Giant Bomb Unplugged: Dungeons & Dragons: Episode 02

Someone should probably explain metagaming to dan lol.

Don't let Dan drive if he's going to be a dick about it. Or next time he sleeps, just leave him behind.

Rorie may or may not be a good dedicated DM, but I definitely agree that the investment here is disappointing. I don't really understand how he expects to teach D&D to anybody if he doesn't really understand the edition he's using either.

It's sort of a stark contrast to the last D&D podcast I listened to - the Penny Arcade ones - where they brought in a guy from Wizards to DM for them. They're actually really fun to listen to, because while there's a lot of out of character joking around, when they return to the actual adventure, it's also interesting. I was hoping for this to head more in that direction, but it hasn't yet. Which isn't that surprising; why would the guys be interested in this when Rorie hasn't even read the books?

Hey Rorie, just a tip from casual DM. Instead of looking for rules when a player wants to do something, just roll a d20 with their appropriate modifier. If you think it seems improbable that they could do the thing, have them roll with disadvantage. For easy stuff, roll with advantage. Say yes or "try it" as much as possible and keep the action moving. 5e is designed to free the DM from the rule heavy days of editions passed.

Please don't "rein in" the antagonism between the party. If I wanted a min-maxed perfect game of DnD I wouldn't watch the Giant Bomb +1 crew do it. The non-combat parts of the episode have always been infinitely more interesting. If all you want to watch is slick combat go watch a video game. DnD is about doing stupid shit with the people you are playing with. Stupid shit such as cutting of the ears of your enemies, demanding an unfair amount of gold, and stealing from one of the party.

Well, I can't sleep and by now there ain't enough time for sleeping till i have to get to work, so this is my life saver. Insomnia, selling GB premium subscriptions since 2010.

Rorie really needs to learn the damn rules before he goes on camera. It's his responsibility to not try and learn on camera. It's a waste of time to watch the guys wiggle pencils while Rorie looks up the crap he should have known before the show.

@thevoice: Exactly. This isn't Unprofessional Dungeons and Dragons, it's Unplugged.

Dan, your commitment to Kayfabe is either remarkable or cringe-worthy. God have mercy on all of us.

He's being Ric Flair when he immediately wants a larger share of the gold. He's being somewhat childish when Brad steals gold from him without his character knowing, but then chooses to actively ignore that and attack a team member for literally no reason within the game's context.

Both Brad and Dan should get kicked in the nuts. The end.

Look that slap in the face shit was hilarious. Why would you play D&D if not to have fun roleplaying? Thats like playing Skyrim for the combat.

At the end of the day. The only thing that matter is, did everyone come away having fun? If not, that is the problem.

Successfully dnd tables (groups, parties, whatever word you like to use) are in part about empathy. Everyone is there to have fun, not just you. Have fun, but don't work at cross-purpose when it comes to others having fun.

So the actions that occurred, the DM style used, none of that is inherently wrong. It might well end up having been..but its not the action itself that was wrong. Nothing wrong with a laid back DM learning the rules. Nothing wrong with a player being a villian, nothing wrong with PvP. In a vacuum all of those things can exist in perfectly fun (though maybe not fun to watch) games of Dnd.

Its when stuff like that is an element of "I am having fun with this, and no one else is/I'm actively ruining it for others." Then, its an issue. And that, ultimately isn't something anyone viewing from the outside can judge.

Seriously. This is a video being recorded for a paying audience by people who are use to what it takes to make entertaining videos, or at least attempting too. For all any of us know, the entire session was scripted down to the very last detail before being committed to film. Maybe they ran it once and then redid it live. I mean of course they didn't but how could any of us be sure?

Thus my point. If everyone had fun, the game is going fine. If not, its an issue of lacking the perspective/empathy to understand its a game for everyone, and people need to work together to make it fun for all. Not, as people are saying, a specific element that happen here that is always 100% of the time wrong, even if it might be in this case.

If this series is gonna be Dan wanting more stuff than everyone (for less work) and being a sourpout when someone stands up to him I will not watch this series. I get enough of that on the podcasts. I WAS ACTUALLY ROOTING FOR BRAD. I think I'll just go watch the ones involving Vinny again. #TEAMBRAD

I don't play D&D and generally like Ryckert, but that slap thing was frustrating both because the stealing wasn't handled well and Ryckert's lack of understanding that he wouldn't know what happened. The dynamic he and Drew have is interesting, but hopefully things will go smoother in the future from an actual gameplay perspective.

#Teambrad!

H A S H T A G T E A M B R A D

It's almost totally unfathomable how Dan could have played videogames his entire life, even to the point of them becoming his career, and still has trouble understanding some basic RPG concepts.

Either way, I definitely appreciate him trying to play the heel and steal all the gold, but it's no fun at all trying to roleplay being an asshole if you're not going to try and remove yourself from the character. If you're roleplaying an asshole and you're not limiting yourself to the game world, then you're just being an asshole.

#TEAMDETROIT

@centurion73: I couldn't agree more, and was surprised to have go so far down the comments before I found someone saying exactly this. I applaud Rorie for taking the reigns-- it's not easy to find someone willing to take up the mantle of DM. However, I feel it's a disservice to the game, the players, and the audience, to hear him say "I haven't actually read..." as often as he does. If you're going to take up the mantle, you've gotta know how the system works.

If Dan pulls this crap again, Detroit Jones should just slit Sir Richard's throat in his sleep and Dan can make a fake Hulk Hogan or something.

This needs Vbomb pretty badly.

Also, wtf Dan. RP a greedy person all you want but stop metagaming like crazy

I don't care about the gold arguments, but I think they should all at least read through some of the player's handbook on their own time if they want to continue this series.

This was great, and Dan just being a heel made my day. The awkwardness all around was just hilarious.

I'm curious, do you guys really think Dan is being an a$$hole for the hell of it? It's obvious from his love of wrestling he's just pulling a heel-turn on everyone just to make it more entertaining.

Oh my goodness I am loving Brad's hair. I hope he keeps growing it out. It looks so God damn good.

I really enjoyed it. Poor Rorie is herding cats and making it hard on himself but everyone is new (including him) so that's to be expected. Keep it up.

Love how Rorie keeps accidentally dropping that "slur".

Nope! He isn't. The bad guys are supposed to lose to the good guys. If Dan was just roleplaying, he would happily play dumb when the other characters make a fool out of his comic "heel" character. You know, since that is why and how heels have existed since forever. There's a big difference between roleplaying a heel and simply trolling and this was definitely the latter. He had what he thought was this great idea about how to screw with the party and piss everyone off but Brad outwitted him and when Dan's plan backfired, he got genuinely mad. It was really kind of pathetic, given how tiresome Dan's joke character already was before the campaign started.

This^^^ I mean come on people. First episode we hear Dan say hes got a plan for this character. Then he pretends to be a dick about money first thing. I look in the comments and see people complaining about how much of a "jerk" hes being, when hes just roleplaying the character really well. Then Brad retorts by "doing something". This is hilarious and you should all take it less seriously. Dannys got a pile of ears for crying out loud...

I know this is the internet, but lighten up people.

Everybody that's upset about Dan are all IT'S STILL REAL TO ME DAMMIT!

Dan metagaming like a motherfucker.

I wonder if Dan is to competitive for DnD

Haven't been able to watch yet, but Drew looks positively alarmed on that thumbnail and I want to know why.

I have three comments for regarding this

1: I sympathise that Rorie does not have unlimited time and may not know all the rules, but I feel that for a product that they are specially asking people to pay for, he could put in a little more time. I don't know if this a case of Giant bomb needs to allow him a couple of hours of business time to bone up on the rules and figure it out (how I think it should be handled) or finding a bit of free time.

2: I am having a hard time understanding why Dan seams to be having such a hard time grasping the concepts at play here. I have never played DnD, only played a handful of RPGs and don't think that I am a overly brilliant person, but I feel that just from watching this series, I have a basic level of understanding of how it is going down. However, for someone who seams to spend a lot of time yelling about how "smart" he really is, Dan either needs to put a bit more effort into paying attention, or something because I feel like I am spending an awful amount of time watching hime be just being completely lost.

3: If Dan is just going to act like a giant baby at every chance (I want more gold than everyone/HOW DARE YOU STEAL FROM ME WHILE I TRY AND STEAL FROM EVERYONE/give me what I want or I'll derail this whole thing) this is going to be a tedious ass series, which I would seriously question as it is something that they want me to pay money for. Now, I am not saying that he should play a paladin lawful good, but even wrestling writers know that if they sent Ric Flair out to act like a spoil child, people general are not going to respond to that. People liked Ric Flair because he acted like a charming rouge, an Han Solo. He got over where he could, he didn't act like a child's book villain.

These are my thoughts on this feature, some people might like the way it is heading, and to them I say more power to you. However, while I like the idea of this series, I am dubious on the outlook.

After reading some of the comments. I know very little about DnD and I suspect that this series was made for an audience like me, especially considering 4 of the players are new.

From my point of view Rorie was doing a fine job as DM. A little more group control towards the end when Dan and Brad were arguing would have been appreciated (I don't watch Giant Bomb for the arguing personally). I didn't find the time it took Rorie to reference the rules as distracting, if anything I thought it gave the other members a few seconds to banter among themselves which I like from videos on Giant Bomb. I also enjoyed his attitude while being DM this video, trying to nudge people to RP a little and asking the group what there motivations were for doing certain actions I enjoyed.

"Driving the caravan" and "pitching in gas money" really? If you were trying to RP that as a justification that is pretty weak.Near the end, there was a certain intangibility in the way Dan was talking that did not come off as playing a character. Especially when Brad successfully pick pocketed him and then Dan, from an RP perspective slapped Brad for no reason whatsoever. The other people commenting that agree Dan was a little flustered and obnoxious through the end of this video, more or less have the same viewpoint as me so I won't go into further detail. #TeamBrad today!

I really appreciate the elder scrolls music in the background. Thanks @unastrike.

People acting like Dan was fully in control of how much of an asshole he was being purely because he intended to RP a heel character seem to be missing the very noticeable difference in his attitude.

"I paid 15,000 gold for this coat, I need more money!" - very obviously Dan roleplaying to the best of his ability.

"Dan, your character doesn't know that anything happened."

"Fine, but I'm going to slap him in the face because I say so." - very obviously Dan ignoring roleplaying because, as mentioned, he would have no reason to do that if Brad hadn't tipped his hand.

What I'll give Dan credit for is his attempts to work it back into a roleplaying context; "my guy is paranoid and thinks Brad is looking at him funny", and then using Brad's comment about his pockets as an excuse to check his money. Even if it is Dan being stubborn and refusing to give up his desire to do these things, he did at least try.

Similarly, I'm glad he quickly caught onto the fact that actually doing wrestling moves is suicidal.

In any case, everyone is missing the real highlight of the video:

Dan: What the fuck is a tea towel?

No matter where you skip in this video, Rorie's answers are always vague "maybe", "probably" and "most likely". That sounds like a dungeon "master" in "control". Funny stuff.

More heel Dan all day every day.

Also why does Brad get any say on where the money goes when all he did was die immediately.

Games this generation have like 1 or 2 second loading screens... how would you want to fit in a mini-game in that? XD

On PC, maybe. Wasn't the big problem with Dark Souls 2 on consoles the load times? In any case, they already came up with the alternative years ago: lore text. Skyrim, the Souls games, etc. just have item descriptions and gameplay tips on load screens.

The longest "load screen" I've seen lately is Smash Bros. online, where you get to practice against either Sandbag or a clone of your character.

But if Dan is "roleplaying" Ric Flair he's doing a dick-all job of it, because his partners should be his Four Horsemen. Ric Flair didnt argue with The Andersons and Blanchard every week on TV.

I really hope Dan's character gets wounded badly, and they let Dan's character die in the next episode. That whole thing about the gold, him actually getting upset that Brad stole from him. And all this crazy wresting nonsense is making this a terrible feature. Everyone else is just trying to have a good time. Dan is just taking it way too seriously and being mostly a dick about everything.

Yup. It's a shame, really.

If they are going to argue they should at least try to do in character arguing to make it more interesting.

I would say you guys are overreacting but what's the point

Rorie really needs to embrace the "theater of the mind" aspects of 5th edition and not worry so much about having the exact goblin token for the sample fight. Stuff like that will just bog everything down.

I would have preferred to have Rorie playing and get someone more experienced to DM, even if it is a guest, Gamespot person, etc. A DM who doesn't know what he is doing and doesn't know all the game systems will lead to a pretty lackluster campaign most of the time.