Alehat, a Sly Slide - Playing Dangerous Games with Rook (Blades in the Dark)

Dale is the person that suddenly sells you something without realizing. The person that puts a rock in your hand and then charges you gold for it. You can have a vow or a motto or a code that you live by, and that code can be not altruistic. Right, right, right, yeah. So I mean, if you had to have a specific code, right, it would probably be like, whatever gets me paid is what I do. Give me a good eel, a little bit of mushroom ale, and I'm a happy man. I'm simple, I don't need any of these fancy vegetables. Hello friends, welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled. I'm Star. This episode I'm joined by Roger Peters, who also goes by Rook. Rook is the owner of Epic Sages, a multi TTRPG focused hosting site. He's played and or ran various TTRPGs for over 15 years. I met Rook through TikTok and had the pleasure of joining him on his podcast, Epic Sages TTRPG Classrooms. Welcome Rook! Hello! It's your boy! Rook, I will give you a chance to plug your projects at the end, but is there anything you want to tell listeners about yourself? Well, let's see, where's a good place to start? You covered the basics. Big part of me is the business. I do a lot of stuff with Epic Sages. All that fun stuff. Father of two, husband, army vet, the basics that you probably need to know about me to have an understanding of where I'm coming from. Rook, who are you bringing to the table today? I am bringing you Dale Dorries, also known as Alehat. That's an interesting nickname. We're going to have to get into how he came by it. I got a story. It's going to be great. So this is a character built for a game called Blades in the Dark. Can you tell my listeners a little bit about that game? So Blades in the Dark is one of the Forged in the Dark systems, I believe it was the original one that they produced, that is a seedy underground style game where you are not playing good people. You can be a quote unquote good person, but your objectives and story beats are generally how can I steal this thing? How can I murder this person? How can we do these objectives that are generally not good people things, right? You're not going around healing the sick and saving puppies. And the game treats you accordingly. So majority of the time you are going to struggle and have a bad time. Very rarely do you succeed completely without taking some kind of drawback and getting hurt. And it's the game's own way of punishing bad people because bad things happen to bad people kind of thing, which is an interesting concept to say, at least there's a whole bunch of mechanisms built in the game to revolve around stress and dealing with your traumas and that kind of stuff as a character. And like, if you take too many injuries or take too much harm, you can a die or be like, you get hurt so much that you have to retire and things like that. It's a dangerous game for the characters. Yes, as a player, you will be hurt a lot. It's not fluffy and healing is not gentle. How do you create a character in Blades in the Dark? You start with a name, right? Pretty simple. You then give them an alias, you give them their looks, you pick a heritage from several of the main isles. Whether that's where you were personally born at or where your family comes from. You then pick your type of background and then apply what you think would be appropriate to it. For example, Dale's heritage is Akaros, Akaros, sorry, terrible with the pronunciations. But that's like the main continent on the shattered isles. And then his background is a trade and he's a shop merchant. So during the day when he's not being a criminal, he is a shop merchant that sells stuff all the time. Following that, you get to pick your vice. His is, he goes into a stupor, so he's a drinker, his specific bar that he goes to is a place called the Oasis, run by Kyla, and then after that, kind of while you're picking all these things, you pick the character class you would like to play as, and there's a whole bunch of different classes that you can play as, don't really affect how the rest of the group will play, because that's a whole different characteristic that's part of the crew, and a big part of Blades in the Dark is building your crew up as if it's its own character, so like, Your own individual characters have their own experience, and their own personalities, and their own special abilities, but that all feeds into whatever your crew does, and your crew is basically its own character, because your characters that you're playing as can switch out if they get hurt, or things like that, and the crew can continue doing what it does, and gaining variety, and fame, and that kind of stuff. And the game revolves around a score, or a job you're trying to do, right? Yeah, so like, going into the, the crews, because that'll explain the scores a little better, they have Assassins, which are, as the name implies, Braavos, which are kind of like beat em up extortionist style, uh, characters, Cult, which has the occult y vibe to it, which is a very creepy. Table specific attunement, we'll say, I mean, not all tables have a high level of using occult because not everyone deals with the ghosty side of things and blades in the dark. It's present, but it doesn't have to be kind of thing. Uh, then there's hawkers, which are basically people that get things and sell them. Uh, there's shadows, which are your sneaky spies that sell information and that kind of stuff. And then there's the smugglers that are the, we go outside the city walls, we pick up cool stuff, we bring it back into the city. So is your character a hawker? Uh, he is a hawker. Well, the, the crew I was in is a group of hawkers. So he is a slide, is his class. Oh, a slide. Okay. Which is, uh, what's the best way to describe a slide? They are like your suave, slick talker people. I mean, they can talk their way out of any situation. Mm hmm. The only time I played Blades in the Dark, I played a slide. It was a lot of fun. They're really fun classes. The other one that I played, just as a side note, was a, uh, a spider. And I, I loved the spider. That was, that was such a fun character to play as. Mm hmm. Um, but slides are fun, too. You know what I mean? There's a little bit for everyone in this game that you can find something here to latch onto pretty hard. Yeah, definitely. And so when you choose that, is it called a class in the game? So your characters have playbooks, right? The playbooks are their level up, you know what I mean? They're keeping track of their score, how experienced they are, that kind of stuff. That's what the playbook is. But I think it's still called the character class's character classes. So, a playbook is what they call the sheet with all the specific rules to play a certain character type in the Blades of the Dark. So, either way, so your playbook could be a quote unquote character class, if you want to call it that, but the playbook itself is actually just a little piece of paper. And what kind of choices do you make for your character in blades in the dark? Like, for example, what kind of powers does your character get as a slide? And what kind of choices do you have between abilities and powers and things like that? Gotcha. Okay. So, like, uh, you get special abilities, right? And then you have your basic insight, prowess, and resolve, which are the three types of roles you use for, uh, rolling a check. And it's determinate on, you know, the, the GM, DM, whoever's running it, and they tell you what you need to do, uh, and for every point you get into those things, uh, you can get a checkmark, which is basically an extra dice roll when you're asked to roll that style of roll, and certain classes start with certain levels in things, for example. The slides start with one level of Consort and two levels of Sway, uh, and then you get to pick five other levels of various things from the other stuff. The other things that you pick are your special abilities, right, and they are literal superpowers that your character can use in and out of combat. Uh, for example, uh, one of the ones that Dale has. It's called a little something on the side. At the end of each downtime phase, you earn plus two stash. And stash is basically your retirement, and you want as much stash as possible, because when your character retires, they get to take their stash, and that tells you what kind of life they live after they're done being a criminal. Yeah, that's the only one he picked out, but they have other cool stuff like, trust in me, you get a plus one dice versus targets whom you have an intimate relationship. So, basically, if you're trying to convince a friend or a ally or something like that to do something, you have a better ability to do so when you try to do so. The other thing you get to pick is your allies and your nemesis. So when you first start, you get one, we'll say rival, and one ally, and there's a small list of people that you can pick. So, like, Dale picked for his ally. A Blazoblaz, a gang leader, and his rival, ironically, is the person who runs the tavern that he goes to frequently, uh, Kyra. And then from there, that's, those are all the basic stuff that you get to pick, and then from there it's like dependent on the mission that you're going on. At least for the personal character, obviously the, uh, group book has more stuff that you get to pick from and benefits everyone in the group kind of thing. I thought what was really interesting when I played the game and going through character creation is that I chose, I think it was Kyra as my ally and somebody else chose her as their rival and they had a different description for her. So for me, it was something like she runs a tavern, but for the other player, it was she's possessed by a demon or something like that. So it was like two different people with very different perceptions of the same character, which I think is very, very interesting to play with. Especially when it's someone that both of you will be working with, assumedly, because, you know, one of you is friends and one of you does not like them. Right, right. Excuse me, for some reason. So, Dale is good at consort and sway, and that is essentially manipulating people and kind of forming relationships with people? Yep, he's also relatively good at finesse, and then he's okay at studying, tinkering, and prowling around. So, would you say that Dale is an outgoing person? That they are kind of the life of the party, and that's how they form relationships, or are they more of, you know, kind of a behind the scenes? What is Dale's personality like? Maybe for people who don't know him. Dale is the person that suddenly sells you something without realizing. The person that puts a rock in your hand and then charges you gold for it. Ha ha ha ha! That's the suave finesse that he has, you know what I mean? He's very much a hands in your face for a second, little bit of distraction, hand you a thing, take a thing, you wouldn't notice as he walks away. Mm hmm. He is not necessarily charming, he is just quick and spontaneous and sly. Dale's nickname is Ale Hat. Where'd he get that nickname? So, he, uh, definitely got it from his rival, Carla, because she, uh, he drank so much, you know, he used to go in there all the time, so by the end of every night, he would get, you know, wear his mug on top of his head from someone, you know, someone bashing his head in, basically, so he got the nickname Ale Hat. That's a very evocative nickname, I have to say. It's ironic, because they, uh, drink mushrooms, not, uh, actual alcohol. Really? In the world entirely? In the, the world at the table that I was playing at, you know, as you know, Duskvol is completely in darkness all the time. Right. And one of their main sources of food and various other drinks for the lower class is mushrooms. They're both distilled into a form of, you know, beer, more or less. It's a mushroom beer. Uh, and, or they're just consumed for food on the street and things like that. It's very common, very like harvesty. The other thing they eat a lot is eels and that's pretty lower centric. If you read through the book. To each his own is the, you know, the nice thing about Blades in the Dark, you're playing at the same city, but it can be different at every single table you go to. So Dale is essentially an alcoholic. That's Dale's vice? Yeah, so that, I don't necessarily, at this point in his story, he's not an alcoholic, but it's definitely something that he could become eventually. Because that is his stress relief and, you know, it's very easy to go overboard when you're drinking and having fun, especially if that is your only way to relieve stress and you're constantly in a stressful situation. So, very, very easily could that become a trauma for him, uh, that sends him down a darker path. Hmm, interesting. So, right now, it's Drinks a little too much. Maybe gets a little too drunk. Is that kind of how you'd characterize it? Yeah, yeah, I think that'd be, like, he's fine until he drinks half the certain amount, you know what I mean? If he drinks one or two drinks at dinner, cool beans, no problem, uh, but if you give him, you know, go quote unquote shot for shot, he's not gonna stop until he passes out. Mm hmm. How did Dale become part of his crew? How did he get into his life of crime? So he is with the, uh, the Shadow Men. What an original name, I have to say so myself. Uh, but the Shadowmen were a group of members that met at this bar that, uh, Kyla runs, in varying degrees. Some of them work there themselves, some of them are patrons, things like that, but they just formed together there. Uh, and there are various shenanigans that they were about to get into, because again, this character really didn't get to do much besides say hello, was to meet there and do things. I mean, that was going to be their base of operation, where they got out of, you know, one of them lived in the bar itself, so we had a quote unquote little hideaway for when we needed to plan and do things. Stuff like that. What was Dale's life like growing up? So Dale's life was relatively boring, I would like to say. Um, he was a common citizen. His parents were shopkeep owners, so they had enough food on the table to keep him and his siblings fed. He didn't get into too much trouble. He went to school like he was supposed to when he should. You know, he's relatively good at arithmetic and math and other basic level schooling bits. But I wouldn't say he was anything more than average. Where he shined again was that sly nature, the ability to reach into somebody's pocket without them realizing, because he kind of just blended into the background. So then, was he just kind of pursuing a professional passion getting into life of crime, or was there some sort of other impetus that led to it? Oh, I probably should've mentioned, Dale is excessively greedy. Heh So he owns his own shop, he took it over from his parents, and took over the shop from his older siblings, because he is the youngest of the three of them, basically by himself, and booted his older siblings onto the street under their own fates, as he would say, and any chance he gets to put money in his stash for when he gets old, he will do so, hence him picking up that ability that allows him to put away stash at the end of every downtime action, because he is constantly fleecing both his enemies and friends alike For as much money as possible. That's gonna catch up with him someday. Oh, I can guarantee it. He's definitely one of those characters that was, uh, a glutton for punishment, because he would make dumb decisions to satisfy that greedy need. Would you say that Dale is self taught? As Dale's skills in finesse and, and being sly were those kind of things that were self taught. Dale is very much self taught. He is one of those people that like, if you can't trust anybody, you can trust yourself kind of people, you know what I mean? Not, not very close. The fact that he is even in a crew is like a first for him. This is him stepping out of his comfort zone. Because his quote unquote other wellsprings of cash have started to run dry and he's a tad bit concerned about his incoming profits. So his motivation to enter into this crew is, is essentially the same greed that has been motivating his business as well. They sell things, he sells things, he already knows how to do that. That's easy. So why is his business failing? It's not necessarily failing. It's just not making as much money as he would want it to. It's enough to support him, we'll say, but like, if he ever wanted to settle down like his parents did and raise a family or anything like that, there's no way he could afford it, at least in his mind. I mean, he's not willing to make any kind of sacrifices to achieve those goals at this point. Does he want to settle down and have a family? I think it's a thought that's crossed his mind, you know, being in a family of three or four people, you know, it's something he's been around, and he's excluded everyone that was part of it before from that, right? Parents are, one's dead, and the other one is, uh, basically terminally in bed all the time, kind of thing, and then again, his siblings are somewhere out in the world, living their own life, not helping with the shop, because he basically kicked them out, more or less. Or had his parents do so, however you want to describe it. So is there somebody in his life that's really important to him? Uh, nope. No one but himself. Again, he's pretty greedy and selfish at this point. Which, you know, might have been something he picked up from the crew, or like, been able to make friends eventually with one of the other various factions. Uh, but at this point in his career, he is very much a self centered son of a gun. What was the spark that led to you creating this character and making the choices that you did? This was my second Blades in the Dark character that I built, so it was really just trying to find out a character that worked well with the slide mechanic, and it just happened to, you know, I rolled dice to be like, oh, hey, choppy, okay, what's his, what's his vice stupor, okay, like, this one was very much, I rolled dice to see what I picked up, kind of thing, uh, and then built the story from that. Is that an approach you take often? Um, it really depends. If I don't know what I want to do, I let the dice do a lot of talking for me, and then I fill in the gaps. If I have a story I want to tell, then I, you know, make it so. When you roll the dice, as you did with Dale, do you Eventually get to a place where you have a story you want to tell sometimes it really just depends on the character and the stories that we're building a lot of the times I as a player or GM or whatever, a fill role for something that a group is missing to kind of make sure that they're well rounded or balanced or have something that they could use in the future and Dale was just kind of that kind of that they know in a big slide we didn't have any good talkers we didn't have anyone that like could sell stuff and we were a quote unquote group of hawkers. So, Dale slipped in that spot, or shall I say, slid in that slot, and took over from there. He was definitely not the face man of our group. We had other players that were the face man. He was just kind of the talky guy. Would you say that balance in a party is important to you? In all honesty, no, sometimes when I'm playing with new people, I like to show that balance is important, especially for new systems that I don't necessarily know how to play super well. Like I said, this was my second character that I had made for this system, so I'm still learning it. Um, so filling in slots that I hadn't seen before was important for me because all my other people that were playing had either done slots that I'd seen before or were doing something new and I got to see what they did. So I didn't want to do those slots. Slide was kind of just like the last on the list. Right. Getting the chance to explore all the different classes and options. Yeah, I would say that, as well, way more important for me than having a quote unquote balanced party. Because even if, like, if we were to jump over to another system like D& D, for example, I could play with a whole party of bards, right, as long as each of the bards were from a different class or did a different thing. Same thing with Blades in the Dark. If we had a group of all Hounds, right, which are the hunter style people, I think it could still play really well, especially depending on what kind of crew they're in. I mean, I think Hounds would make excellent smugglers or bravos or assassins. Um, just because of their abilities that they have and they could all literally be unique, especially at the beginning. And then as they get higher level, they kind of, you know, crossover with each other a little bit more, but from a storytelling point, that could just be like, you've been watching your buddy. He's really good at tracking or is really good with their animal and you see how they do it. So you implement that on the stuff that you're doing. So you all kind of become an equally proficient at something kind of thing. That could be interesting. Blade in the Dark is one of those games that getting to the end can be very hard, especially if you restart from the beginning every time your character dies or has to retire. Whereas if you kind of do the, hey everyone needs to be at this level for us to continue playing the story, it's not as bad. Uh, but if you restart, restart, like you're supposed to at the end of every, shall we say, finishing segment for a character, it can be difficult. It can take a really long time to hit that max level as a player. Same thing with your groups, you know what I mean? Once you get past, like, uh, a level two notoriety, like, it takes a while to get to those next levels. Do you personally relate to Dale's story or Dale as a character at all? Is there anything in there that you brought in because it's something that you personally? Have or even personally want to explore? At this point, a shop merchant. You know, I mean, it was interesting, but at that point, you know, uh, I don't think Epic Sages was a thing when I made Dale or it was just beginning, it was under a different name. So I hadn't really picked up the sales mini style stuff. So I honestly just made Dale to have a fun character and run through an experience. I don't really have a lot to relate to them. He's just a character. Pretty much. There's nothing that's, uh, attached to me and him. You know what I mean? There's no, like, high tier similarities, except for, I would say looks. Reading his description. He's got a relatively tall build, blonde hair, soft footed. He has a scar over his left eye. I don't have a scar over my left eye, but I would consider myself tall, or at least average sized. And brown hair, I have brown hair. That's really the closest similarity I can think of. Do you usually play characters that share physical similarities to you? Uh, generally something. Not necessarily everything. Uh, I make a lot of my characters 5'9 which is how tall I am. Um, just because it's easy to then see from their perspective, quote unquote. But, uh, other phenotypes and things like that, not as much. I mean, quite a few of my characters I think have hazel eyes. Brown hair. You know what I mean? But that's, that's relatively common, especially depending on the race and class and location and all that fun stuff. What does Dale dress like? Ooh, good question. So Dale changes his outfit. Depending on the situation in the game. There's three styles of loads that you can do. There's light, normal and heavy and Dale would choose his look or clothes that he's wearing, depending on what load he would have. So, like, if he was in a heavy load, he would obviously have like a heavy trench coat that covered all this thing. So he could be as quote unquote sneak as possible. Uh, whereas if he was in a light load. He might wear shorts and a shirt, you know, whatever is most comfortable and convenient for him for that situation, you know, a normal outfit for him is a basic working shirt, basic working pants, some kind of boots, and that's his get up. Can you explain what load means in this instance? Sure. So, one of the really cool mechanics of Blades in the Dark. Is that when you are going through the story, you can not summon an item, but basically call back. Hey, I remember that I packed this earlier and then you mark off one of your sets of load, right? And your load is how many equipment pieces you that you can have on your character, right? So someone in a light load. Is able to sneak around fast and not get noticed very hard and things like that. Someone in a normal load might look like they're getting up the trouble, but people might leave them alone because they're like, it's not worth my time. Someone in a heavy load looks like they are going to cause trouble and people either stay the heck away from them or meet them and greet them kind of thing. And the load is kind of inconsequential because there's a whole bunch of items that you can pick through. And as long as your character is quote unquote has access to those items, they can basically draw them out of their coat pocket whenever they need it. If you suddenly remember, oh, I need a sword, because we're about to be in combat, you can pull out a sword, or a knife, or a dagger, or whatever you need that fits the scene appropriately. Um, you know, depending on the class you're running, there are special items that only certain classes can use, but there's also this really cool mechanic that allows you to, like, hey, earlier today, before any of the things went on, I remember going to this place and hiding a whole bunch of keys that I stole under this rock, and then suddenly you have a pile of keys because you stole them all from the guards earlier today, uh, and that's incumbent on the, The GM or DM to pick those up and, like, tell you how much stress you gain for doing that from earlier. Um, and again, stress is another mechanic that leads to things, uh, in the game itself. What kind of things does stress lead to? So, uh, stress leads to trauma. And trauma A gives you ability to gain experience, because this is a game of when bad things happen to you, that's when you gain the experience, or when you take high risk chances, you also gain the experience. If you take safe choices, you don't level up fast. If you take dangerous choices, you level up faster. But once you start taking trauma, you only get to have four total, and basically they change your personality, uh, depending on what trauma you get. Um, and sometimes it's a narrative you get to pick what trauma you're acquiring for being too stressed, or Sometimes it's from the story itself where, like, it picks you. For example, one of the ones is haunted, right? So let's say you are doing something and one of your teammates gets killed relatively close to when you are trying to do something. And you take some stress on so you can not take some damage and survive yourself. And it puts you over your stress barrier to give you a trauma. You might pick up the haunted trauma because you remember the look of your friend as they got stabbed to the heart while you ran away like a coward. We've talked a lot about Dale's vices, and that's totally appropriate for Blades in the Dark, but does Dale have strengths, besides his kind of abilities and his capacity, but does he give blood at the local orphanage? Like, does he have anything that we would consider good? Is there anything redeeming about this jerk? Yeah, does he have any redeeming qualities? Um, it's not something I got to play through, but I would like to think he's good with animals. I would like to think he's generous after he's greedy, which is a silly quantity to have, but I think once you have stuff, you're willing to give it away kind of thing. And I feel like that is more of the greed he is than the just like, I must consume everything it is. I want stuff and then I'm happy to give away what I don't need. Interesting. There is a conflict there. When, when I think of greedy people, I think, yeah, they just want everything for themselves. So what is the motivation if it's not to have it himself? Well, the, just because he gives it away doesn't mean he didn't have it at one point, doesn't mean he didn't use it, you know what I mean? Like, if he doesn't need an item, I don't think he would be stingy and hold onto it. I think if he has it, uses it, and doesn't need anymore, he's happy to give it away, or trade it for more stuff. Mm hmm. So, it's a, a consumption mechanism. It's probably a, a good way to think about being the youngest child of three, uh, wanting all the stuff and the things and being the baby of the family and stuff like that might've taught him to be that, but I would like to say his parents were meant to be good people. They were good traders, good merchants, which is why his side job is secure because his family name is well known in the place where they live in. And so he still has to have some of that moral integrity that his parents brought over, even if he himself is kind of a shipper. Does Dale have any sort of personal moral or ethical code, a motto that they live by, anything like that? Um, no, I think that's one of Dale's downfalls. Again, he has, he's not a great character to like aspire to be by any means. So I think whatever gets him paid the most or keeps him the safest or most comfortable, you know what I mean? It's all selfish at this point. He has yet to learn any kind of care for others. I think And again, that's something that I, as a player, wanted to build for him, but it wasn't where he's at currently. You can have a vow, or a motto, or a code that you live by, and that code can be not altruistic. Right, right, right. Yeah, so I mean, if you had to have a specific code, right, it would probably be like, whatever gets me paid is what I do. Right. Does Dale have any quirks? Yeah, actually, uh, he, he likes to drag people around. So, like, if there is a person who is knocked out in a stupor, he will move them to a new location. Uh, just for funsies. Even if they don't want it? Yeah, exactly, if they're fighting, the better, because he gets to giggle the entire way as he moves into a new location. It's not like an impulsive thing, so like, if he was running from the cops and whatnot, he wouldn't stop to move them, but like, if he is in downtime session, there's, you know, descriptions of someone knocked out on the street, you can drag him to the other side of the street. Or down the road a while or something silly like that. So would you say he's kind of a humorous prankster kind of character? I think a lot of his slyness falls into that category. He definitely plays with coins, just for funsies, in front of people's faces. And he's one of those hand magicky tricky people. Again, with the finesse that he has, you know, that's kind of something he's good at. So yes and no, it's more about being a jerk than being funny, I would like to assume. Backstory wise, it could have happened to him once and he just forsaken revenge against everyone until he finds the person that did it, and if he was drunk, how was he ever going to find the person that did it? That's going to end up being his new rival. Once we win over the bartender. Why are you excited to play Dale, eventually? If I ever get back to the group that was playing with this, I was really excited to play Dale because A, he was a lot of new experiences for me at the time, And he was a completely new experience for the rest of the group. Um, and one of the things I love to do with people is teach them how to play these TTRPGs that we love how to do. Blades in the Dark is one of our certified ones that we teach other people how to play and go through and, you know, basically be the best they can be kind of thing, uh, through the business. Just being able to go back to that and play with those people again would just be fun. I mean, some of them have continued on after original games and I've played with them later. For the most part, you know, most of the group is still just waiting around. How old is Dale? Dale is in his early thirties, about 33. So has he been kind of a proprietor of this business for a long time or? Uh, yeah, probably since he was about 20. So he's been running it for about 13 years. And how long has he been in this crew? This crew is newly formed. It's a baby of conception. It just started the first session that we played together kind of thing. Would you say Dale is straight, or have you thought about his sexuality at all? I haven't given it a ton of thought. It's not something I'd come up with, but probably. There is, you know, some kind of dynamic to it. I'm sure if he found the right person, it could be something different. But as of this point, that's not something I had in the books one way or the other. You mentioned that he might be interested or he's thinking about eventually settling down. Does he have interest in those kinds of relationships at this point? Is he just solely focused on the business? Again, with him being in his thirties and not having anyone that's there that can help run the business and things like that. Right. Yeah, the advantage of having children is that's a guaranteed workers, you know, we go back to the selfish thoughts to suffer stuff that they'll hear. If he has kids, eventually, they'll get to run the shop for him. If he has a significant other, they'll be able to help him with the shop, you know, that kind of stuff. Um, so, again, going back into, if he does have those thoughts and feelings, they're definitely for, like, greedy reasons, you know, not altruistic whatsoever. It's going to build a workforce, one child at a time. Exactly, you know, so, someone's gotta start somewhere, right? That's what his parents did, dang it, he's gonna do it too. Heh heh. Does Dale have a voice? Hmm, let me see here. So how about something like this? This would probably be a good Dale voice. It's a little higher than your own voice. Yeah, I can't hear it, so I have no idea what it actually sounds like. So, for the listeners, what exactly are you using to alter your voice? I'm using the program VoiceMod. I use it all the time in the business, uh, it has a wonderful soundboard that you can add stuff to it. There's a whole bunch of different AI voices, people have been working on this for a long time. Uh, and it's a really good one. Is that something you use a lot when you're playing a character, is these kind of voice modulation programs? I bought this about a year ago, or bought into it about a year ago. And it had some really good stuff, so like for demons and monsters, I would use them for various things. Especially for more of our space centric stuff. So more of the like Lancer and Starfinder. It's not something I've ever tried. I'm stuck with analog voice modulation methods. Yeah. I mean, so I have some of that too, but it definitely makes it way easier. And I only have, you know, three or four accents that I can change to without sounding super terrible. So this helps me do more than what I usually would. I don't know. I think they're lots of fun. Again, we go to the soundboard, and I use the soundboard on our silly videos on YouTube all the time, that are just me me AF, um, because we like to have fun, and, uh, cause havoc. Dale, is there a food that most people like that you absolutely hate? Bell peppers. I can't stand bell peppers. I know they're expensive and we don't get them often, but give me a good eel and a little bit of mushroom ale and I'm a happy man. I'm simple. I don't need any of these fancy vegetables. Would you say Eels and mushroom ale are your favorite meal, or is there something that you like even more? It's cheap, and I like cheap. Saves me the money so I can put it in my pocket. So whatever saves me the most money, I'm happy to eat and drink. It's interesting that you have a lot of money, but you don't really spend it in any extravagant ways. Do you just put it in a account somewhere and just watch it grow? Why? Are you trying to steal it from me? You know, it's the kind of information you don't share with strangers on the internet. Rook, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing Dale with me and with my listeners. Of course, I hope they enjoy it, and, uh, that he gives you all a bit of a smile when you think of a greedy little monster that hoards all the gold, that isn't a dragon. Yeah, no dragons Blades really unless it's a, unless it's a real bad day. It's a real mean demon, something like that. You guys done goofed up enough to bring out the dragon ghost. You need to, it's like getting the Sharknado on the table for D& D. You done messed up, you need to go home. I will go ahead and put the links in the description to your socials and your projects that you want to share. But is there anything that you want to share with my listeners, any projects that are happening, anything like that? As per usual, this summer specifically, we're reaching out and doing as much in person stuff up in Fairbanks, Alaska as possible. But in the interim, before we start, you know, doing more events around the country. Uh, we really want people to come to our discord and come hang out, come watch our shows on all the links, you know, especially our YouTube channel. Come check out our podcast. We'd love to hear people's feedbacks and things like that. Our big focus has been these display games on YouTube. So both the Lancer and the D& D that are running currently. Anywhere really near ending. So there'll be going on for a while, but I believe blades is actually our next display game that we will be doing. So if you guys are interested in watching a blade screwed, cause havoc and go through the levels and all that fun stuff, keep an eye out for that. We're writing a book. The book is written. We're finding an illustrator and getting it. All that fun stuff done with it or more details in the future. Come check out our stuff we have right now. We have a lot of stuff. We want to share it with as many people as possible. You can find me on TikTok at StarMamaC or on threads, Blue Sky, Instagram, or Facebook as Characters Without Stories. You can also listen on YouTube at Characters Without Stories or follow the link in the description. Please share the podcast with a friend. Word of mouth is the best way to find new listeners. Your recommendations help me immensely. Thank you to all of my listeners spreading the word. I am so grateful. I want to give a special shout out this episode to Lord Harry Chin Beardington who left me a wonderful review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify are really helpful. To let listeners know that you support the show. So if you have a chance, please leave a review or a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Thank you.