Podcast / Gays in Capes

Your weekly dose of crying over DND.

A Dungeons & Dragons roleplay group based in Minnesota who have been around since 2013. They revolve a bit less around the nitty-gritty of gameplay and a bit more around roleplaying, character development, and complex world building. There are several campaigns going at once with various different DM's, though the plots and character are often interrelated. The website gives descriptions of all the players, characters, and worlds, and hosts livestreams of most of their sessions. Their podcast covers the sessions MINDND and DNDASH weekly.

Tropes are broken down by session.

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Works contained in this series:

QDND

Short for "Quouse DND", this campaign began in September of 2013. Season 1 is complete and available on Youtube, and season 2 is being streamed weekly. It follows a set of heroes as they try to stop an evil cult and eventually a war. Arnam is killed repeatedly. The original adventuring party consisted of:

• Joaquin, a human fighter who has been elected the party's highly unwilling leader, played by Ashley
• Havi, a cowardly & germaphobic half-elf cleric, played by Emily
• Jojo, a bumbling barbarian half-orc, played by Shad
• Caranthir, a really chill drow druid, played by Tim
• Ireth, a tough-as-nails elf ranger, played by Kayla
• Daliah, a hot-tempered human rogue

The session is DM'd by Ben.

QDND contains examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: We have Atsafune, and then Jamal. Or Rosalind, but then her brother Nifty.
• Alliterative Family: Clint, Cassidy, Cameron, Katerina, and Calhoun Calloway.

• The Atoner: Jojo's major driving force in being a Good Guy is to make up for his past.

• Bazaar of the Bizarre: Havi and Tanum's magic shop. It is unassuming and quaint on the outside, as well as a little bit in the middle of nowhere - but its contents are incredible. It also has a kickass book selection.
• B Quiet Nudge: Jojo always seems to spill the beans at the worst possible moments. It doesn't help that he physically cannot whisper.
• Black Market: Stories covering acquisition of some items from the magic shop are to be left untold.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Arnam is shamelessly, unapologetically evil. In season 2 it turns out this is because he split himself into two parts as a child, meaning the current Arnam is literally every evil part of his soul.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Havi and Tanum. While both had feelings for the other, neither said anything for their own reasons.

• Death Is Cheap: This is DND, after all. The page for QDND NPC's has a kill count for several major characters. The highest is 6.
• De-power: Caranthir loses his ears in the first streamed session, leading to him losing all his racial traits from being an elf. Averted in that he then gains his latent racial drow traits, which are mostly the same.

• Dual Wielding:
  • Joaquin wields two swords to try to amount to his older brother, Clint Calloway, who wields a great sword.
  • Jojo tries to wield two great axes for the whole session, but doesn't get to before running away with Lia.
• Dysfunction Junction: The whole group, really.
  • Joaquin being a runaway "prince" along with a slew of person issues and inadequacies.
  • Havi avoiding all his problems, and his issues with Tanum.
  • Jojo has his previous group of friends die. Except Lia. But her being alive doesn't make things better at all.
  • Caranthir was abandoned by his parents and raised by wolves. Though he turned out the most collected of the group ...
  • Ireth has her whole tribe and family wiped out by a group of Orcs. Lindsay survives, but survival of old friends for this group just tends to bring more problems ....
  • Dalia comes from a very large, poor family. Her rogue trainer was also part of the Cult of Sorrows.
  • A whole lot of the npc's fall into this, too. Most notable being Tanum, Lia, Nifty, Lindsay, Phillip, and Meekus.

• Grail in the Garbage: Many powerful things can be found amongst an equal amount of trash]].
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Jojo, when he hits and proceeds to scare away city guards by hitting them with another guard.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Lia went from working with thugs, to working with some shady figures for 10 years, to working with the party trying to save the world, to marrying or rather, scamming, a rich noble from Quarmar before performing an apparent final Heel–Face Turn and running off with Jojo. Needless to say, nobody's quite sure whose side she's on anymore.
• Healing Hands: Havi, being the group's cleric. Ironically enough, he cannot stand the sight of blood and wears gloves as a protection against germs. (This is seen as trivial considering removal of the gloves is often necessary to perform any healing magic.)
• Heel–Face Turn: Several of the characters come from darker pasts, but are now on the side of the "good" guys, as far as we know. Joaquin and Jojo went through this before the story officially began, and Tanum made the switch shortly after his introduction.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Upon realizing the fate of his daughter, Tanum begged to take on the burden of the god helmet himself.
• Ineffectual Loner: Havi isn't as as gung-ho about the Team Friendship thing as the other guys are. He just doesn't get it.
• Inept Mage: Tanum definitely appears to be the textbook case of this. It turns out he's not a mage, but a sorcerer; meaning he'd been studying the wrong theory all along.

• Lured into a Trap: Lia lures Jojo into a trap when she invites him to come back and visit her after they deal with the Shaman.
• Magic Misfire: Due to incorrect channeling, most of Tanum's magic either didn't cast, or cast a different spell entirely.
• Master of Illusion: Arnaugh is rarely seen not sporting an illusory double of himself, or two, or three.

• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Meekus guides the party for 3 days, and then immediately dies. He gets better.

• Naughty Under the Table: Tanum has a tendency to get a little handsy when he drinks.

• Parents Know Their Children: The Calloway's knew of all of Joaquin's alias' and what he was doing while being them.

• Reluctant Hero: Areli wants nothing to do with being even part of the hero group.

• Selective Obliviousness: Havi refused to acknowledge any advances on Tanum's part, insistent that he was either reading Tanum's actions incorrectly or Tanum was making a terrible mistake.

• Wham Episode: Oh boy there's a lot of them
  • Jojo finding out Lia is still alive. And then having to fight his dead friends. And then being able to talk to his dead friends and have them forgive him.
  • The same time as that, Havi dealing with Tanum's losing his heart and practicing necromancy.
  • Lia and Tanum getting their hearts removed. Again

• Joaquin reading the letters from his family. Also, the reunion.

• Wham Line
  Jojo: -finally admits his feelings-
  Lia: ... Do you have the stuff?
  Jojo: -nods-
  Lia: Ok. Get out.
• Wedding Smashers: So common it's almost become a running joke. Lia and Joaquin both have their weddings ruined, and the party crashes through a few others.
• You Are Not Alone: Every character has a background arc that is especially tough, but everyone else in the group stands with them through their hard time. Caranthir, however, was honestly pretty chill with most things happening to him.

QDNDOS

QDNDOS takes place 15 years before the events of QDND and has been running since winter of 2013. The two sessions have tied together in some unexpected ways, though QDNDOS in general has had some fairly rotten luck. To what degree they're responsible for the events of QDND is still unknown. The original adventurers were:

• Alexei, a vampire ranger who is uncomfortably into romance novels, played by Ashley
• Sophia, a human cleric with a self-righteous streak that's more like a highway, played by Dee
• Ader, a dwarf fighter who isn't quite sure if he's in the right place, played by Jay
• Eli, a high elf paladin who wandered into the group and was too lazy to leave, played by Emily
• Issa, a drow wizard who's a naive, lovable nerd, played by Shad
• Penny, a high elf cleric who joined the group a bit later, played by Mia

QDNDOS contains examples of:

• Brilliant, but Lazy: Eli is quite an intelligent person, it just takes a lot to get him to use his brain on something that isn't strictly helping his own situation.
• Character Alignment: Ader and Sophia are lawful good, Issa is chaotic good, Alexei is chaotic neutral, Eli is neutral evil, and Penny is chaotic evil.invoked

• Dismotivation: Eli actually hurts himself in his attempts to be lazier.
• Dysfunction Junction: Most of the group falls under this in this session as well.
  • Alexei is a vampire.
  • Ader has a lot of issues from being in a dwarven war.
  • Issa is another runaway prince.
  • Elijah has had some issues with Nifty in the past, as well as whoever cut his hair and scared his face.
  • Sophia has her sister die prior to the start of the session.

• Holy Burns Evil: Sophia, the party cleric, can't do anything for the undead Alexei. Inverted in that Alexei is the only party member covered in crosses - although, of course, Pelor's imagery looks nothing like any of that.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Although she's the cleric, Sophia has a longsword and an array of holy spells that put her on the front line regularly (especially when the party include legitimate squishy wizard players like Issa).
• Immortal Immaturity: Eli is over 400 years old, but generally has the attitude of an apathetic high-schooler.
• Important Haircut: More of a traumatic experience for him, Eli's long locks were chopped off prior to the campaign starting. He is still very bitter about this.

• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Clint has a fair share of this in the god trials, where he either has to be killed or run the chance of being the cause of a huge war that will kill millions of people in the future. And he's 15 now.
• Race-Name Basis: Eli doesn't care enough to remember his teammates' names, and generally refers to them by race or some sort of stereotypical or derogatory title.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: The entire warforged plot of QDNDOS. It makes a certain amount of sense - the 'robots' were originally built to house souls, so huge amounts of realism make sense. The fact that these robots can apparently reproduce, though ...

• Shades of Conflict: The entire premise behind The God Trials was choosing between two morally ambiguous options with massive consequences. This got further complicated by the group getting transported to different planes as the debate went on.

• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The entire conflict of the second season after they're tasked with tracking down and handing over to their deaths some hyper-realistic robots. The players get more and more bothered by the task as time goes on.

DDND

DDND was the first campaign played by the GiC cast and is the longest running; it began in fall of 2011 and is still going, albeit sporadically. The bulk of the campaign predates the livestream, but text logs of the early sessions are available. The group, in a sort of round-about way, are trying to stop an evil sorcerer from summoning the legions of hell to this plane. The original adventuring party consisted of:

• Artie, a half-elf cleric with a heart of gold, played by Emily
• Easton, a human fighter who's a prostitute but means well, played by Ashley
• Griel, a warlock who enjoys disturbing the party as much as possible, played by Joe
• Hazel, a gnome wizard who's only out here for the rare books, played by Dee
• Roshan, a human ranger who somehow got put in charge, played by Mia
• Morven, a gnome rogue who is only here to dramatically complain, played by Jay
• Teague, a half elf wizard and a huge nerd, joined the party later, played by Chloe

The session is DM'd by Alex.

DDND contains examples of:

• Stupid Good: Artie sees the good in everyone and in every situation, no matter how Actually Terrible.

MODND

MODND, or Modern DND, takes place about 500 years after the events of QDND and has been running since Q1 winter of 2015. The original adventuring party consists of:

• Stiletto Margarita, a human rogue method actor con man, played by Ashley
• Marlowe, a human warlock fighter concierge, played by Jay
• Dolly, a dwarf warlock floor supervisor, played by Andy
• Nikkolai, a human getaway driver with a deskjob and a foot in the mafia, played by Emily
• Anise, an elf cleric who's currently a janitor, played by Shad

The session is DM'd by Ben.

DNDASH

DNDASH started Spring 2014, and follows a dysfunctional group try to save the world from demons while accidentally becoming pirates. The adventuring party consists of:

• Julian, a shy, pink tiefling who was voted into a leader role for the group, played by Andy
• Nero, a paranoid & anxious half-elf illusion wizard, played by Emily
• Elliot, a shitty pirate elf who is currently a mailman, played by Shad
• Toivo, a lanky elf druid with an affinity for squirrels, played by Kay
• Aiden, a middle-aged gossipy human cleric who heals a lot of broken ankles, played by Jay

The session is DM'd by Ashley.

DNDASH contains examples of:

• Achey Scars: Nero and Toivo both got a little of this from theirs when demons were around.

• Blackmail: Nero had been blackmailed to work against the group in order to save his sister, Auka.

• Character Development: Everyone in the group gets a little nudge forward, though they're all still growing up.

• Coordinated Clothes: The whole group got matching outfits when they joined Luck's crew and then again when they got their magical girl outfits.

• Earn Your Happy Ending: The group fails a lot, but still win at the end of season one.

• Gender-Blender Name: Lesley, the prince of Solendale.

• Love Potion: Looking for a way to delay Lesley's wedding, Nero slipped Elliot a love potion to get him with Lesley, hoping to play off the existing feelings between the two.
• Manchild: Elliot is 40 but acts like he's 12.
• Never My Fault: Elliot has a hard time accepting blame even when it's blatantly obvious he is at fault.
• Nightmare Weaver: During a brief panic attack, Nero casts Phantasmal Killer on Elliot, showing only him illusions of his worst nightmares.

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Which is mostly We ARE Struggling Together. There are a few in the group who get along okay, but they argue amongst themselves way more than they work together well. Nero and Elliot the most.

• Springtime for Hitler: Lexington and Nightingale picked the group because they were expected to fail; to go to Sillistone as a set up to get killed. Instead, the group ends up beating them both, as well as the rest of the seven.

• Stalker with a Crush: Toivo has a tendency to develop feelings for people, which inevitably turns into a bit of an obsession.
• Supernatural Aid: At the end of the first season, the group is helped by Jo Casta, who they find out in season two that she was basically an angel.

• Teacher/Student Romance: Toivo was seduced by his teacher at age 15. An unusual variation of the trope, where the teacher is an attractive woman with a male student but the relationship is still unequivocally condemned.
• The Power of Love: Canonically, the power of love can fix even the worse curse in the DNDASH world.

• The Unapologetic: Elliot often refuses to apologize, even when it's obviously something he's done to upset someone. It's often "not his fault" or they're "being too sensitive". Most the time, it ends in a Backhanded Apology and then an Ordered Apology. There are also times where he knows he's in the wrong and tries to avoid it until it hopefully goes away, which doesn't work.
• Treasure Map: Elliot's got one now, which unfortunately leads to where Luck is making her new home base.

MINDND

MINDND started Q1 Winter 2015, and follows a bunch of half-races. The original adventuring party consists of:

• no-name, a warforged who is still learning who they are, played by Emily
• Ezra, a "quarterling" rogue on his way to be a master thief, played by Ben
• Althea, a tiefling sorcerer who is just getting into the real world, played by Kay
• Samson, a half-orc, half-drow fallen paladin of Lolth, played by Shad
• Rainbow, a half-orc/half-elf cleric who can't read and has a rainstick, played by Ashley
• Rostrix, a half-orc barbarian who can punch the magic out of doors, played by Chloe

The session is DM'd by Jay.

MINDND contains examples of:

• The Nameless: no-name, obviously. This is due to the fact that they were not programmed with a name, and have not lived long enough to find a suitable one. (Nor cared to.)

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