Episode 5 - Deities & Decaf

In this episode of Dungeons and Dark Roasts, the hosts discuss deities in Dungeons and Dragons. They talk about Gru, a character attempting to ascend to godhood, as well as the dragon goddess Tiamat. They also discuss the role of gods in the game, such as how they influence certain classes like paladins and clerics. They then discuss a dream sequence that took place in the game, where the party was brought into a courtroom setting involving deities. Overall, the episode explores the role of deities in the game and the impact they have on the characters and storyline. Welcome to episode 5 of Dungeons and Dark Roasts. Stay tuned for this week's episode where we talk about deities and decafs. Be sure to like and follow us on Instagram and Facebook for all of our updates and recipes. Listen every Wednesday on Spotify and Amazon Music for our latest episodes. Welcome to Dungeons and Dark Roasts. I'm Axis. And I'm Alex. We're two dungeon masters for D&D 5e here to talk about the chaos of our adventures and the coffee that gets us through it. Hey Axis. So tonight I want to discuss deities. And the reason I want to discuss deities is one, it's a super broad topic in Dungeons and Dragons. But also, our party, the Swayers, is starting to move into the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. And there are obviously some deities involved with Tyranny of Dragons as well as our party members. Oh yeah, for sure. Each of them have some kind of higher power that they interact with. But in terms of actual deities, I think the biggest example is going to be Gru, who is currently in the process of attempting to ascend to godhood with his character. Which is why we constantly hear about Lucky saying, all hail God Gru. And we keep talking about his God Gru arc. I got to get a sound bite of him doing that at some point. Yes, we do. And he has the best character voice ever. I know, right? I love that little bunny. And so in Tyranny of Dragons, there is of course Tiamat. Tiamat is the dragon goddess and she is the big bad of Tyranny of Dragons. And leading us into Tyranny of Dragons, we were actually missing Gru for an entire episode. And you did something that I thought was entirely brilliant for our party. Because you didn't want him to miss the beginning of this episode or any of the combat. And that is the story that I want to talk about later tonight. On the way to that, I think I would like for our listeners to hear a little bit about why gods are paired with certain types of characters, certain classes of characters. And it might make a little more sense about some of the gods that we're going to talk about in this episode. So the thing with gods in D&D, gods create an unknown factor. And they give scope to certain classes, such as paladins. Paladins are primarily oriented around maintaining their oaths. But at one point they were reliant on having a deity, keeping their alignment, and sticking in with that. Or it caused problems for the characters. But not in so much as not having a deity. Yeah, I actually like to think of paladins in real-world sense as, like, crusaders. Yeah, and that's exactly what they are. Even in D&D, they are primarily crusaders. They, in 5e at least, have put more focus on maintaining their oaths, which creates a framework for the paladin's overarching behavior. Versus there could be a paladin of any number of deities in any number of pantheons. But they are all still functioning mostly as crusaders. Right, right. And then, of course, you have clerics. Right. And clerics are channeling their belief of their god and their faith of their god through a symbol or a prayer book. So that they can cast their magic or their healing to help others. Whether that be to provide a buff for, you know, an upcoming skill. Or to heal someone. Or ask for divine intervention. And never get it because the role is so insanely low. Yeah, I mean, you do still have a chance. There's always a chance. Always a chance. Yeah, clerics are an odd beast nowadays. Because in terms of the game of Dungeons & Dragons, every single deity has their own clergy. So even playing a cleric, you think of clerics as, like, priests or healers or any number of things. But you've got clerics of death. You've got clerics of the grave. Even the Goddess of Magic has clerics that focus on the arcane. So clerics are different. I personally play a death cleric. They're really fun to play. Because all of their spells have an explosive damage dealing effect to it. And past a certain point, you start dealing cleave damage. Yeah, I actually play a grave domain cleric very often. I have a character named Aureliana, who I hope we feature at some point. Who decided to... Well, she didn't decide. She turned evil due to something that happened in the Tomb of Annihilation. And ended up TPK'ing her entire party. And she's still living with Asterak as his boo. Hey, I've got my character that I made for the Tomb of Annihilation that we talked about months ago. And I named him Alabama Groans. He's still waiting. Anytime you want to run a Tomb of Annihilation campaign, I am right there. Of course he does. Of course he does. So this genius plan that you had to help out the party, have an entire session. Which, as a DM, that is so genius. You know you're going to be down a player or even two. And you don't want to move on with the story. But you don't want to do something different. And so what you ended up doing for us was a dream sequence. Now let me preface this, okay? Because I want you to actually tell the story about the dream sequence. But... You know what? You go ahead. Because you're being generous thinking that any of that was planned. But yes, please continue on with that thought. No, it may not have been planned, but I think it's very, very funny. You give me undue credit. I will take all of that that you decide to give me, whether it warrants it or not. Well, here we go. This happened on Good Friday of 2024. For those of you who are listening in the future, this happened Good Friday of 2024. And I, as in real life, am a religious human being. I choose that for my life. And that is what I like. And I go to church every weekend. Just thinking about it. Just remembering what I pulled. It's awful. I go to church, and it was Easter weekend. And you chose to do a deity-based, kind of one-shot dream sequence. Right. Right. Throughout this entire thing, there were so many references to Easter Sunday. You couldn't throw a stone and not get an Easter reference. Yeah. It was absolutely awful. I grew up in the church, off and on. So that's kind of where it was coming from. But I was not planning for that particular time. It just worked out because I knew Gru was going to be out, and this had to happen to develop the story at some point anyway. And I wanted Gru's character to be in the dark for a certain amount of time so he wouldn't be tempted to bring his out-of-game knowledge into the game. Right. So we all take a long rest at the inn that we were at, and we all enter a dream sequence. And I would love for you to take it from there. Okay. So, like I said, this was not planned. I was flying by the seat of my pants the entire session because I didn't know what I was going to do. Well, I applaud you because it was amazing. I am so glad. The major premise that I was going with was Gru is going to be out. I'm going to take full advantage of this. We've got to do a courtroom sequence. The party got yanked into a courtroom because Gru's character storyline is that he is trying to ascend to become a god. There were a group of deities that were in favor of allowing mortals to ascend because many of them had, in fact, been mortals at one point in time or another. The other group were primarily made up of greater deities like Torm or Shar that were in favor of maintaining the status quo where gods are created rather than born from mortal bodies. Right. What it eventually turned into was Mystra, the goddess of magic, had to remain neutral so she was the judge. The side of the status quo were the greater deities like Torm, Shar. So, at the table, you had Mystra, the goddess of magic, and she was kind of the judge of this whole thing, right? Because she had to stay impartial for this whole process. You have Torm, and he is the god of courage and self-sacrifice. He's a common deity for paladins or noble clerics. You have Shar, the goddess of darkness and loss. She's kind of like the emo goddess. Death and trickery, okay, gotcha. And then you've also got Mask, and he is the god of thieves. Sorry, let me pull up my nerd glasses for a moment. To be more specific, he is the god of deception and hidden things. So, it goes without saying, thieves, but please continue. Go ahead. So, you had Mask on one side, and you had Torm and Shar on the other, and then, of course, you had Mystra who was just overseeing all of it. Playing with deities as NPCs or non-player characters, it's very dangerous because you don't want to, for lack of a better term, get a god complex. So, in this particular situation, they were ultimately trying to set a precedent for whether they were going to allow this to happen. In Mask's case, he was in favor of staying out of it, I guess you could say, whereas the other side wanted to directly interfere and prevent another mortal from ascending to godhood, the mortal in question being Gru. Which didn't make a lot of sense because they had ascended from being mortals, correct? Specifically in Torm and Shar's case, no. They were created by a figure known as Aeo, who is an overgod, but that's getting down a rabbit hole that is far, far too deep to go down. That's okay. I am not as up on the lore. I'm much more mechanical. They were created. They were born from the celestial energy surrounding the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Right, so they're the purist, and they're saying, no, this mortal is not becoming a god, not going to happen, and we're going to put you to the test to make sure it doesn't. Yeah, and it's ironic because Mister herself was a former mortal as well, so it was either further a slap in the face. Right. So we all show up, and we're on one end of this arena with these judges, and there's a lot of talking that goes back and forth and so on, and eventually the party is presented with the two champions. And absolutely true to the Easter Sunday irony of it all. They were both angels, absolutely. Because why wouldn't they be angels on Easter weekend? Right, right, why wouldn't they be? And I know so much of this may be sacrilegious to say me all, but being as religious as I am, I found the humor in all of this. Every time one of those quirks got pointed out, I was like, oh, it's so sacrilegious. I mean, I pointed them out because I thought it was funny. Every single one. Well, probably because I'm so connected, but yes. So we are given these two angels, and the party is like, oh, I don't know if we want to fight for Gru to become a god because we don't want to die. Right. And as a DM, you had to make it very, very clear that even if we died, we would not actually die. Right. I mean, it was a dream sequence, but this was an audience before deities. So in this particular dream sequence, there were no long-lasting story elements, but these gods had already shown themselves to be capricious, so I left just a little bit of a doubt in the back of the player's mind that, okay, maybe it might be permanent. You never know. Right. And even in mine. Oh, yeah. Because I was not sure. So eventually, we talk our way into removing one of the angels, and that one champion is removed, thank goodness. Right. And then we end up fighting the other. Right. And to fight the other angel... Oh, geez, the map. Okay, yeah, I remember the map now. I'd forgotten. I had blocked out the map. Had to walk across water. Yeah. So in that case, I wasn't thinking. So D&D Beyond has some limited maps that they have uploaded, and because this was a spur-of-the-moment thing, I opened the map, clicked Select, and it was there. And it just happened to be the water map. Right. And so now, of course, we're walking on water. Yeah. It just gets worse. It just keeps getting worse. As it goes on, it just got worse and worse and worse. And you had provided, at one point, a jester of sorts. Oh, yeah. As an NPC that you provided as kind of a neutral party. Right. And he will come into play here in just a minute, but he's watching all of this happen, and he's a little bit chaotic. Such a fun character, though. He is a fun character. It's a great character. And I decide that I'm going to be clever, and Ginger runs up to fight this angel. Yep. She had just picked up a new skill where she had an extra action, an extra attack action. So nobody had seen her do this yet, so she does all three of her strikes plus her bonus action, which included SimSec, and his lightning attack. And so I do this huge, almost 50 points of damage, and everybody's like, whoa! And it's great, and then the angel takes its turn. Right after that, the angel took its turn and then proceeded to give you the beatdown of your character's life. Not just my life, but my full true death. Right. You annihilated my character. And I will say, in the entire time I've been playing D&D, it's the only time it's ever happened to me where I got a true death in one hit. Hey, I will wear that as a badge of honor. It's the first time I have ever killed anyone outright in the game. That was a lot of damage. It was a lot of damage. It ended up being, I think, almost 70 points of damage, which, for those of you, true death. Let's describe that here for a second, okay? So what happened to my character is, when you have a character, they have a hit point base, and if a bad guy does your hit point's worth of damage doubled, it is a true death. There are no saving throws. There is no pass and go. There are no second chances. You die. That's it. Your character is dead. This is where, you know, the son of comes back to revenge your character. Right. And that's usually what happens. And I even asked, in game, I said, okie dokie, so are we creating new characters at the same level? Because I had missed the part where you were very clear about saying that our characters weren't going to die. Right, right. So I was prepared to start rewriting a character, like making a new one. And my character dies on Good Friday due to an angel, and the whole time, of course, Lucky is saying, all hail God grew, so the entire map is shaking, so there's an earthquake as well. Right, right. And this NPC that you dropped in, this jester. Yeah. Casts true resurrection. Yeah. I had drawn a blank on, and that's his name. His name is drawn a blank. Yes. I had him on hand just in case things went sideways for you guys, where I could use him kind of as a deus ex machina to give you guys a hand just in case. To be honest, I had completely forgotten that I had said, if you die in the dream, you won't die whenever you return to reality. But I also didn't want you to miss out on the fight. So as soon as my evil clown jester balancing on his own head, as soon as his turn came around, I wanted to get you back in the fight so that you could take part in it rather than just being like a bystander. And without thinking, I was like, okay, how do I get her back in? How do I get her back in? Right away, true resurrection. Bam. You are back to life with full health. Right. And of course I lost it in the game. I just thought it was the funniest thing that could have ever happened on Easter Sunday to my character. And it was all resolved. We, I, you know, I don't remember how the dream ended. Maybe we shouldn't tell so that Gru doesn't know. Yeah. I think we should just leave the ending of that for another day. And we can, we can tell you how the, the gods chose to weigh in on that later on, but. Okay. You're going to have to tell me because I honestly don't remember either. I do have my notes. And I will tell you after we're done recording. Oh good. I'm so glad somebody takes note in this party. Oh wait, no, Aria does too. Nevermind. She does. She's wonderful. But yes. So we will tell you all in another episode, how that played out and whether or not Gru is allowed to continue on his Ascension path. But we wanted to tell you our fun little story there about Easter Sunday and all the ridiculous things that happened, as well as pairings of gods and classes. Yeah. And how that can play out. And it really does lead us straight into our homebrew of the week, which we have done something a little unique this week. Axis, would you like to lead us off this week? No. No. No. Okay. So our homebrew of the week this week, if you all will join us, is going to be a little different. And rather than talking about another sweet coffee, because we got a little bit of feedback from our audience that you might want something different. I do too. I'm tired of sweet coffee too. I know. You're killing me. I know. But it's coffee. What else do you do with it? I drink it black. Well, and that's exactly what we're going to talk about this week. We're going to talk about our pairing. And I was informed by one of our listeners that coffee pairs with cheese as beautifully as wine does. And we did say that this week is decaf. Any of these suggestions can be done as a decaf, because if you're like me and you can't drink after 4 o'clock any caffeine or you'll be up all night. Lightweight. I am a lightweight. I know. We're the same age. So we are going to provide you all with tasting suggestions for some of our favorite cheeses. And then later this week in our social media, we are actually going to sit down and do a live tasting of a cheese board with these coffees. And so we would love for you to join us later in the week. We will be doing that on Wednesday when we normally launch. So the podcast will come out, but we will also have a live. Cheese. Yes. So, Axis, tell me about your two cheeses. Yeah, I found my notes. We're good. Okay, so the two cheeses that I picked were brie and cheddar. In this particular instance, brie could potentially be paired with a lighter roast coffee. The creamy and buttery texture of brie compliments the light and delicate flavors of a light roast coffee. So think like breakfast blends. The pairing is more subtle and elegant for like a snack with your morning coffee. Yeah, like with your jam and your brie and your toast. That sounds really good. You know, hearing that feels like we have got a case of first world problems. Okay, that's awful that we're talking about, oh, you can pair this cheese with your jam, but it really does sound really good. And then we've also got cheddar paired with espresso. This might be a problem with decaf coffee, but yeah, you know, with espresso, you're just really going for the stronger taste anyways. Yeah, that's true. The sharpness of cheddar, which goes with the sharpness of espresso, they're both very intense and bold flavors. In this case, the pairing provides a contrast between the cheese's complexity and the coffee's concentrated taste. And I think for me, it feels like this would be something that I would probably drink on like a chilly winter afternoon. And I need that boost at like 11 a.m. to get through my afternoon workload. And then I could eat cheddar cheese by the block. I probably shouldn't, but I can. I mean, no one should. No one should. Oh, it's awful. I'll go to the store and just grab one of those like little blocks of cheese and just open the wrapper and just eat it like a candy bar. He doesn't need a cheese knife. He eats it by the block. Yeah, I just like unwrap it like a candy bar and just That's it. Oh, I believe it. Well, I chose blue cheese and Gouda. So I love a good blue cheese. In particular, a Gorgonzola is one of my very favorites. And it is suggested that you have blue cheese with a dark roast coffee because the bold and tangy flavor of blue cheese can stand up to the more robust flavors of a dark roast. The richness of both the cheese and coffee are going to create this really decadent pairing and experience. And I can see doing this like after a steak dinner. Oh, yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. And so I can see that just really enhancing that dinner you've just had. And then, of course, you've got Gouda. Gouda is Gouda with everything. I specifically like... I had to. I had to for you. I know you love a good pun. I love a good smoked Gouda. And the suggestion is a medium roast coffee that's got more of a nutty flavor in it, maybe even a flavored coffee. But the nutty, slightly sweet flavor of Gouda pairs with the balanced and acidity and mild flavors of a medium roast. And the smooth texture of the Gouda, because it is a very smooth cheese, can also provide a nice contrast to the coffee's body. So we will be trying all of these coffees black. So, again, we will be doing that live on social media. And don't forget, come out and see us at Dallas Fan Expo, June 7th through the 9th. We will be having a day where I am dressed as Ginger Andrea, and we will be handing out goodies and signing autographs, and we would love to see you all out there. Stay tuned next week for Necromancers and Nightcaps.