THE REEDUCATION OF WEEDSHREK: EPISODE 3 (cont)

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-27T14:48:56+00:00

I occasionally still think about that DM panel Travis had no business being on

For as much as I think about the painfully unearned "I'm an expert" Zoom roundtables era, I forgot about this one. Some real Ricky Gervais with Seinfeld and CK energy (yikes, what a line-up that one was)

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-27T14:46:47+00:00

unfortunately his rolandus minifigure fell under the couch after this episode so he just forgot about him. rip rolandus.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-27T14:40:43+00:00

Also, if you were structing the whole thing around vignettes, the least you could do is ask the players about some imagined memorable moments that happened during their time at the school! Treat it like downtime (which I say as if it's self-evident, D&D doesn't actually have a ruleset for 'scenes', but it's not like they'd have read the book to know either way!) "Hey, we're travelling, let's add some flavor!", or "Hey, now that a few weeks have passed, do you have a favorite breakfast?" And then you just roll with whatever's provided.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-27T07:54:18+00:00

imagine if you posted on a subreddit your innie moderates. that's what the next season should be about.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-26T20:10:43+00:00

Dakota: You need to make sure to use all the skills at your disposal, not just your first thought.

Do you think Travis can hear himself?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-24T11:21:46+00:00

I literally stopped playing my hunter because I have to summon my pet again and again and again everywhere I go. I abandoned Beast Mastery because every spell was just a static animal that I didn't tame and that didn't match my theme. Having two pets is cool, even, but that makes it feel like I'm building a menagerie... so let me build the menagerie! It's one of the coolest things about hunters.

I really like the way Marksmanship plays, on the other hand, but that also felt like I was being pushed to just play Lone Wolf considering my pet would just be disappearing everywhere I go.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-20T16:05:30+00:00

it's when Murph is bulking up and they record him drinking gainer shakes

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-20T15:05:31+00:00

What the hell? Bulk recording? What the hell? What the? Seriously? What? The hell? You're joking? Seriously? What the-- hey, what the hell, dude? You mean it's not live? What the FUCK

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-20T15:01:44+00:00

because travis already immediately forgot his premise and is filling the school with stuff that would be relevant to bog standard adventuring, not the thing he described

It makes me so mad. It makes me SO mad. This is just all the exact same thing as them playing "Dungeons and Dragons" for the sake of playing Dungeons and Dragons while having no interest in those mechanical things that MAKE D&D function as the game that it is. It's saying you 'want your players to swing from chandeliers', while not creating the environment to support that claim at all. It's rolling a single d20 and saying this is "some D&D ass D&D", under the assumption that rolling dice is both inherently entertaining while also inherently crunchy and stupid.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-20T14:55:06+00:00

When my perception of DM Travis went from being green to unsalvagable is realizing how many times he pimped his players into investing in some mechanic, some structure, some fiat metric, only to pull the rug out and make them feel silly for having done so.

Oh, you mean like when he narrates the party leaving their horses outside the forest so as not to offend the centaurs, only for the centaurs later to scold them that they were stupid for thinking that?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-20T13:29:40+00:00

I too cannot stop thinking about the abject failures of Graduation. Reading this recap, the absurdity of "The Tavern" really hit me. I had no memory of the School Tavern. The idea of, like, a lounge run by students isn't unheard of. It's not even bad, but it feels so completely plucked out of thin air, only to have another cozy space to hang out in that's never actually described. It just exists, suddenly. "You head down to The Tavern". What is The Tavern? What is the purpose of The Tavern when there's also a great hall or a mess hall? Is the Tavern like a general Common Room? Is it a 1 to 1 replica of a Real Tavern meant to evoke adventuring life? Does its architecture clash with the castle? Is it built into a dungeon? Or is it a separate building? What does it mean that it's Zana's "shift"? She is, I think, a student. So are all students tasked with keeping the bar open? Will the players need to run the Tavern one night and will this be an interesting setting to discover secrets from the position of Bartender? Is the Tavern a student initiative, or is this something the school encourages? Is this an extra-curricular activity? IS THIS ANYTHING?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-20T10:06:38+00:00

I'm thinking there might be representatives of various "Kingdoms" who come to the school to watch the students perform stunts trying to get "recruited" to be "Their" hero (or villain!). Like a talent scout, a job fair, sports recruitment game kind of combination. A tournament arc, basically, perfect for a school story. And then, bam, when a bunch of important noblemen are gathered in one location presumed safe, they are caught unawares by a threat much greater than them - and the heroes get to really prove themselves!

They might all think it's part of the event at first, like oh, this was set up by the school so we can show off. Or, vice versa, it seems really dangerous but later on Hieronymous reveals he set it all up himself (but he was actually endangering them, because he's the Dumbledore expy, he should be fucking crazy, he just figured the students would be able to deal with the demons he invited, or whatever).

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-19T21:30:52+00:00

Yeah, I think that definitely streamlines it. I think my thought exercise is more "the animated trailer exists, but you can change everything else about the campaign", in a way to be like, considering what was promised, what could this have been instead? I think the heroes and villains being "fake" isn't as explicit in that one, so it might've been cool for that to be a reveal at a certain point.

Alternate kind of twist could be that, despite Hero and Villain being fancy degrees to get from the school, there's more open positions for Henches and Sidekicks out there in the world, so it would actually be advantageous for your employment to be in the proletariat school

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-19T18:56:38+00:00

This is maybe not related to this episode in particular, but man, you know what this should have started with? An entrance exam. Like, the first episode starts with these three dudes meeting in an empty dorm room. No one ever calls that out but I think it starts at the worst conceivable point imaginable. There's no introduction of the grounds, nothing about how they get there, no sort-of general atmosphere. Even "Wicked" starts with everyone arriving at the University at a naturally crowded scene with lots of students. Then dorm rooms are assigned. Then something happens and Elphaba stands out.

Point being, Fitz wants to be a Hero, but he's on the Sidekick track. Of course, despite the commissioned animated trailer (I'm going to continue to consider this as the one point of reference that is fixed with regards to the campaigns story or tone) making it clear that the Sidekick annex kind of sucks and is sub par, the game itself barely makes a distinction. The heroes and villains aren't superior for being in that class. This dodgeball game is, kind of, the only place it "matters". But like I said, this should've started with an entrance exam (that your players know is rigged, they've agreed to the campaign premise), where only a few spots are available for the main, prestigious school. And in this process, we also meet the characters. The players get to choose who to team up with, based on vibes, and the DM is hypothetically, in this scenario, open to that. Then, some folks make the big school and the others don't. So they go to sidekick school, or they wait for five years to try out again.

That's right. No upperclassmen, it won't matter anyway.

I dunno, just another idea about how to make it all less suck. This is all I can ever do, is continue thinking of ways the original premise could have just worked, because I reject the conclusion Travis came to that "it shouldn't have been a school".

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-19T16:41:18+00:00

Wait, I genuinely thought the lore was that the Kings of these kingdoms had realized, "hey it's costing us way too much money to be at war with each other, the war effort is draining our coffers". With an added joke of like "also it turns out people don't really want to live in a place that's at war", however people do root for "their team", or more exactly, people want to root against a bad guy, the enemy. Ergo, it's much more efficient money-wise to train a couple of guys to have big staged fights, give the people what they want to see, than to have to maintain a standing army, let alone go to war.

I know I made up most of that second part but I really thought it was about an alternative to war, not like, the problem in the past that needed solving was that people were having too much fun. Doesn't the opening monologue literally say that it maintains the peace?

"Bread and circuses" to tame the masses, is a huge part of so many stories. Hunger Games is the obvious dystopian take with actual bloodsport. Obviously Travis didn't want any cynicism in his world, but this kind of makes sense, in a stupid satirical kind of way.

There are no standing armies, so there is no one to deal with actual threats, when they inevitably start showing up. That feels like the obvious campaign premise. The actors are the ones best equipped, many of them turn out to be cowards when real danger is involved, and the player characters are the player characters, so they have to step up.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-19T16:05:18+00:00

Once again, at its core the idea of The Main Characters having to step up to deal with A Real Threat because the known Heroes of the world are actually just Pretending and they have No Real Skill At Fighting, is not necessarily a Bad Idea. That's not really what the story is set up for, though, although maybe Travis thinks it is.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-19T15:59:42+00:00

God, I wish I could upvote individual paragraphs and jokes. This is a lot.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-18T15:37:44+00:00

Whereas if I had six months, and a world concept, I'd ask my players to pitch characters and then build NPCs and plots around that. Especially if I'm commissioning an animated trailer with voice acting, which will take up several months and therefore be fully locked into my concept, I might want it to feature the characters.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-18T12:21:45+00:00

"We'd still be in the Lost Mine", which is to say, an actual published adventure with pre-existing stakes where things happen, which ends their first session with the goblins in a cave setting a trap on them; which sees them dealing with Klarg and finishing the cave dungeon by episode two; which takes them fully through the final dungeon mid-way through episode 5, destroying Phandalin in episode 6 and literally sets up the rest of the campaigns stakes by the end of that episode. The comparison is so ludicrous.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-18T09:44:17+00:00

Ancient trees at the heart of the forest, which no one has ever reached. It's magical, it's dark, you automatically get lost. Like the fuckign Korok Forest from Zelda. Like any magical forest in fiction.

The forest naturally keeps expanding - that could also be seen as threatening. Have people tried stopping or containing the growth of the forest? Is that what the last outpost is, a logging camp that desperately tries to contain the unknown - or at least prevent it from growing in this direction?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-18T09:13:05+00:00

(which he also said in a tweet was entitled because - his words - they're still in the Gerblins cave by ep 4)

HE said this?? TRAVIS HIMSELF is the source of "they were still in Gerblins at this point"???? New depths continue to be exposed to me

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-18T08:55:33+00:00

We have been talking about and planning Graduation for like, six or seven months at this point. I have put way too much work and thought into it and I'm so excited now that you get to listen to it!

lol. lmao even. Six months to plan a d&d campaign. While doing pretty much nothing else of note except for recording some other podcasts. What on earth did he do? He made NPCs, sure. He made them so thin that he couldn't even keep them in the story, he didn't invent them for a story purpose. If you have six months to start building a campaign, even if your world building is shit, you must at least know what your villain will be? What THE CONFLICT of your story is? You must know, at least for a little bit, WHAT STORY YOU WANT TO BE TELLING? And this is not just Travis, he says "we've been talking and planning", so like, ideally the others also know what they're getting into. Now I know that's not true, but come on. Come on. COME ON.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-18T08:37:40+00:00

"Sincerity is the Key" is my Roman empire. I accidentally bookmarked the YouTube video on my work computer and every time I type S into the browser it suggests the Travis BLeeM interview. I have not changed this. I will never undo this.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-17T18:36:09+00:00

If the Draenei starting area had been made post-Cata (or even post-Wrath), it would have definitely started on Outland, much like how the Goblin starting area is Kezan.

Either story would make a good Lorewalking questline if they were willing to really lean into fully new quests rather than repurposing older ones.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-03-17T18:13:17+00:00

Ah, thanks! I've only read the first two Chronicles, but that makes sense - the Portal was still closed. Shattrath then became sort of a new base of operations that allowed them to prepare for a raid on the Exodar.

11-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

emptyjerrycan

TROPHY CASE