Everett Nichols, a Protector Who Defends What Matters - Healing from the Past with DJ BeeZee (Old Gods of Appalachia)

Content Warning this episode for brief mentions of forced sterilization (49:03-49:53) and death of a child (57:40-57:48).

DJ BeeZee brings Everett Nichols to the table. Everett is a union man, through and through, who defends those closest to him.

DJ and I discuss healing from generational trauma, the union history of Appalachia, and how finding player agency in TTRPGs can be cathartic when we lack agency in our lives.

This character is built for Old Gods of Appalachia, a Cypher System game by Monte Cook, based on the podcast of the same name.

DJ BeeZee is an AuDHD Game Master for Hire and Co-Host of One Shot’s Tavern, a TTRPG podcast focused on learning about all of the tools and mechanics that TTRPGs across the spectrum offer in order to become better story tellers, game masters, and game designers.

You can learn more about DJ at:
https://www.characterswithoutstories.com/guests/dj-beezee

Cover art by The Curiographer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecuriographer

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Thanks for listening, and may all your characters find their stories!

Transcript

DJ: 0:00

I would love to stop the bloodshed in the world, but I can't, and I'm going to do anything I can to lessen it. It's why I play TTRPGs, really. As much as I wish I could change the past, all I can do is kind of do what I can to work towards a better future. Reaffirming that journey again. By going through that trauma again, and learning to get past it. again. Let's look at actual history! I'd

Star: 1:08

like to give a content warning this episode for brief mentions of forced sterilization and the death of a child. If you'd like to avoid these topics, look at the timestamps in the show notes. Hello friends, welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled. I'm Star. This episode I'm joined by DJ BeeZee. DJ is co host of One Shots Tavern, a TTRPG podcast exploring different tools and systems, as well as a game master for hire. DJ, thank you so much for coming on the show.

DJ: 1:43

I'm super glad to be here.

Star: 1:45

DJ, how did you get into TTRPGs?

DJ: 1:48

My co host and I, he got me into it around 2009, 2010, when we met. We just kind of were playing ever since, so we started with Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. From there, we ended up transitioning over into Pathfinder, which a lot of people did at that time. Basically, it was just a lot of Dungeons and Dragons for a really long time for us. He went away for a while, which meant that I had to learn how to game master, so he, like, went off to Colorado, left the friend group, you know, behind here in Michigan. And so, in order to keep playing, I had to, like, dive deeper in. Back then it was hard. Uh, it really was. There wasn't a whole lot of tools to use and learn. So I've always, I have ADHD, uh, and autism. So for me, it's like, I was taking like, oh crap, I don't know how to like interpret these rules. I need to learn how to do this and trying to like get games going and keep games going without any digital tools Which is what I wanted because back then, you know, the iPhone came out and I was like, oh there should be an app for that They told me that there's an app for everything There was not at the time and then eventually there was for Pathfinder It wasn't good, but I mean it was a character sheet which helped From there, I just, I fell off for a couple of years, uh, while I went to college, and then I did like a band life thing for a while, did a bunch of shows and stuff, and then ended up just coming back to tabletop games, and then Andrew came back, uh, from his time away, and we, we started doing weekly games again, as, as a friend group. That lasted up until the panorama, the good ol pandemic, uh, COVID 19 in 2020, and into about 2021 when they sold their house and started traveling the country in a RV. But! It was kind of perfect because around that time was uh, that transition to everybody playing online. Which was, for me, it worked a lot better because I didn't have to travel and it meant that I was going to be there always without having to, you know, have the anxiety of going up and meeting in person. As much as I love meeting up in person, uh, I do find that I am far more free when it comes to being online and in front of a camera.

Star: 4:09

That's surprising, actually.

DJ: 4:11

Yeah. I don't know what it is. Like, I like being around people, uh, but like three people, maybe. Whereas online, it's, it's a lot easier for me. I think it was like last year Andrew was like, hey, I'm sick of fifth edition. Let's try Cypher System. It's a game that I've had for a while and I want to learn to play and so we started a campaign and we all fell in love with it. And so now I just kind of main two systems. It's mostly Dungeons & Dragons and Cypher System now. It's been great. I became a Game Master for hire after I got fired last year from my job due to the mental health stuff mentioned before. Uh, and it's been great. I make my own schedule, right? I, um, run about six, seven, sometimes eight games a week. Varying from Dungeons & Dragons to Cypher System to one shots of various other systems, uh, if I can get them together. It's, it's been great. Tabletop games truly changed my life for me. I'm mentally healthier, right? Because I don't have the expectations of sitting in an office or a testing laboratory or wherever any of the other jobs that I've worked in the past where there were these, uh, very rigid, strict deadlines and micromanagements and all the things that my brain couldn't handle. And instead I get to play Dungeons and Dragons and Cypher and all these games for a living. So that's been my journey. Uh, we started the podcast for One Shot's Tavern in January officially. And so that's been fun too. But yeah, I love tabletop games.

Star: 5:48

I have a question because I know some other pro DMs. I know that it's pretty dominated by D&D. Do you have any trouble getting together a Cypher system on -are you playing on Start Playing?

DJ: 6:00

I am on Start Playing games, yes. It is, uh, moderately difficult sometimes, depending on the system that you are trying to open up, right? Uh, there are going to be mainstays in like, super popular games. Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, really any of the major publisher games are going to have a lot of an easier time to fill a game. I definitely struggled filling Cypher because most of the time when I am running a Cypher game, I'm teaching the players how to play Cypher. And because I'm teaching them how to play Cypher, people are a little hesitant to spend money, right, especially 25 a session on a game they don't know how to play yet. And I just, I do my best to try and reassure people like, hey, I am going to walk you through this step by step. We're going to get you to where you are going to be, you know, really good at this, but it's a process. And so I, one of the things that I do is tell people, hey, this is going to be a shorter campaign. It's going to be kind of more of an introductory to the system. We're going to get you as proficient as I can get you, and that way if you want to keep playing in a campaign with me, or if we want to continue this campaign as a group, we can. For the easy money, I post Dungeons & Dragons games. Those are the ones that fill up within a couple weeks of posting it. You're good to go. Ready, ready to run. I haven't tried like Call of Cthulhu or anything like that, but I have heard that those games do well. But the other thing is building up a reputation first. And that's, that's kind of one of the things that a lot of the other game masters for hire suggest is you want to build a rapport with your players in order to get them comfortable and going I will follow this game master into any system They want to run and it's been nice because lately I've been having that a lot of players basically I've been like hey, what do you guys want to play next? We're halfway through this campaign, what is it that you want to play? Do you want to run another, you know, Dungeons & Dragons module? Do you want to try another game? And a few of them were, were like, hey, whatever it is, as long as you're running it, I'll be there. And I was like, that's gonna make me cry. Uh, that, that is the most flattering thing you could tell a game master, especially one that you're paying to run these games for you. But it's hard at first. Uh, I was definitely really nervous. My unemployment had ended. And so what I had done was while I was on unemployment and I was doing my job searches, I basically just kind of built up everything I could first, all of my campaigns, all of my assets, anything I could in order to hit the ground running because I had a advantage that other game master hires don't have. And that was, I had no job. And so it was all or nothing for me.

Star: 8:50

What made you decide to make the leap into podcasting? You talk about hitting the ground running, and to me, seeing your podcast start up, like, right from the beginning, I was like, oh my god, they were so much better prepared than I was when I started my podcast. There's just the amount of stuff that I've had to change since I've started, and you came in with your branding, you had multiple episodes ready to go.

DJ: 9:14

Andrew is the star on that, because Andrew is a stay at home dad. He takes on contract work as a marketing professional. So, he's a graphic designer, him and his wife both do marketing campaigns, uh, she's, you know, does like the full time marketing position, whereas he picks up the, the contract work. So, having him involved, and basically having, uh, everything ready to go, was a godsend, right? Originally, One Shot's Tavern just started off as the branding for my Game Master for Hire. Uh, it was going to be the name of my Discord, It was going to be essentially just me doing my thing. Andrew started talking about it and he's like, hey, you know, you and I out of all of our friends have the most free time and by most free time, I mean, we had, you know, maybe like 10 hours a week where we could, you know, sit down and do stuff because he's taking care of the kids full time. I'm running games, you know, four days a week, five days a week. And I still have to hang out with my wife. That's very important to me. And, uh, he was like, what if, you know, we started this journey last year where we tried out Cypher system. What if we continue that journey and we dive in to trying other systems? What if there's so many out there and, you know, I was doing the TikTok thing and like, I had already started meeting amazing people like you and Penny, uh, and Adam and just all of these, uh, amazing voices in the TTRPG space that we just really started to get super interested in, well, we could just try as many games as possible. And, you know, because of TikTok, we have as many people as we need to, you know, ask and say, hey, does anybody know how to run X system? Uh, and I was like, yeah, sure. I've got, I've got the time. His brain and my brain work completely different. My brain is a junk drawer and his is a filing system. So we definitely run things different when we're doing interviews. He's, he's more prepared with, you know, questions. I'm more like, what's your favorite color? You know, like, what's your, what's your favorite mechanic? You know? Ooh, I really like that too. I'm the guy who, who just kind of like falls in line and is just like, Oh, I want to relate and I want to get to know you and I want to be friends. He also is that way, but for him, it is very much like he's very informational. For example, he tried to get me to use Trello, which, for those of you who don't know, Trello is like a, this is, needs to be done, this is what's in process, this is almost done, and this is the deadline. And I'm just like, buddy, I'm gonna tell you this right now, I'm not going to use this.

Star: 12:04

So you're not, you're not using the Gantt chart that he made for your podcast?

DJ: 12:08

No, I, I found it better that I can throw things that I need done up there. Okay. But, personally, uh, I'm just, I'm a very off the cuff person. Even my campaigns, for the most part, I run along modules, but most of the time it's bullet points. And it's, it's very free flowing improv. Anything can happen, depending on where my brain is at in that moment. And so, it's, it's just funny because like, we compliment each other very well in that way, we butt heads very well in that way, because it's, it's, uh, it's just two completely different ways of thinking, and that's okay. Really what you saw as us jumping in prepared was us being like, oh no, we set a deadline for ourselves and we need to hop on this right now. Luckily we found like, Squadcast and Descript really early, so that kind of like cut down on the amount of work that it was going to take for us. We did make the dumb decision to jump out the gate with podcast video, which slows things down a lot. I still like video. It's funny. Cause in the beginning I was like, let's just do audio now, Andrew and I have switched positions on that. He's like, I think 90 percent of the stuff we do is not going to have video and we're going to switch over to that format. I'm like, all right, fine. Makes clips easier. I can just put a logo up. I haven't done it yet, but I could.

Star: 13:29

Yeah, I, so I started like completely audio and then lately I've, I've been, you know, I watch, I watch podcasts on YouTube and I'm like, you know, maybe people want that experience, but then I just have a backlog of video at some point. Maybe I'll get to editing this one. Because it takes so much longer.

DJ: 13:49

Yeah. Especially with the new RSS feed on YouTube. So you throw your RSS feed up there and it's like, cool. Here's all of my podcast episodes. And it's like, you throw your, your YouTube edited versions up there. And it's like, oh man, this is just clutter. There's so much stuff going on. Do I really need this?

Star: 14:07

Yeah, definitely.

DJ: 14:09

But people like it. And so it's, it's, it's, yeah.

Star: 14:14

Let's get to your character. You talked a lot about switching to cypher system and how much you love cypher system. What is it that you love about the system?

DJ: 14:23

It's funny because you look at the state of TTRPGs and you see like there is the very crunchy everything is defined side of things like Dungeons and Dragons. There's not as much creative freedom for the players. And then you have something on the other end of that, say, a Powered by the Apocalypse game, where the character sheets are much more simplistic, and the things that you do are more implied. You, you kind of flavor them how you want to flavor them, depending on which game you're running. Then you have Cypher System, which I like to imagine as being very firmly in the middle of those two things. It has very nicely laid out rules, of course, but at the same time, every aspect of your character sheet, from your special abilities to the weapons that you're using, skills, All of those can be flavored how you want them to be flavored. I really like that. I believe that it gives a lot of agency to the players to kind of craft their narrative. Uh, so that's like part one of why I like it. The next part is, as a game master, often players can run in directions where they shouldn't be. Or more so you haven't planned for. Cypher encourages that. It is a much more like, theater of the mind oriented system. Uh, you might have some like, battle board stuff, but that's gonna be about it. Whereas with Dungeons and Dragons, it's like, if you are hanging out in Waterdeep and you wanna go to Baldur's Gate, like, that requires a whole lot of reading. And like, jumping around and be like, oh no, this is, you know, like, what do I do? They decided they wanted to, you know, teleport and go visit somewhere else, or not continue on with the module yet and go do other things. Cypher's system very much allows the players to do that, and it doesn't require a ton of extra prep on the Game Master's behalf, because everything is rolled the same way in Cypher. You have a difficulty from 0 to 10, and you multiply that difficulty by 3, and that is going to be the difficulty, the DC, so to say, of the task that you're rolling. So if it's a difficulty 5, you have to roll a 15 or higher. If it's a difficulty 10, that's 30 or higher, and it's like, oh no, you can't do that. That's where the agency comes in, because you have something called effort, you have training. All of these will reduce the difficulty by a whole step, which means 3 points on the die. And so if it was difficulty 10, and you've If you decide to spend 3 effort and you have training in it, that drops it down from a rolling a 30 or higher down to a difficulty 6, which would be an 18 or higher. Still hard, but it's not impossible. And I really love when my players get excited. I love when I get excited because I'm a player. And it's like, cool, alright, we have this insurmountable task ahead of us. How are we going to do it? For example, say the difficulty of a creature is like, this is a difficulty 8. Uh, it's not terrible. You only have to use a little bit of training and effort to reduce it down. But this is a boss. And like, they're scary, and all of these special abilities and stuff. And you know that if you hit them, and you spend as much effort as you can on the damage, which increases your damage, it's like multipliers on your damage, you might be able to take them down in one shot. Or, you might incapacitate yourself and totally derail the entire thing. I love that. The other thing is Game Master intrusions are super fun. For those who are listening, a Game Master intrusion is an unexpected complication that just happens. Uh, and so it's the main way in which players gain experience points. For example, a gun could jam. Or, maybe the hallway collapses. Or, maybe all of a sudden a bunch of new soldiers show up and you have to fight them too. Or, You kind of get pushed in the correct direction because you've been going the wrong way. All of these things are Game Master intrusions. The players can deny them. They just spend experience instead of receiving experience. Or, there's player intrusions. Player intrusions are very similar. They're usually, uh, Tied to the type of the player. So for example, uh, a warrior might know a guy who just randomly shows up and helps and then, you know, talks for a minute and then leaves. Uh, we used that in a campaign that we were, uh, in because we were getting annoyed by the ship combat and we happened to be on the home planet of one of the player characters and we're like, uh, he's like, I know a guy and that guy showed up and all of a sudden it was a two on one battle. We finished the battle, had that chat, and then we continued on. Cypher gives you all of these tools and all of these ways of genuinely impacting the story, and that is my absolute favorite thing, while also giving me rails and rules to adhere to. I don't have to be overly imaginative, but I can be imaginative in the game. And so it feels like there are rules and laws of physics on the world while allowing me, you know, agency.

Star: 19:42

So you're bringing a character for a specific Cypher system game called Old Gods of Appalachia.

DJ: 19:48

Yeah.

Star: 19:48

Can you tell my listeners a little bit about this particular game?

DJ: 19:52

Absolutely. So it is a partnered IP game for those of you who haven't. If you really like horror podcasts, Old Gods of Appalachia is a really well produced horror anthology, light anthology, because there is an overarching story to it. About late 1800s, early 1900s, Appalachia. It's cryptids, it's, you know, folklore, it's, you know, a little bit of Irish folklore mixed with a little bit of Native American folklore mixed with a little bit of black folklore, right? Because that is Appalachia. Appalachia is, uh, you know, you talk about melting pots in, you know, the world, uh, and, you know, the United States is a melting pot. Appalachia, in my opinion. is one of the more very well mixed together melting pots as far as like the folklore and stuff goes basically you have uh the idea that these primordial spirits or these primordial beings these godlike entities uh of magic and And all of that existing in Appalachia, because, I don't know if you know this, but the Appalachian mountains are older than trees. Trees did not exist when the Appalachian mountains were formed. It is essentially, uh, a mountain range that is so old that it existed in this primordial time where instead of trees, we had giant mushrooms. And so the idea is that all of these haints and spirits and good things and bad things are rooted in this mountain range. And it's, uh, a really kind of fun fun setting for a horror podcast. And so, uh, I don't know if Monte Cook Games approached them or if they approached Monte Cook Games, but, uh, the Old Gods of Appalachia role playing game was born out of it. And so in it, you get to kind of explore it. And so it's kind of like Call of Cthulhu esque in a way, where it's mostly normal people, or lightly magical people, going through these horrific events. Because they are, they're horrific events. Things like towns burning down, and coal fires, and, you know, mine collapses, and, you know, hauntings, and All sorts of dark things. And so, I really enjoy this setting, because it's like this slight anxiety. You know, you don't know what's happening. It's all a mystery. And it's, it's just fun for me. I personally really like it. Because for me and my family. We are very Appalachian. We live in Michigan now, but essentially, uh, if you look at my DNA report, uh, from ancestry.com, it says Kentucky and it's Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, basically what happened was my ancestors, you know, came over from Europe, arrived. In the late 1500s, they settled in Kentucky, and West Virginia, and basically all along Appalachian Mountains. And that was it. That was, that was just where they decided to stay. Forever. That's, uh, it's kind of my connection to it, is, uh, I really like Appalachia, and I really like the folklore behind it. Because my family is, uh, what is called Melungeon, which was just, uh, mixed race people. Who, you know, lived in Appalachia. It was, you know, a mix of as many different things as you can imagine, but not the one that they always claim, which is Native American. It was Arab, Black, and mostly Irish. Basically a bunch of people ran into the mountains and hid, uh, and lived there. Formed communities.

Star: 23:44

Tell me, DJ, who are you bringing to the table today?

DJ: 23:47

Indeed. Everett Nichols. Everett Nichols is an amalgamation of several of my ancestors and, uh, more immediate family. Nichols is my mom's side. It is the very Melungeon side of the family. Everett is a coal miner, which many of my ancestors were coal miners in Appalachia. They, you know, it was either farming or coal mining, you know, in, in West Virginia and Kentucky. So for Everett, he is, he is a coal miner. He's not magical. He's just a guy, right? Uh, he's, he's a hard worker of mixed race and he lives in West Virginia. He's, it's just very like, no nonsense, he wants to protect people. In fact, he is a scrappy protector who defends what matters. That is his cypher system sentence. So a, essentially the scrappy part is his descriptor, which is partially his personality. The protector is his type, which is closer to akin to like a warrior in other cypher games. And then defense what matters is, uh, basically he's got a lot of special abilities that are going to basically allow him that physical prowess while really, I mean, let's be honest, Physical prowess doesn't matter in the face of spirits and haints, but for him, he's very much wants to defend his town and family. And I like to call upon some of my family history with that and the various, you know, people that were related to from the Coles to the Gibsons to the Nichols. That is Everett. He's originally from Kentucky. He left Kentucky for reasons that he doesn't like to talk about. And moved up to Pennsylvania after having a stint in West Virginia. And essentially, uh, he doesn't know why, but everywhere he goes, trouble follows. And so he goes from town to town in Appalachia, experiencing one awful thing to another, and then moves on.

Star: 25:52

Let's get a little bit into the way that Cypher system, it's not a class per se, but you mentioned this sentence that you build essentially when you're building a Cypher character, which personally I love the idea of this. So you have a descriptor and what was the second one again?

DJ: 26:08

Yeah, so descriptor, type, and focus. And so your descriptor is going to be kind of like a simple personality. Uh, which is going to give you certain skills. It is going to give you the opposite of skills, which is inabilities. Uh, things that you are just not good at. For example, Everett is very good at risk assessment. And he's not very good at pleasant social interaction. Because, you know, he's hot tempered. Uh, then his type, uh, so type is kind of like a class. It is, yeah, I would say it's the closest approximation to a class in Cypher's system. And so that'll give you, like, a bunch of options for special abilities from, uh, Danger Sense, which basically is, like, you are mildly aware, uh, at all times, and so, like, you spend a point, and you get to be trained in your initiative. To some of the more physical skills, like, he's trained without armor, therefore he's better at speed defense rolls. Because he's, you know, scrappy. He's dodging out of the way, he's rolling out of the way. And then you have your focus, and what the focus is, is, I don't want to say a subclass, but more of an archetype. There are hundreds of focuses to choose from in Cypher's system. All of them are very specific, and it helps you to build the character that you want to build. Defends what matters is going to be very like, I'm courageous, I have an easier time when it comes to like, you know, not being afraid of things that, you know, normal people would be afraid of, so normal people are courageous. But when you come across a man shaped deer that has flaming horns and eyes, the average person, uh, is still going to run away. So, Everett is, is willing to kind of stand his ground, even though he doesn't understand the supernatural things that are happening around him. I love the focus system in Cypher. There are super insane ones, uh, such as like, Dances with Dark Matter, which gives you like, wings of like, dark matter, or there is Fuses Flesh with Steel, which basically turns you into a cyborg. It's great. Any type of character you want to build in Cypher's system, you can.

Star: 28:23

You mentioned, uh, speed rolls, and I don't remember from when I played, but you have three different areas, correct?

DJ: 28:31

There is an optional fourth, uh, and an optional rules, which is kind of like your sanity. Most people don't end up playing with it, but, uh, yeah, you s you have your might, uh, which is going to be all physical brawn related tasks, or constitution. Basically, they take the traditional stats that you would see in a TTRPG, and they condense them down to these three stats. Might, speed, and intellect. Your, like I said, your might is going to be anything that's brawn related, uh, or constitution related, so resisting a poison. Speed is going to be, uh, you know, dodging out of the way, or running fast. And then your intellect is going to be thinking your way out of things, or defending against some kind of, like, mental attack, such as being afraid. The different pools for Might, Speed, and Intellect are also your HP, and while they're also your HP, they are your resource to spend. I've heard a lot of people in the past say something along the lines of, man, what if we had a homebrew rule in Dungeons & Dragons where I ran out of spell slots and I can instead spend some of my HP to have a spell slot? And it's just built in to Cypher. Your pools are your HP, but they are also your, your resource to spend. And so if you, most of your special abilities are going to have a cost of between one and nine points of your pool, depending on what tier you are. And so you spend those out of, out of, you know, your intellect and speed and might. And to make tasks easier, effort costs. three points for the first one, two points for every, uh, one after. And then you have ways to reduce those as well. I won't get too much into them, but they're called edge and basically edge and efforts, each point of them can be used once per turn. So it's not that your effort or edge goes away. It's just that you can only use it once per action. You can be cautious and not spend everything all at once. I don't play that way. I will spend every point that I can if I have to, and if it kills me, that's fine. Because narratively, it is fun, and it makes sense to, uh, you know, in this situation, especially in Old Gods of Appalachia. Where you're in a party of two to five people, most likely, that you're pretty closely involved with these people. And so that self sacrificial, like, you guys run, I've got this, I will hold them back, is fully supported in Cypher's system. And I love that.

Star: 31:02

A lot of times when people are playing games that exist in, not necessarily a contemporary world, but a modern world looking, for example, at 19th century, like Call of Cthulhu or Old Gods, which takes place in a previous setting, but we're not necessarily in a high fantasy world where everybody's an elf, And I think a lot of times, those systems will have kind of a normal guy option. They're just, just some guy, which personally, I am a huge fan of the normal, the normal guy trope, surrounded by weird magics and everything like that. You've made that choice here to play that archetype. Is that something that you often do? You know,

DJ: 31:45

I do like the normal guy. I'm not often playing spellcasters in other TTRPGs. Because if I am, it's It's typically, like, a warlock. And a warlock is basically just a normal guy who fell into magic. I'm not ever the wizard or the sorcerer, right? I usually am something like, oh, maybe I'm a rogue. So with Cypher System Uh, thinking about it, all the times that I've played Cypher System, I have yet to try an Adept, or a Speaker. Speakers, kind of like, they use word magic, right? They're very convincing, they're very charming, they're like the Bard type in Cypher. I either have played a Warrior, or I have played an Explorer. And, uh, I actually got it wrong. Protector is closer to the Explorer to Cypher System. And I would say that the Explorer is the ultimate normal guy, because they're not particularly good at anything, but they're very well rounded, and so that, that kind of gives them, like, the ability to, to kind of, like, pick up this type of skill and this type of skill. I love the normal guy trope. I'm just a guy who got in over my head and I want to do the best that I can and protect the people around me and so even though somebody might be casting spells next to me and, you know, dealing a hundred points of melee damage in a rage to my other side, I'm just there to use the skills that I have and, you know, the, the character and, uh, courage that I have uh, against all odds. Because, you know, I don't have the power fantasy that some players have. There's nothing wrong with having a power fantasy in a TTRPG. I want to make that perfectly clear. I don't pick on players who want to overly be broken using the rules. I understand. That is a way that you want to play. And that is a valid way to play the game. If it wasn't, they wouldn't allow it in the game. So I personally though, like to not be optimized and like to be mildly underpowered, uh, cause I like the challenge of will I succeed? Maybe. Uh, and if I do, it's going to be really cool. And if I don't, it's going to be tragic and it's going to really drive this story forward. That's, that's my play style.

Star: 34:11

I've been talking a lot with people about the idea of failure and embracing failure. And I, I like the way that you're relating the idea of being an underpowered character or underpowered in quotes, because that means a lot of different things to different people. But, but being a character that's not necessarily optimized for the highest rate of success. And to me, I also enjoy this trope for the same reasons, because it makes it easier to embrace failure, if you're feeling rough.

DJ: 34:41

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Here's the thing, right? Like, I like to imagine when I play these games, it's like the Isekai, right? Where it's like you've, you've been pulled into this world and, you know, it's, you don't belong. But for some reason, you're the only one who can save the world, even though for some reason that makes no narrative sense that it's you. Because I think that's closer to a real life scenario. story, a real life epic of, you know, I'm just, uh, Odysseus, right? I'm just a king on this silly journey to get back home. That is, is wonderful, you know? It's, it's the Yasuke, right? The Black Samurai, where, you know, this poor man was sold into slavery in Japan and, you know, ended up becoming a cultural icon to the point to where they're putting him in an Assassin's Creed game and is one of the most famous Samurais from history. It's, it's funny because it's just like, oh, I'm just me and here I am doing something amazing because I think we all genuinely want to do something amazing in the world. We live in a world that is well, hard to live in. We see terrible things happen all the time, and it's heartbreaking, and you want to be able to do anything and everything you, you can, recognizing that, like, you know, you only have the tools which you have. Some people like to jump into that by, you know, I am Omni Man, and I am here to forcibly put everything right, to, I am maybe a sketchy guy who, you know, isn't perfectly moral all the time, but even I want to make sure the world keeps spinning, to I'm just normal. And I would love to stop the bloodshed in the world, but I can't, and I'm going to do anything I can to lessen it. It's why I play TTRPGs really. Uh, it's, it's to, to live out the things that I can't change. You know, I mentioned the autism at the beginning of the, the interview with that comes like this strong sense of justice that can just, if you let it feel overwhelming, there's just so much bad going on. Um, And TTRPGs let me live out the ability to make change in ways that I can't, even as, like, the normal guy.

Star: 36:59

Would you say it's easier for you to relate to characters who don't have superpowers in stories that aren't high fantasy? Is it easier for you to get into character or to build a character in those settings?

DJ: 37:12

Typically, yeah, cause, I don't know, for some reason there's just, there's not a lot of draw to be insanely overpowered, and every time I've played a character that is overpowered in some way, I don't quite get into them the way that I would like to. For example, I played a paladin orc named Avery in a Descent into Avernus game, and You know, being a paladin in Avernus kind of feels like a cheat code where, you know, radiant damage, radiant damage. I get this extra all the time. And I loved that game. I didn't love my character. In fact, I tried to kill my character several times and go back to the, uh, it was funny, my game master, which was Andrew was just like, we're so close to the end, you don't need to switch out your character. I'm like, oh, but I want to. I find an easier time. getting connection when I know that one wrong session, I could lose that character. It really kind of like draws me to it. I won't get too much into it, but like from an early age, death has been a very prominent thing. Thing around me, and I don't know, I just have like a more comfortableness around the idea of my mortality than most people, and therefore, like I accept if my player is not going to make it because I see that as like, hey, this is, this is life, and life is the truest story that you can tell.

Thorne Files Podcast: 39:07

This is Annabelle Thornee. Current head of Annabelle's Investigations. Paranormal Investigations company set up in Edinburgh. I'm here to tell you today that monsters are real. And have been real for centuries. Only they've been hiding. We don't understand why they're coming into the light now, but if you see anything, if you hear anything, make sure you think you're in contact with one. Tell us. We can help. I have a few agents in the field just now. Evangeline Lane Fox, Peter Anderson, Vera Bright, and for better or worse, my niece, Tabitha. Don't hesitate to tell us if you do. You might not get another chance. The Thorne Files Podcast is a Monster of the Week actual play podcast with new episodes coming out every other Friday. If you're a fan of horror, mysteries, and shenanigans, why don't you come and give us a listen at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and pretty much everywhere else you can get podcasts. Be ready to be scared.

Star: 40:17

Is that something that you've done in the past? Is having a character sacrifice themselves? Having a character killed? Or switching out a character, where you've just kind of decided to move on from that character. Intentionally, I guess, or unintentionally, in the case of dying.

DJ: 40:33

Yeah, so, it has been a couple of times. Uh, it's actually really funny because, I don't know what it is. It does, it happens often for me in games. As a game master, even for my NPCs. For our actual play of the Eye of the Tyrant. I tried to do that with, uh, with an NPC, and they didn't let me. And it's funny because, like, it gave me that same moment of, like, No, no, no, this is my character's decision to make. Uh, you guys are getting out of here. Instead, it was more along the lines of, like, grabbing the NPC by the ear and dragging him, uh, out of the situation. I've only successfully been able to do it maybe once or twice in my entire TTRPG career because it very much relies on your compatriots, your party members. Avery basically ran into a magic circled ancient dragon, so the ancient dragon was not able to move from this very small spot and unloaded with highest levels of smites that I could just, you know, all of the, you know, extra attacks I could get in, got the ancient dragon down to like almost nothing. And then he gets wrecked. Finally, doesn't use any of his healing. Like it was very much like, this is it. This is going to happen. But. Sure enough, Andrew's wife, Emily, came in, uh, playing Squatch. And was just like, Nope! And, you know, brought me right back up because, like, even though it was like, Well, all my death saving throws are gone, cool, let me prepare this next character sheet. They were like, nope! We're not done with Avery. And so it's, it's funny cause it's at the same time defeating to have self sacrifice denied as opposed to just letting, letting it happen, which is a very interesting feeling. It's funny because it's not like at one point it is heartbreaking, but at the other point, like there's, there's also like a warmness to it, right? No, no, no, we care about your character. We like the character. We want that character to stick around. This character doesn't get to just self sacrifice and save the party and disappear. So it's a very interesting dichotomy.

Star: 42:49

Yeah. I was in a campaign, a long term campaign, it was right at the end, the final battle, and one of the other players decided to do that self sacrifice to save the day, and it was actually a really beautiful moment. Like, none of us, we could have probably brought him back, found a way. And we decided as a party not to and instead he, you know, he was like, I want this character to die and for this to be the end of a story.

DJ: 43:18

Right.

Star: 43:19

And it ended up being, you know, one of my favorite parts of the campaign is like his goodbye because we went to the underworld or something and talked to him after he died.

DJ: 43:28

Yeah.

Star: 43:28

And had this really lovely farewell. But yeah, there have been other instances where that opportunity has been taken away from a character and from the player of that character.

DJ: 43:38

Yeah.

Star: 43:39

I think systems like D&D make it really difficult to have that kind of narrative sacrifice or that narrative moment, because there's so many ways to avoid death. Whereas there are other systems where you're just, I'm making this narrative choice, and this is what's going to happen.

DJ: 43:54

Absolutely. Cypher system is very much along those lines. There are very few ways to cheat death in Cypher system. Pretty sure there's like maybe one. In Cypher system, usually dead is dead. You have a damage track, you have hale, which is healthy, which is like, you know, you have at least a couple points in each of your pools. Then you have impaired, which means that one of your stats is at zero. After that, you have debilitated, which means you have two stats that are at zero. And all you can do in a debilitated state is hobble. You don't even get your full movement. It's basically like you are, you are moving away from the action or you can stay there. And then after you hit zero in all three pools, typically that means that you are dead. In the long running campaign where I played, uh, another character named Cedric, that one, uh, I actually grew attached to as a character. You know, so I was taking things like hard to kill and all this stuff, so where it was like, I could keep going unimpaired and debilitated. And so, I liked that because it allowed me to, you know, it's like, yes, I am at zero in two of my pools. I'm still able to fight. And if I need to, I can fight until the end and nearly did a couple of times, barely, you know, skin of my teeth. Whereas with like an old gods game, if I'm playing Old Gods of Appalachia, which I'm going to play as a player in Old Gods of Appalachia at some point, uh, I, I very much want my characters to have that fragility. I don't want to be a tank. I want to be a glass cannon because it makes sense. This is, you know, 1910, right? These are big, powerful spirits. Am I necessarily going to, like, intentionally sacrifice my character? Well, it depends on the narrative. Everything, for me, like, if it makes narrative sense, then it's on the table. Because I think that is For me personally, the most important part, my role as a player, is how can I push the narrative forward in a way that is satisfying and makes sense for the other players, because even as a player, I'm still in game master mode.

Star: 46:03

Talking about that, as a Game Master, do you think that you build characters differently?

DJ: 46:09

I definitely do, and I've actually noticed this a lot with my other players. Because, funnily enough, most of my players are long time Game Masters. Some of them are professional Game Masters who just, you know, want to play a game. Others are, you know, people who have been forever Game Masters, and that was just, you know, the role that they were assigned to. Uh, particularly my Thursday night game. They are all game masters who are very close knit now and supportive of each other. And I noticed I build my characters in a similar way to them, which is I want to fill gaps. I'm not looking to be the main character. I am looking to have a prominent role, but I don't want to be "The Guy." You know, I'm not Tom Sawyer. I'm not other fictional character in a book, right? I'm just a guy on the team. And when I build my characters, I do so in a way that allows me to support the other player characters without taking away from the other player characters. So, if there isn't a party healer, I'll probably be a cleric. I like clerics, uh, as far as like support classes go, not so much as the in the tank side of it. So if I'm gonna play a cleric, I'm gonna play a very much like, I'm here to heal you, I'm here to keep you alive cleric. I like to, like, look at the gaps in the party and so usually I won't even make my character or start making my character until I have heard everybody else talk about their characters. And then from there, I'll write my backstory and like dive in and be like, okay, cool. How can I make this work for everyone else?

Star: 47:44

So this situation is a little different for Everett because you built this character outside of a game. Why did you decide to take that approach rather than waiting for an Old God's game to happen?

DJ: 47:56

You know, It's funny, because like, if this was Dungeons and Dragons, or any other game, I could probably just find one, right, and jump right in. But with Old Gods, it was one of those things where it's like, I want to be ready to jump into a campaign, if I have the time, and somebody asks. But more importantly, because of the historical nature of Old Gods of Appalachia, I find my family history to be very fascinating. And I was just like, you know, who would my great great grandfather be? And how would he act, or my great grandpa, or even my grandfather, because they had a lot of hardships growing up. And I very much looked at it and went, okay, cool. I still built him as mostly a support character to fill that role, right? He's a protector who defends what matters, but he is more of a martial kind of, like, support role. And I just, I don't know, I just kind of like was looking at and reading on family history and like reading about all of my, you know, my great grandfather, I was reading about some of the horrible things that the reason why my great grandparents moved to Michigan, there was a man named Dr. Plecker who was driving all around Appalachia and that area and he was sterilizing people like my great grandpa. And it was because they were mixed race. My grandpa's half black, uh, Melungeon. His father and mother were also both half black, uh, Melungeon. And, you know, there are family lines in in my family tree that ended in the early 1900s because of Dr. Plecker, where he he did a lot of things such as prevented family members of mine from being able to be enrolled in the census. Because he didn't want them to have representation. To, uh, going around and then basically be like, I'm here to do doctor stuff and, and sterilizing. And so a lot of people in, in my family and other families from Appalachia who, you know, lived in Appalachia since like mid sixteen to late sixteen hundreds, all of a sudden in the early nineteen hundreds, had to start fleeing everywhere and they came to Michigan. Everett is very much a kind of an homage to those people and kind of like a respect to that side of my family. I'm very white. Uh, you know, I may be part black, I may be part Arab. But, like, if you look at me and you hear me, you're going to just assume that I'm white. And so, like, I would never claim to be, you know, uh, something else. But I am still very proud of my grandpa, right? I'm very proud of my grandpa's family and their history. And so, Everett's a love letter to that side of my family. Very much so. And I think that's why he exists.

Star: 50:50

Is Everett Melungeon?

DJ: 50:52

Yes, he is. And essentially, when I look at Everett, I look at my grandpa. And so like, my grandpa was very dark skinned, his hair was not the same texture as mine, but like, there was still, uh, features that, you know, you look at us and you can go, Oh, I actually see the resemblance between the two of you. Yeah, Everett is definitely very much Melungeon. I think it's a very interesting, hidden bit of history that is fascinating.

Star: 51:20

You have some things in your family history that, I think if I was looking back, I would think how I wish that I could have gone back there and protected them from those things that happened. And here you are creating a character who is a protector.

DJ: 51:34

You know, it's, anybody who looks back at a traumatic family history, you are always feeling the effects of it, whether you realize it or not. My family came to this country poor. They were mostly Irish, Scottish, English mixed in there, and some of my ancestors were free black men who came to the United States uh, of their own volition. Some of them were not. And they all just kind of found themselves in the same area and, you know, became a community. And I look at it and I look at everyone on my mom's side of the family and I kind of just draw that correlation and that history of like, oh man. All of these, these terrible things that happened to them really is heavily felt in our income level and education level. Uh, my mom never finished seventh grade. It's, it's funny because out of the seven children my grandfather had with my grandma, only one of them came out looking like him. And he was an identical twin with the whitest brother that you can imagine. And so like my uncle Roy had to grow up as a black man in the country with a black father, a twin, identical twin brother who was not a black man, you know, I look at all of that side of the family and I've realized I'm like, Oh, okay, you know, things make sense here because you, you look at any of the wealth that the family had accumulated and then lost. Because that happened several times throughout, throughout history in the United States. And it's like, yeah, then, yep. It makes sense as to why, like, two of my seven aunts and uncles actually graduated from high school. One of them went to college. And it's just like, man, you, you really wish. You could do something about it. You know, obviously there is nothing you can do, but you wish that you could make it better and, you know, break off the familial curses that the world has laid upon you. It, it comes down to, honestly, a lot of me as a white person going, Oh, there is a structure of white supremacy in and around my life and in the system that I am living in. That the only thing I can do about is speak out against and educate about because I can see it in my own life and while I have the privilege, right, as somebody who, you know, you can look at and go, oh, yeah, you know, that white guy DJ, you know, I have that privilege that my grandfather did not and his family did not have. And so it's very much like as much as I wish I could change the past, all I can do is kind of do what I can to work towards a better future. And even then, it's so overwhelming and you still feel so small in the grand scheme of things, right? Because, you know, my my Uncle Roy, he ended up moving down to back to Kentucky. Uh, he did not have a good life, you know? And my my Grandpa Roy, he he did his best. He was an electrician. He took care of these seven children, and he, he did everything he could for them. It's a very interesting perspective that I think that most people of my skin color are not experiencing in their lives. Instead, it's more of like, I hear about these things, I see them in history. They can't really tie it back to their own current present. And for me, I just, I look at it, I go, oh wow, it's there, and I still don't understand it all, because I don't experience that side of it.

Star: 55:13

To Everett, he defends what matters. What matters to Everett?

DJ: 55:17

Family, community, people. People are the, the main thing that matters. Money in life only matters as much as keeping you fed, right? Property does not matter. I am a socialist, very much so, and so, for me, it's, the real things that matter are going to be those people you love around you, and the community around you that, that you love. Because everything else is just so fleeting, you could be rich one day and poor the next, or poor one day and rich the next, you know, depending on how the, you know, wheels of fate land on you. But, you know, your found family, your chosen family, Sometimes, your birth family, you know, depending on your situation. Those are the things that I hold super deeply. I was talking to my wife about it when we bought the house here, that I could sit down and just watch TV with her every single day and be completely content and happy. We don't have to go anywhere. As long as we are together, that's what brings me the most joy and happiness. It's where I find my contentment. Everything else is a bonus that can happen. Heh heh heh. And, uh, my friends, I feel the same way about them. Where I could just spend every Sunday afternoon playing a game of Dungeons& Dragons or Cypher System with them. And it doesn't really matter what my financial situation is, as long as I'm eating and my bills are paid. That's what matters. To Everett and to me. Cause, I mean, Let's be honest, uh, most of my characters are probably going to be an extension of my values and what I care about the most.

Star: 56:57

You said earlier that Everett has moved around a lot, that he's been followed by trouble. And that kind of rootlessness seems to me opposed to the idea of having an established family that you want to be connected to.

DJ: 57:10

It definitely can be, right? With Everett, there's just a darkness in his life that seems to follow him from place to place. And I think it kind of is rooted in my fear of losing people. And before getting to the point of like, recognizing my autism and my ADHD and becoming a healthy person, it was kind of a fear that I had. Where I didn't quite know how to process the idea of, of loss. I lost my little sister at a very young age. I was four years old, she was two. She was hit by a car in front of the entire family. And that obviously altered me. So I turned five a month later and started school two and a half months later. And because of that, I went from a fairly normal child, uh, apart from, you know, the autism and ADHD, who was good at socializing, to being a child who didn't want to talk to anybody. I, I was afraid of people, right, because I think it was, uh, a year later, my, my, my grandpa passed away in a car accident. And having a lot of death happen that early really affects the way that your relationships grow. And so, for, for Everett, He's lost people. You know, he's only 25 years old at this point. He's still a young man doing his best, but tragedy strikes at home and he, he has to start over. And so he goes out and he starts over. It may not be his blood family anymore, but he tries to form those connections and grow and, and rebuild that family and that community again, and then he loses it again. And so, essentially, what just keeps happening to Everett is, every time he seems to have found himself in a good place, where, you know, his family and his, his community has begun to thrive, tragedy strikes, and he doesn't know how to pick up the pieces from that, and so he moves on to the next place, and starts over. I would say, yeah, that definitely is inspired by my own feelings of, of love and loss where, you know, I, I've lost a lot of people along the way, but I am in a spot now where, you know, I, I, I have a family and community again, it's hard, right? It's hard to lose people. You know, my little sister was my absolute best friend in the world. Even if you, you know, uproot yourself and move on, those connections are still present. They're very much still a part of you. That love doesn't go away. You know, even though Everett has picked up and moved on, right, and I've picked up and moved on, I'm still very much affected by those people. Everett is still very much affected by those people. It's not abandoning them, it's not running from them. It's more so realizing that maybe it is easier to heal for some people. By starting over, or having a new chance to, to try again.

Star: 1:00:22

How detailed have you gotten into Everett's backstory? For example, do you have these specific instances of loss already planned out? Or is it more of a general idea?

DJ: 1:00:33

The first instance of loss is the thing that Everett has, and so for Everett, the town in which he was born and raised, it was a coal mine fire, you know? It, uh, spread to the town, and he lost everything, and everyone. As far as the subsequent tragedies, you know, it could be something as small as, like, you know, he lost somebody, you know, one person, and when you don't know how to deal with loss, and you kind of, like, run into that situation of, I lost everything before, and then you run into another situation of heartbreak. Sometimes you, you just want to move on and try again. It's, it's one of those situations where it's like, uh, you know, I personally ran through, you know, some, some instances where I lost people and then I would move on and try not to become close to people. But that never works, you always inevitably become close to someone else, and then if you lose them again, or you lose that person, it just becomes a scar layer, right? It becomes a bit of trauma over the heart, where eventually that scar tissue seems to be the entire thing. And it takes a lot of work and a lot less running to process that and to heal from that and to, uh, be able to open up fully. And the happy ending to that story is like, I did it, right? I processed, I got healthier, I learned. And I think Everett is still in that process. Because I put him at the age of 25, because I hadn't quite gotten there yet, at 25. I was around 27, 28 years old, uh, when I met my wife. And thank goodness, uh, I had healed by then. Cause Like, I, uh, it's terrifying to think of what would have happened if I met my wife and I hadn't. I was learning slowly about myself. And I think Everett is learning slowly about himself with each of these tragic events. Nothing supernatural has happened to him yet. It's wherever he finds himself in that campaign and, you know, being a bit closed off, but not too closed off. Cause I think that's a terrible trope where you just refuse to interact. Yeah, you know, instead being a little standoffish while being friendly. I think that's the part that a lot of people get wrong when they try to play a character like that is they are completely closed off and confrontational. Whereas I don't think hurt people really often act like that. It's more so in here, right in their heart, where they have put up the wall, that, Hey, I don't want you to get too close. That doesn't mean I don't care about you, and that I don't want to care, that I don't want to protect you. It's more so, I don't know how I'm going to react if you're not there anymore. It's a learning process, it's a grieving process, it is, it's all of these things where eventually you become whole, you become better, and you're able to look at someone and realize, oh, I do care, and that's important. Very much so. I'd say that's kind of my motivation on it, is going through that journey again, reaffirming that journey again. By going through that trauma again and learning to get past it again.

Star: 1:04:09

Yeah. So you mentioned that Everett very much shares your values and, you know, we've talked a lot about protecting people you love going through that personal trauma and coming out the other side. Are there values that Everett shares with you in terms of maybe political values or morals?

DJ: 1:04:26

Oh, absolutely. So, uh, Everett is a union man through and through. You know, I grew up in a very union family, you know, my dad is a UAW, you know, a former Ford worker, and, uh, I'm a very strong believer in social organizing. And because of that, most of my characters are, and most of my campaigns are. It's one of those things where, uh, you know, I, when I first bought the Old Gods of Appalachia book, I was like, all right, so let's look at actual history. There's something very influential to me that I really, uh, enjoy in history. Not so much the awfulness of it, but it is the Battle of Blair Mountain. The Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia was one of the fundamental things to really kind of kick off labor rights in the United States. It was a bloodbath, where coal miners decided to take up arms and actually, like, just full on protest, and the companies basically used the police and all of that to massacre them. It's a horrible point in history, but it is one that has influenced, uh, you know, labor talks in the world that we live in today. So, the Old Gods of Appalachia game that is on the shelf for when I decide to run it takes place in and around the area of Blair Mountain. So, Everett, very union forward, very social forward, right? To be fair, back in 1910, nobody was really talking about socialism versus capitalism, right? We were just living our lives.

Star: 1:06:02

Well, maybe not in the United States.

DJ: 1:06:05

Not in the United States. No, that's true. That's true. And the United States was moving towards that more social aspect in general. We came very close. We were doing great. And then World War II happened. And then, you know, we didn't continue our alliance with the Soviet Union because we saw another empire. There's only room for one empire. And, uh, basically, you know, the Red Scare and all that started. But, you gotta think, in Appalachia, during these labor movements, the conversation of equal pay for work and having more equity in the company and abolishing company stores and company towns and seizing the means of production was a very real conversation that was happening. And it was really the center for labor right movements in the United States. So Everett's very much along those lines. And I have only played one character ever that was kind of more of the opposite of me. And it was the worst. Uh, it was a fun character, but like at the same time to be a character that's just like money, money, money all the time did not sit right with me in any way, and so it's hard for me to not play a character who is, you know, labor conscious and socially conscious, uh, in that way. So I would say, yeah, absolutely. Everett 100 percent shares a lot of those more political values that I have.

Star: 1:07:34

I will say that when I played Old Gods, like the only time I've ever played it, I also love the labor history of Appalachia, the coal mining, you know, I'm a big fan of movies like Matewan, for example. So when I made a character in Old Gods, I made a union organizer. I have to do this.

DJ: 1:07:52

It's great.

Star: 1:07:53

Yeah. And I love that it's so easy to make a character like that in Old Gods.

DJ: 1:07:57

At my previous job, the one that I got fired for, fired at, not for, but people kind of called me like a one man union because I would have these one on one talks with my supervisor, with my boss and with the president where, you know, they would pull us every now and then they'd be like, all right, let's have a chit chat, let's talk. And it was never me talking about me, other than me wanting to work earlier in the day and go home earlier. It was always like, listen, I make more money than some of my co workers doing the same job. I don't like that. And just because, you know, this person's 19 and this person's 21, you know, Just because in your mind they're children, right? They're not children, they're just not. And I, I would very much spend my hour, sometimes every week, begging to, you know, hey, 14 an hour is not enough for what we're doing. And so like, it was just me, very much just every week, like, no no no, hey listen, like, I don't think you realize, they're not telling you the things that they want to tell you in their one on one meetings with you. They're not telling you about the financial anxiety, they're telling me about the financial anxiety. And it worked. All of them were making around 17 an hour by the time I was fired. I wasn't fired for helping them. I was fired because I had a meltdown. But, you know, I'm proud of that, because they deserved it, right? And I wanted to see them thriving, and now they're thriving. And now people who get hired in in that position start out thriving. I just, I think that's super, super important. Not only to keep your employees happy and, you know, fed, but to make them genuinely want to be there, right? You treat your employees correctly, you give them the benefits they need, you pay them fully, and you're not overloading them, then you're doing something right. But if you're like, well, you know, I don't know if there's room in the budget for that, and we need you to go above and beyond, you're just exhausting people and causing turnover. So my whole thing is I will advocate for anyone and everyone that I can to make sure their lives are better, because I'm not super worried about my own. I'm happy.

Star: 1:10:09

To me, I think one of the benefits of organizing a union or organizing your workplace in that kind of way is that feeling you can have of having agency over your work, which is such an important part of most of our lives is, is having that kind of control, and non unitized workplaces often feeling like you don't have any say in what happens at the company. And so I think besides obviously the financial benefits or the benefits on your benefits, there is that benefit of feeling that kind of pride in coming together. Coming back to TTRPGs with TTRPGs is that we have agency to change the story. We have agency within our stories, and I think especially in a game like Cypher System, the players have some agency with player intrusions, for example. Do you find that connection?

DJ: 1:11:00

Absolutely. Whether it's in our jobs, or in our personal lives, or in our entertainment with TTRPGs, we want to feel like our choices matter. We want to feel like that we own a bit of it. And, with Cypher System, you do. You are telling the story, right? You have player intrusions. You get to influence the direction in which things are going, right? You are essentially a co game master. Everybody wants to love their job, right? And it's not something that we often get to have in our lives, is to love the work that we're doing. Often we start off loving, uh, when we, when we get into it, and then it falls apart because all of a sudden we are going as far above and beyond as we possibly can, and we're just fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. And this is probably an autism thing, but crash, just an absolute crash, and you just don't care anymore because you didn't get that promotion, you didn't get that pay raise, nothing has improved for you, you've just made things harder by working harder. And, I think the escape in TTRPGs, where it's like, I made a decision and it affected the entire world, is very cathartic for a lot of us, because we want more control in our day to day lives. We don't want to control every aspect of our lives. Nobody does. Um, well, that's not true. I shouldn't say nobody, because there are those people out there. But, we don't want to control every aspect of our lives. We just want to make a difference, and we want to be happy doing it. TTRPGs lets me have that feeling every time I play, whether I'm a game master or I'm a player. And I think it's interesting because if you look at players of TTRPGs and game masters of TTRPGs, you find a lot of common ground as far as like some of the personal values we all hold. You know, it's 100 percent a bit of a spectrum, but, like, we can find that common ground a lot easier than I think a lot of other hobbies can. And I find that the more you play TTRPGs, the more your values start to kinda change and shift a bit, because you are in this community setting where you're working together, not as an individual, but as a group, accomplishing a task together as equals. And in those situations, we truly, as people, I think excel.

Star: 1:13:54

Everett, where did you grow up and how did that affect who you became?

DJ: 1:13:59

I grew up in a town just east of Salyersville, Kentucky. Uh, my father was a farmhand and, uh, worked himself to the bone. Unfortunately, he grew ornery in his old age, wasn't able to, uh, well, provide anymore. That's when I took on the responsibility as the man of the house to, well, start my life in the mines. Hard work affects you. Uh, you wake up early, work all day in the mines, you come home. You don't have a lot of personal time, uh, but you cherish every bit of personal time that you have. And, uh, well, it's, uh, hard work doesn't really do much good for anybody physically, but When you can stay fed, that's what matters.

Star: 1:14:41

DJ, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing Everett with me and my listeners.

DJ: 1:14:46

Very happy to have finally done this. I know we've been putting it off for a little while. Life's just been hectic, but finally in a good spot to you do things, so

Star: 1:14:56

I'm glad to hear that.

DJ: 1:14:57

I had a blast. Sorry to talk your ear off.

Star: 1:15:03

You know, that's what you're here for is to talk my ears off. I'm just here to listen. What would you like to share with my listeners?

DJ: 1:15:12

Yeah, check out One Shot's Tavern. Uh, we talk about different TTRPGs, um, we kind of just really talk about anything TTRPGs now. We, we just have fun with it and it's great. We also have an actual play called The Eye of the Tyrant, uh, that is going to be coming to kind of like a season finale with a soft reboot soon. Probably by the time this, uh, episode has aired, most likely. We are going to be looking into doing more actual plays. I have Pink Security and More coming out, which is my TTRPG setting. Kind of geared towards Cypher system, but really any system that handles modern play can handle it. Uh, it is a post post apocalyptic setting. Uh, I like to call it, uh, Junk Punk or Hope Punk. Which basically just means that the world fell apart, and people had to pick up the pieces, and that's what they're doing. Uh, you can find that on Backerkit. It's currently up for pre order. If you're interested in joining an actual play, we are going to be doing auditions at some point for our next one. We aren't planning on doing that beginning, like, filming and releasing until the end of, around the end of the year of 2023.

Star: 1:16:16

2024?

DJ: 1:16:16

No, what year is it? 2024?

Star: 1:16:18

2024.

DJ: 1:16:19

But yeah, if you're interested and you have some actual play experience, uh, and you want to record some, uh, short format TTRPG stories, I'd love to have you. Oneshotstavern. com. You can find out all that information.

Star: 1:16:32

For my recommendation this episode, I'd like to introduce you to a podcast called Hammer of the Gods. Hammer of the Gods started out as a D&D actual play, but they've since played all kinds of games, from Werewolf, to Masks, to Eat the Reich. You may have heard of them when I promoted their charity stream for the Trans Empowerment Project. One of the things that any creator wants to know is what people think of their work. For podcasters, it can be especially difficult to get feedback. Did you know that you can now leave comments on individual episodes on Spotify? If you're listening there, I encourage you to leave a comment and let me know what you think about an episode. You may have also noticed a link in my show notes that says, send us a text message. If you have a question you'd like me to answer on a future episode, or just want to leave a comment, send me a message. I started a newsletter. If you'd like to get a behind the scenes peek at the podcast, follow my other projects like my current all woman actual play, and be notified when a new episode drops, you can find the signup form in the show notes or on my website. Please share the podcast with a friend. Word of mouth is the best way to find new listeners. Your recommendations help me immensely. Thank you to all my listeners spreading the word. I'm so grateful. You can find me on TikTok at StarMamaC or on Threads, Blue Sky, Instagram, and Facebook as Characters Without Stories. You can also listen on YouTube at Characters Without Stories. Or follow the link in the description. My submissions are currently full. I'll announce on the podcast when I'll be accepting more submissions, so keep your ears open. Thanks for listening, and may all your characters find their stories.