Dunce (Dunce) Revolution

The latest round of video game commercials has come to a close with the Summer Game Fest (seriously, why not games plural?). Despite the heat dome reminding us how cooked our goose really is, we manage to temper our expectations for the showings from this year's vitamin E3 supplement.
But beyond arguing about games we might not see until 2026, highlights of this episode include:
Buzz realizes how much he missed out on Alan Wake II last year.
Another sign of the apocalypse arrives with Sarah having managed to net herself a platinum trophy with the game Sable.
Lots of Dragon Age discussion. Like, a lot.
Will finally puts a pin in Rebirth and wants to know what the heck is up with that ending.
It's simply too hot out.

It's a Hadozee, sorry, a doozy of a dungeon crawl, as we discuss that sensitive subject of race (soon to be species) in D&D.
With One D&D updates starting to crest over the horizon (or "2024 Revision to 5th Edition,"? I genuinely don't know how they are marketing this anymore...and I think the MM comes out in 2025 anyway...), the ways in which we generate our player characters and NPCs will be updated, including that important first step of choosing a race.
We also look back at all the elements that have often found themselves tangled up with DND races, such as language, culture, and alignment, and how the soon-to-be updated source books are offering a looser connection between one's species and other character traits.
Somehow we get wildly off target by talking about Target, Pride, Harvest Moon, Larian Studios, Farmer's Only, Animal Well, Indika, and even Orcas!
Like Jessica Rabbit once said, "I'm not evil. My character race was just written that way."

As the legendary Ellen Greene once sang
"
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Which I reference because we kick off this very special episode talking about our future overlords: computers!
And then we get right back into what we assume our five listeners really came here for, us being petty.
Video games? Yes, we talk about those too I suppose.
We play amateur anthropologist as we marvel at how Shenmue crawled out of the primordial pond to allow Yakuza to grow a vertebrae and complex digestive system. And speaking of evolution, we can't help but think about (and beg for a better) version of Pokemon on the still secretive "Switch 2".
We also wonder if Nintendo will pull a fast one on Metroid fans before the year is out, and stand with mouths agape at Microsoft shutting down studios (congratulations share holders!)
I mean, I don't care what anyone says, spending massive amounts of money to make Starfield, the most visionary game ever to drop from the sweat of old Todd's brow, and lovingly made available day one on Game Pass I might add, was definitely a better decision than keeping around the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush (winner of awards including CEDEC, Golden Joystick, Game Awards 2023, New York Game Awards, 24th Game Developers Choice Awards, and 20th British Academy Games Awards).
Games we discuss include: Little Kitty, Big City; Shenmue II; Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth; Atelier Marie; Hi-Fi Rush; Caves of Qud; KeeperRL; and Pokemon.

Join us from the opposite end of the dungeon experience as we put on our lich-hats and talk through the finer points of setting up your lair in expectation of pesky would-be adventurers. Frankly, we just think liches are cool and will take any excuse to talk about them.
We also get sidetracked by some of those other big DnD topics, including our thoughts on how stale alignments are at this point in the game, Curse of Strahd (the best module?), and NBC's Community sitcom not making that one episode with a Drow costume in it available for streaming.
Also, while we're not an "Actual Play" format podcast, we still end up chatting quite a bit at the end there about our current campaign (We just hit one hundred hours and recorded the day we get together to run it, so please find it within yourself to forgive us).

The Dunce (Dunce) Dungeon team is back to roll investigation on the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, an updated core rule-book for Dungeons and Dragons 5e.
Yes, we think it's weird that it's coming out this much later than the PHB. Yes, we think it's weird that the 2024 MM won't come out until 2025. Yes, we think it's weird that they did it in this order when the MM is arguably the most mechanically critical book for encounters.
We also meander through a variety of side-topics, as is our way, including THACO, Magic: the Gathering being the lifeblood that seems to sustain game shops, other ways to spend a point of inspiration, the cultural impact of Stranger Things normalizing TTRPGs, and the love and hate relationship we all have with Roll20.
Please pardon us, as we also reminisce about scenes from our latest campaign, we are just very excitable. Rest assured, you are not being sold on some Live Play scheme. We leave that work to the people who actually know how to make money off of this media.