Do you hear that sound?
Crickets? Are you integrating sound effects?! Dreams do come true.
Dreams come true. They do. Oh, wait. Oh, just you wait, just, it's gonna get buck wild up in here.
Oh, I'm so excited.
How are you my friend? I've been thinking about you this week.
Uh, yeah, it's not been my favorite week in the spirit of honesty...
yeah.
...and full disclosure. For anybody listening who's not my friend on Facebook or Instagram. Um, I had to say goodbye to my wonderful 17 year old cat last week, my sweet little Maggie and that sucked.
Oh,
There's just no, no other way around it.
Never a time where that's cool.
Do not recommend. Um, so yeah, just been laying low this week and cuddling my other little snuggle bun, Coney Bear, Um, and trying against all of my best efforts to take it easy and take it slow, which is very hard for me to do.
Yeah. Cuz that's the other thing is that you were supposed to have this week off, you were supposed to go to Maine.
Mm-hmm I am not in Maine right now. I am in Charlotte, North Carolina, but it's okay. I figured Maine will always be there. I hope, I hope, you know, if any of the, you know, Continental US falls off into the ocean. And floats away. Maine is not my pick. Dear Ocean take Florida take Texas.
Mm-hmm.
So, so yeah, so I, I adapted, I changed my plans. I, uh, bailed out of my vacation. Um, and I stayed home and attempted to rest, but worked more instead.
Oh, bummer.
Go ahead and play the womp womp womp sound.
Oh, that's the wrong sound. Oh man.
You gotta laugh. You have to laugh.
You gotta laugh. Um, not a, not a fun week. I know. I know, but it's, you know, I think it has just been, it's just been hard on everybody, I don't know why it's just something in the air.
Truly.
Something about August.
Yeah, we're in the, in between where it we're all tired of summer and it's not quite fall, but the kids have already gone back to school and we're just seeing, you know, all these different shifts in ours and our loved ones lives.
We're in the upside down.
Yeah. Yeah. We are.
I think I may, maybe I forget every year that, that it's August is a little bit like that because I have great things to celebrate. Um, next week is my 10th year anniversary.
Double digits!
Yeah, I know. I
That's amazing.
I can't even believe it can't even, Uh, well, no, that's not true. I can totally believe it. I can
Those of us who have met your wife could totally believe it.
Yeah. Yeah.
As per usual, I have a sweet little outline for today that we are welcome to ignore or keep to. We'll see, we'll see how it goes. You know, this, everything this week is just up in the air in some great experiments. So we'll just, we'll see. Um, but, but first but first, Matt, but first, do you know what time it is?
Don't have
Oh my goodness.
ready to bed.
Um, your, uh, links for you are in Slack.
Yes, I actually, I saw it and I opened it and then I closed it again. I was like, I'm so excited. I'm oh, I just got no, I've got it right here.
We are just walking tropes of ourselves most of the time.
Gonna be super trope-tastic. Super trope-tastic.
All right. You wanna, you wanna roll first? You wanna rock that, that, that dice roll first.
Okay. Yeah. D100! Inquiring minds want to know 40, 48 is the number that I'm rooting on the ADHd100, um, table.
So this is, this is one that I've actually been pretty excited about for a while. Build a D&D party with characters from a TV show. What show and what characters would you pick?
Oh, to play, like what characters would I play would just like.
No, like take the cast of Friends and like, you know, so you, you wouldn't wanna play with Ross, but you would play with, you know, Chandler and Joey and Rachel or whatever, you know, like you can, you can leave people out if their vibe isn't cool enough for D&D is telling.
Okay. Interesting. Interesting. I mean, Now that you've opened that up though, now that
I know. Right.
We kind of have to do that. Right? Because I saw, I watched Friends for the first time this year, um, and, and genuinely enjoyed it. I, I just, I, um, yeah, I was too snobby in the nineties and too busy. I think we've talked about that, We sat down and watched all of friends and I thought it was a strangely uplifting program. You know? I mean, it's just from starting to finish, they love each other. Right? Like, that's the cool thing. So what it would be, they would make a good D&D party.
Right. But of course I would leave Ross behind. I just can't. I can't do it Ross. I'm sorry, man. He, uh, he made the cut, but unfortunately, due to his hubris,
Mm.
He perished. He perished fighting an Owlbear, which is such a sad way to go.
At like level three too, Like not even, not even into it.
Let's see, Ross would be, um, I would say probably Ross then would be like a, a wizard wouldn't he? He'd be the studious type.
Yeah. right.
He would be he's the nerdy studious type. So he would be a wizard and,
He would be a wizard. He was probably planning on multi classing four or five times Paladin for some holy reason, you know? And didn't even get that far. Yeah.
Ooh, Ooh. Ooh. Is it, do I dislike Ross because. They might have coded him to have a little ADHD, but the annoying parts of ADHD that I, that are annoying to me about myself. And that's what turns me off of Ross.
Okay. That's its own episode. own thread.
it down. my God. Oh my God.
Oh, no.
Oh, that is at episode though. Okay, cool. Uh, anyway, Ross was a wizard. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see,. A druid would absolutely be Phoebe, right. Phoebe would be a druid.
Mm, a hundred.
Bard. Joey would be the Bard. Um, well Joey or Chandler.
Yeah.
That's tough.
Maybe they both would be bards. Maybe it would be a party of bards, a bardy party.
Maybe like one would be like sub classing is sort of a jester type and the other one would be more of a, I don't know. And then Monica? My favorite strangely.
Did you already say Rachel?
Oh, Rachel, right. Sorry. Rachel would be, I think Rachel would be a fighter,
Oh
So Monica, um, would then be
Hmm.
What would Monica be?
I feel like she would be some kind of a caster. I feel like she would be warlock or sorcerer.
She has a, she has a pact. She has a relationship with a...
Can't you see.
Well, maybe yeah, yeah. Uhhuh. I could see that. Um, I was trying to somehow work in her O C D.
Mm-hmm.
I was trying to somehow figure out what that, how that could manifest in a cool way, but, um, yeah, let's go with the warlock. Yeah, I like it. I like.
I sign off on all of these things.
Okay, great.
I'm sorry that if my example led you to feel, you know, railroaded and boxed in, but I love that.
No, it worked, it worked. I, I got to show off my, my new found knowledge of, of Friends.
Yeah. Yeah, I did take that by the way, as a future topic, takeaway of diagnosing our favorite characters with ADHD example, Ross from from
Yeah. Mm-hmm
We'll go down that, that, that masky path. All you ready for me?
Yes.
I have a 13.
13 is What is your favorite D&D spell?
Ooh. Ooh, I, so I, I, whatever one is the one that's going to cause the most damage. You know, even in games where I'm supposed to be like buffing other players or healing, like I'm not a good healer. I wanna fight. I wanna, I wanna kill stuff. So messed up. So I, I tend to like to cast the ones that you cast them once and then can use bonus actions to keep firing away, like a Call Lightning, um, or something like that. Moonbeam, Sunbeam, any of those where you cast on an action. Yeah.
Uhhuh.
Witch Bolt I don't like, because I feel limited that you can only send it at one person. You choose, you choose a, a place to send Witch Bolt. So I think I use this in one of our games in Strahd where I cast, Witch Bolt on somebody and they died in the next round. So then my Witch Bolt was wasted. I felt like, whereas. Area of effects. If I Call Lightning, man, I love that one.
Cuz you could just move it around wherever you want it to go and just smoke people out of their little hidey holes and just burn them to a shred. Love it.
OP, but, um, you were, you were playing the other day with one that, I wasn't super familiar with, but it was really cool. Mind Sliver. Is that, is it Mind Sliver? Is
I think it was no, I think it was Shatter. Mind Whip? Yes. Mind Whip is the one.
That one was cool.
Yeah, that one's
It did some really unique things like, yeah.
That's the one where I think same kind of vein. So it causes damage and then it takes things away from who it hits. So I think that's the one where on the next turn, the, if they, if they fail their save on their next turn, they can either have an action, a bonus action or a movement, not all three. And it's so limiting. Um, yeah, that one is fun. That's my newest character Cora. So I'm playing around cuz this is my second time playing a sorcerer.
Um, so on this one, I'm I'm trying very hard to not choose the same spells I've played with before, you know, stretching
Not it's really fun. You're doing a lot of thundery stormy.
Mm-hmm
Stormy weather kind of things. Yeah.
Gotta get that boom, boom, boom.
Yeah. Sweet, good answer! We need a, we need a sound effect for ADHd100 table time. Um,
A little intro in and out of it.
Let's see. This is gonna be the beginning, the end and the beginning of me. Um, yeah. So what kind of topics do you like?
Well, Matthew, um, right before we hopped on mic, I think actually, as we were like doing some, some testing and, and checking. Our good friend Fitz, who we mention every episode. Hi Fitz, uh, slid into our DMS...
Mm-hmm.
With some news. So this news, if you haven't heard, is that, uh, 2024 will mark the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons.
Yes.
And so Wizards of the Coast is coming out with what is being called One D&D which it will effectively apparently be like D&D 5.5 E. Um, currently, now we're on 5E.
Wow.
Uh, so I started, of course, while Matt was doing all of his nerdy tech things, I started furiously reading through the press releases and what, uh, Wizards of the Coast has put on their website. What's already live on, uh, D&D Beyond. Of course, you know, if you're a D&D person you've either heard of this, or you can go on your own, um, you know, uh, rabbit hole rampage, if you will. Um, but they're, they're, like that
I've never heard that rabbit hole rampage
Rabbit hole rampage. They're gonna start, like you could opt in, you can claim, play test material for your own games, get to fool around with it a little bit. And then there will be these survey windows that you'll get to then give feedback to, I guess, help shape the future of Dungeons and Dragons.
Happy. Happy clown.
So I've already claimed mine. Log into your dndbeyond.com.
Just now. Yeah.
And you claim it. This is so great. And so the very first thing that's up, and this makes me weep with joy. I feel like after a cloudy, rainy, awful, depressing, terrible week, the clouds are parting and rays are shining through again because of this, because the first play test material is all around character origins.
So basically it's just, it's begging, it's asking me to build some more characters and you, I think Matt mentioned this not too long ago, that they may be kind of replacing the whole idea of race with origins instead. Um, so I'm excited. I'm excited.
I mean, I personally, have been wanting to move in that direction. Just like, look, well, you know, they've gotten flack. I don't know if it was necessarily deserved flack, meaning changes needed to be made to game to Dungeons & Dragons and 5E. But this movement, these movements, to just being more mindful, more, more sensitive, more, all these things, we're all learning how to do this, right? Like I don't think that, you know, making Drow evil for decades is you know, bad.
It just needs to change. That's all. The game needs to evolve the way anything evolves. Right? So yeah, I, I love this and I, I think that's where it's moving to is like, what do you wanna look like? What do you wanna be? Who do you wanna be? You could be a, you know, a human orc halfling. I mean, my, I just found out my dog isn't even a shih tzu. Right? So like, why wouldn't that apply to everything? I don't know. It's fun. I'm psyched. We need a play test.
Absolutely. So, yep. We've claimed ours go claim yours. And the other part of the announcement that kind of excited me, cuz we've also talked about this on prior episodes is they're trying to make it both forward, scalable and backwards proof. So they're trying to say, we understand that different people like different systems, modules, rule sets, whatever, for a reason. So they're trying to integrate this.
So if you're on 4e you can continue with this One D&D you know, one D&D to rule them all one rule set to bind them. Um,
Nerd! Wow.
I'm really sorry.
No, nerd. Um, no, I mean, we are nerds. And I really like that. I think that's, that's part of... we haven't really taken that plunge. But the thing that has been attractive about Pathfinder to me, because I feel that as, as the indie rock version of D&D it's, uh which again is be the hipster version. That's so belittling, but I mean, there's an element of it that's true, but it is just way more open in a lot of ways, in some ways it's more hardcore, but there's an openness to it.
So I'm psyched. That Wizards is kind of, uh, saying, okay, look, let's open this up because... why they did such a good job with 5e man, they did such a good job. And there's always gonna be people who want to play 2e right? 3.5, 4 whatever there's always gonna be. And that's, that is a different game. And I know we've talked about that, but like, you know, the Dungeons and Dragons of my youth is very different from the one now. It feels different. It plays different. It, it acts different.
The choices are different. And that is an attractive thing. It's an attractive game, but man, the, the level of heart and the focus on story, honestly, the therapeutic elements of this game, I think have happened since I took a 20, 30 year break. Right? Personally, I don't, I don't remember the game being quite as focused on your feelings, if you want them to. Right. You don't have to focus on your feelings, but I like to, and that's why I love part of why I love the game so much. So yeah.
Keep branching, keep it open, you know, cuz they could close it all up, but I'm glad that they're not.
Mm-hmm.
Hooray. We'll see. Wow. That was live news. Um, what else?
So, we got, we got some more fan mail, uh, this week, um, from our friend, Adam, uh, sent us, just a little bit of feedback, which we, by the way, love. And you can send that to us anywhere that you want to on Bivins Brothers Creative's, Facebook page on our website, uh, by joining our yeah. Twitter by joining our Patreon on our Instagram. If you have our emails, phone numbers, uh, carrier pigeon, owl post. Any which any, which way you wanna go, we'll take it. Maybe don't send us a howler.
But other than that, actually, you know, what, if you wanna send us a howler, you can do that too. Um, , it's just all like bubbling to the top today.
You're on fire today. Nerd, nerd fire.
I told you we were leaning really into our tropes and you're going full hipster on me and I'm going big weird nerd.
Yeah. I've got like I in front of me, I've got this like super fresh ground coffee made with vacuum press and I've got my mustache. None of that.
So our friend Adam sent us this great message with, honestly, I think a lot of stuff that Matt and I wanna talk through on this podcast in one way or another. Um, but the part that really stood out to me was an actual, um, proactive podcast topic, suggestion that I'm just gonna read verbatim. I hope that's okay, Adam. Uh, it's how to make friends as an ADHD adult, especially when it comes to joining D&D groups. I play pickup games at the local game shop and feel super out of place.
I'm not willing to buy a random graphic tee just to appear to fit in, uh, making. I love that. Making friends as an adult is hard, but it seems it might be harder with ADHD. Thank you for saying that because I I've, I've felt that way for a while. And I've heard from a lot of my adult friends. And so I, I actually don't know if it's any better or worse with, or without ADHD. I currently live in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is where I went to college. It's not where I grew up.
So I'm lucky in that I have an abundance of people that I went to college with and kind of this ready made community for me here. But I moved to New York for a few years between college and settling back down here and had a, a hard time like figuring out how do you make friends outside of work? You know, I'm not the type just to, as we've talked about, walk up to strangers and start up conversations.
And I've had a lot of friends here in Charlotte wonder and approach me and say, how do you make friends here? And I have no answer for them because my friends here are primarily people I went to college with. It's again, that, that safety blanket, that comfort zone that comes up every episode. But the reason I wanted to bring this up, not that, I mean, well, I'll pause here and kind of ask you, do you have any advice or thoughts?
As far as I think this is something we both talked about though, is the hardships of making friends as an adult, as someone with ADHD.
Yeah, we've definitely danced around the topic a little bit. I certainly can walk into a room and talk to almost everyone in there about something, you know, one thing But it, you would think that because of that, that I would have scores and scores and scores of friends, like really close friends. But the flip side of it is, is something that we talked about two podcasts ago. The object, uh, permanence, right? Where you're like, wow, that was such a great person. That was so cool to meet them.
And then they live in this universe and you don't see them for a a year. And they're like, oh, hi, my name is this. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I just, I, I met you. Right. But it was a year ago. So it's your fault.
Did I tell you about the experience of going to my brother's wedding a few months ago? And my family is pretty small on both sides. My aunts and uncles on both sides are how my parents got together. So these are obviously people that at one point in time knew each other, cuz they all went to the University of Alabama and met in Birmingham and set my parents up.
My aunts and uncles, we get to the wedding and it had been so long since anybody had seen anybody that they started introducing themselves by first and last name. Cracked me up, like I'm, I'm sitting there just like taking it all in like stifling laughter. And it was funny to watch cuz they're doing it. And then at the same time as the other person is returning it, they're like, of course I know who you are. I think this is a fear that we all have though.
We all have this fear that we're not gonna be remembered even by the most, you know, even by our, our relatives, relatives by marriage, but still. So I think, you know, and, and yeah, sometimes names are hard, you know, sometimes if I'm going to a place with a friend I'll, I'll tell that friend, Hey, I, if I don't remember somebody's name, I'm probably not gonna introduce you to them. You are gonna have to say hi I'm...
Oh yes. Oh, I have all of those with any friend that I have going. Yeah, that is, yeah.
So, you know, to jump in and say, Hey, I'm Alison.
This is a timely topic for me because, I have this friend I've mentioned. He is an actor. I did not know him, pre pandemic very well, because he was a full-time actor in Chicago, which means he really just worked all the time all the time. But then the pandemic happened and I, I was, uh, reintroduced to how to make friends because of Matt. Because he decided for whatever reason that I was going to be a new bestie. Which is 100% necessary to become a friend of somebody with ADD.
That's point, is that he didn't know all of that, but like he, I, I'm assuming all of his friends in his life, he says, do they pass muster? Yes or no, if yes, I'm going to work at it. And he works at it, you know? And he really moved past all of the topical stuff, the superficial stuff. And he he made us incredible cocktails and he would invite us over and we would like, you know, have dinner and, and doing all this stuff. And he just kicks ass
mm-hmm
at being a friend, you know? Um, He's my newest, best friend, like in Chicago and I have great friends in Chicago. And so, uh, tonight I'm going to his farewell party actually, and it's real sad, because I have spent so much time in Chicago just trying to understand all of this. Like why is it harder for me to have friends?
Because I, um, I am the way I am because I was in a rock band where, where I didn't have to work very hard, uh, because I have, because I am older, it could be because I have ADHD, it could be any number of those reasons. Right. Um, so the coolest thing is just that Matt gave me this gift, not just friendship, but he showed me what it takes. It's not easy. It's really nice. it's not easy. I mean, maybe it is for him. It's definitely not for me. I'm so grateful that he did.
And I, and I, I feel like I've learned some lessons and, and the other cool thing is he's going away for a year or more. But I'm not afraid to lose him. You know what I mean? I'm not afraid to lose him as a friend where I don't know if that I could say that about everybody that I know, you know, so that's cool.
Well, It reminds me of, and I think Fitz is somebody who sent it to me. There's a meme that says something along the lines of how introverts
an extrovert, finds them, likes them and adopts them. And that's
That's it? That is a hundred percent it.
And I have been both the adopter and the adoptee and, you know, you're right. When you find a, a new shiny friend that you zing with, for whatever reason you wanna hold 'em in place and show 'em the ropes and like, Nope, Nope. Yeah. Not gonna let you slide outta here, but sometimes you need to be pulled into somebody else's orbit.
Um, so I almost wonder if it's not so much an ADHD versus not conversation, but an, an introvert versus extrovert conversation that we started on, you know, before, and, and, and why you and I both are able to do it and also struggle with it because we've both become more introverted in recent years. Maybe even just, maybe we're just ambiverts now. Um, so, yeah, so I, you know, I think it's, I think that's all a wonderful thing to talk about.
So what, stood out for me in Adam's question, because I personally don't have any answers. I wish I did. I thought this might be a fun challenge for me. Like if, if I would take this as a, challenge maybe isn't the right word, but maybe I need to try.
Maybe I need to like, almost go undercover and, and try for myself some of these meetups and local game and report back to the listeners of ADHd20, both as a social experiment, you know, research for our podcast and our listeners and our community. Um, so I can say this is definitively what I learned in my experience. This is what worked and what didn't.
Take that for what you will, but I also wonder if it's a boundary I need to push on for my own growth, you know, to find more people that I can play with. As often as I wanna play to get over the fear of strangers to, you know, we, we even talked about not that I would expect this out of it, but when we were having the, the podcast episode, uh, where dating with ADHD came up and I was like, I have no answers for you.
I have no idea how to meet guys, like, other than dating apps, which is a swift no. Maybe there's a nerdy boy somewhere out there in Charlotte that I, I don't know. Evan, Evan has long suggested that I go to more Cons, just because like, he's like, you need to go to where your type of person is gonna be, and they're not gonna be, you know, at a bar. And they're not probably even going to be on the apps, but they might be at a, at a big old nerd Con.
I love that.
I'm telling all of you, all of this, what you, especially Matt to hold me accountable. Like, let, let me, you know, this is like the concept of meetups is something that I have long shunned, um,
Me too.
Feel free to hold me accountable. Give me a little bit of time, too.
I, I love this challenge for yourself that you created. I accept the challenge that you created for yourself and I will hold you accountable, cuz I think it's an amazing idea. I think that you are entering a new era of AK. You have, you have lovely friends, you have amazing ones, but where you are right now, I think that, uh, similar to me, there have been people who have kids or want kids or moved into this or got new jobs or, or are just operating or just focuses change and evolve.
I think this is the time where you're going to find that group. That's always, probably been there, but maybe you didn't know it was inside. We all knew that you were a nerd, but you just kind of had to like open that door and walk on through. Right?
I hear you on this new season and finding this new, you know, blazing this new path to glory, then there's this other part of me that's sitting here going no new friends. I'm good. I'm full. I have, I have enough.
Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, but
But not every, but, and not every friend you, you meet has to be a soulmate, you know, like life changing. Like it's okay to have people that I see once a month and play D&D with, you know, maybe that's, that's the connection that I'm lacking, um, and will perhaps find and report back and tell you the good, the bad, the embarrassing, the ugly, and the wonderful, uh, someday soon on future episode of ADHd20.
All right. All right. All
Frightening
Oh, man. Okay. All right.
I think that's it. I think that's, I think that's the show!
Yeah, I really can't. I mean, you're, you're literally leaving us on a cliff hanger. I can't imagine, like, I can't imagine how else to end it. But thank you, uh, Mr. Reinhardt for, for writing. Thanks everybody for writing. And thanks for caring for listening to this. Um, all y'all all my friends and you know who you are. This is a special thing for me and, has gotten me through some very tough weeks recently.
Mm-hmm
Hooray for ADHd20?
It's been a beautiful little sailboat...
Yes.
...this week for me, sailing me out of...
sailboat.
...the yuck, get out of there.
Yeah, get out
yay. Thanks Matt. Thanks listeners of ADHd20 for being my sailboat.
Thanks everybody for sail boating.
Bye We're still the worst at endings.
I don't know. Sometimes it's easier than other times.