker but this is before i got memed and you know like meme to death gamers rise up you know uh yeah uh i did it yeah i was like just before all that and a bunch of people were taking pictures of me and i made a child cry on the bus, and like her mom her mom laughed because like her like i looked over and i saw this kid made eye contact with her and i just i didn't even smile or anything i just looked at her and she She started crying and her mom was like, what? And she looks over at me and starts laughing.
Cap:
[20:07] That's so funny.
Dylan:
[20:08] It's a fucking terrifying clown.
Crit:
[20:11] Wow.
Cap:
[20:11] That's adorable.
Crit:
[20:14] Nice.
Cap:
[20:14] I just kind of segued into my hobbies and fun facts. But do y'all have, what do y'all do when we're not at the gaming table for funsies? Or work, you can talk about that, but I figure that's lame.
Dylan:
[20:29] No, I'm not going to talk about work. um i mean aside aside from that not much i did a lot of gaming growing up video games and stuff like that i never really liked board games um i uh sunk my teeth into stuff like um ultima online uh diablo and you know diablo 2 and all those and the longer format more uh rpg focused games i got more and more into especially like planescape torment you know the reviews it's the greatest game you'll ever read you know stuff like that um but i haven't really played much in the way of video games uh in the last 10 years or so so everything just hasn't really caught my interest but yeah other than that i'm really into like growing plants and uh making stuff i like to cook and i'm in self-care although i've fallen off lately, Yeah, and walking around the city.
Cap:
[21:34] You'll get back on it.
Dylan:
[21:35] I love walking around the city. It's one of my favorite. I don't even know if it counts as a hobby, but there's always something that goes on when you do it. For sure.
Crit:
[21:42] People count hiking as a hobby, and that's just walking.
Dylan:
[21:46] Right. You're going for a ramble. I hike often. Every day, actually, I hike.
Cap:
[21:54] I hike to and from my job. That's right.
Crit:
[21:57] I hike to and from the bathroom every day. do.
Dylan:
[22:01] A lot of hiking at work they.
Crit:
[22:03] Tell me to take a hike I did it.
Dylan:
[22:08] Well yeah then I'll just get random obsessions you know three month things that I'll read a bunch of books on and learn everything about and then completely drop that's my.
Cap:
[22:19] Favorite I love the hyper fixation so the fuck do you do crit.
Crit:
[22:23] What do you do I don't do anything it's great.
Cap:
[22:29] Come on even i had things.
Crit:
[22:31] That i do and i don't do anything either no i pulled shit out of my ass i just like to i love doing no i sit.
Cap:
[22:39] Stationary in this room until.
Crit:
[22:41] We enter.
Cap:
[22:41] Phone calls and then she activates that's right.
Crit:
[22:43] No so i uh i i obviously i i sit here and talk to these chums um i do does it count if i'm still taking classes i don't know yeah okay yeah so i do sketch comedy I do improv, I do some music, play the instruments. I have too many, hyper fixation style. So yeah, don't ask me which ones.
Dylan:
[23:12] You just took the dog to agility training today.
Crit:
[23:14] Yeah, I do agility with my dog. I do weightlifting. I also love to grow things in the garden. um and yeah i'd like i make stuff sometimes i've got more oh god i'm a beekeeper that's probably the most interesting thing oh yeah and i've got these uh these pythons these sick i've got two pythons i have two pythons yeah those are like they're a vet in the house they're just massive and they're sick wait actually hang on six and a half inch pythons flex for me flex they got really big i didn't i didn't look but like from the top they look kind of cool i have like they're i've got some muscle definition now and it's like really exciting actually hell yeah.
Cap:
[23:58] Hello to anyone young in the audience.
Crit:
[24:01] Enjoy god enjoy.
Cap:
[24:02] Your knees while you have them.
Crit:
[24:03] You're beautiful you're beautiful i.
Cap:
[24:05] Know you hear the millennials on tiktok bitching about their knees but like it's it's fucking true just stretch every day.
Crit:
[24:13] Just give yourself a big hug.
Cap:
[24:15] Yeah.
Dylan:
[24:16] No, no. Love yourself. No, actually stretch every day. No, fuck all that. Stretch every day.
Cap:
[24:20] Fuck loving yourself. Hate yourself and stretch every day.
Dylan:
[24:22] No, love yourself too, but you can hate it. But fucking do it.
Crit:
[24:27] Drink water and stretch and eat and sleep and move your body. Do those four, five, six, seven things. Every day. Every day.
Dylan:
[24:38] And you'll be just fine.
Cap:
[24:41] Indeed. Drink water, everyone. But, well, I think this concludes our ASL Getting to Know Us episode. We hope y'all had fun sort of listening to us talk about our backgrounds in gaming and just a little bit about us as people and players. We hope you enjoy listening to our game. We certainly enjoy playing it. So, until next time, stay hydrated, stay sexy.