DMPC Brickwalls Game So Bad Even the BBEG Gets Tired Of Waiting [RPG Horror Story]

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Sometimes everything goes according to plan,
Sometimes they go horribly. Join us while

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we tell tales of games gone wrong. This is Curmudgeons and Dragons RPG horror

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Stonies the Low Adventurers. Welcome to
Camudgeons and Dragons. My name is Jason

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Portizo. Today I'm joined by Miss
Josie Diaz. Well. Hello, dear,

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Oh, hello again, Josie.
Yeah, it's like I never left.

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It's almost like you never left.
It's almost like you've been here the

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whole time. I have been here
the whole time, even when you don't

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see me again. I think I've
said this before. I'm always there.

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You're always annoying. Yeah, I
think I feel like I've said that before

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too. I think you'll say something
and in the back of your mind you

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hear my little stupid voice whispering the
most obnoxious thing you can think of at

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that moment, pretty much, and
then whoever is a crossroom, you just

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see your whole faceball and like,
what my I you know how some people

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have a conscience that's like a little
voice. Mine is not a conscience.

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It's just an annoyance and its name
is Josie. Yeah, it's ye.

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They'll just see me randomly get sad
all of a sudden, They'll be like,

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oh, I guess that's how depression
works. Just Josie, I am

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the cure to depression. Sure,
we'll go with that. It's I said

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to depression, not to agitation.
Okay, fine, well this see trick

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got weird. Let's get to a
story. Oh okay, all right,

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fine, all right today story is
from steel Geek two. The sequel way

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better than Steel Geek one. Steel
Geek one was like phoning it in Steek

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Steegie three though, got like way
off the rails and they started like you

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have to have that happy medium.
Steel Geek two, as soon as you

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throw in like like full CG guy
characters, you know the franchise is over.

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But just reviving dead characters with no
explanation peak. Steel Geek number two,

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All right, this is DMPC shoots
down every idea PC's had for invading

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a castle. Turns out Bbeg was
apparently a moron. Okay, Yeah,

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I love when we had titles that
are almost as well as a story,

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even invites us into our campaign,
gives us grief about character design, waste

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a session and a half of planning
by having her a dmpc veto every idea

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and then ends the game. What
a story, right, So here's a

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little campaign. The wife and I
joined about twenty years ago, so we're

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going back. We were invited by
a friend of a friend we all knew

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through gaming to join her homebrew rules
in World. Now now I hear you.

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I hear specifically Jim cringing. Yes, now, now I hear you

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cringing. But honestly, the rules
were good. It was a point based

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system. They had good flexibility and
decent balance, and after reading them,

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I was impressed. So we found
out that every other player went with they

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cast her slash Marshall mix of points. So I went pure Marshall and the

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wife went pure Castor. We go
for character making and she promptly choose us

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out for being disrespectful and late.
WTF two question marks? Oh, she

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had forgotten about daylight savings. She
was an hour off. Okay, nothing

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to do with the game, but
it's just it does set a character precedent.

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Just immediately put off. I'm immediately, I'm already annoyed. Be like,

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okay, fine, guess what I'm
gonna do to you. It was

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an ongoing game that we came into. Now there's going to be a time

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where like saying this as twenty years
ago talking about daily savings time to be

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like, wow, that was that
was a long time ago. They were

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doing Daly savings time. Because I
think we're stopping that next year. Well,

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I'm desperate for them to stop doing
it to me. Yeah, listen,

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it's nice down now. So it
was an ongoing game that we came

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into. First session, we find
we are hunting the Bbeg's minions to find

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his hidden castle. Okay, standard
stuff. We smoked the minions, find

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out the hiding place and that ends
the session. She has a DMPC,

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but that was because they only have
three other players before us. Okay,

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I guess, and I think that
is okay. Yeah, if you need

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to balance it out with I mean
there are cast Or Marshall Mays. So

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the DM also wants to participate in
party shenanigans. They don't just want to

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counteract. I'm not I'm not against
dmpcs, Okay, just double checking,

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just making sure second session were in. We polish off patrols of minions and

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find the castle. We are now
a halfway through the session. We start

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planning. How six people can get
past a small army, enter the castle,

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find the Big Bad and his lts
or is that much as be lieutenants

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on them? Probably yeah, or
lieutenants if you're British. I'm not okay.

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I put the listeners, fuck you, find the Big Bad and his

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lieutenants and smoked them all every idea
we have. Her DMPC has a counter

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argument. Session ends queue. The
between time get a call from her telling

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us that the other players aren't happy
we are more powerful than they are.

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We're not. She started at us
with the lower points, but we specialized

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and they generalized, so she tells
us not to spend any more points in

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our specializations. Whatever that's your problem, madam, right, it sounds like

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it's not as balanced as you thought
it was. To the next session,

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the clever planning continues, and by
that I mean her DMPC spends three hours

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shooting down every idea we have.
We have now spent five hours on planning

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and have gotten nowhere. That's literally
awful. It's insane. Something happened,

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though, I forget what. Suddenly
the drawbridge opens and the Big Bad comes

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out and challenges us to a group
combat. So we walk by the army,

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we walk past the moat that describes
down to the feet of depth and

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distance. We get on the bridge, we beat the hell out of the

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bad guys, and that was the
end of the campaign. What what?

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So we get invited in with three
sessions left, aren't told that gives us

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grief about spending the XP when there
wasn't going to be another session anyway,

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and waste half the time telling us
what won't work, and then serves the

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big bad up on a platter.
The end boring. I think I'm bored,

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honestly, after you spent two hours
the week before and three hours the

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next week planning and being told that's
not going to work. Okay, Then

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DMPC, what do you think will
work? Right? Tell me lay it

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on me. If you're so fucking
smart, that's I'm I'm annoyed, I'm

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agitated. If I was at the
table, he are you fucking with me?

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That's it. That's the end.
That was easier than the fight we

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had two sessions ago. Well,
have a theory about that A DMPC like

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a should not be even participating in
planning. No, they should just go

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with the flow us The characters are
about to get themselves killed. But like,

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obviously DNPC has has information that they
shouldn't have because it's in the same

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brain as a dm so like they
shouldn't be participating in that. I've done

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tmpcs like two or three times,
just because we had a low player account,

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and one of them was a like
a like a mystery, and I'm

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like, obviously this DNPC will not
be participating in figuring out the mystery.

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What do you use your dmpcs for? Because in campaigns that I'm in,

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they're really mostly used to be like
if we're kind of floundering to figure out

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what we should do next, they'll
drop us. They're like a little quest

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marker. Yeah. So and for
role play. Yeah, so a couple

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of different things, so that I've
used them for. Most commonly if we

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have the low player account. I
have one recently where so low story short

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ended up with just two players,
went from just two players to zero back

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to two, and yeah, we're
all there and had all stuff set up.

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So I throw a DMPC and we
have a three person party, which

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was like the bare minimum, yeah, for for being able to to play

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most of these games. So so
I had d NPC for that and the

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other time I ever did it was
players came by with their characters pre made.

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They had not consulted each other about
it, and there was like no

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semblance of any sort of healing whatsoever. Oh no, and it's just like

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a lot of like frontliners that are
definitely going to get killed. Yeah,

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So I had a d d NPC
in there, not only to have like

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a little bit of healing, not
going to like you be responsible for keeping

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them alive, but just like you
know, someone gets down, someone's got

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a healing word. Yeah. And
I also used that one as the hook

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there was because we kept doing these
same one shots like every week, so

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I was like kind of tying them
a little bit together. So it was

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it was the same like Quest Giver
benefactor I love a short story collection,

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to be honest. Yeah, that's
kind of what it was. And she

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started off as being like this queen
and then got downgraded to like mayor oh

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still thinks herself like regal, but
her office is a mess. Um.

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We've been having a phone with that
one. But but the dwarf that I

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that I gave them like then we
just kept making this that it was his

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sister that kept getting lost. He
got to keep saving her over and over

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again. Amiliar, she's a she's
a fledgling level one druid, and she

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she's trying her best and she getting
kidnapped by a turtle. No. No,

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she's awfully trying to learn Drewid stuff
that keeps running out of spell slots.

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I see that is a problem,
which is also why she can't help

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a combat anyway. So yeah,
so dnpc's absolutely have a role. Now,

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having a DNPC to flesh out a
four person party is fine. And

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then two more people join. Now
you got to this side, how important

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to this story is your DNPC?
Um? So should that DNPC should have

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still been part anticipating Maybe should have
been like taking a step back and look,

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the two new players participate more.
But all that coming around to say,

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like being like shooting down players ideas
over and over and over again for

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five hours. Yeah for if it's
like for like ten or fifteen minutes annoying,

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but whatever, put forward literal hours. If the players have the stupidest

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idea you ever heard, PC say, that's the stupidest idea I ever heard.

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Yeah, but they can still run
with it if they want to yeah,

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and like obviously tell the players why
and it shouldn't information they already have,

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so like, hey, that's not
going to work because remember we saw

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this, and like it's it's a
very different thing when like the only person

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at the table with any sort of
design information is like forcing the players to

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figure out what is apparently a very
difficult puzzle because it took five hours by

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sheer process of elimination, But then
it couldn't have been because they just walked

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past everything because the big bad evil
guy challenged them to one one in combat.

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Well, she probably got as bored
as everyone else did, so they

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just you know, all the all
the obstacles that you know, the the

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army, the moat that she described
in like how deep it was, Like

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obviously that was supposed to be a
thing. Yeah, And I mean,

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like I'm still annoyed with them reaching
out between sessions to be like the other

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players are upset that you're too op
you're too optimized. That was the point

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for the DM to be, Like, you guys could have specialized in something

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instead of spreading yourself thin over every
category. Yeah, why aren't you Why

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aren't you happy that you have somebody
that's so strong on your fucking team.

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I knew over the fucking moon,
but it was their time. Yeah,

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So so I'm gonna I think I
already pointed it out, but they said

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it was it was a it was
a point basis some they had good flexibility

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and decent balance. I think I
think we proved that. I think you

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had a test show that that was
a lie. I mean it could have

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been and the other players still could
have been annoyed about it. Yeah,

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Or you know, being being balanced
and flexible doesn't mean that the players are

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going about it the right way.
Yeah. If I just built bad characters,

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sucks to suck. Yeah, I
agree. So my other theory was

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that for whatever combination of reasons,
people were just getting sick of this game.

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And she's like, you know what
it, We're just gonna skip all

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this stuff that I had here,
go straight to the big bad let's wrap

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this thing up. I mean,
can you imagine how like disheartening it would

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be to get five hours of coming
up with ideas and somebody being like no,

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no, nah, Like imagine at
your job, you're coming up with

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all of these ideas for marketing or
for like sound engineering stuff whatever, and

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the clients just for every last one
of them. Nah no, I don't

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think so. I don't like that. And then you get to the end

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part and it's like you could have
done this yourself. Yep. And then

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they just skip it all, just
playing unplugged violent. Yeah. I was

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thinking, this sounds like every night
we're trying to side with the half for

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dinner. A different problem. But
it sounds like the game wasn't that great

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and you only you only wasted two
sessions on it. Yeah, congratulations,

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you escaped, Yeah you got out
of it. Yeah you win. I'm

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not sure Steegeek two. That's why
Steelgeek two is the best of the best.

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Yep. And a game is over, so there is no Steelgeek three.

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Perfect. You survived. They stopped
beating that dead horse. We dated

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everyone all. We do stories like
this all the time. I go to

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Communctions Dragons dot Com and on their
episodes, you can click on RPG horror

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stories and find like there's at least
fifty of these or close to it.

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I think so, And with this
being episode one O six, it's just

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about half. There's a lot of
them, and indies, you can't tell.

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We love to do them. Hey, I love doing them. Be

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either super easy to make, which
is great for me. Yeah, but

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I've just let to sit here and
be mouthy. It's it's great for me

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too. Um. That's all I
got for today, Josie, Thanks so

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much for joining me any times.
Your homework now Okay, you're elated.

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Thank you Adventurers. Until next time, thank you for listening to Curmudgeons and

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Dragons. Please share this with your
favorite adventurers and leave a review. If

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you have a tale we should tell, please send it to us at Curmudgeons

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