D&D Court: Bonus Cases - Dubious Heights, Dice Debates and the World's Saddest Trombone

The hand roller just needs to do it Yatzee style by shaking dice in a cup and opening onto a dice tray.

Alyssa Landry

The hand roller should either roll into a dice tray (or even something akin to one like a rimmed plastic plate) OR use a dice cup man. Go yatzee style: it eliminates the possibility of human interference and is also still fun and full of suspense to slam that bad boy don’t onto the table

Zoop

The hand roll thing is…ugh it’s hard bc as a dm that would def bother me on principle but at the same time I mean, I don’t actually think it wouldn’t be random. That said I mean it’s just not in line with the spirit of the game. I’d say they should just get a dice tray and roll in that so it doesn’t fall off

Zoop

several months late to this but i just need to chime in with how genuinely upset i am at how good of a character name Dunder Mifflin is

cool guy Julian

Please just make a spinoff series of the four of you trying to remember the plot of movies you haven't seen in 30 years or ever.

A DM who can come up with a story device like that Storytelling thing would NOT intentionally fuck with a major character moment like that.

Adrian Woodhouse

Thank you for your dedication to science 🫡

Noah Jay

I was going to post this, except as Yahtzee! Style. They make velvet lined cups for the fancy version which feels really nice for shaking.

Noah Jay

For the roll just use a yahtzee rolling cup

Tracy Burns

If you have a small table to roll on, just use a container/receptacle to roll in

Scott

I’m glad they got to the crux of Flubber. That a sentient robot wanted to fuck Robin Williams

Brendan Rooney

My solution to the dice rolling dilemma is Liar’s Dice Style. - Rolling in a cup eliminates the human element of potential tampering. - you can slam it down with “pizazz!” while minimising space. - you can experiment with different cup and dice materials to find your favourite rolling noise. - it’s really good for the suspense of head to head or contested rolls.

Brendan Rooney

Nobody asked, but I did some statistical testing: I rolled an acrylic and a metal die in the classic way (shaken and thrown in dice tray), the one hand sauté-and-set-down, and the two hand cup-shake-and-set-down 100 times each, for a total of 600 dice rolls. I found that each way to roll does favor one side, even the classic way (sorry, it’s impossible to have perfectly balanced dice, all your dice are at least a little bit weighted). The metal dice was overall less biased than the acrylic one, possibly because it’s heavier, so shaking it around just spins it more overall because there’s more momentum going on there with the additional weight. The one handed method favors one side of the dice more strongly than the classic method, but the two handed method favors one side more strongly than the one handed method. This seems to suggest that the two-handed cup actually biases the roll more than the one-handed sauté. HOWEVER, the side that is favored changes with each type of dice roll. The two-handed cup tends to favor numbers closer to the numbers favored by the classic method, which indicates that the two-handed cup just exacerbates the natural bias of your die. The one-handed sauté might be less strongly biased than the two-handed cup, but the one-handed sauté favors numbers further away from the classic method, so it actually changes the natural bias of your die. In conclusion, the one-handed sauté gives you different numbers than you would get on a classic roll, and the two-handed cup just makes the natural weight of your dice more pronounced. Metal dice seem to be less affected than acrylic dice. I submit this evidence to the court in support of the ruling that the one-handed sauté-and-set-down is NOT a valid way to roll. My advice to the plaintiff: just get a rolling tray with high sides, you’ll never drop your dice again

Kelsey K

I would love to hear a… DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL about what happened

Joe D’Antonio

i came back to say that i accidentally hit the airhorn soundbutton while my friends and i were discussing this case. my mouse was just hovering in the soundboard and i got distracted by my cat and hit my keyboard and it went off. after some investigating it seems that if you press enter while hovering on one of the six sounds it just plays

foster the boneless duck

if you go to your memberships, click on naddpod and then go to your membership you should be able to just copy it from there

foster the boneless duck

As far as the sad trombone case; doesn’t the DM sort of have a right to say “whoa bud that’s a lot, let’s keep it light here” when a PC tells a story about strangling their sister to death??

Morgan

Stupid question, how do I get the RSS for the bonus stuff to my feed?

Tea Jay Kay

Exactly. They were done once they failed the possession check.

Dylan McCollum

I also have anxiety, but mine usually manifests in just avoiding the thing I don't understand instead of asking for help. This player overcasting their most powerful spells for gamechanging moments feels like there was a little bit of conscious cheating going on.

Andrew PG Lusk

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the character pretty much screwed once they were possessed by the ghost on their own either way? If the fall was 40 or 50 feet instead of 60 and landed with 1-2 hp left they’d still be possessed right? What would stop the ghost from just climbing and jumping off again to possibly kill the PC instantly without them even getting a chance to roll. Without anyone else around to intervene going down to 0 hp is the only way for the possession to end, so I’d argue it was a good thing the fall brought them down to zero. Dice Christ just wasn’t on their side and they failed their death saves.

Paul Gonzalez

If a character is 40 feet up a cliff and fails a climb check, they don’t climb another 10 feet and then fall, they just fall from 40 feet. So if a character is on the ground and fails a climb check, it doesn’t make sense for them to still successfully climb 10 feet before falling, the DM should have just said they can’t find a foothold and can’t climb that part of the wall at all.

W1LDF1RE

I just remembered about they talking about the one Skarsgard siblings, when the jackhammer commences

Vitor Magnanelli

water is over rated. water anti's for life.

Mila Janus

emily you absolutely need to get on WaterTok it's less painful than it sounds

foster the boneless duck

My first thought hearing the Sad Trombone DM case was that they might have been trying to play a different, dramatically appropriate sound, but slipped and hit the wrong one.

Jarla

I used to love the Absent Minded Professor and I initially hated the remake because of the idea that flubber was like a little sentient thing. But it was an ok movie.

MkA7L

In regards to the spellcaster confession, as someone with really bad chronic anxiety, I fully can see how yiu can get stuck in not saying anything. Can be very difficult even in the situation of something thats seen to be as trivial as dnd.

Vivi

Thinking about 8 bit book club, it would be funny to get a guest on but act like they're the 4th host while still acting as if Jake was also a guest

Penpen

Weird that ya'll left out that Webo was in love with Robin Williams and the replacement Webo is supposed to be like her daughter

Zippidi Skibidi

I think the player in the first case was right. Wall height doesn’t matter because I think the DM should’ve rebalanced the encounters when the party split up. Killing a player, while away from the party, when it was originally supposed to be something everyone faced, feels wrong. When the DM is in that position the wall height doesn’t really matter keep the player barely alive and give them the challenge of getting back to the party and make some minor encounters or something

Matt

I'm so glad to hear Emily's reactions to the movie Flubber. I haven't watched it since the Nineties, but that film does live rent free in my head!

Alex W.

Maybe unfollow and refollow the show. Your probably going to have to refresh or delete/add the RSS link.

Jeffrey Steck, Lord of the Fjord

This is so dumb, but I was wondering if a fellow patron could help me out. I got a new debit card and so my patreon lapsed. I fixed everything on the site but the feed on my apple podcast app won't update with short rests or new episodes. How do I fix it?

Joe S

Ok I'll be honest, I sympathize with the spellcaster confession. My very first game of D&D I ever played (like three years ago), I wanted to be a bard but I had no idea how spells worked since I didn't have the players handbook for reference and I had trouble understanding rules online. Whenever I asked for help, my group would give 3 different answers that didn't help me so I just ended up using cantrips for the longest time. My DM asked me why I didn't use any spells at lv 3 and I was just genuinely confused because up until this point. I didn't even know we leveled up, or how spells worked to begin with, or what spells I even had access too even though I asked for help on it constantly because I couldn't wrap my head around it for some reason. Obviously I got razzed and to this day it comes up every now and again. Now I just play barbarians or fighters because spell casters scare me and I don't want to deal with it lol

Lambroux

The first 60 seconds feels like Murph is turning into Geoffrey James a la The Headgum Podcast

David Pugh

Of course you need to roll your dice, however that hand roll way is the only way you can get a random number on a d100 without it just rolling off the table because its a ball

Simon Hughes

My only concern on the Rutabega case is that on the nat one they took 8d6 which implies it’s 80 feet and then it shrunk down to 60 when he was going. But the DM did mention failed wisdom saves and a bad perception check. So I think it was just an overall unfortunate situation.

Garrett Durham

The Crit Justices heard a tale where a DM has a world that requires in depth storytelling, and in the darkest moment of someone's backstory (after the DM has asked for personal stories of love, death, and betrayal) and they assume that the DM crafts this world would purposefully do slapstick sound effects? Is it it funny? Abso goddamn lately Is it true? Doubtful

Colin Whelan

In casinos when you roll the dice you are required to bounce the dice off one of the walls of the table as that is the only way to ensure that people aren't gaming their rolls

Paul Brady

Are there any other sounds the DM could have been trying to play instead of the trombone? Or maybe they were checking to see if there was something that would serve as a good transition? Idk. Too many possibilities to assume the worst.

Adam Sutton

For the person rolling dice in their hand. This is why dice Christ gave us Dice trays there's plenty of small ones with high walls that are perfect for you

Michael Glander

Love that Jake is starting to assert himself these past two episodes! Might be about time for him to reclaim his Boston seat

Martian

I am deadly serious when I say that 36:34 is the Wilhelm Scream for 2023. Justice Flubber you genius put it on a soundboard and accidentally play it when Sol dies edit: also as a 90s kid the Trouble popper ended friendships. You could just pop a 6 straight up and down and go 5 times in a row. It was so bullshit my parents refused to play with me.

joel

also narratively it did end up sort of working out for the scene playing (coincidentally right after a bad joke), so there *is* precedent

anneon

ALSO AS SOMEONE WHO LEGITIMATELY LAST WEEK ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE SAD TROMBONE SOUND ON A SOUNDBOARD, YES IT IS 100% POSSIBLE

anneon

shocked that this episode doesnt have a classic ‘SPOILERS for *whatever no context media the 2 crew are talking about this time/frozen 2’ warning xD

anneon

As for the dice roll question, what about using a barrel roller from games, in essences yhatzee and pigs cause fucking you in essence can slam the barrel down on your roll and fucking not have looked at the dice?

Myka Donati

I would pay an infinite amount of money to listen to a recorded commentary of Anchorman by Murph. Just stream of consciousness viewing.

Jace Zett

Flubber is a wild movie to revisit. It is a CLASSIC.

Katy Howells

Love this. Will really miss If I Were You.

Alex Cannata

I feel like Flubwell Tanner works better but that's just me.

austinoxner

I thought Weebo I was pretty cool as a kid

Jambo