#this is about mavrus but it just hits every time

[brionbroadway]

i don't care what he's playing, zac oyama should always have counterspell

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

random notes on naddpod c1 ep 70-100

part three of the list of personal highlighs, shared here in lieu of chewing my very indifferent friends’ ears off irl. For whom it may concern.

spoiler warning! you will get no context but still, massive massive spoilers ahead

That moment where Hardwon almost came back as a gnome tho, right after Murph explains how he left that option in as a joke

The wrestling! Jake and Emily rolling the exact same three times in a row!

so much good parents content in this episode! Also Melora is back, I adore her. The concept of an anti-authoritarian deity is so funny. “No don't listen to me! But do. But don't!”

I’m with Emily, Murph doing Elvish is the actual worst thing to ever happen

“I’ve hit a bit of a rough patch in my relationship but that’s okay because I found a book that lets me kill my dad.” “Everything’s coming up Beverly!”

“You can’t tell us your character’s name, Zac, because they haven’t met you yet.” “And they never will!” “Yeah, I kept telling you they’re not going to the Frigid North but you wouldn’t listen.” “I keep heading north.” “I keep telling you, they’re south, they’re so far south -”

Zac’s characters gaslighting an NPC is always funny. *badly tells a bold-faced lie* “Why would I lie about that?”

“Unsheep him immediately!”

Ren’s laughter is INFURIATING

“Yeah, he lost both contacts. Both contacts just shot out of his eyes when he was giving the speech earlier.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out if any of them are actually good singers or not

Pursuit of Dragon Eggs

Zac “unofficial King of the One-liner” Oyama at it again with the perfect character intro: “Mavrus the Unschooled who… forgot this assignment”

Genuinely I just want to be as effortlessly funny as Zac for a single day. Just to know what it’s like to live like that.

Finally a realistic magical tournament - now with bathroom breaks!

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Mawmaw is back! I love her so much

Lucanis doting on his newfound daughter is so sweet

“We shall meet at dawn!” “That’s so early, can we do like nine?”

Murph doing out of touch aristocrats (the “SilvONE percent”, Caldwell is on FIRE) is GOLDEN. “Ren, keep working on yourself.” “I won’t.”

The Boobs getting Balnor a mechanical tuna that sings Chasing Cars

Also this might be the first time I’ve seen the DM carrying on a bit for so long it actively stalls the plot, and I loved every dumb second of it

Murph trying to introduce Cooter’s new high eleven girlfriend, fucking up and calling her his wife instead, and having to take that in stride

“Nice cape, my champion.” “Oh, do you like it? I got it expressly to impress you.” HARDWON

“It’s fourteen platinum. I know you have many slides to build.” “Yes, this will go a long way to build the parliamentary water park.”

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Progressively useless shop links

The bit about them trying to get Murph to give up the cliffhanger while on tour is so funny because a) the idea that Jake would be the one to go looking for Murph’s notes while Emily and Caldwell keep him busy when they are literally IN EMILY’S ROOM and b) that he’d somehow have to try to break in when it is LITERALLY ALSO EMILY’S ROOM

Caldwell calling Murph “Daddy Murphy”, “Daddy DM” and “Teacher” in quick succession while trying to get away with some Classic Beverly Bullshit absolutely sent me

“I’m just gonna keep stabbing at the slit… and think nothing of the implications.” “Thanks, I hate it.” Well so do I, Murph, but you’re the one who gave this group an environment with a slit in it that people can push a sword through so. should have seen that coming a mile off

Of course I’d reach the extremely horny part of this episode while I’m standing in line at the supermarket 🙈

I was starting to think that maybe Murph had finally shaken his dice curse, but then he’s rolling for that fight at the casino with the bullywog and the enchanted sword and I think it’s been going on for like five rounds and neither of them has hit the other

“We should play this for real money.” “Have you seen my husband roll dice?!”

“You killed my beautiful boy!” “Mrs. Rosell?” “No, it’s Ilsed! Context clues, everyone!”

“Poetry or whatever the next level of hell is”

Hardwon’s flashback 😔

BABY PAWPAW

“Moonshine, there’s something about you. Things that don’t belong just… find a way of belonging when you’re around.” is such a knockout of a line. It’s so sweet, it almost made me cry.

Followed directly by “Pawpaw shits into your bib,” of course

“Fungus can’t eat plot armour, right?”

CALDWELL. Hot damn the man is too good at this.

“You killed me, Murphy!” “I have to take a bath! I need to go on a long walk! You ruined my night, Brian!”

“This is the hardest work it would be to bully anyone.” “I wrote a tragic backstory for you, loser!”

Running all three one on one encounters as one encounter is such a good move

“Hey what’s up with your hammer?” “The hammer’s gotten bigger, I have NOT gotten smaller!”

“How far were you from the edge, Moonshine?” “Forty feet. […] You gonna take me to the edge, Hardwon?” “I’ll do my best to get you over the edge, Moonshine.” “…what would you do if you were having sex and they were like, I’m forty feet away?” “I’d be like whoa, that’s pretty far.” “But I can get there with a full dash!” And then nobody, DM included, manages to get through a single sentence including the word edge for the next couple of minutes…

Murph’s gleeful “you guys are pissed at me”

“Hardwon, make out with him!” “I’m recording it on my recording orb.” “…who is this for?”

“I’m a falcon. Can I lift Bev up?” “Absolutely not!” “I’m gonna try anyway.” “You are like Link holding up a chicken. Just running with a flapping bird in one hand.”

Not Murph opening the Ilsed flashback with a full minute on cyclical aesthetic trends in architecture?

“Please don’t be hot, please don’t be hot…” “… a young, hot Ilsed -“ “No!!!” Same Bev. Same.

“You wanted to be special, and you are! It’s rare to find someone stupid enough to make a deal with me but with enough potential that I could still do something good with your body, we’ll done.” That’s brutal

Murph slowly losing his mind as his players debate whether hell is really all bad (“the first layer is like super rad”) and what the purpose of hell is “the purpose is for bad people to torture other bad people and it’s bad and it sucks and it’s hell??”

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I too am weak for a loyal knight and I melt into a puddle every time Jake and Murph run through their Hardwon and Mawmaw routine

Also this seems as good a time as any to give a round of applause for the “dwarphanage” and “dwarphan” puns. It’s so funny it just never gets old

so amused by how both Jake and Caldwell have called Murph Brian to signal anger

41 to hit?? Is that even a thing?

“Well, my cat was sick and I’m feeling spicy”

“This is an insane dynamic for a twenty-five-year-old to be in the middle of.”

Cooter the Berry Boy

“…did you just quote Lin-Manuel Miranda? […] You shoot this beam of red hot light and it hits this thing and it begins to melt away as you give an insane speech that you took from someone who does not exist in this world.”

Jake’s quiet sob of “that’s plagiarism” in the background

“Yes, my name is ‘Luke Earthier’.” 😬

Murph giving his elves super ridiculous names but then hating when the PCs make fun of them is so funny. He fully played himself

But it’s also very sweet how he will just fully accept their dumb nicknames. Lucanus is Daddy Luke now. Pendergreens hasn’t been called by his actual name for weeks.

Zac, who obviously came in without a prepared intro, trying to come up with a two-liner on the fly and somehow deciding the word he’ll be trying to rhyme with is “Juiblex”

“The thing is, Zac, I wrote sketch with you for like a year, and -“ “We know you’re smart. Is the disappointing thing.”

Random flashforward to Apple and Cooter, lone survivors of the apocalypse, in a Denny’s in Shadowfell

“Trees are beautiful and cool, that’s one of the first things you learn as a Green Teen!” “He’s right! Trees are cool and you suck!”

“You get non-lethally Boromir’d”

absolute cruelest answer to whether the NPC was deceived by a 13 deception check: “Hey, man. Maybe.”

Emily forcing ridiculous world building on her DM, truly The Axford Move: “Take that hat off and debate me!” “Alright, you take that vest off!” “…do I have a vest on?”

*threatening reer* is an underrated Pawpaw noise

That cliffhanger at the end of Ep. 88 and the outrage

“We’re all gonna jump you after this!” “There’s so many of us here, man!” “We’re gonna box your ass, we’re gonna mail it to… to Spain!”

“You can listen to people threatening to put my ass in a box on the Short Rest -” “Hey, no. I’m only gonna celebrate your ass.”

“Murph. My hat has telekinesis, right?” “Yeah?” “Can I use my telekinesis to control the sphere that we just received from Akarot?” “…Yeah.” “Okay, sweet, I’m going to fling this Sphere of Chomping Shit Up with my telekinesis.” Murph, apparently remembering in this very moment he’s DMing for Emily “I disguise myself as him” Axford: “Oh no.”

Bev and Erlin pull a full “here at the end of all things”

Jeez this episode is just the Emily and Murph drama hour. She’s leaving her possum! I am upset!!

Cobb’s “would this be a bad time to invite you to my improv show” was perfectly timed

“I assume the horse of Famine is stalking me, so I put out a plate of food for it every night. To be hospitable.” EMILY!!!

“It’s this vendetta that this horse has for me.” “...do you think maybe the rider also has something to do with it?” (this in reference to the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse)

I love how Murph is making progressively scarier villains and the boobs just flatly refuse to take them even a little seriously

“Everybody wake the fuck up, Death is here! Like actual fucking Death?!” is almost as funny as Bev’s “Rise and shine, we’re in the shit again!” from the Galaderon arc

“The horses we ride were all killed by you!” 10/10 callback, no notes

“The end is nigh! Bird for sale! The end is nigh!”

Jake asks Murph to rate everyone based on looks, immediately regrets it when Murph ranks him fourth, after himself

Emily plugging the podcast itself on its 96th episode

Them workshopping Caldwell’s intro rhyme on air for several minutes, then finally getting the recap started only for Emily to interrupt Murph after half a sentence to point out he “says ‘dragon’ cute”

I’m still not over the shock that the “what an honour. what an injustice.” quote is from this podcast. Damn. (Also I somehow really expected that to be a Caldwell line.)

“You must understand, I’m under a tremendous amount of pressure, I can’t tell when people are joking.” Oh the line between Murph and Melora is growing thin

“You see yourself outsmarting Josh and turning his entire army against him, you turning Akarot’s steed into a dolphin, outing Balnor as the witch in the Autumn Court trials... Just a supercut of Murph whomps.”

“Hey man, I know I haven’t said this in a while, but fuck you!”

Hardwon fighting Jaina, Mawmaw and Old Cobb but barely fighting back is just plain tragic

“Peepaw, is this another lesson? Is this a lesson I’m not understanding the meaning of?” “Moonshine, this is because I’m disappointed in you!” Murph is taking no prisoners this ep, noted.

“It’s good. I think you’re good. You’re smart, you’re a great storyteller, and you’re mean! You’re a bad guy.” I love that this is both a joke and the greatest praise a writer can receive

“That is the wraith on the red horse’s turn. He is a dolphin. The dolphin on the bigger dolphin flops. In Hell.” again, NO respect for Murph’s apocalyptic riders

a brief and nearly incomprehensible aside about Meatloaf songs (whose political views WERE problematic but whose songs 100 percent occupy the exact aesthetic of this batshit insane scene)

Murph picked the worst Meatloaf song tbh

honestly my main gripe with Pendergreens is I cannot fucking understand him and that hurts my pride. please this is my second language

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i love how religiously Emily is keeping Deadeye’s memory alive throughout this, it’s so sweet

Moonshine and Meemaw on the grandma tree </3

“I didn’t have you until I was 350 years old. By that time, I had already lost Marabelle. And here, now I got you. Now I got another sister.” this whole conversation is so perfect, but I really really love this part, it’s so lovely to acknowledge how your relationship to your parents can evolve over a lifetime (especially one as long as this)

Emily’s delight at finding the critter refugee colony in the grandma tree is so pure

Murph bringing back Caldwell’s worst Green Teen creation as a wholesome jamboreen campfire memory

and one last Cawcaw sighting

what is it with the entire d20 cast and fem characters with that half-shaved/undercut hairstyle. legit every time they want to make a fem character particularly cool they give them that haircut

not Murph trying to sus out Hardwon’s deal with Moonshine once and for all in the penultimate episode by any means necessary

“’I’ll just... get another brewsky, and then I’ll meet you... behind the tree in... t -5.’ And then Hardwon does a weird moonwalk away.”

Bev goofs one last time and once again falls from a great height

I want Denny’s “whelp, I’m alive!” as a soundbite

“What are the others up to? Are they in danger?” “... how old are you?” “Sixteen!” “.....they’re hangin’ out.”

"Can we say that what I did to Jaina was a sort of religious experience and counts as a zealous trance” is definitely one of the funniest things Murph has let Emily get away with

“Congratulations, y’all. You fucked in DnD”

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Jake almost crying in his (presumably) last intro as Hardwon

Murph laying it on unexpectedly thick and Emily struggling to follow that up with the very silly intro she prepared

“One hour [of going down on someone] isn’t taking your time??”

One last Somber Boy Song! and what a song it was, damn, Caldwell!

“He has such a haunting boy voice! It feels like he’s just alone in an abandoned church.”

“No, I don’t intend to join you [in your fight against a god], mylady. You are a demigod. I am a butler.”

“Do you guys think the Gods were scared when people looked to them?” “If they weren’t, they weren’t doing it right.”

“Here’s what I’d like to do, Murph: I would like to blow the Horn of Valhalla, bring out these berserkers, and then I would like to, on the thinking cap, cast Conjure Woodland Creatures and conjure eight pixies, and I’d like to put four of them in the Bag of Holding and use four of them to cast Fly on four of the berserkers which then I will cast Animal Shapes on, using my own concentration, to turn them into elephants, and we can go into battle on flying elephants. .... Just let me know if you want to leave me.” I have found my new favourite Emily moment. Jesus Christ. Her getting through that wild plan so businesslike and then “just let me know if you want to leave me” in that defeated tone took me OUT

underrated reason to bring back an old enemy for the finale: he’s the most annoying and everyone hates his guts

“Hardwon, you take a sick 69 psychic damage”

“The actual God looks hurt. She’s upset, I’m upset. But don’t worry, everyone, it is my turn.”

“That brings me down the same way my old man went down.” aka Jake sends the DM into an emotional crisis with a single sentence.

“You briefly fix his deviated septum.” now that’s just cruel

Handy Andy playing a vital role in the final fight makes me so happy, Deadeye helped! Posthumously!

“Hardwon, you struggle, but you get through the words… Table… of… Contents” cause of death: this

“Your god is a pro wrestler” OH MY GOD OF COURSE HE IS. Emily cracked it

“It’s okay, Balnor. Like all the most powerful things in the world, I knew I was only borrowing you.”

Hardwon coming into Shadowfell with unimaginable amounts of dirty laundry: “Moooooooom!”

Hardwon meets his dad :(

Murph really has the “emotionally repressed Dad” routine down pat

“Thank you so much, I sent [the Thinking Cap] through the dry cleaner’s, so it should be all good.” “Dijuana was killed by the dry cleaners.” “You were not supposed to get it wet.” “Yeah, something screamed in there they said, I don’t know.”

Another Jamboreen! And it’s about to probably get cancelled again with another Pebblepot in charge! Time is flat circle

“You see Cran grabs the counsellor, ‘Are you a Pebblepot? You have to tell me if you’re a Pebblepot!!’“

“I cast Conjure Animals and create... what would a dragon eat?” “It would for sure eat like a sheep?” “Oh no, that feels so cruel!” “But you’re creating it, it’s like... it’s a Beyond burger. Beyond Sheep.”

Of course Moonshine accidentally created a Crick dragon

Hardwon gets a fixer-upper in the Crick

I cannot believe Murph managed to pay off that horrendous hotel room scene, and how! Incredible. No notes.

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This doesn’t strictly go here but if you go on IMDb, everyone but Zac is officially credited with their silly homebrew DM titles. Like Murph is credited as “Direct Messenger (Dungeon Master)”. I discovered this on a very stressful day and it delighted me to no end.