Captain RoBear: From Bartender to Dungeon Master | The Evolution of a Digital Identity

What if the bar top and the D&D table were the same thing? Captain RoBear—streamer, storyteller, and former bar owner—joins Gamertagged for a deeply human journey through gaming culture, personal reinvention, and the joy of feeding people, on and off the screen. From his early days in Yahoo chat rooms and JNCO jeans to running his family of dwarves in rich, emotionally layered campaigns, RoBear's story is about owning who you are and building spaces where laughter and love come first.

We Talk:
– Finding identity through gamertags, community, and storytelling
– How Boy Scouts, HeroQuest, and bar life forged a Dungeon Master
– Building authentic digital spaces (and refusing low-quality merch)
– Streaming as a second act after losing everything
– Food as roleplay, family, and cultural memory
– Leadership, empathy, and why love at the table matters

🃏 And in the ReRoll…
We conjure Captain RoBear’s trading card: the jovial legendary captain, ale in one hand, shield in the other, commanding the room with laughter, lore, and deep-cut DM wisdom. It’s the first-ever holofoil pull in Gamertagged history.

Guest: Captain RoBear
Hosts: Marthah Maple, Ryanocerus, Scarto46
Produced by: Gamertagged Studios

🎧 Captain RoBear:
Twitch – https://www.twitch.tv/captainrobear
YouTube – www.youtube.com/@CaptainRoBear
X – https://x.com/CaptainRoBear

🌐 Gamertagged Links:
Website – https://www.gamertaggedpodcast.com
Everything Gamertagged –

In this episode, we’re taking a moment to spotlight Take This, a nonprofit at the intersection of mental health and gaming. From AFK Rooms at conventions to their Accelerate mentorship program, they’re building safer, more human spaces for players and creators alike. Learn more or support their work at TakeThis.org.

Transcript

The Pizza Lasagna Incident

Captain RoBear 0:00

When it melted, it melted the entire outer shell and it made a giant eight-foot block, four feet tall lasagna of pizza and plastic. So the worst part about this okay, like almost everything was safe, like it was a very small. It was a strong, small, contained fire. But whenever they put the fire out they will usually cut a hole to relieve, like pressure and heat. The hole that they cut was exactly my room and they gave me the Buffalo Bill treatment and they took that hose up there and they turned that hose on Dude sliced my bed in half.

Ryanocerus 0:38

Oh my.

Captain RoBear 0:39

God Cut all my clothes and destroyed my original, like Pentium 2 that I ran like diablo 2 on. Just destroyed man game attack.

Scarto46 1:09

Welcome back to Gamertagged. I'm Scarto46.

Marthah Maple 1:13

And I'm Martha Maple.

Scarto46 1:15

And today we're sitting down with the one and only Captain Robear, Bartender, storyteller and the captain of community tables everywhere.

Marthah Maple 1:24

This episode is packed. We talk about Boy Scout origins, dragon Quest, bar life and what it means to truly build culture around the table.

Scarto46 1:32

And for the first time ever, we've got a hollow foil re-roll card. That's right, shiny gold and live now at gamertagpodcastcom.

Marthah Maple 1:40

You've never seen Captain Energy quite like this.

Scarto46 1:43

So let's set sail. Here's our conversation with Captain Robear. Welcome to this episode of Gamertag. Captain Robear, thank you for joining us tonight.

Captain RoBear 1:57

Great to be here.

Scarto46 1:59

Oh yeah, Also with us tonight is Martha Maple.

Marthah Maple 2:02

Hello.

Scarto46 2:05

Okay, she always chose a different route there. And also Ryan Osiris. Hello, all right, welcome everyone. I'm your host, scarto46. We're here tonight with Captain Robear. We're hanging out, just jamming, chatting it up.

Captain RoBear 2:18

We totally haven't been talking for the last hour and a half we have not?

Marthah Maple 2:22

We literally just met you.

Captain RoBear 2:24

This is the real start of the episode.

Scarto46 2:28

This is the real start. Yes, we don't have an hour and a half of recorded content about all kinds of crazy stuff. Captain Robert, let's talk about you, not your tag, not your gamer tag, but like what first pulled you into digital spaces or gaming worlds.

Captain RoBear 2:42

Elder millennial, 40 years old here. So I've got to ride the wave. I've been there for Yahoo chats, al chats, the infamous JNCO jeans forum chat room. I've been here for it all. Did you wear JNCOs? I didn't. My mom would never. She would have never paid for that. I was a Levi's red tag. You know four new pairs of jeans at the beginning of school season. I did not get the $40, $50 jeans.

Marthah Maple 3:13

No, you should have been cutting grass for the jingo money.

Captain RoBear 3:19

When I was cutting grass, we were saving up for that first NES.

Marthah Maple 3:22

Oh yeah, that's true. Oh yeah, no true.

Captain RoBear 3:24

Oh yeah, no priorities, yeah there was some serious priorities then. So, man, I've got to grow up. It's just a very fortunate thing to be an age appropriate during all of these phases to like learn how to be a digital entity from the beginning. How to be a digital entity from the beginning. It's just such an advantage to know be a child in the old world, get to have my own innocence and protection, to make mistakes and not be in the public eye and, you know, to have my village raise me and curb my behavior and really form a person that I am, before I even get to put myself on a platform. You know I was there when college humor was in the party picks game.

Captain RoBear 4:10

This is a crazy era. Long before the dropout days they had a place where you could dump your digital pictures from the party the night before. This is pre Facebook. So there's, you know there's some early Robear that no one will ever notice or identify, because in the early 2000s it was a very unfortunate era for guys. You had to be in your boy band era and if you weren't your friend group, justin Timberlake?

Captain RoBear 4:37

you were just.

Marthah Maple 4:38

Joey Fatone with your pink necklace.

Captain RoBear 4:41

Your horrible, high and tight bird's nest in the front got to be glued. Oh man, it was a rough era. People don't realize how, at that point, we were still so driven by what MTV told you to do, what Carson, daly and TRL told you to do. Those things were all the original influences of culture and mainstream media that told you what you were going to like and what group of people you were going to hang out with from the movies, media and music that you consumed. That is all gone now, yeah.

Captain RoBear 5:16

The greatest story that I can tell about this is I have a friend. She raises her child and she doesn't have any auxiliary forces outside of her to tell her what she is supposed to enjoy. And you know what she loves the most, what she loves Rush.

Scarto46 5:36

Oh, my God.

Captain RoBear 5:37

She loves a group of Canadians playing crazy prog rock and she wants to be a bassist like Geddy Lee, because she's just watched the YouTube videos and loves the music and there's nobody there out there to tell her that she shouldn't listen to Rush. I love that dude. That is beautiful. Back in the 90s, if you wanted to, you had to listen to Queensryche. You had to put on your black leather jacket. You always had the ponytail. You were one step away from comic book guy. You were like cleaned up comic book guy. Trust me, I've been to a lot of dream theater shows. I was that guy. I know what it was like.

Captain RoBear 6:12

So it's cool seeing how we've metamorphosized into this world now to where you can be super narrow and just enjoy what you want to enjoy. However, trading that off from the old world where you needed to know a little bit about a lot and you know me, having my bartender background it's important to have that conversation. I can talk to a farmer about the farmer's report at a gas station and I can also talk about Twitch, pax East. So that's something that we have lost that now, because you don't have to have that. We have to spend a lot of time with my five and seven year old nephew to make sure that they get those worldly experiences, because they can just love Paw Patrol now.

Captain RoBear 6:53

Yeah, paw Patrol could be their sole existence. Stay in that bubble. Yeah, you can be super narrow these days. I've got to ride the evolution and I got to do it at an age appropriate level and I feel like I was there for the Goldilocks zone and I have to be a good steward to know that either end of it, kind of like in the middle of the balancing scales.

Scarto46 7:13

Can I ask you what haircut you had back in the MTV days, because I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours Once.

Captain RoBear 7:19

I quit high school football, I grew my hair out the first time. A hundred percent, I'm done, done. I'm not playing organized sports anymore. I'm walking out like judd nelson simple minds is playing in the background. Dude, I went full long hair but I was clean shaven for most of my life. I did large sideburns and that freaks people out like huge elvis chops that was, and also that was like that scott era too. Yeah, we're folks so like I was adjacent to that. But I was very much like. I did the long hair, metal head, like I have native american heritage, so it was like I was. I was getting back into my roots with that. And then in college I was like all right, all right, this is. Oh man, this is bad. You can't, you are not allowed to be your own person here.

Marthah Maple 8:00

You very much have to assimilate.

Captain RoBear 8:02

And uh man, the jo, the Joey Fatone era was rough. It was rough.

Scarto46 8:07

I had a bowl cut. I had a bowl cut and JNCO jeans and the wallet chain I had the whole thing going on.

Captain RoBear 8:16

Man, you had the corn shirt and the thick fan bead necklace.

Scarto46 8:19

Oh yeah, no, I did the puka shell necklace. Yeah, it's still puka shell. God, those got so dirty, they were so disgusting I didn't change my driver's license picture for like 15 years and I had the freaking puka shell necklace on my driver's whatever dude what, dude?

Captain RoBear 8:35

that's a horcrux. Now, that's yeah I'm gonna bring puka shell necklaces back.

Scarto46 8:42

So when you're growing up, were games a constant for you?

Gamertag Origins & Building the Captain Persona

Captain RoBear 8:44

you mentioned you were cutting grass to buy the new nest game, but like yeah, so yeah, like super fortunate I, I also get to grow up with like the greatest era of gaming. You know, my my dad's a huge pinball nerd, so I grew up with a with a nice full cabinet downstairs, uh, which that's just a luxury to have. What pinball game, though it's an old mermaid.

Scarto46 9:08

Oh, yeah, god.

Ryanocerus 9:09

I love it.

Scarto46 9:09

My dad was a big pinball guy too. Man, that's so cool.

Captain RoBear 9:16

In that era we had that video rental arcade combo. Ours was called.

Ryanocerus 9:19

Videos and Cream, which is wild, a wild name to have now.

Captain RoBear 9:22

I remember going up and cashing tickets for Pogs, so I had that classic Strangers Things kind of 80s to 90s experience. I was born in 84, so I was born in the 80s, but when you're in small town America, the 90s were still the 80s.

Scarto46 9:36

Oh yeah, 100%.

Captain RoBear 9:38

Like my basement still looks like the basement I grew up in. Still looks like the Stranger Things one you know, but I was there. I that I grew up in still looks like the Stranger Things one you know, but I was there. I got to have the Atari 2600. I had that growing up, so gaming was always there. My brother's five years older so, thank God, he was always contributing way more in those early years to us getting stuff. So when we got that first NES, we got Duck Hunt, we had Mario and we got Dragon Warrior came with it, because Dragon Warrior came with the Nintendo Power subscription, oh yeah. And Dragon Warrior, which is Dragon Quest 1, which free pop for them.

Captain RoBear 10:11

The HD 2D remaster is coming out this fall of 1 and 2 and I'm so stoked to go back down there. I'm playing 3 right now, which I never got to play way back in the day and it's actually canonically before. It's one of those prequel. The third is the prequel, but that game is coming out. That's what got me hook, line and sinker for turn-based and that's where I fell in love with JRPGs and forming a party and hunting for loot.

Captain RoBear 10:38

Everything stems from that experience. So you know I beat Dragon Warrior. This is when I'm going to kindergarten at like half day, so I'm getting to play for those couple of hours before my brother gets back home. So you got to be all in and I beat the game before him as a kindergartner. He was so pissed, just so livid that his little brother, just you know, just destroyed this game in my small window. So like that was my first claim to fame. And and of course, then I get Final Fantasy one. You know you beat it once with a varied party. You start doing crazy combinations of all all white mages, all black mages, all thieves, you know, all red mages. And so I go down that JRPG line. I keep getting to grow as a person with each system that comes out Super Nintendo in the Sega era, but went through all those and the rest is history as far as electronic gaming.

Ryanocerus 11:31

I was going to say when did the tabletop stuff come into the picture and what got you pulled into D&D?

Captain RoBear 11:37

So when I was in Boy Scouts, the high degree of rain out and just shit weather just absolutely spurns tabletop and storytelling. So there's just a lot of camp outs of like you wanted to have a great nature weekend and your ass is in a tent holding on for dear life while being pelted by nature's worst. So naturally boys are going to tell scary stories, they're going to do all those kinds of like communal things. When you're forced to be in a small area and with having tons of bad weather, me and my troop we always made a gaming tent where all this could go and fit, so like you didn't have to go in like crowd one person's tent. So we were always set up like this mega, like communal space when we would do it, and so then we would game and back then it was a D&D. Did we know any of the rules?

Ryanocerus 12:33

Very little we were trying to play D&D, just living the whole time. Yeah, just stories with your boys.

Captain RoBear 12:40

Yeah, it's just more of glorified story time. It wasn't until HeroQuest hit. And it's crazy to think, because the new D&D sets that are coming out right now the Heroes of the Borderlands looks a lot like HeroQuest Because it's pre-gens. They're doing a lot of the deck building with cards so it's easier for people to like oh, here's what I have, these are the cards in my hand. That's also influenced with where gaming is at right now. Deck builders are all the rage.

Captain RoBear 13:08

Everybody knows that's an easy way for somebody to parse a lot of information. But HeroQuest, man, it's just such an easy way to get in to that style of like dungeon crawling and that's very much what it is. You know it's, you can rp as little as you want. It is mechanically going through a dungeon with a dungeon master and rolling very simple dice that have skulls or shields on them. We have every hero quest that's ever available, including our old og set, and right now we're very much doing what we did underneath the tents back in the day. It's more like action figure play for them and talking about what is a wizard and what do they do and what they have. So they're getting that baseline competency right now. That's going to pay dividends here in a couple years when they're like, hey, uncle roe, will you run us through hero quests? And I'll be like, oh yeah, buddy. Oh yeah, we're so, ed. They have no idea how good they're about to have it.

Storytelling Roots: HeroQuest, Boy Scouts, and D&D

Captain RoBear 14:04

But yeah, that's where my origin was. So like we played a ton of HeroQuest in those long upper South Midwestern winters and it gets cold, you got nothing else to do. We would 100% run through HeroQuest and like that kind of kept me maintained all the way through high school. I did pick up like a weird D&D like Dragon Quest box that was kind of trying to be Hero Quest but it was like more advanced, it had a lot of the art from AD&D and second edition and whatnot. But we would always just kind of like take stuff from that and put it into Hero Quest. But there came a point where that just all stopped. Like high school hit. Like once you get, you know your car keys and you take an interest in whatever, things start to go drastically in a different direction. So what became my crutch then was when the release of World of Warcraft that was my senior year of high school. Oh, dude, you were a WoW player.

Scarto46 14:58

Oh yeah.

Captain RoBear 14:58

BC, oh bro.

Scarto46 14:59

Yeah, okay, so I was a vanilla WoW player. What did you play in WoW? What class?

Captain RoBear 15:04

Oh, dude, lifetime, Shaman Lifetime.

Scarto46 15:06

Shaman. Oh man, you have such Shaman energy, bro. That makes so much sense Lifetime Shaman man.

Captain RoBear 15:12

I love that kind of support. It scratches the itch of my little bit of my native heritage a little bit.

Scarto46 15:18

Oh man, I've gone down a rabbit, was a hunter for a freaking. I don't know what did I play like 10 years and so that's all I played was one freaking hunter. It was so good man.

Captain RoBear 15:31

Hey, when you had time to waste, let me tell you what. I would hang out those soul stones and be like, hey, big boys, who needs a healer? What a totally different way of how you play games now. But once we got that, that was such a good experience and fulfilled that niche, I didn't need to organize people. And because organizing people became very difficult because if we were organizing, we were socializing and going to parties and going to different socialization events and developing as a human in a different way.

Captain RoBear 16:00

Nowadays I think we've circled back to that where I think that that's a premium experience for people growing up now and I think they are gathering around a physical table more than what I did during that time, the period of time that I grew up in. That filled the niche and I didn't get back to it until I sat down with 5th edition and if I hadn't tuned in and seen Critical Role at that time, if I hadn't hopped on before that Briarwood arc and was like you know what I miss, that I miss telling stories like that in person, and so I hopped on the fifth edition train there. So I went from barely knowing anything about D&D, missed all the Thaco years and fourth edition and all that Was able to ride the wave of a very, very and easy system, which 5e is, and never look back do you remember the first time you dm'd then and what made you want to dm?

Captain RoBear 16:53

that was out of necessity. You didn't know it when you were younger, but like, yeah, taking over those games in hero quest, I knew if we wanted to play, I needed to be the dm. I needed to foster that you had to be your own advocate and nobody else was going to, hey, let's come over and play this. Also, they didn't own the box. I happened to be the lucky kid that owned the box. There's so many factors then that determine whether you become that guy. I was lucky. I had the DNA, the gumption, wanted to play.

Captain RoBear 17:20

I want to hype other people up to play. I'm the one that's there during class like, oh, what are you going to play? Are you going to play Wizard? Are you going to do this? I'm wanting to live in that space in my head. So I'm naturally being the maven, trying to drum up the support to go and play, and to this day, that's still the role that I play. I enjoy getting people pumped up and excited to go play something, whether it's D&nd or another video game that's out there. So my first experience behind the screen was literally hero quest and that's. I think that's where I really got my dmpc chops, because I was like dude, I'm still playing. I don't care if I know where all this stuff is. Never, nobody, ever told me that I didn't have to. I knew what. I knew that how to play without ruining the experience for everybody else when did you get the captain's hat man?

Captain RoBear 18:05

Was that around the same?

Scarto46 18:06

time.

Ryanocerus 18:06

I love it. I'm so addicted to it.

Captain RoBear 18:09

Yeah, so the hat. Okay, this is man. This is decades, decades ago now. This is like the first big bachelor party of my, my friend group, and we're going down to new Orleans and everybody's hyped and whatnot, and they're like oh man, robert, you need, you should rock, you should rock the captain's hat. I'm like, of course I should, absolutely I will 100 do this, and so go out on the town. I mean, there's no easier icebreaker than wearing a captain's hat and looking like a c-store. Jason momoa lou albano is the easiest thing.

Captain RoBear 18:43

Being Timu Mamoa is the easiest thing of my lifetime. It was obviously a huge success. We had a blast. And they're like, well, you got to wear that, you have to wear that during the wedding. And I'm like, oh, of course I am Duh. I'm, I'm 22 years old. So I started wearing the blue blazer, the khakis, the captain's hat. This is pre-beard. This is crazy, I'm coming off. I'm coming off my job at anheuser-busch. So I got like short hair. So I'm just, I just look like a normal guy with a captain's hat at this point, until the rest of the chops on or what man?

Captain RoBear 19:13

yeah, still got the wicked chops still still very much elvis, but yeah, everything else is just starting to get grown back out again. Um, and I keep meeting people as the captain because that's just the easy thing. Everybody refers to you because it's like, hey, it's captain and I keep doing it, wedding to wedding to wedding, and everybody knows if you're from a small town, you hit that, you hit that season. Yeah, it's wedding season. Baby, being a fraternity man and having all these connections in my life and then being in the bar business, you know a lot of people, so you're a lot of weddings, so just naturally end up meeting, like my state legislators, at the captain over the course of time.

Captain RoBear 19:49

And like it's just wild. So that just became a thing. So then it would come back to my bar and they'd be like, hey, where's the captain at? Where's captains at? I'm like I'm going to have to go take this thing off my family's pontoon and I'm out to put it in my freaking bar. And so then it just became fused with my forehead and when it came time to stream, why would I ever even bother trying to take this thing off? At this point everyone knows me as the captain. There's no sense trying to knock this branding. So what a lot of people think was like a stream gimmick or something I'm like, oh no, no, this is my life. I have to moisturize my forehead consistently.

Scarto46 20:23

So you were Captain Robear before you were ever Captain Robear.

Captain RoBear 22:02

Yeah, 100%. So when it comes down to the username, I technically would say I was Captain Rob, because people were still just saying Captain Rob or the Captain, and that was a good distinction, because when you're Captain Rob, people really want to call you Captain Bob and I'm not a Bob. I'm not a Bob and I'm not a Bert. Or they want to call you captain bob and I'm not a bob, I'm not a bob and I'm not a bert. Or they want to say captain ron and so it's hey. It's just super easy to pass by that. Yeah, I was either robear or I was rob, because I had a lot of friends that already call me robear.

Captain RoBear 22:28

I'm a big dude, easy to align with the bear. I wear the witcher necklace, the house of the bear, because I love the heavy armor boys. I ain't got time to roll away. The fun thing, though, with the branding at the very beginning I was like should I put a bear paw up on this captain's hat? And I was like. I looked at it and go something internally was like my spidey sense was going off and I go oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. No, I cannot do this, because that is the sign of bears in the bear community.

Marthah Maple 23:00

Yeah, it's always about it.

Captain RoBear 23:03

My inner leather daddy was trying to tell me he was like no no, this is. I can't represent this community. That's not me.

Scarto46 23:11

My inner leather daddy is such a great sentence.

Ryanocerus 23:14

Inner leather daddy is. I mean I want to change my game routine.

Captain RoBear 23:18

I'm going to give you guys a killer story right now of Inner Leather Daddy, let's do it. That involves my first bear experience. This channel's back in the high school. I'm being an old school metalhead. I'm taking a friend to their first Kill Switch Engage show Awesome, they've always wanted to go, but they've been scared of the crowd. I'm like, hey, you stick with me, I'm going to be on the outside of wherever the pit is. I'm going to be protecting people, like I always do. I was like don't worry.

Captain RoBear 23:43

You'll be with me. I'll make sure that everybody gets up. If you get pushed around whatnot? You'll be fine, you'll enjoy the music. So I booked a show up in Chicago and the location of the venue happens to be named the Bottom Lounge lounge. Not thinking anything other than the fact that this is in the basement of the building. We take our tickets to the bottom lounge and we show up that night in chicago and you know, both of us young bearded males happen to walk in to. Not only do we walk into a, into a bear bar, but we happen to walk in right when adam d, the guitarist, is up on stage and goes. Is everybody here ready for bear week? Let me tell you the experience of being a fresh young cub, unwillingly the greatest night of my life. I mean maybe there was a few people crossing the line that night with, uh, with how close and everyone was slamming each other in the pit.

Captain RoBear 24:40

But I tell you, what I had no bar tab. It was a wonderful experience with the community. It was one of the craziest shows that I've ever been to. That sounds amazing. We were the only people not in leather. It was like a movie us walking into the show so funny. Me and my buddy still talk about it to this day is like the wildest experience of our lives that's so crazy, dude, that's awesome.

Scarto46 25:03

I mean one like no one. You said so many things tonight that like stuck out in my head you said the word pogs, which like resonated like very deep with me, and then kill, switch, engage.

Ryanocerus 25:13

No one talks about kill switch, engage and pogs in the same freaking conversation you've built some really cool ecosystems with Saved by the Spell and Neon Regimes and Marrow Strand. When did this kind of shift from passion projects into more of a creative world for you?

Captain RoBear 25:28

Well, I mean, I was in that situation of like it just didn't matter. It was, the boats were burnt so I could do really whatever I wanted. I was living off savings regardless. So whether I was trying to be a creator at that time the minute I shut the doors to my bar, or I was trying to invent myself in something else, it got to be what I wanted to do in the first place. But before all these shows, you don't get to just do that Like that's not how the creative economy works. So I've always had a bar during a distinct moment of my time. That was authentically me. Early 20s nightclub scene yeah, that's what you are Into a dive bar in your mid-20s. That's what I was. Later retiring into a craft beer bar and not serving another mixed drink ever again in my life, just pouring the beers that I loved. I've always done it from a sense of I'm going to do my best work. That's most authentically me and that's always what's going to make me tick and make me work. That's what carried me through those three different iterations while I was in the bar.

Captain RoBear 26:30

Business Streaming you don't exactly get to do that and that's why I started on Mixer instead of the big pool that was Twitch. I went in there. I knew that I needed to hack attention immediately. I needed to jump on something that was new, and we did co-stream. If you put four people together and everybody has one or two people, all of a sudden you have a chat room and I knew the secrets. I was very lucky as well. I went to a Guardian con before it turned into GCX event. I was a Destiny 2 and Destiny player, so I went to that event. That was King Githalion, professor Broman, lee Love's chief, returned to Leviathan. A whole crew of those content creators that I watched because we were part of this Destiny community and I was a community member back then. We all met down in that bar at the Miller Ale House down in Tampa and that thing ended up spurning a convention that we just got to our capstone this year of raising $20 million for St Jude.

Love, Leadership, and Building Better Tables

Captain RoBear 27:26

Wow, it's freaking awesome dude, which is a wild path to go. But these first people I met. My first industry friend, nelstar, who worked in software sales at the time, ended up becoming a dev working for Square Enix, working for 505 Games and Rivety. That's where I met all my first peers. So when this, when my goose got cooked I did have some mentorship to lean on and send a few people messages and be like what did the economics look like? And it was really Professor Broman at that time who was doing a lot of how to content creation work, running a show that was, if you don't have a stream yet, you should create your community on Mixer. And I was able to take that advice and that strategy and it worked perfectly to build all the way up into my first moment where I'm asking internet friends, do you want to play Dungeons Dragons? I knew this was my goalpost.

Captain RoBear 28:18

Originally I thought I was going to bring the people that I played with live together Absolutely too unreliable. To make that happen, we had to find people that were already pre-set up and that man, this was the dark days. So when we would go and run those first D&D sessions and say, by the spell, which those are? Those are people that I know in person that played together. We had voice meter, banana and blue Yeti, snowballs and some of the worst of the worst stuff to deal with for people that don't know how to run a setup.

Captain RoBear 28:50

Then we have the seven layers of hell of background noise. We don't have crisp on discord. We don't even have discord yet. We're talking Skype calls. But once you build that momentum, then it was like, okay, we're going to add a second and you got to keep meeting people and people that want to play and that's where I was able to steamroll and eventually I got to that point where I did not have to play a video game or be in some of those niches, because, man, that is a brutal thing to do. To have to play one game every day the same thing. You're gonna drive yourself insane, but you have to almost do it to start your content creation journey, otherwise you're just not gonna be seen.

Scarto46 29:29

Love your freaking story about like reinventing yourself, like after your career and running the bars and then taking all of those experiences all the way back to freaking boy scouts where you started. That is such a wild, cool story. And now you live this life that you built for yourself around playing D&D on the internet with your friends. That's so cool, dude, very blessed. So your style of storytelling is you've lived it right. Was that intentional from the start, that emotional type of cinematic style that you go into, or is that something you grew into's?

Captain RoBear 30:00

just me. I'm already. My public persona has already turned up to 11, because that's all I've ever done. That's what I do.

Scarto46 30:06

Well, if people haven't talked to you before like one-on-one. You're a super big empath. Like you're reading the room 24, 7 on people's energy yeah, yeah, my.

Captain RoBear 30:14

my goal in life has always been to try to make sure everybody in the room is having a good time and trying to be a good host. I have a blast when everybody else is having a blast and seeing seeing joy and people laughing, like that's the good stuff, that's what makes you survive this world. That's that first bit of escapism. Sometimes it's just sharing what the human condition is.

Captain RoBear 30:35

let alone getting to enjoy escapism or games with people. So you don't need a tabletop or anything else, just to enjoy each other's company and you know that's, that's the stuff that that makes us want to be on this planet. So, like I, it was naturally. I've always felt I felt that call for that and that's my natural skill set. So I'm just lucky that there's a place to apply that and, luckily, a place to survive and sustain and what is a wild changing world.

Scarto46 31:02

Well, we were talking about earlier and you were talking about hey man, this, these are just my skills. They're they're turned up to 11, but I really understand myself and I think, when you're describing that that's probably why people feel like your tables are dope and that they really want to come back to those tables when you have someone join your table, or they're in your space or they're they're on your stream. What is it that you're trying to get them to take away with them? Like, what do you want them to walk away with?

Captain RoBear 31:24

I'm trying to get them invested as much into the players in their table as they're invested in their character. Yeah, Once the table truly loves each other you don't have to be friends before that. It literally can be that experience that bonds everyone together and galvanizes you as a party.

Captain RoBear 31:43

A lot of times it's that first emotional moment. It can be that first time when everybody is just laughing so hard they can barely breathe. It can come at a varying degree of moments, but you can become very, very fast friends and that is just the good stuff. That is always the goal.

Scarto46 32:00

Well, I said this to you before, before we started, in the hour and a half that we recorded before but, it's leadership, dude, your point about galvanizing and your point about the table coming together and man.

Scarto46 32:09

love is what powers everything. I think about the same thing. Right, if people believe in each other, and they believe in what they're trying to do and they're all looking the same direction, there's nothing that a group of human beings can't accomplish. When human beings are off, it's because they're looking in different directions and they don't know how to talk to each other, and so creating a space where people can do. That is so, so cool, bro. That's just building a culture where people can just thrive.

Captain RoBear 32:30

And I'll be honest, people see. People see the successes they don't remember. When I made a mistake and didn't do my safety tools, due diligence with friends that I knew and I accidentally dropped some spiders out of nowhere on a friend I didn't know was arachnophobic. It just never came up and this was really before everybody was going through session zero with a fine-tooth comb and it just didn't dawn on me to check on my own friend that I knew. And obviously it's easy pivot, you just remove it, you get your own version of the red card, you pivot, you're off of it.

Captain RoBear 33:06

But I don't ever forget that experience and I talk about it with my friend all the time that that cut me to my soul, that I didn't take the time to do my due diligence with my own good friends. You don't forget that. And those are the times that a lot of people don't see or they don't remember. But we're like everybody else. I have learned the hard lessons. Some of it comes with being 40 years old and being around the block. The more you have experienced life, the better storyteller you are and the better you're going to be at this stuff and more prepared.

Scarto46 33:35

Totally agree. But I think the other thing, what you just talked about, is and I think this is true what makes good leaders are leaders who are willing to be introspective, and while I'm talking about leadership in this conversation, when you're at a table or in your community, you're leading that and there's an expectation that you're holding for yourself, cultivating a community that can say they're sorry and that they love each other.

Captain RoBear 33:55

Yeah, dude.

Captain RoBear 33:57

You just have to do that. That is life. You're going to make mistakes. You just have to do that. That is life you need. You're going to make mistakes, but you'll be the accountable person in the room and there's a reason why you need accountability. When those hard truths strike hard, those are time to change your behavior and it's not going to happen overnight. And don't bullshit. The bullshitters say I am working on this and I'm trying to be better. People will always appreciate the struggle and the journey and if you do that from the top and if you can get everybody to buy in that, it's okay to say I messed up, I'm sorry, I'm going to try to do better. Once you learn that, you're going to be in a really good spot, whatever Dude.

Scarto46 34:37

I'm all about that. You got to be able to say I'm sorry. You got to be able to say I love you, and those are really two hard things to say. We're all kind of like a bunch of broken crayons. Right, I'm the crayon that you use on every single drawing and you color it a lot, and it's got all the other colors on the top of it and it's rounded off. That's me.

Captain RoBear 34:53

You know what I mean. I am Because, hey, Homeboy did not get the 64 crayon with the sharpener on the side. I did not grow up inside of the 64 crayon world Primary colors.

Scarto46 35:07

baby, there's no difference of colors in that box.

Ryanocerus 35:10

You've talked a lot about community building and leading people, but what's something people might not see that it takes to run that space but to also keep it human?

Captain RoBear 35:21

You really. There's four hours of prep for a four hour D&D session. It's hard when you're creative because it's the most uninteresting part of your day, but that has to get done. Then actual self-care on top of trying to fill the creative well, that four hours needs to be filled back with other pieces of content, whether it's the nature walk, it's watching Netflix, doing all of those things. You have to fill that back in. You have to find your muse, otherwise you're just going to, you're going to get lost in all of this.

Re-Rolling Real Life: Discipline, Time, and Self-Worth

Captain RoBear 35:53

Those are the behind the scenes things that people don't think about. That's where, unfortunately, how good you are and how disciplined you are is going to quickly start to show. And one of your big questions on this prep sheet is like boy, if you could reroll one of your own stats, hell yeah, I wish I was more disciplined. Absolutely, absolutely, wish I was more disciplined. I have to fight and struggle. I can only be 10% better of the worst disciplined person on the planet. I can only be 10% better of the worst disciplined person on the planet. But I have my superpowers because of my rabbit holes and because of what I go down, what I consume and how I treat myself. That's how the creative side comes out. This is I do not get to have a 20 in all the stats. That's not how this works. Those are things you have to fight and struggle with and you have to pre-plan and really understand what you're capable of and what you're not. You learn you're going to have to trust people in this life and you have to figure out how you're going to trust.

Captain RoBear 36:46

I went from having 30 people on a staff to nobody. Back to myself again. It was like, hey, there is no one to delegate to, there is nothing. You were on 24 seven until you grow to a certain size to have your own team. This is how it's going to be and it's going back to square one, which is a wild feeling. But, man, there's so much behind the scenes that you have to do within a day. If you just don't start budgeting out your time, you're going to collapse and start, unfortunately, hating yourself for not getting stuff done, when you're just not capable of getting all of that stuff done. You're just going to have to pick what you're able to do and settle for that and that's okay.

Captain RoBear 37:30

And you need to get comfortable with it and you need to understand that that's your best.

Scarto46 37:34

Bro, I'm going to give you like a three-part question, because you already talked about the stat that you're like. Hey man, it can't all be 20s, but where do you see the identity of Captain Robear heading? And what's next in that next version of you?

Captain RoBear 37:50

And which stat stays locked at 20 always. I mean charisma isn't just hard locked at 20. I've spent my 40 years in this life being an ENFP and making sure. That is the most important part of my business. So making friends is the easy part. This is. I think this is a great what's in store for Captain Robear. I have never run merch, really Never run merch, ever Zero. Here's the deal. As a small business owner, I cannot stand the quality of drop ship.

Marthah Maple 38:19

Yep.

Captain RoBear 38:20

And I cannot do that to people and I don't know why it's acceptable on the internet and I think it is an absolute travesty that people accept that quality and charge those kinds of prices to their community for what they're providing. If you're charging somebody $25, $30 for a shirt, that thing better be a lifer Okay, Especially in this economy when money is short, because I know I am not capable of running an online business and stuffing envelopes when I'm over here reading about UFOs at three o'clock in the morning. I can't do that. I know that's not in my skillset to get done and I know I have to hire a team to get that done. I'm doing it to Robear's level. Is it neurotic? Am I leaving money on the table 100%? Is it 100% authentically me? You bet your ass.

Scarto46 39:10

There's a certain quality and expectation you have for whatever you put your name on or how you're approaching it. Could you just drop merch, sure, but like that's not what you're about, you know what I mean 100% half a million dollars in debt.

🃏 ReRoll: The Legendary Bard Captain

Captain RoBear 39:29

So all my assets were zero. I went from building my little that was my egg to zero. The minute you hit that and realize that you truly don't have any control, you immediately no longer worship the dollar and your only currency in this life is time, and I don't work 16 hour days anymore. I eat family meals with my nephews on Friday nights, we watch wrestling together and get rowdy with two little boys things I would have never done if I was still in the bar industry. Time is your most important currency and you just don't understand it until you're old enough. And if you do get an understanding when you're younger, the more powerful you will be, because you are the only person that is in charge of that currency and nobody can can take that piece away from you. You have to maximize it for what you can.

Scarto46 40:18

Time is the only currency that you have. You invest time in certain things and certain things aren't worth the time.

Captain RoBear 40:25

Every day can be the next day that you reinvent yourself, and you have to live that way, your freaking story is so awesome, bro.

Scarto46 40:33

All right, you know that we do a segment on this show called re-roll, right, yeah, okay, and we envision, right. What is it? What does a person's persona look like? Now, you, you do this all the time. You invent lots of characters. So I'm gonna flip it on you and say let's talk about captain robert. You know what I mean. What does the scene look like, what's the world look like and what's the opening shot when Captain Robert appears?

Captain RoBear 41:00

So I get to do this all the time, so it's not like a super crazy out of body experience for me.

Captain RoBear 41:03

So I run a family of dwarves, the Barley family. And the Barley family is largely me, telling the same story over and over again of me choosing work versus having a family, and it's told in a different way kind of every time, whether it's the experiences of you know it, not working out and having the same priorities as the significant other, or it's getting lost in the sauce and enjoying work so much that you're Peter Panning and you don't care whatever else happens around you. My favorite moments are always when we're gathered around a campfire and people finally really start opening up their character to each other. So when we're at camp we're talking about what's not only in the first Dutch oven but what's on the auxiliary.

Captain RoBear 41:49

So we're talking about doing hardcore pork chops in gravy, simmering over here on the side grilling in a deep frying, getting that good crust before they go into the gravy and we have a side cobbler with just that perfect crust on top from the good berries that we've loaded it up. So not only is it a dessert, but it's life sustaining and giving us HP back. So we're merging worlds and man. When we were in lockdown, the thing I missed the most was eating with my friends. So, dude, our food RP just got out of control.

Captain RoBear 42:22

Us talking about all the things that we wanted to sit down and enjoy that human experience that is enjoying a meal with each other. We go hard in the paint, so hard we've actually started to make our own little subclass called Sandwichmancer. Sandwichmancer my boy is a huge sandwich foodie, so he's going down the trek of enjoying different sandwiches of the realm and eventually he's going to become the Iron chef, the sandwich master, as well. But we do that and we basically flavor it in with a little hero feast. So, like the party's getting good bonus, I'm rewarding the cool rp of him having prepped like what kind of cool sandwich he's going to talk about? He's he's a new yorker, so he has an endless amount of deli concoctions from his local that are just off the chain. It's bringing hospitality into my D and D.

Scarto46 43:13

I love it, dude, so. So what is? What does Captain Rover have with him?

Captain RoBear 43:16

I'm always playing at kind of this like hybrid of a Druid cleric, bard, so it's basically like I have the storytelling and the lore from the bard. I have my support, heavy armor, classic Dwarven shield cleric where I can be like the off tank and help support and heal the party. And then there's my druidic background. My family are actually arborists. They came over here from Germany and they were the nurserymen and so that's what I grew up with in my life, always being around you know, trees and nature. So I had that hard connection to the earth and whatnot. So like I blend those worlds together, along with my Native American heritage. That kind of all comes together in one amalgamation.

Captain RoBear 43:56

So I'm always like a cleric of. Shantae is a big one for me, you know. So I'm able to tap into the things that I love Oktoberfest, the big fall festivals, the fair time, the food. I'm always got like a little you know, usually some sort of like mini keg or fermentation vessel, because I'm trying to do fun things with goodberry. I like a shield the mace or shield the axe kind of guy, always have been. Those are the things on me. I like being prepared.

Scarto46 44:22

I'm a little jack of all trades to assist and facilitate man, that is a beautiful wild scene that you've painted, oh crap. So is there like a certain aura that captain robert has, besides being like jovial, energetic, right, but like yeah, I don't know man it's laughter man.

Captain RoBear 44:41

It's always. That's where you're going to hear me, even before you see me and it's tough because I am easy to see across the convention floor she will hear me before you, even see me.

Scarto46 44:52

No doubt I have a crazy idea. We have been capturing notes about you throughout the podcast, right, because we have re-roll and in re-roll what we do is we take the key personality traits, preferred roles in gameplay, favorite genres and worlds, signature style or vibe and visual inspiration and we jam that into a bot and we say what the hell will this create from a visual?

Scarto46 45:15

standpoint okay, and so what happens is put all this into our bot and then we'll read to you all the personality traits we've captured, but we roll the first roll and then you get two re-rolls to change anything you want. What do you think? You think we should try it?

Captain RoBear 45:31

let's go. I hey, all roads lead to Tom Bombadil, but I'm here for it.

Marthah Maple 45:35

All right, we're friends.

Scarto46 45:37

We're best friends. Huzzah, I'm going to show you what we've captured about you so you can see the prompt before we put it in. We try to capture parts both about your story and where you come from, but also Captain Robear, so we're going to mesh those things together. Let's go, and it's going to be wild potentially.

Marthah Maple 46:05

For your key personality traits. We have bartender, clearly, Beer history buff, which.

Captain RoBear 46:12

I, I love you're a storyteller.

Marthah Maple 46:15

You're extremely passionate about the things that you love and it is so fun to hear you talk about them. You're authentic and introspective and you're jovial. Your preferred roles in gameplay Captain. Clearly You're super energetic. You're an uncle, a game master, a performer, a builder in many senses, and you're a friend. Your genres and worlds that we have are Hero Quest, dragon Quest, d20, lord of the Rings and Ex exandria.

Captain RoBear 46:53

I threw that one in octoberfest is a realm as well your signature style, or vibe, is obviously your legendary captain's hat tavern on a pirate ship, natural 20.

Marthah Maple 47:07

I feel like you give very big net 20 vibes. You're so full of energy. Native American heritage, your Elvis chops uh, long hair and beard, hybrid druid, cleric, bard, and your hard connection to the earth. The D&D table mixed with a bar top, running your family of dwarves, the Barley family, and exploring those dynamics around the campfire Top tier food, role play, shield and mace at hand. Aura of laughter here that I don't think necessarily falls under any of these categories is that line that you had said which is just going to do my best work. That is authentically me. I love that. I think that is the purest thing you could say oh, I love it so we have no idea what will happen when we hit this button.

Final Thoughts: Time, Authenticity & the North Star

Scarto46 48:06

But you want to find out together? Let's do it, sweet bro. All right, here we go. But you want to find out together? Let's do it, sweet bro. All right, here we go magic card. I love it, the art felt so different than the other ones we've had. So the rules are you can change anything you want about this, but it's all chance, because it's all chance that it doesn't come back the same way it is right now.

Captain RoBear 48:36

No, it's too good. There's no re-roll. You send it Ten out of ten. Ten out of ten.

Ryanocerus 48:41

A re-roll bought is like a gin. So sometimes it'll do nice things for you and sometimes it'll say, oh, that's what you asked for, that's not what we're doing.

Captain RoBear 48:49

In my experience, you gain something and you lose something.

Marthah Maple 48:54

I love that. You love it.

Captain RoBear 48:55

I love that. You love it too, man, that's great man.

Scarto46 48:58

I love that. All right, let's see. It's going to generate a backstory. You're the jovial bard captain, we're going to say the jovial legendary captain.

Captain RoBear 49:05

Man making me a legendary card off the bat. So much power it's a hollow card.

Ryanocerus 49:09

I think that's totally a hollow. For sure, We've got to talk to Sushi about making this one a hollow card.

Scarto46 49:14

So, ale in one hand, shield, in the other he commands the room with laughter, lore and legendary tales of the sea. That's so good. Awesome man.

Captain RoBear 49:23

I think the most important thing that I want to know if I can feel any more scene. I mean, this is what I am. I am a freshwater captain. When I spend my weekends, I am on my pontoon at Kentucky Lake having a blast with my nephews and we're sitting floating, swimming and having a good time.

Scarto46 49:47

Captain Robert, what we do for the last part of the show is we give the floor to you man. So whatever you want to say to the audience, to folks who are listening to your community, to anyone, it's your show. So finish us off, brother.

Captain RoBear 50:00

Yeah, hey you're never too old for new tricks. I will say the craziest thing that's happened to me in streaming in the last month is we went on and played a 15 year old MMO after we got done streaming D&D. All because one of my friends, ted Nerd Immersion, shout out to Ted, who does awesome content. Ted wanted to play Guild Wars and he had the itch to play an MMO and we eventually found out it was a Guild Wars veteran. So I started playing Guild Wars 2 for the first time and we had probably our one of the funnest, most financially successful streams of my career, playing a 15 year old MMO in the middle of the night on a Monday.

Captain RoBear 50:42

You never know when these things are going to happen and they just line up and tick all the boxes. But when they do, the formula is still the same. You're seen on Twitch because you're in the right directory at the right time. People can see you on the front page. If you're not on the front page and being that big fish in a small pond, you're going to have to rely on all your other sources to being seen. But every now and then you can put all of the pieces of the pie together that make these things work.

Captain RoBear 51:13

Sometimes that's just you and your friend laughing and running around at a 15 year old MMO in the middle of the night, acting just like you would, as if the camera wasn't on, just enjoying each other's company, exploring a game together, and just call upon everyone whenever you're thinking about getting involved in this space, come at it as the angle of trying to be your most authentic self and representing that. That is always the secret sauce. It's not being a voice actor from LA. It's about loving people at the table and coming together for something. Whatever that piece of content is, that's what makes people want to sit on the couch next to you, and I can't encourage people more or enough to find their North star in that way, instead of just thinking about dollars, cents or what people want to watch.

Scarto46 52:06

That's beautiful, brother. You said it a couple of times tonight, but I'm going to. But I'm going to call it back If people love each other and they're willing to say they're sorry, then humans can do anything, and thank you for building spaces where people can do that, bro.

Captain RoBear 52:19

Hell yeah, thanks for giving me the platform to run my yapper. You guys are fantastic. It's so much fun. We could have talked for four hours.

Scarto46 52:26

Well, Robert, thanks for joining us tonight. We really appreciate having you. Thanks for all your time. You're just freaking awesome dude. I'm excited to share the first holo card that we're going to create on Gamertag, and it's going to be you, buddy.

Captain RoBear 52:38

I appreciate it. You all are fantastic, thank you.

Marthah Maple 52:45

Thank you so much to Captain Robert for coming on and sharing his story. That was such a fun ride.

Scarto46 52:52

Yeah, from boy band haircuts and wild bar stories to the Barley family dwarves, Captain Robert gave us everything.

Marthah Maple 52:59

My favorite part was his reminder that time is the only currency we've really got. That one, like, really hit deep.

Scarto46 53:06

Yeah, and now he's immortalized as our very first hollow foil re-roll card. Seriously, go check it out, it's gorgeous.

Marthah Maple 53:12

And if you enjoyed this conversation, leaving a review or hitting that subscribe button really helps more people to find the show.

Scarto46 53:19

Thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you next time on the next episode of Gamertagged.