Table Talk - A D&D Podcast

Join us for a (not so new) review of a sourcebook that was hot off the presses when we recorded, but is now probably outdated enough that you’ve already moved on to Daggerheart (like we have) as we unpack the 2024 New Player’s Handbook! This long-awaited update to Dungeons and Dragons 5e, now One DND, by Wizards of the Coast certainly made some much-needed improvements, from its layout, finally ending the debate on whether potions should be an action or bonus action, and Robert Lopez’s personal favorite, Mexican Orcs.

Fetch and Smoke have 2 hours left until they become fish food. They’re plan is fool-proof (or Fetch-proof, if you ask Smoke): Blow up a cell tower, ambush the convoy, get the package and deliver it safely to Codfather’s lair with absolutely NO hiccups on the way. But add a friendly neighborhood vigilante, a lot of guns and a few grenades, things look like they might be shaping up in Fetch and Smoke’s typical fashion- chaos.

Welcome back to the 14th episode of season 2 of Table Talk! It has been a while since we last uploaded for you all, and on today's episode we'll get into why. The short answer? Life. The long answer? Everything in between. Pull up a chair as we trauma dump about the last 3 months of navigating all nine layers of scheduling hell with no wish spell in hand, the ridiculous amount of one shots we've run in between, and what's to come for the rest of this poor season and a sneak peek into the exciting season 3.

Welcome back to another episode of Table Talk! Join Robert and Madi for the newest installment on a reoccurring segment, From our Table to Yours, where they kick off their first of many "Media to TTRPGS (shitty working title)" where they turn their favorite media from books to video games into a bare bones TTRP system. Today's session is all about The Last of Us, a gritty and dark post apocalyptic United States post-fungal-zombie-outbreak where anything that can go wrong...absolutely will 100% of the time. Using the lore from the award winning video game series The Last of Us by Naughty Dog and the incredibly popular MAX live-action adaptation, our intrepid hosts create a brand new hybrid system mixing mechanics, gameplay, and character creation from 5E AND Kids on Bikes. From replacing hit points with three hits total to assigning benefits of being from the cannibal club, listen in for a fungus filled session to help you fill your players with an inescapable feeling of certain death! But ask for consent before traumatizing them! Just good manners.

What's more fun than playing superheroes in a city full of neon lights and concrete heights? Join Robert and Maddi as they play the villainous vigilantes Smoke and Fetch. On a night out gone wrong (or right, according to Fetch) full of dancing on tables, sneaking into a club, and almost stabbing a puffer-fish bouncer, Smoke and Fetch end the evening with a block party for the books, quickly starting their morning. They're offered a job by Sapphire City's Codfather, a half-shark half-man gangster, leading them into a series of wild escapades. From fighting the city's deviant task force to dealing with a drug-fueled superhero, Smoke and Fetch aim to pull off one last job to settle debts and secure their future. But with complications at every turn, failure means facing the Codfather's wrath or worse, DRT's bullets.

What's more fun than playing superheroes in a city full of neon lights and concrete heights? Join Robert and Maddi as they play the villainous vigilantes Smoke and Fetch. On a night out gone wrong (or right, according to Fetch) full of dancing on tables, sneaking into a club, and almost stabbing a puffer-fish bouncer, Smoke and Fetch end the evening with a block party for the books, quickly starting their morning. They're offered a job by Sapphire City's Codfather, a half-shark half-man gangster, leading them into a series of wild escapades. From fighting the city's deviant task force to dealing with a drug-fueled superhero, Smoke and Fetch aim to pull off one last job to settle debts and secure their future. But with complications at every turn, failure means facing the Codfather's wrath or worse, DRT's bullets.

You’ve heard us talk about it way too much… so here it is! We return to our Tales from the Inn series where we tell you a tale from our very own table. This time, join us to hear about our current campaign- the Sapphire Prodigies, a cyberpunk city filled with super powered people called Deviants, ranging from a random civilian with the ability to call lightning, or a plant that gained sentience and now stops crime with it's massive vines. Our story follows Knightlite, Shadow, Chip, Kaze and Volt - a ragtag group of heroes all trying to make it big in Sapphire City, one of the last sanctuaries for Deviants and non-deviants in the world. They find themselves forced to work together in order to keep their City safe, and quickly become an unwilling and unruly team of misfit Devants out to do the right thing (some times?).This campaign is loosely based on Capes and Crooks 5E and uses their amazing systems, setting touchstones, and character creation process.

Join us for a talkback session about Maddi's first time GMing her own one-shot from the last session. From one-shot versus campaigns, roleplay driven versus more combat encounters, homebrewing versus pre-written- we compare and contrast our own experiences DMing, as well as reflect on favorite moments from our first time Point Pleasant.

What better way to start your GM-ing experience than trying it in front of a microphone for everyone to hear? Maddi takes the reins and leads her first ever damn-near-homebrew one shot, taking place in a small town on the Jersey Shore, and follows Tony Zuko, a greaser dressing cool kid and the rest of the junior class at Hidden Harbor as they prepare for the annual field trip to Port Pleasant, an overnight camping trip just a short walk away from the Boardwalk. From secret friendships to evil science teachers, makeovers, the social maze of hormonal teenager’s and more can be found inside this totally normal and definitely not cursed town. Link to Patreon Post with Behind the Screen info here!

Now that you’ve presumably listened to our episodes on how to build a character, join us as we take it a step further with multiclassing! We discuss the pros and cons of taking levels in different classes at the same time, several different insane combinations, and what tends to work the best and what works the worst. This especially includes Robert’s personal beef with Sorcerer/Warlock multi-classing, broken in many ways. In response of course, Maddi builds her PC Sparrow into that very multi-class, as Robert builds Ybba into a fighter/barbarian for maximum hits.

Join us at the table as we take you through Capes and Crooks, a 5e Superhero RPG by Crit Academy that we recently started using at our own table in our current campaign, The Sapphire Prodigies! We unpack the inspiration behind our campaign, our experiences with comic books, a quick look at an amazing sourcebook, and give you a run down of the characters at our table. The Sapphire Prodigies, written and DM'd by our very own Robert Lopez, follows a mixed bag of heroes, old and new, human and not so human, who all "coincidently" meet on a high stakes mission gone wrong. Each hero has their own unique power set from Light to Shadow, Lighting to Wind, and of course the obligatory robot, and each is striving to become Sapphire City's top hero in 2099, the new golden age of technology and super-powered beings.

The season finale of Table Talk! In celebration of almost 24 hours of content, join Maddi and Robert as they play through Table Talk’s first official actual play- The Spire and the Scab by Jasmine Bhullar. Robert DM’s the tale and the DMPC Ybba, the goliath fighter as Maddi plays the puzzle solving Sparrow, a tiefling sorcerer. Full of chaos, four nat ones in a row, cheese, and some interesting attempts at accents, this season finale has everything you could wish for and more.