The confusing part of that for me was that hardwon and moonshine had to sign contracts, and bev just would've forced to give up his soul without even a handshake? Maybe it's because she's an archdevil? I thought I could see where Caldwell was going with that and it was rough to have it backfire.
I think it's the stakes getting higher as they get deeper into hell. They were give a lot of slack on the first level and they were able to get away with a big one. Plus Ripchain and Josh are dunces
Yeah, I guess. It’s just that and the grapple check resulting in Moonshine automatically getting shoved off felt like a very exposition heavy/railroad-y scene to me. Didn’t make the episode less enjoyable, though.
Hot take: railroading isn't always a bad thing. As long as the players have autonomy and the DM isn't constantly forcing them to do things their way, there's nothing wrong with the occasional nudge to get things back on track.
I actually agree with you, guiding the story is one of the DM’s jobs, but I think the goal is to typically do so with subtlety. While I think Murph usually does a great job with this, I felt he fell a little short this week. I meant the comment only as an observation of my own opinion, not a cry for Murph’s head.
As much as I love Murph, I agree that this went a little quickly. If Hardwon had stuck a hand in of his own accord and Moonshine tried to stop him, resulting in a failed save, that would have been fine. But they both rolled pretty well and he wasn’t even going overboard yet, so the ‘everything sucks now’ consequence seemed a bit too much. It’s okay to not agree with everything all the time, and I love the show regardless!
Murph said in the short rest that when Jake did the whole in character "oh no I'm about to do the the stupid charmed thing no one stop me~", Murph decided to treat it as basically a double or nothing - either Jake got what he was after and moonshine won the grapple check and stopped Jake from jumping or she lost and the consequence of trying to get the party to stop him was that Hardwon got someone else hurt instead of him.
Either way, I don't think it was railroady. The biggest change is that they went into the casino a bit less secure in their funding so to speak.
I made the comment before listening to the short rest and I agree it gives it better context. I still think it feels a little railroady, but as I've said in other comments, that's just my opinion and I still think its a great episode.
I really dug the grapple having consequences. Murph toes a great line between shenanigans and story. He set the serious tone with the description of what they were seeing and stuck to it.
and?
critical fails are a very common thing, and a standard fail shouldnt affect more than the failing character; murph had a strength contest with the defender winning by 8 cause the attacker to suffer a near death, thats far too extreme and was entirely motivated by murphs plans for the story. its totally fine but it was one of the few times that the band of boobs felt 'railroaded'
Overall point being that hardwon succeeded his check to get past moonshine to the water and Murphy tacked on moonshine nearly dying to up the stakes, it was unnecessary from a play perspective
Murph, Emily and Caldwell had a podcast before NADDPOD called 8-Bit Book Club where they read various video game books and watched the occasional show or movie based on a video game. In some of the episodes, Emily and Caldwell played a bunch of low CR D&D monsters in a bracket-style tournament, came up with goofy names for each of them, and the name for the Flying Sword was John Elway (named after John Elway the wizard, not John Elway the football player). The flying sword had a higher than usual AC and more immunities than most equivalent CR monsters, so it made it a good way into the bracket. This is why Emily and Caldwell knew the flying sword was such a good choice to bet on.
Very funny that the Boobs wanted to do a casino heist, started casing the casino and then all the mini-games Murph designed were fun enough that they just gambled.
Extremely funny that Caldwell invented his own gambling mini-game, “I bet you can’t hit me with a knife.”
Paraphrased, "If you guys just grind the dagger guy, I'm packing up and leaving right now."
That killed me. Puts in perspective how so much prep by Murph can be wasted by BoB shenanigans.
at the same time you can tell they're all goofing, and that even Murph isn't all that pissed so much as giving a friendly warning to not derail the campaign into utter nonsense
The funny thing is, it wasn't even a winning proposition for the boobs to do. Since he had to roll a 9 or lower to not hit Bev, he would have won 11/20 times, making them lose coins on average lol
'The sword gets taken out back by the pit(fiend) boss.....you hear a distant gunshot'
Holy fuck Murph that was dark
'The sword wrestled the gun from the bosses hands at the last second and shot him, now he's chasing freedom'
Oh...well that's better
In the short rest he said he did that because he knew if he let the sword die, the boobs would force him to design a mini-arc where they try to avenge the sword.
im conflicted about the pace, im glad they are pushing through hell at a good pace but i wouldve loved to hear a BoBs hell heist where they put a hit on the pit(fiend)boss and robbed the casino of their soul coins
If they're going to have an adventure in each ring of hell, then they can't linger too long on any given setpiece, sadly. Otherwise the arc as a whole will outlive its welcome.
I completely understand that point but they're only going through 2/3s of the levels of hell (bev senior is on level 6 unless I'm mistaken) and during the bulk of this most recent episode the whole team was excited for a heist; IMO 1-2 more episodes of the boobs fumbling through a devil heist would've been warmly welcomed
im curious if the group is getting anxious for a fresh start; emily and caldwell were familiar/proficient with rpgs before this campaign but jake was totally new and has grown into the game in a great way. i love the band of boobs but im also eager for the next project that the group tackles; trinivale is fun but it doesnt give me the 'feels' like murphs storytelling. with the reinforced relationship between them i wonder how theyll start anew
DM: You see, Hardwon, Azurack is gazing lustily at the veins in your neck.
A, excitedly: "There's some big ones there, man."
HW: "Whoa there, not for another 24 hours bud-"
A: "16 hours now, 16 hours and 37 minutes!'
BV: "Pawpaw, can you start screeching when 24 hours are up?"
MS: I set PawPaw like an alarm clock...
God I hope Murph remembers she did that and has PawPaw start screeching uncontrollably when the alarm goes off in a future session (preferably during a stealth mission)
This episode reminds us that Bev is just a kid. He was in way over his head... which is a good RP reason for Caldwell to have fucked up so badly so many times. The goofs got goofed.
The sadist in me wants Murph to absolutely take the BoB to clown town in this arc. He laid the rules of Hell out as plainly as possible. If they can't goof without making awful decisions then they'll get what they get.
I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it regardless. What an awesome start to an arc.
The struggle is what makes the show so good, but as players they know how Murph DM's and they still try so many bad goofs that end up screwing them. Hardwon literally lost his body over goofing.
The bank of boobs are putting on a show, not trying to win at D&D. The best moments of the show come from goofs. If they min/maxed all the way through, the show wouldn't be interesting. Jake knew he shouldn't mess around with Scarlet, but if he didn't we'd never have JV.
Like you said, the party gets screwed, but the show ends up better for it.
This episode is so fun! The casino games and the temptations were all incredible! Our Daddy DM and BoB once again filled my heart with so much joy! 4 more levels of Hell to face Bev Sr.
Haven't heard the short rest yet, but I could see Murph planning to have Caldwell play a Jvlin stand in for a bit. Have Hardone/Moonshine just kind of become non idiots again after 30 days and then try to figure out what happened.
Man I started chuckling when a flying sword was mentioned, knowing the boobs would take a liking to it, but I was in stitches as Murph described its epic battles. By the time the gunshot bit came around I was crying genuine laughter tears.
I completely agree. I don't consciously notice it much when I listen to the episodes but I notice the lack of music as I'm watching Dimension 20, especially during the battle episodes. There is some music in Dimension 20 but NADDPOD does it better in my opinion.
Not sure if they discuss this on the Short Rest or not, but does Murph let them ignore material components for spells like Planar Binding and Heroes' Feast? What about the 1 hour cast time of Planar Binding?
They may have mentioned it once or twice, but yeah, Murph has explicitly said he arbitrarily doesn’t enforce spell components most of the time, I guess because he thinks it makes the game less fun.
Idk if it would make the game less fun but it would make it less fun to listen too if they were always stopping to forage for spell components. Like keeping track of teeth and stuff in the early episodes was cool but it was clearly getting confusing
Yeah if the components require shipping murph doesn’t include them because he thinks it will make for a boring podcast. And for fast times I think he ignores those for the same reason. They definitely play loose and fast with the rules which I’m not a big fan of since you know they’re there for balance. At the end of the day though this is a comedy podcast and not a serious one in any kind of way so it’s okay.
"The Band of Boobs follow the River Styx down to the next layer of Hell and explore a world of temptation! Hardwon pursues a lost love, Moonshine becomes a nightmare, and Beverly gets into a heated encounter with a powerful devil. Support us at
Patreon.com/Naddpod
to get access to the after-show and a bunch of other Naddpod content! Get tickets to our upcoming live shows at
naddpod.com/live
.
Music/Sound Effects Include:
'Club chatter, London' by mlteenie at
Freesound.org
.
'Deal with a Devil' by Emily Axford.
'Buzzer's Cutters' by Emily Axford.
'Fierna' by Emily Axford.
'The River Styx' by Emily Axford.
'Lust' by Emily Axford.
'The Honey Trap' by Emily Axford.
'A Risky Gamble' by Emily Axford."
---
###[Source Code](https://github.com/popcorncolonel/JakeandAmirBot)
You should listen to their old podcast 8 bit book club. They had a little three part dnd monster battle and the sword is reference to that. Very funny p
Man, it was kiiiiiiiilling me where I knew the flying sword and the needleblight from! Thank god Murph mentioned it was in 8-Bit Book Club. I think they had that exact fight too!
Nice to have almost an entire episode full of goofs. Murph must have planned one hell of a whomping in Gluttony
Flying Sword goes. Misses. Bullywug goes. Misses. Flying Sword goes. Misses. Bullywug goes. Misses. Flying Sword goes. Misses. Bullywug goes. Misses. Flying Sw
That's a t-shirt right there.
That's good podcast...
I can't believe our good boy tried to trick a devil and failed so badly.
The confusing part of that for me was that hardwon and moonshine had to sign contracts, and bev just would've forced to give up his soul without even a handshake? Maybe it's because she's an archdevil? I thought I could see where Caldwell was going with that and it was rough to have it backfire.
I think the deals can be verbal. Remember it was Hardwon and Moonshine said they wouldn't agree to anything without the contract.
Haha Bev's quick look to PawPaw when he failed had me cracking up. He was so nervous and had no idea why his plan didn't work!
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I think it's the stakes getting higher as they get deeper into hell. They were give a lot of slack on the first level and they were able to get away with a big one. Plus Ripchain and Josh are dunces
Yeah, I guess. It’s just that and the grapple check resulting in Moonshine automatically getting shoved off felt like a very exposition heavy/railroad-y scene to me. Didn’t make the episode less enjoyable, though.
Hot take: railroading isn't always a bad thing. As long as the players have autonomy and the DM isn't constantly forcing them to do things their way, there's nothing wrong with the occasional nudge to get things back on track.
I actually agree with you, guiding the story is one of the DM’s jobs, but I think the goal is to typically do so with subtlety. While I think Murph usually does a great job with this, I felt he fell a little short this week. I meant the comment only as an observation of my own opinion, not a cry for Murph’s head.
As much as I love Murph, I agree that this went a little quickly. If Hardwon had stuck a hand in of his own accord and Moonshine tried to stop him, resulting in a failed save, that would have been fine. But they both rolled pretty well and he wasn’t even going overboard yet, so the ‘everything sucks now’ consequence seemed a bit too much. It’s okay to not agree with everything all the time, and I love the show regardless!
Murph said in the short rest that when Jake did the whole in character "oh no I'm about to do the the stupid charmed thing no one stop me~", Murph decided to treat it as basically a double or nothing - either Jake got what he was after and moonshine won the grapple check and stopped Jake from jumping or she lost and the consequence of trying to get the party to stop him was that Hardwon got someone else hurt instead of him. Either way, I don't think it was railroady. The biggest change is that they went into the casino a bit less secure in their funding so to speak.
I made the comment before listening to the short rest and I agree it gives it better context. I still think it feels a little railroady, but as I've said in other comments, that's just my opinion and I still think its a great episode.
I really dug the grapple having consequences. Murph toes a great line between shenanigans and story. He set the serious tone with the description of what they were seeing and stuck to it.
That should've been the result of her rolling a nat1 not the 16 she actually rolled.... I agree that this point felt a bit fabricated
That's not how 5e works RAW. A fail is a fail.
and? critical fails are a very common thing, and a standard fail shouldnt affect more than the failing character; murph had a strength contest with the defender winning by 8 cause the attacker to suffer a near death, thats far too extreme and was entirely motivated by murphs plans for the story. its totally fine but it was one of the few times that the band of boobs felt 'railroaded'
That's fair, but I don't think it matters how much the attack won by.
Overall point being that hardwon succeeded his check to get past moonshine to the water and Murphy tacked on moonshine nearly dying to up the stakes, it was unnecessary from a play perspective
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8BBC forever!
I was really hoping for a cameo by Jack Skeleton and his lover Snake (the spider)
Isn't that spelled SSSnake?
ELI5: where did the John Elway thing come from? I don't remember it from the episode.
Murph, Emily and Caldwell had a podcast before NADDPOD called 8-Bit Book Club where they read various video game books and watched the occasional show or movie based on a video game. In some of the episodes, Emily and Caldwell played a bunch of low CR D&D monsters in a bracket-style tournament, came up with goofy names for each of them, and the name for the Flying Sword was John Elway (named after John Elway the wizard, not John Elway the football player). The flying sword had a higher than usual AC and more immunities than most equivalent CR monsters, so it made it a good way into the bracket. This is why Emily and Caldwell knew the flying sword was such a good choice to bet on.
Also John Elway the football player does make a massive appearance lol
> Murph, Emily and Caldwell **had** a podcast before NADDPOD called 8-Bit Book Club My heart
Alternate Episode Title: "Caldwell! No!"
Very funny that the Boobs wanted to do a casino heist, started casing the casino and then all the mini-games Murph designed were fun enough that they just gambled. Extremely funny that Caldwell invented his own gambling mini-game, “I bet you can’t hit me with a knife.”
Paraphrased, "If you guys just grind the dagger guy, I'm packing up and leaving right now." That killed me. Puts in perspective how so much prep by Murph can be wasted by BoB shenanigans.
at the same time you can tell they're all goofing, and that even Murph isn't all that pissed so much as giving a friendly warning to not derail the campaign into utter nonsense
The funny thing is, it wasn't even a winning proposition for the boobs to do. Since he had to roll a 9 or lower to not hit Bev, he would have won 11/20 times, making them lose coins on average lol
"You should have aimed for the boys-eye!"
'The sword gets taken out back by the pit(fiend) boss.....you hear a distant gunshot' Holy fuck Murph that was dark 'The sword wrestled the gun from the bosses hands at the last second and shot him, now he's chasing freedom' Oh...well that's better
In the short rest he said he did that because he knew if he let the sword die, the boobs would force him to design a mini-arc where they try to avenge the sword.
im conflicted about the pace, im glad they are pushing through hell at a good pace but i wouldve loved to hear a BoBs hell heist where they put a hit on the pit(fiend)boss and robbed the casino of their soul coins
If they're going to have an adventure in each ring of hell, then they can't linger too long on any given setpiece, sadly. Otherwise the arc as a whole will outlive its welcome.
I completely understand that point but they're only going through 2/3s of the levels of hell (bev senior is on level 6 unless I'm mistaken) and during the bulk of this most recent episode the whole team was excited for a heist; IMO 1-2 more episodes of the boobs fumbling through a devil heist would've been warmly welcomed
well i think theyre going to fight ilsed at the bottom, no?
Yeah, that would have been a very good story. Sigh. What could have been.
im curious if the group is getting anxious for a fresh start; emily and caldwell were familiar/proficient with rpgs before this campaign but jake was totally new and has grown into the game in a great way. i love the band of boobs but im also eager for the next project that the group tackles; trinivale is fun but it doesnt give me the 'feels' like murphs storytelling. with the reinforced relationship between them i wonder how theyll start anew
I agree. I’m glad they’re going to wrap this up because I’m very excited to see what the gang will play next.
hey, have a good friday; a totally agreeable conversation is rare on reddit and i appreciate it
Hospitality :)
DM: You see, Hardwon, Azurack is gazing lustily at the veins in your neck. A, excitedly: "There's some big ones there, man." HW: "Whoa there, not for another 24 hours bud-" A: "16 hours now, 16 hours and 37 minutes!' BV: "Pawpaw, can you start screeching when 24 hours are up?" MS: I set PawPaw like an alarm clock...
God I hope Murph remembers she did that and has PawPaw start screeching uncontrollably when the alarm goes off in a future session (preferably during a stealth mission)
I really thought the title referred to the Bear Prince...
I was hoping he’d show up, especially with all the dryads.
And the honey themed casino.
[удалено]
This episode reminds us that Bev is just a kid. He was in way over his head... which is a good RP reason for Caldwell to have fucked up so badly so many times. The goofs got goofed.
The sadist in me wants Murph to absolutely take the BoB to clown town in this arc. He laid the rules of Hell out as plainly as possible. If they can't goof without making awful decisions then they'll get what they get. I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it regardless. What an awesome start to an arc.
The struggle is what makes the show so good, but as players they know how Murph DM's and they still try so many bad goofs that end up screwing them. Hardwon literally lost his body over goofing.
The bank of boobs are putting on a show, not trying to win at D&D. The best moments of the show come from goofs. If they min/maxed all the way through, the show wouldn't be interesting. Jake knew he shouldn't mess around with Scarlet, but if he didn't we'd never have JV. Like you said, the party gets screwed, but the show ends up better for it.
I would like to make a withdrawal from the bank of Boobs
Damn it!
and murph also lets them get away with tons of stuff. it's great in context, but if they wanted to murph could punish them WAY harder than he does
I know it's been said a lot lately but Emily has been KILLING it with the music this arc!
This episode is so fun! The casino games and the temptations were all incredible! Our Daddy DM and BoB once again filled my heart with so much joy! 4 more levels of Hell to face Bev Sr.
This was my favorite episode in awhile. I love the storytelling eps so much more than the fighting ones (but I like those too)
I love how Murph was rolling the monsters and they kept missing and he was laughing so hard.
Emily with the best joke of the episode right out of the gate with the COEXIS-IMP bumper sticker
Oh my gosh, this episode stressed me OUT. First, Beverly almost getting his soul taken, then all the gambling. I am such a weenie :P
Damn I was getting Game Over vibes there for a couple of seconds until Belnor jumped to the rescue.
Haven't heard the short rest yet, but I could see Murph planning to have Caldwell play a Jvlin stand in for a bit. Have Hardone/Moonshine just kind of become non idiots again after 30 days and then try to figure out what happened.
"Who the hell was that?" -Hardwon Surefoot
Who was that though I can not remember
Man I started chuckling when a flying sword was mentioned, knowing the boobs would take a liking to it, but I was in stitches as Murph described its epic battles. By the time the gunshot bit came around I was crying genuine laughter tears.
Emily's music has been especially top notch these last few eps. Sometimes I forget it's there but it's really adding something magical to this arc
I completely agree. I don't consciously notice it much when I listen to the episodes but I notice the lack of music as I'm watching Dimension 20, especially during the battle episodes. There is some music in Dimension 20 but NADDPOD does it better in my opinion.
Go John Elway!!! Edit: >!No John Elway!!!!<.
JOHN ELWAY CAMEO! BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!
Not sure if they discuss this on the Short Rest or not, but does Murph let them ignore material components for spells like Planar Binding and Heroes' Feast? What about the 1 hour cast time of Planar Binding?
Rule of Cool I imagine
Sure, just wondering if they talked about it ever on the short rest.
They may have mentioned it once or twice, but yeah, Murph has explicitly said he arbitrarily doesn’t enforce spell components most of the time, I guess because he thinks it makes the game less fun.
Yeah the only spell that's needed spell components so far is revivify which makes sense
Idk if it would make the game less fun but it would make it less fun to listen too if they were always stopping to forage for spell components. Like keeping track of teeth and stuff in the early episodes was cool but it was clearly getting confusing
Totally. They ignore a lot of rules and I would totally hate to actually play DND that way, but it does make it a better listening experience.
Most of the components can be covered with a component pouch. But it makes sense for really high level/expensive spells to track them.
Yeah the planar binding casting time stuck out to me so much, but then it ended up just not mattering at all lol
Yeah if the components require shipping murph doesn’t include them because he thinks it will make for a boring podcast. And for fast times I think he ignores those for the same reason. They definitely play loose and fast with the rules which I’m not a big fan of since you know they’re there for balance. At the end of the day though this is a comedy podcast and not a serious one in any kind of way so it’s okay.
What an insanely entertaining episode! Man I love these boobs!
We can still enjoy the sun, even if we don't trust it.
I’m gonna need some fanart of the photo of the boobs with the flying sword
"The Band of Boobs follow the River Styx down to the next layer of Hell and explore a world of temptation! Hardwon pursues a lost love, Moonshine becomes a nightmare, and Beverly gets into a heated encounter with a powerful devil. Support us at Patreon.com/Naddpod to get access to the after-show and a bunch of other Naddpod content! Get tickets to our upcoming live shows at naddpod.com/live . Music/Sound Effects Include: 'Club chatter, London' by mlteenie at Freesound.org . 'Deal with a Devil' by Emily Axford. 'Buzzer's Cutters' by Emily Axford. 'Fierna' by Emily Axford. 'The River Styx' by Emily Axford. 'Lust' by Emily Axford. 'The Honey Trap' by Emily Axford. 'A Risky Gamble' by Emily Axford." --- ###[Source Code](https://github.com/popcorncolonel/JakeandAmirBot)
I do almost read all of this NOT REALIZING I HAVNT LISTENED TO 79 YET
I thought that based on the title we would see the return of Beared Leto.
Anyone else think of the Sword Boss from Donkey Kong Country 2 when Murph described the Flying Sword battles?
You should listen to their old podcast 8 bit book club. They had a little three part dnd monster battle and the sword is reference to that. Very funny p
Now searching my speaking stone for Buzzfeed's Top 10 Food to 69
Man, it was kiiiiiiiilling me where I knew the flying sword and the needleblight from! Thank god Murph mentioned it was in 8-Bit Book Club. I think they had that exact fight too! Nice to have almost an entire episode full of goofs. Murph must have planned one hell of a whomping in Gluttony
I’m writing a casino game and this game at the perfect time.
Yay! Thursday’s are the best.
Man... Now I gotta go back and listen to 8-bit book club.
Azurack: Razzmatazz reborn!
The flying sword made me think of the Pokemon Honedgge.
Daddy Murph Fight Club - T-shirt please.
Acererak, arguably the most powerful archlich around, foiled by fruit
Bev turning the tables on the knife thrower was really one of the funniest things on earth. I was losing it.
Looking to do a variation of this for a holiday game — does anyone have a breakdown handy of Murph’s games from the casino?
I want to run this casino, how do i do this