From the Satanic Panic of the 90s to the thirst traps of Baldur’s Gate 3, we are diving deep into Dungeons & Dragons. In this episode, we debate whether D&D is actually just a math class in disguise or a legitimate cure for dyslexia. We also discuss why "Frog Women" are hot, why adults can never schedule a session, and how vector calculus ruined our childhoods. Plus, we pitch a billion-dollar idea for a VR D&D game where you can throw virtual pennies at your friends.

Speaker 1: Today's topic is Dungeons and Dragons, bitch. What's up?

Speaker 2: (Laughs) I think you had it perfectly the first time. I think it was great. I think you do great. You do great work around here.

Speaker 1: (Sound Effect) Okay. Today's topic is Dungeons and Dragons. Nope. Today's topic. Today's topic is Dungeons and Dragons.

Speaker 2: I think you had it perfectly the first time. I think it was great.

Speaker 1: (Sound Effect)

Speaker 1: How about some sound effects? Maybe we should start bringing in some sound effects into our pod.

Speaker 2: No, we should just keep it all foley work. All mouth sounds. No, serious though. This is an all-natural podcast, dude. This is grown all naturally from two... two American boys...

Speaker 1: Yeah. We don't AI slop this shit. We don't AI slop this.

Speaker 2: Though I wonder what an AI fart sound sounds like. Like which direction would AI go with a fart? Would it be like more bassy? High pitched?

Speaker 1: I think if you just said "fart" it would just be as bland of a fart as possible. No stench. No squeak. No nothing. Just normal... just very down the middle.

Speaker 2: Whoever trained the AI, would it depend on what they would consider as a fart? Could you train an AI with your own farts to produce your own farts for the masses?

Speaker 1: I wonder if Hugging Face has an LLM that is just specifically trained for farts. Like just a fart LLM.

Speaker 2: Fart LLM. I like that. That'd be a very expensive joke endeavor. Worth it. Anyway. Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah.

Speaker 1: D&D. You... are you active... like are you on a campaign right now? Like are you campaigning somewhere in... in... on planet earth for Dungeons and Dragons?

Speaker 2: No, I was thinking about it. I did a one-shot with some friends. Most of whom who've like never played. And I'd played a few times, mostly when I was younger. And it really stuck in my mind because it's been like a decade for me. And there's a certain age where... when you play D&D as a young man... younger man... then you know, it's just kind of like... it's a young nerd dude thing to do. You know? Sometimes you just play D&D. And that's cool. Because you're not really doing anything that important. So it just kind of feels like a thing that you do. And it's pretty fun. And uh, you know if you're a bit of an actor, you know... trying to be, you know... bit of a character. It's a good time. You know it's a good... it's a good way to just pretend you're somebody else for a little while and uh do some cool fantasy stuff in the meantime. But um... there's a certain age where when you're doing that you're just like "What the... what am I doing?" Like I gotta go make money or something. Like... what am... what am I doing pretending to be a Halfling right now? Like this is crazy dude. Like... I have three unfinished woodworking projects I have to get on. Like... why am I spending my time doing this? I have a podcast to record.

Speaker 1: (Laughs) Yeah I mean I... I liken Dungeons and Dragons campaigns to like... old rich white men playing golf. You know? It's like... you go out, you spend six to seven hours on it and I mean I think the difference between D&D and like golf is I guess... well golf is a never-ending game. It's always a sense of improvement. So you play seven hours and you're like "I don't know what I just did." You know? What did I go and just do?

Speaker 2: I'll take your word for it. I recently witnessed some people playing golf. Jesus Christ that looked boring. But anyway. I digress.

Speaker 1: I mean just a tangent just a little bit as someone who does... did play golf pretty consistently in his youth and tried to get back into it... uh later in life but um... you know it's just... it's such an investment that needs to happen there. Um... it is for me it is about um... getting rid of some rage, you know? Just wailing on a little ball. That's what I like doing. I just like wailing on... I think I'm actually more... I would actually enjoy more like long drive championships than like an actual round of golf. Actual rounds of golf are um... taxing on the soul for me. So.

Speaker 2: Maybe that's why Top Golf is so popular. Cause you just... you just smashing it every time. You're just incredible hulking that ball.

Speaker 1: You just smashing it. Yeah. You're not... And then... but then you can play the little games, right? You can play the little like accuracy games or whatever. But like...

Speaker 2: No one's playing that except for nerds, dude. Every time I've ever been to a Top Golf everyone's like "I wanna see how far I can shoot that ball. I wanna see if I can drive it over the net. I wanna see if I can get it over the net."

Speaker 1: I saw a guy do it once and I was like "Wow, please don't do that again." But that was cool. Cause that could easily have ruined someone's windshield but... nice. But yeah no I find... I kind of similar to you with Dungeons and Dragons... um... I have other stuff to do. I mean I just have other stuff to do. And so I don't... I don't do it. Um... I did it as much in my youth though. And it was kind of a big deal in my youth. Like really... it was the thing. For a lot of people. Um... and it spawned so much stuff. It spawned... uh some of my favorite um... fantasy series. Dragonlance. I don't know if you know about Dragonlance or not. Um...

Speaker 2: I haven't seen Drag... oh is that a book series?

Speaker 1: Yeah it's a bunch of books. Yeah. Tons of books.

Speaker 2: I think I might have read one or two as a kid. I read a lot of fantasy books as a kid.

Speaker 1: I mean they were um... reading them in today... reading them today... they weren't that great. Uh rereading them. But uh I think as a kid I was... I was kind of into it. And I liked... I liked being able to um... find those big word... you know they had crazy words for names for things. Like it was... they were never just, you know, normal... normal names like Jim the Dinosaur. You know?

Speaker 2: Be like The Land of Ashmacarna.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my dyslex... I feel like it um... and I'm going to be a little red piller here... I feel like it resolved all of my dyslexia. Like I had dyslexia... it cured it... but making reading so dang hard and being like persistent at wanting to read these nerdy ass books... I think solved a lot of... no I still have terrible dyslexia. But yeah.

Speaker 2: All right parents. Go out there, make your... make your kid a nerd. Have them read uh... fantasy books with complicated names and do not let them quit. That's the cure to dyslexia. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Just beat them and throw them... lock them in closets. That's how you cure dyslexia. Through isolation.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Well I was also part of that whole uh... you know the satanic scare that Dungeons and Dragons kind of went through in the 90s. So there was a... there was a lot of uh... I think ruining of the game when I was uh... you know a boy to teenage to adulthood. So I definitely haven't played since... I don't know I was like 10? Maybe? Maybe even less than that. Like eight.

Speaker 2: That's crazy to me because Dungeons and Dragons seems like... possibly one of the least satanic, least heavy metal pursuits ever. Like it just feels like... like there's nothing threatening about a group of grown people or kids playing Dungeons and Dragons. Like I feel like the people who made up that stuff have never actually had witnessed a Dungeons and Dragons game. They just like saw the paraphernalia. They saw a character sheet and some dice and they were like "Oh my god they're... they're making uh... they're making Ouiji board confessions to the devil or something. There's all these numbers. I don't understand numbers. Oh god."

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it was... it definitely had to do with illustrations. It definitely had to do with illustrations. It definitely had to do with the over sexualization of an elf. Of a spider elf. Of a dark elf. Of... I keep saying elves because they usually get depicted as these like gorgeous creatures or something. Uh... yeah. I think that's more of what it was. It was more of like the sexualization of things. Not so much uh the game mechanics itself. I think the game mechanics itself speak for themselves. Weren't they... I mean they were like built out of like real battle simulation strategy game stuff and so...

Speaker 2: Well they say that's the inspiration. But yeah. Yeah. The Prussians in the 19th century. It was from them originally. And I think there's been... I think it's pretty far removed from like the war games that militaries used and use now. But. Yeah. There's some DNA there.

Speaker 2: You know I think that um... like computer games have gotten a lot more complicated. But like tabletop and board games like the level of complexity is the same because you know you're still using a human as a computer. To compute all the stuff. Like they haven't got that much more complicated. If anything they seem to be getting simpler because who the... cause with video games being a thing why the hell would you learn the rules to a super complicated board game. You know what's funny to me is and this I have no data to support these claims is what I've noticed is that super complicated board games used to be like more popular it seems. And now they're giving way to people playing Dungeons and Dragons. Again no numbers no evidence to support these claims. I feel like Dungeons and Dragons is more appealing to young men because A, it's less nerdy. B, we're all willing to admit that elves are sexy. We're all willing to admit that now. You're at a certain age and you're like... you're not just like "No mom like don't look at my Dungeons and Dragons books. This is a sexy elf in there." Now you're just like "That's smut and I like it." At a certain age. You're willing to say that. Like I play Baldur's Gate 3 and I'm just like... you know the mean dark elf? Kinda hot. I don't... you know I'm just gonna say it. I have a buddy of mine he likes the frog looking lady. I'm sorry if that offends any fans. Lae'zel. The character in Baldur's Gate 3. He loves Lae'zel. He's not willing to admit it. But he loves that frog woman. And um... anyway I digress. Uh now I think it's just a loose form game where anything can happen. I feel at a certain point does get more appealing than just like I have to memorize a gillian like rules to this board game or like I play yet another video game where there's a lot of explosions and I click on guys and stuff. I feel like that... then again maybe that's always been the appeal. It's just a... you know anything can happen. It's your imagination supported by numbers.

Speaker 1: Well back to the length of... I mean back to your kind of original point about like the length of the game right? Is I mean do you spend that much time gaming already? And why... you know could you just supplement or not supplement but just replace all your game time with just a session of Dungeons and Dragons? Like could... do you feel like you could like... you know you probably play like an hour here, 30 minutes here, 25 minutes here, 2 hours here or whatever. Could you just like move it to Thursdays? Where you just spend six hours on every Thursday on your you know ultimate Dungeons and Dragons campaign?

Speaker 2: That's the thing about Dungeons and Dragons is it also always has to be a thing that you like schedule and do on a weekly basis. You can't just ad hoc be like "Wanna run some D&D tonight?" "Oh yeah sure." Like that never happens. It never happens. In my... admittedly limited experience. It didn't happen 10 years ago. It didn't happen for this. Because literally motherfuckers have kids now. Like there's people with kids and one guy was literally whispering so he wouldn't wake up his sleeping baby. Like it's just the whole dynamic is different than like "Oh yeah we're gonna... we're gonna play Dungeons and Dragons from 10 to 2."

Speaker 1: Did you rename him Dilbert the Whisperer or something? That's what I would have... I would have done that. I would have been like "I'm sorry I'm the Dungeon Master. You are now Davian... Davian the Whisperer. Until you can actually get get some balls and just talk like a regular human. Or find another place in your house. Are you in a one bedroom apartment?"

Speaker 2: I was going to say... Are you in the same room as the baby playing Dungeons and Dragons? Like I feel like you should be able to shut the door and talk like a normal human. Like I don't I don't fully understand the whispering part of it. But. As someone who's never had a baby I don't know. I didn't pry... I didn't like interrogate him about the exact situation.

Speaker 1: Well yeah and I'm... you know I'm now 12 years removed from... from... from babies so... you know I don't know.

Speaker 2: This is the episode where we age you very precisely. We're aging you very precisely.

Speaker 1: I am 14 years 7 months and 27 days from babyhood. I haven't changed a diaper in 10 years 17 months and 317 days and 4 hours and 17 minutes.

Speaker 2: So when are they not a baby? Is it when they're capable of playing Dungeons and Dragons? Or is it when their diapers are done?

Speaker 1: That should be the new thing. That should be the new thing. You... you are called a baby until you play your first game of Dungeons and Dragons. We should create a society centered around... your... you become a child. You know? The... the gatekeeping is Dungeons and Dragons. You are not allowed to be a baby... or a child until then.

Speaker 2: Why don't they make Dungeons and Dragons kids edition? And everything is simple and they get a giant foam dice to throw. Which they'll love. And just when they capture the concepts of imagination. You know they come just come up with the concepts of imagining things. And they'll just be like "That's a poopy head" and you're just like "You cast poopy head." You know?

Speaker 1: I think... I mean I think they have to be able to count. And I don't think counting starts until you're like... I mean at least three. Dude a little kid who plays Dungeons and Dragons... I was thinking more like five-ish. But yeah let's say if you play Dungeons and Dra... you're gonna get good at math. You know maybe that's why... it was... there was the perception that only nerds played Dungeons and Dragons because there's so much math involved. Like I feel like back... back in the day you know when Dungeons and Dragons was considered a niche nerd activity... you didn't do math if you were cool right? You were busy wearing letterman jackets... making out on a... the tailgate of a truck... throwing a football... and then ending up like the Glory Days song. Glory days... (singing) da da da... you know? That's what you did if you were cool. You didn't do math. You didn't add one number to another.

Speaker 2: I mean... I think... I feel like if we're going to get down... if we're going down the math rabbit hole... I think for people in general everyone doesn't mind counting. Everyone doesn't mind... addition and subtraction. I think the moment... I think it's like second, third grade when you have to learn the multiplication tables? I think that's when the first bit of people drop off. And they go "Ah this isn't fucking cool. Like fuck this shit. I have to learn multiplication tables? I have to... I have to multiply and divide things? I have to group things into groups and then add those groups up? Like that's crazy man." And then the next guy...

Speaker 1: Define drop off. Find drop off. Cause you have to be a real dummy to get to multiplication tables and be like "I don't even want to do anymore math than this." You have to be real stupid to be like "I can't handle multiplication tables or more complicated." Like that's crazy.

Speaker 2: I think this is the episode where we determine how nerdy you are right now. I think that's what happens.

Speaker 1: What? Because I... I had to do bigger math than multiplication tables at one point in my life? Yeah I did bigger math so I could get a degree and make money like oh my god sue me. You know?

Speaker 2: I think the fact that you don't find multiplication tables to be troublesome or bothersome is what I'm referring to.

Speaker 1: I fucking... I hate math even more than the next guy. I'm not a fan of doing math. Never never have I been like "Oh I love math. Blah blah blah." Never once in my life. But like... that's why I'm asking you to define it. So I'm asking you to define it because you could say drop off as in like... whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Give me one minute here. Let me... okay. You know what? You go. You go.

Speaker 2: I'm trying... I'm trying but you're getting very defensive about me calling you a nerd and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I've never thought of you as Wile E. Coyote but you know we're... we're in it. Bugs Bunny character. You like Elmer Fudd. Yeah. I think he was right.

Speaker 1: You think he was right? Okay what is he right about? I didn't know he talked much.

Speaker 2: It's rabbit season bro. That's what the sign says. He was not wrong. He was within his rights.

Speaker 1: But it's duck season.

Speaker 2: Eh. He'll shoot that duck later. Oh come on man. That was the reference. Oh yeah. Oh my bad. My bad. My bad. It's rabbit season. Ah no it's duck season. I know it's rabbit season. Sorry I haven't watched Looney Tunes since I was playing Dungeons and Dragons I guess. I don't know. It was so long ago. I played Dungeons and Dragons more recently than I've watched Looney Tunes.

Speaker 1: Let's just... let's just leave it to our... to our one listener. One listener... when you got to the point where you had to start memorizing multiplication tables is that where you fell out of love with math? Because up until then you were just counting. Up until then you were just doing like "I can count to 200. I can count to 300." And it was just like a one up of like who can count to a thousand? Who has the time to count to ten thousand? Right? That was the... that was what you did up until... you know... up until you had to learn multiplication. And... and that's when you first had to actually put some brain power into mathematics. Because you had to be like "Two... two times two is four. Two times... you know... whatever." Whatever all the multiplications. See I don't know I can't even do it right now. But I remember distinctly like having issues with like multiples of seven. And multiples of like eleven. And like these weird multiples. And actually kind of being difficult. Being kind of challenged with math. That's where the drop off is. I'm not calling people idiots who don't know math. Just saying like... multiplication was the first drop off man. Division was the second drop off. The moment that you had to divide things and find a remainder? That shit sucked man. That shit sucked. No one wanted to do remainders. No one wanted to do non-terminating decimals. No one wanted to do that shit. No one wanted to go into the... at your significant zeros. And go all the way down the pipe. And do you know whatever whatever. Right? With division. And then... and then algebra happened. Algebra separated men from boys. In my opinion. Or nerds from geeks and geeks from sales people. Right? Like that's... Algebra was like the next drop off. And then Geometry hits. And that even killed some of the people who loved Algebra. Because now you gotta prove a line is a line. Like that shit sucks. And then you go into... then you have to combine Algebra and Geometry with Trigonometry. And then that dropped off a whole other set of people and that was the... that basically separated the financial nerds from the math nerds. Right? Trigonometry is when the financial people were like "Nah nah nah. We're just do stats. We're not gonna do... we're not gonna do triangles and polygons. We don't care about polyhedra. We're just gonna do finance." Right? We're gonna do stats. And then Calculus hits. Now you gotta find the current place of a... of a dot on the map. Right? On the Cartesian plane. And holy cow. That sucked even worse. Then we don't even want to get into like the 3D space. Where you add the Z axis and everyone then takes a dump on that. And then you're talking about Vector Calculus. Holy crap man. Math sucks.

Speaker 2: Look if you don't like math you're not a dummy. I was just saying if you can't do multiplication tables you're a dummy. That's all I was saying. If you don't know how to multiply... go fucking... try harder. Like holy shit. But uh yeah all that stuff sucks I don't... I don't recall doing any of those things fondly. I barely failed a... a calculus class once. And it was by one percent. And I was like "I really have to take this class over again? You really can't help me? I was in tutoring literally every day. I'm bad at this. I'm trying." And they said "No. There's no extra credit in my class." And they said "Well if I give it to you then I have to give it to everyone." And I said like "Like bitch I can keep a secret. God damn. Like just fucking scratch my back you know."

Speaker 1: I feel like... I feel like failing calculus is like a... is like a rite of passage for... for those that venture into the... those who venture into the depths of... of math. I think it's... I think it's a rite of passage for you to fail calc. Either calc one, calc two or even vector right? Like even... even going past calc two. Like it's like a rite of passage to fail linear algebra. You know? I feel like it's like...

Speaker 2: Well you fucking tried. I have the easy professor. Hm. Anyway. We can quit reminiscing about college now because... I do not miss that part of college at all. God that sucked. God that was terrible. I had some very fun classes and there were all the ones where you just spoke with words about things. All the ones where you wrote with numbers about proofs and whatever you call that stuff. That was just dragging nails across the chalkboard 24 hours a day. Anyway D&D luckily doesn't involve that level of math. I don't even think you need to do multiply in D&D. It's very kid friendly so. Kid D&D. Come and do a story or whatever.

Speaker 1: Right? I think you can though. You can make it as mathematically impossible as you want can't you? I mean it's... that's what... that's what is the beauty of Dungeon and Dragons. That's the beauty of Dungeon and Dragons is once you're Dungeon Master you... you create the story. And if you need your... your people to do... to prove a line is a line. You're making them do word problems of like the speed of the train coming from... you know Frankfurt. And another one speeding toward Frankfurt coming from London. And what town do they meet in? You know?

Speaker 2: To open... To open the tomb of Pythagoras you must discover what the third angle on this triangle is. Luckily you've read an ancient tome written by a dwarf that states that the theorem of Pythagoras means that the... the third side squared equals the first two sides squared or something like that. I don't remember. Pythagoras. But that's the stereotypical like "I'm never going to need to know Pythagorean Theorem in a normal life." And I have not used it once since graduating school. So we were... we were all right as little... as dumb little kids. As little kids who were like "We're never going to need this stuff." We were all correct.

Speaker 1: I... um... yeah. I think Dungeons and Dragons you make it what you want. You know? You can make it... you can bring in all the maths you want. Or you can dumb it down with giant foam die. I actually would mind playing a Dungeons and Dragons session where I'm... where I'm rolling giant ass dice. That would be actually kind of fun. You know where like you make the whole room... where you make the whole room you know and like the gi... the dice is like the size of your head. And you're just like "RAAAAH!" Throw it across the room? You probably have to like remove your furniture though right? You probably have to like make sure there's no vase. You know your grandma's ashes are put away. You know. They're not being displayed on the mantle or whatever.

Speaker 2: Your Pokemon ball... Pokeball mug. Because uh... it's safe. Hey I think um... I think Dungeons and Dragons could be very improved with a more physical component to it. I feel like that'd be fun. A more physical aspect. Oh I guess that's just LARPing. Are people still LARPing? Like do you LARP with D&D rules? Like... or is it literally just like at that point you're just physically beating each other with foam?

Speaker 1: I wonder if there are... wonder if there is like a D&D LARP... like group. There has to be. There has to be a group of people that are like "No. We will only LARP if we are under the guidance of a Dungeon Master."

Speaker 2: That'd be cool as like a VR game. You know? Oh yeah you can do all this D&D stuff and then you drop it in and then you actually swing your arms and beat up like orcs with swords or something.

Speaker 1: Would that be like... so... so like your... like you'd have like a... like an upload... like before you start the game you like upload the Dungeon Master rules and then you... then you enter into the VR world based on the... the rules of the Dungeon Master? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2: Yeah. And the players are like in their bodies. And the... the Dungeon Master is the one who looks from above like normal. And they have like a table where they can move stuff around and affect things. And the players are like in the scene. I feel like that'd be cool.

Speaker 1: That would be really unique actually. To have like where there's like a god mode VR guy who just like is overlooking the tabletop. But then you have the four to eight players that can be inside the... that are inside the tabletop that are actually taking on... but man that would be some generative... some generative code right? That would be some like... No Man's Sky level uh... type of programming.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It'd be hard to have like many things to put in there. Cause normally you can just be like "I put a penny on the board and that's a new creature." You'd need to have that all pre-made so it looked cool. You wouldn't be like "I'm fighting a... a penny virtually."

Speaker 1: What if you... what if that's what the Dungeon Master had was just like a bunch of nickels and pennies? Just like throw it down and it would explode in real life? Like in... so... so like you... so like you'd put down the penny but then in the like the VR world the players would see the demon that you've created right? Like... they don't really have all these like... the Dungeon Master doesn't have all these sprites. They're just... they just put dots on the map. And that creates the... the real... the real sprite in in VR. So you're not having to double duty. I don't know.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That Dungeon Master could have like uh... could be on like a computer. Because they have to access all those sheets and things. We could... we could be... make... call it... we could call it you know uh... your... your parents' frugalness or something. Cause we're not paying for extra sprites. You know? We're not paying for... you get dots. It's too expensive.

Speaker 1: Well... Dungeons and Dragons. Would you still play it as an adult? If a group of your favorite people... let's say we're playing it. You would?

Speaker 2: You know if my family... if... if yeah my favorite people were... were into it... I would try a session. I don't think it would be successful. I think most people get pretty bored with it. At least the people that I surround myself with. There aren't many people that are like "Oh yeah. Let's play 27 straight weeks of meeting every week and playing you know... our version of whatever and this person's always the Dungeon Master." You know.

Speaker 1: And that is why Dungeons and Dragons as an adult is lame. Trying to do something fun that needs to be so highly scheduled and structured feels lame. And that's my final word.