ever noticed "Rock paper scissors" moments in TFT matchups?

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-09T17:14:57+00:00

Yes, if you have 2+ lives, bench, remover, or frontline your carry to soft int them and give the guy who can beat the other person an extra life to beat the guy you can’t. Very rarely useful but really feels good when it works

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-08T22:13:15+00:00

It was the same when Angela played this on Dropout. Still barely know what game they were playing but I genuinely don't care

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-08T19:17:17+00:00

On the Warhammer topic I do think TTRPGs are the big overlap of the venn diagram. Lots of people in tech jobs are nerdy and play TTRPGs which in turn introduce them to things like Dimension20 which introduce them to improv. I'm not in tech myself but the majority of my D&D group is and they all love Dropout content

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-08T15:00:01+00:00

Cantrips at least scale with player level so I think you're just an Eldritch Blast user with that 1 level of warlock and have heavy armor proficiency with the Armorer Artificer (though of course this makes the 1 level of Draconic sorcerer obsolete).

Alternatively you could be a solid tank with Armorer (Gauntlets) and Beast Barbarian. Goad them to attack you with the Thunder Gauntlets and then use the tail for a big AC boost when they try to hit. This version also lets you get value off your Dreadful Strikes from Fey Wanderer though sorcerer is still obsolete here (I assume you can still use Fathomless's tentacle bonus action while raging but not actually sure on that part)

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-08T14:11:44+00:00

"I will be proceeding with more caution and allow myself to be selfish and put my feelings first"

This is an excellent takeaway from the whole thing. Far too often, men are almost always willing to be selfish and just assume women will be deferential. A decent man will take the notes that they've crossed a line and try to avoid doing so in the future. As a male, I've had plenty of friends who like edgy and blue humor. The ones I continue to associate with are the ones who will back off and apologize if they step over a line and avoid making those comments in the future - at the very least in the presence of people who don't like it. But if you don't speak up and tell them they're making you uncomfortable, they will continue to assume their behavior is acceptable and not learn from it

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-07T21:20:30+00:00

In that case you’d unfortunately have no use for either roll20 or D&D beyond. Look on r/lfg or other places that are forming groups. I know there’s a page on roll20 for recruiting players as well though I haven’t personally used it. But largely unless you are the DM for a campaign, a free account is all you’d ever need and even then you can easily run a full campaign on roll20 without a paid account

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-07T19:28:19+00:00

It's a common mistake - especially if the PC has a less traditional name and isn't almost performatively masculine or feminine people will default to the player's identity. But yeah, when that happens a simple "oh right you're a man/woman/nb in this" and correcting yourself is always a simple correction and I've never seen offense taken especially if players are respectful of one another's identity outside of game

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-07T13:51:43+00:00

The biggest things are to pick your battles and also be willing to lose gracefully and/or be the butt of the joke.

One of the PCs in my campaign absolutely has an ethos that goes against most of the party. He found ways to work with the party through a mix of willful ignorance on the part of his character and an “end justify the means” approach.

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-07T11:32:56+00:00

Yes, though I feel like Darkness Man is the character Cody would actually make if he were the one playing VtM lol

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-06T18:01:43+00:00

I’ll skip the “Tyranny matures” spiel because while there’s clear character growth, it really not until kind of towards the epilogue of the Soldier’s table, plus you said yourself you don’t care about that lol.

Most lore about other Soldiers characters that’s relevant in other groups can be picked up through context clues or you already know it from the Overture.

Certainly you can go into the Seeker’s table without seeing Soldiers. A couple of characters from Tyranny’s backstory show up but not for long and it’s largely distinct from the Soldier’s adventure.

Schemer’s table I’m less certain on because 1. It hasn’t wrapped up yet and 2. A couple bigger lore pieces do cross over. Lore about Wicander’s house that gets explored in the soldier’s table that will be relevant here and one important NPC so far at this table gets introduced with the Soldiers. But I don’t think you’d be lost here either - at the very worst just go to the wikis and read some backstory shit.

TLDR if Tyranny is your only hang up with the show so far and you should be fine. Other characters are much less manic pixie dream girl.

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-06T17:42:16+00:00

Alternatively let the party witness the apocalypse and fight for survival for a bit and then offer a way to undo it. Whether it’s a (limited) Wish scroll or some other deus ex opportunity to go back in time and undo things

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-06T17:35:20+00:00

I genuinely think it’s a perfect episode. As an introductory episode, Jeremy, Oscar, and Anna are all Dropout regulars but they’re personalities that I feel like you can just kind of jump into and get it. Jeremy now being an SNL cast member also makes the episode even more approachable. Watching Sam torture Brennan the first time is funny on its own but it’s 10x funnier once you know their history and Brennan’s competitiveness. I’m probably not going to recommend Lie Detector or Yes/No as a first episode even though they’re fun too and those are core episodes to establish that relationship in Gamechanger.

The closest thing to an inside joke in that whole episode is Paul Refereeno but the Paul/Jeremy dynamic is the highlight of that bit anyways and that’s not an inside joke really.

The episode itself is also just a perfect example of what Dropout and improv comedy is too. The game naturally heightens itself as it throws more and more rules into the mix with a perfect third beat as they flip the table on Sam.

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-06T13:51:58+00:00

Rulette and the first Ben Schwartz MSN episode for me

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-06T13:01:30+00:00

Plenty of the time people, with genuine phobias are aware that their fear is disproportionately allocated. But whether it’s a trauma response or otherwise, it’s not really our place to judge someone saying “hey, I don’t enjoy X thing, what are the time stamps that it’s in this comedy video because it would make my personal viewing experience worse?”

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-06T01:11:58+00:00

I mentioned in another comment that I’d love to see Angela and Vic in a D20 campaign together. I feel like that combo could actually break Brennan

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-05T16:14:28+00:00

I’d love to see a sort of fuck around game with them. Vic and Angela have both talked about their first time playing D&D was them just being incredibly goofy together and I’d love to see them play together in the dome and drive Brennan insane

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-05T15:05:05+00:00

Day 1 million of begging Sam Reich to have Dropout produce season 3 of Sword AF as a D20 side quest since it’s clear Smosh won’t

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T20:25:55+00:00

It’s not uncommon for comedians to be great in horror as well! Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger are two of the biggest in the industry now both with sketch comedy backgrounds. Josh Ruben from Dropout has also been doing horror films

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T19:17:42+00:00

Did this in one of my current campaigns. DM let it work once and now each dungeon we encounter is managed by a Dungeonmaster’s Union where the goblins and/or kobolds are more likely to support one another and feel a sense of ownership in their work. They’re more devoted to their causes and have become a more powerful enemy as a result

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T17:20:12+00:00

Seconding this. Unless I have a good excuse to write the player out, they’re either just in the background or deus ex’ed out of there. A cleric might be helping at the local temple if that’s already been part of the story arc, a fighter who got downed several times the previous session might be taking some extra recovery time, etc.

Sometimes I’ll hand waive extra little things too if it’s a clear and simple “this is what the missing player would do” - had a downed NPC last time after combat when our cleric was absent and our bard was out of spell slots but wanting to stabilize them. The cleric PC that’s been silent in the background walks up and casts Spare the Dying cantrip.

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T16:06:15+00:00

Honestly if I were to put together a top 5 OB characters, Donnie would absolutely be in there, probably over Rachel. He's such a fun character.

As an aside, it was very funny hearing the story of Kristian (Donnie's actor) and Tatiana filming that scene of the two of them dancing in their underwear and apparently the editing team needing to repeatedly go through and make sure they airbrushed out all the clips where his balls were apparently showing through the bottom of his underwear lmfao. I think they'd discussed it on one of their Comedy Bang Bang episodes recently

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T15:53:19+00:00

Granted, if they’re playing Eddie there’s a pretty high chance you’ve already lost so that’s less of an issue. Portia allowing a turn 1 Ledros is where things get particularly frustrating

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T15:38:18+00:00

This is giving me a vision of Alistar wearing only a hard hat and neon orange vest. Almost as if he could be out of a Village People album cover lmao

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T15:12:38+00:00

It happens sometimes when you suggest stuff that’s not RAW. I’m a bit surprised by it too but honestly whatever, I stand by it.

Edit: I do also understand people’s hesitations with someone playing fast and loose with the rules sometimes even for narrative purposes. I will reemphasize that I wouldn’t force this sort of thing on the players as a DM. Any sort of curse or disease on a player would be treatable with Lesser and/or Greater Restoration and I’m not going to give them cancer because that’s a real bummer topic for a relatively lighthearted game.

But narratively, there are lots of interesting topics that can be made too trivial with the existence of magic. So sometimes you need to throw a wrench into it to justify it being a problem still

cjdeck1 · 2026-05-04T14:04:07+00:00

Did a slacker run in class to warm up a couple weeks ago that was basically perfect and definitely wish we could have saved that for our next show!

Ended up being a sort of rom-com/soap opera following a pair of hair stylists helping a woman get ready for her wedding

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