DnD Wife Stories

Nerdy Beginnings: Our First Foray into Podcasting

DnDWife: Welcome, everyone, to our very first episode of Couple a’ Nerds, the podcast where we talk about everything, nerdy, dungeons and dragons, and crafts all crammed into one tiny little apartment. I am your co host, DnD wife, and with me is my co host, and husband Dungeon Master Eguile.

DM Eguile: How’s it going, everyone?

DnDWife: We are so glad to finally be doing this. I think we’ve been wanting to for a bit. We were just maybe a little scared. It’s tough talking in public, but I think it’s really important to tell people about our unique experience. We do have an in person table, and I think that’s something that’s very unique nowadays. Not a lot of people have that.

DM Eguile: Yeah, it’s always kind of been my DM philosophy with that, both in game and out of the table is really important because when you’re there sitting and you can see each other face to face, that’s the connection you want to make when you’re playing RPG’s.

DnDWife: Yeah, and it’s super fun to get all excited, too, in a group. I think it’s really important to share that in person as well. It’s kind of difficult to do that over a screen to all be super excited.

DM Eguile: Plus, there’s that fun of you and I being husband and wife and the extra little fun that that creates in a dnd table. So that’s going to obviously lead to some interesting and fun stories.

DnDWife: Yeah, that’ll be super fun to share.

Eguile is the dungeon master and also the main terrain crafter

But let’s talk a little bit about who we are, why we’re here, what are we doing, right? As you know, I am DnDWife. I am a player on this table. I’m also Dungeon Master Eguile’s wife. I paint. I do all the miniature painting for the table. And I write the blog dndwifestories.com, where I go over all of our adventures together as a table.

DM Eguile: I’m Eguile, aforementioned Dungeon Master, as well as the husband. I’ve been running this table for about five years now. It just started off just with, like everyone, the intro to Pendelver and I got to learning. I’m also the main terrain crafter. I tend to be doing all the bigger projects. The DM table that I have and everything that I set up is pretty much created here in the apartment. And I like to show ways that even though you’re in a small space, you can craft some pretty big stuff. And I’ll be able to show that later on.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah, I’m really excited to talk about how you can still have a really great looking table with terrain and everything, even though you’re in a really small place and you don’t have to buy all the expensive stuff either.

DM Eguile:  I mean, I’m using matte like bed frame risers to hold my table up, and it works and looks great. So there are very simple ways to have an excellent looking table for next to nothing.

DnDWife: Exactly! And I, for one, am super happy to be sharing that with everyone, whoever might be listening. We’re super excited for you!

DM Eguile: I mean the whole reason we even got started with this was because of you. I mean, your curiosity. And then, of course, watching Critical Role is what really got us started in all this.

DnDWife: That is true. We started watching, I think, in 2018 is when we started watching Critical Role. It was already a few episodes in.

DM Eguile: I want to say we were like two, three months behind at least. But it was still, when it was still on Geek and Sundry, for sure.

DnDWife: Yes, they were still there. But it was still fairly advanced. So, we got in and we had plenty of backlog to go through at that point. and I mean, from the very first episode, we were hooked.

DM Eguile: Yeah. Obviously the story driven aspect of it we’ve always loved, and that was always something that really attached to us. But, I think, yeah, it was just more of looking at that because at the time, we would have been playing mostly mmos online. Shout out to Final Fantasy 14.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah.

DM Eguile: I mean, we’d been playing that for years, but just sitting online talking to people. We didn’t have that connection, though we were playing with 12,15 people at a time.

DnD Wife: Oh, yeah.

DM Eguile: So once we saw something that we could nerd out and sit at home and be at a table and have snacks and play nerdy games. Oh, sign us up.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah. And we have never looked back after that. It has just been all the DnD all the way!

DM Eguile: Because that one Christmas where you were pointing out Critical Role and I decided to sneakily buy you the Mines of Phandelver, giving it to you, hoping that you would be really interested in it. But the moment you cracked open the rules book, yeah, you were pretty much not going to do that.

DnDWife: Yeah, I was super excited at first. I was like, I want to do this. I want to do DnD let’s do it. And I was kind of really gung ho. And then I got it and I opened the box that is Phandelver with all the new player stuff, all the new DM stuff. And it was just so intimidating.

DM Eguile: Yeah. When you had asked me originally, I think when I was like 12 or 15, I had seen people that had played fourth edition, but it was always talked about just being horrible and not fun and just a waste of time. So I never really got into it. I knew about it. Never did it. So I thought, hey, if I could maybe get my wife into something this nerdy, perhaps we could have some fun. And she was already playing video games. What’s next? Tabletop rpgs?

DnDWife: Right. It was super easy to get into it. And, I for one, I know you’ve done it, but I had never played DnD before that, ever.

DM Eguile: Yeah. And I knew that. And there’s a lot to come out. And that’s why at the time, we had just recently lost our jobs and had to restart from scratch. So we were really kind of looking for something to kind of hold on to for us. And I just remember kind of seeing the defeated look of realizing just how much goes into dnd and not really being able to do what they do on Critical Role. But, I snuck around and on my breaks at my job, I would read the instruction manuals and learn the rules, and I sneakily bought the Dungeon Master’s Guide. And you never knew. You know now, obviously.

DnDWife: Yeah. And can I point out, I didn’t know this until about maybe an hour ago when he happened to finally share this little tidbit of information.

DM Eguile: You gotta keep your secrets. I mean, not only as a DM, but as a husband. But I worked with a couple of people who had. A couple of my fellow employees had seen me reading the Dungeon Master’s guide and offered to join. And that was literally how we started, was a couple of night cooks at Marie calendars and my wife meeting at three in the morning to play all day or all morning and all night.

DnDWife: That sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke.

DM Eguile: I mean, it kind of is, but, the one thing we always wanted to maintain and the one thing I always knew from DnD was consistency and meeting every time. So we always try to meet every other week. And for five years still to this day, we have a consistent schedule where we meet because we made it such a big part of our lives. And we hope there are other people that love this game and love the connections you can make, especially with your significant other, huh?

DnDWife: Absolutely. And, don’t get us wrong. Our schedules have had to change. The times and the dates that we host DnD have had to change, in all this time that we’ve been doing it. Not everyone can meet, at the same time as all the years that go by. Things change. Life happens.

Five years ago, we started playing Dungeons & Dragons with six players

DM Eguile: I mean, not only that, but we just like everyone. And, you know, we have the stories. We’ve gone through many table adjustments for various reasons and little spoilers, some legal, some crazier than we ever could have thought happened for such a little table that we were. But we sit now, five years later, a six player strong team that meets every three weeks consistently for 8 hours a day, and we never looked back.

DnDWife: Yeah, I think it was one of the best decisions we ever made, I would have to say.

DM Eguile: So do I, as a married couple, as nerdy people, there’s something about being able to meet and do something consistently with your significant other, your spouse, hell, your boyfriend, your girlfriend that you can connect with. And that’s not necessarily, you’re not holding each other’s hand. You’re experiencing an adventure. Hell, your characters could theoretically be antagonists to each other and have some fun, kind of picking at the little things to each other mid game that you can do. Now, we don’t necessarily have that connection, unfortunately, being your DM and all the way we do sometimes we do recently have gotten an actual couple on the table, which is quite fun to mess around with. It’s super fun to put them in uncomfortable situations. But we’ll get more into that much later.

You can do dnd anywhere and with anything

DnDWife: Oh, yeah.and then let’s talk about some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about. Right. What are we trying to tell people?

DM Eguile: Obviously, the biggest thing we like to talk about is the fact that you can do DnD anywhere and with anything.

DnDWife: Yes.

DM Eguile: And so our big thing is that, as much as we’d love to own a home, we’ve always lived in an apartment and been apartment cruisers. And it’s a little tough sometimes, especially when you’re a Dungeon Master and a player to organize, have all these supplies and stuff that a lot of people think you have to have. So we feel like that’s a way we can kind of share that experience and some of the tips that we’ve had of condensing and storing everything from a tiny one bath one bedroom to now that we have a two bedroom, two bath with a little bit extra space. But it takes time, and I feel like from our experiences and also what we can share with others and what they can share with us, we can just increase that community even more and connect apartments around the world.

DnDWife: Yeah, I do think it’s important to point out that we are dinks. We do not have children. It’s not something that we’ve had in our heads. And so we’re really lucky to be able to have an extra bedroom now. But it wasn’t always that way. We started off in a very small one bedroom, one bath apartment, which is better than some people start off with.

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah, we’ll show, and if you ever go to dndwifestories.com, I mean, there are plenty of articles that my wife has written that, talking about and showing how we used to just have, like, a little card table that we kind of sat around or a coffee table on the floor. So it really is more about coming together than the location or what you’re using. You can use anything from pieces of scratch paper coins to, yeah, $100 minis and all these other craziness, but it’s really more about coming together for a unified thing, and that’s what we’re trying to bring with the segments that we have.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s important to note, I think that, not only do we run the table, out of our apartment, but I also do most, if not all, of the miniature painting for the table here in our apartment. And I did it before as well, when we were in the smaller, much more cramped apartment. A little tougher, though. Yeah. But you can do it, and it is feasible, even though it does maybe seem like a daunting thing to get past.

DM Eguile: I’m sure you got plenty of tips.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah, we’re going to be sharing that later.

DM Eguile: And, I mean, for me, too, I bring a lot of extra in the fact that, yeah, I’m a DM, but I’m also a professional cook. I’ve run quite a few restaurants. And you’ll see, as we have many articles talking of the different recipes that we use, and we try to make them a spin, not just basic. We have one that one of our players had not liked and if you’ve ever seen the cookbook, Halfling Chili, I recommend it. but if you have Halflings in your party, they tend to take offense to it. But it’s delicious. I swear it’s delicious.

DnDWife: And the book promises that no halflings were harmed in the making of the chili.

DM Eguile: There you go.

DnD Wife: So I think we’re okay.

DM Eguile: And so we’ve come up with a lot of food options that you can provide, not only on your table, but in your game as well. There’s nothing more fun than handing some delicious treats to your players, only for them to open an envelope that says it was given to them by the antagonist that they have been chasing down. I had to convince these people that, no, in real life, I would not poison my players.

DnDWife: We don’t RP that hard.

DM Eguile: No, but they definitely were second guessing. Picking up the apple slices, they hesitated a little bit. It is funny, but I don’t go that far for my RP.

DnD Wife: Not quite.

In Lore Drop we will talk about our homebrew world of Extrayus

We’re also going to be talking about our brand new homebrew world of Extrayus.

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah, brand new.

DnDWife: We created it completely from scratch. We drew the map completely from scratch.

DM Eguile: Old school, too. We did all the rolling. We had a friend of ours and also who eventually became our new player. She joined us to help kind of sketch out the parameters of this large, what was it? Seven foot long scroll was the final dimensions of the scroll.

DnDWife: Yeah, I think it was seven x five.

DM Eguile: And we have plenty of photos to show of this craziness.

DnDWife: Maybe not seven x five, maybe like five x three.

DM Eguile: We’ll have to find out. That’ll be something we’ll have to look at. Fortunately, we keep that map pretty hidden, as it is the only real document.

DnDWife: The master map.

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah. I’m hoping one day to get it kind of made into something much larger. But we’ll get there. Yeah. But our plan behind Extraeus was we always wanted to bring our DnD games to the world, but with laws and copyright and rights, it was always tough because DnD itself owns so much, you can’t even talk about it. And that kind of is a shame. Or you start spinning words that everyone really knows what we’re talking about, but we can’t really talk about it. So we came up with a solution. Make our own world. Yeah, we had talked about it for years, and my wife has always been planning these different worlds and whatnot.

DnDWife: Yeah, I just really like world building. Like I said, I’m a writer, so I like exploring new worlds in my head, as strange as that might sound. so the idea of building and creating a world that we could play in, that we could live in, was just the most amazing thing to me as a writer, as a storyteller, it was just so exciting.

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah. For me, I don’t know, it’s always kind of that claim to fame for DM’s is do you have your own universe? Like, did you make a world that you can say no one else thought of, no one else really came up with?

DnDWife: Yeah.

DM Eguile: Obviously you’re going to make nods and mentions in Extraeus. We have a lot, and some will be very subtle as they’re nods to our previous campaigns and some of the consequences that the players had inadvertently caused at the conclusion of our three-year long running campaign. Yeah, just as a brief. It ended in a wish spell, which always, most of the time, doesn’t end the way the players are hoping to. Yeah, I know that’s a podcast of another day, for sure.

DnDWife: Yes.

DM Eguile: But really, I wanted to have that kind of control as well as. Not only that, but I wanted to make something with you. I wanted to have that connection of a world that we could create together and that I could help run and build and that you could actually live in that world.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah. It was so cool to be able to just jump right in.

DM Eguile: Right. I’m not a writer. I’m more of an orator. I have been publicly speaking for 15 years, always known to be a very good impromptu speaker, which has always been my key, but writing was never my strength. So when it came to becoming a Dungeon Master and creating a world through voice and through a group, I never looked back. And we’ve now been building Extrayus for what, about a year now?

DnDWife: Yeah, it’s coming up close to a year in February.

DnDWife and players create their own hometowns in Extrayus

DM Eguile: And in my insight, we created a different kind of aspect, too, as this world is so new in that my players, as well as DnDWife here, are actually creating the world, as they go. The players themselves had to create their own hometowns, because that was their hometown. They had to describe what they were made of.

DnDWife: Yeah. And then we had to find out where they were located in the world.

DM Eguile: Now, obviously, having my wife here be a part of that was going to be very difficult, and she was always worried about meta gaming, that dastardly thing.

DnDWife: Yeah, that was a tough thing to kind of get over as a player, as your wife.

DM Eguile: I think we also came through with a pretty good compromise, and I think a pretty unique setup for a character if you want to kind of give a little sneak peek to your current character, your traveler of Extrayus.

DnDWife: I went the really easy route. Amnesia is the best for when you don’t want to do a lot of hard work to start with. So, I just left it all up to my DM, of course. I don’t know anything about this world.

DM Eguile: But as you know, that’s not always the best idea. As you’ve been getting these bursts of memories and recollections that I have kind of made it a personal agenda to put you through the emotional kind of spin cycle.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah. They’ve been head splittingly fun.

DM Eguile: Everything from mundane to horror inducing cringe. I know.

DnDWife: Yeah. We have only been playing for a year, but there’s so much that has already gone on that we’ve experienced, which is why we also have, one of the other segments we have, which will be called Lore Drop, will be specifically just talking about Extrayus itself, how we made it, the species, the cultures, the cities that were made not only by myself but my players as well. We also have plans in the future, hopefully with all, hopefully you future listeners to allow for you guys out there to also help build parts of Extraeus, help me build towns, NPCs, and other things so that you can hear about these and how my players interact with them in certain chaotic ways.

DM Eguile: Yeah, I’m sure we’ll have some contests or something to see if someone would like to have their NPC or maybe a town named after them. It would just be really cool to be able to include some of the viewers, some of the readers in on this.

Looking at this ragtag group of Travelers, as I’ve called them

DM Eguile: So essentially what we have then, and just to give a little, preview note, we’ll also be talking about the adventures in Extrayus itself. Looking at my ragtag group of Travelers, as I’ve called them since, as my wife can contest here, they have yet to name themselves, even though they’re level four.

DnDWife: Yeah, it’s tough you know some of the good names have already been taken by a lot of the online players, and so it’s kind of tough to come up with something unique. we’ve had a few different things thrown out there, little names thrown out there, but none of them. I don’t know, don’t feel right.

DM Eguile: It’s a tough one. We’ve had some hits or misses for our other ones, and we’ll probably reveal those later on. And if anyone is curious to know of the previous campaign team names you can go to dndwifestories.com and read about our previous adventures there. 

DnDWife: Yeah.

DM Eguile: But I think this is going well with our travelers so far. Obviously, we’ve kind of hinted a little bit of DnDWife’s character. Are you willing to at least drop the name of your character? Well, and the accent?

DnDWife: Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, I’m a British person in this one. I don’t know if that’s a very good accent. I hope so. I’m so sorry. If not British people, I apologize to the entire island, I guess, or country. 

DM Eguile: It’s good, sure. 

DnDWife: But, I guess my character’s name is Luna. That’s her found name. Because she does not remember anything, including her actual name. but that’s how she was found. She was very pale, very dark hair, and, the people who found her thought she looked a little bit like the moon, so they called her Luna.

We made some major changes to the species in our world

DM Eguile: And the special thing is, you are playing a high elf, which is going to be much different in Extrayus. Now, all the species are very much different.

DnDWife: Yes, we made some major changes to the species in our world. While they are similar to some of the ones you already know, they have very different origins, very different places that they’re going. so they’re not exactly what you would expect.

DM Eguile: And, I mean, if you’re interested to even check a little sneak peek, go to dndwivestories.com. Welcome to Extraeus. There’s a brief little kind of summary of some of the sneak peeks that will come in future podcasts.

DM Eguile: Yes, we list a bunch of the different species names that we created, so you can always go check that out there and then.Not only that, but we’re also using a lot of special classes as well. We won’t reveal, as my veteran players were allowed to select from some unique, interesting types of homebrew, character classes that I had found for them. And, though many of the other players don’t even know what each character’s class currently is, it’s leading to some interesting, debacles as to no one really knowing what everyone is capable of, because this homebrew world is so new.

DnDWife: Oh, yeah, it’s super fun. Like you said, a lot of the veterans, I think there’s three of us, we have unique classes that the others don’t know about that we have no clue about and then we have some of our younger, more new players. They’re just doing kind of like the basics, trying to get started and just find their way.

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah. Since session one, since session zero, they’ve definitely hit the ground running. And I think that comes with having a mixed group of veterans and rookies all the same and just shows you again that community, because we all love each other. We all want each other to succeed and grow. And so when we see new, exciting people that want to play this thing that we are so excited of, we instantly want to help them in every way we can, which is why we want to reach out now to all these people to see whatever we can do.

DnDWife: Yeah. Maybe it isn’t the most amazing world out there, but I’d like to see if people think it’s a nice place to live and maybe see if they want to put someone there.

DM Eguile: And we’re also hoping to give also a little bit of our advice as we go along, as, we’ve been together now for ten happy years and, we don’t really see that changing anytime soon. And we’ve seen that there are very good uses of RPG’s and the tabletop to help you connect and build a stronger relationship. And there’s also ways that it can cause problems. but you figure it out. And through our experiences and hearing all of your experiences, we learn, just like our characters grow in levels, we grow in levels, we learn to become better. Husband class and wife class, listening one up, partner class. Right. And so we just see it as this is that life is that whole thing. It’s a game we play both at the table and off the table. Yeah, I think it’s really helped us just communicate better, do more coupley things, be more in tune, because it’s something you can always do together. And, I love adventuring with you.

DnDWife: I do too. It’s fun. Even though you’re the DM and know everything 

DM Eguile: And we’re starting this podcast, and I’m hoping that not only with connecting with everyone else, it’s another way that you and I can do something together and have some fun and share our stories. And so it’s not just us talking alone in our apartment all day.

DnDWife: Yeah, because that’s not weird.

DM Eguile: Not weird at all. Not weird at all.

DnDWife: Not at all. but we’d like to thank you all so much for joining us, on our very first episode. It’s really crazy to even think about that, but we’re so grateful.

DM Eguile: We’re learning, trust us, we’re giving our shot. But just like when we first started in DnD, we were rookies. We had pieces of paper and drawings and markers and we just all hung out. But that didn’t change how much fun. And just even now, today, we have just as much fun as we did our first day.

DnDWife: It’s all about enhancing your fun, right?

DM Eguile: And so we’re hoping if we can get this far, we can connect with others. Yeah, it’s going to be a rough start to begin with, but it’s about who you’re doing that rough start with, and the people you play with, your partner. Everything matters in terms of the connection and the family you create.

DnDWife: Everyone along the way helps you, supports you, and we’ve really created a family with this table. I think it would be really fun to hear what other people have to say about their own table.

DM Eguile: Exactly, which is why we encourage people to, we are going to have a discord up here pretty soon so that we can have people come together, connect, ask us questions. but we do have some social medias coming out, so please keep an eye out for those, dndwifestories.com. That is the central place for everything. My wife has spent years setting it up. Please read her old stuff as well. The archive materials will give you a little snippet as to kind of the craziness we’ve been through.

DnDWife: Yeah. If you want to read all about campaign one and a little bit about campaign two, some of our one shots, it’s all in there, so you can just kind of read it over and catch up a little bit if you want.

DM Eguile: And for those who just not always want to listen, because I know we are very physical, visual people in the TTRPG community. Don’t forget to look out for Comic Cave. It’s going to be kind of our off podcast segment that will feature art from one of our players.

DnDWife: Yes. @EntLynk. That is E-N-T-L-Y-N-K on x, formerly known as Twitter, and also on Instagram. Check out some of her stuff. It is so cool the way that she draws these DnD characters. And before she joined us, she had never once drawn a portrait, anything, fantasy, nothing. And she just took to it like a fish to water. It was so wonderful.

DM Eguile: We set her up with, like, multiple commissions already. So she’s already facing that dreaded artist conundrum. Oh, yeah.

DnDWife: I mean, as soon as we told our players that she was available as an artist, they jumped on that.

DM Eguile: So be sure to also check out our social media because most of that art will be displayed there first.

DnDWife: Yes.

DM Eguile: As well as exclusively first on our discord, as well as this podcast itself.

DnDWife: Absolutely. There’s so many awesome future segments to look forward to. Not just Comic Cave, the Lore Drop stuff, the Apartment Craft, materials, all of these things.

DM Eguile: The campaign itself could be probably 50 podcasts alone.

DnDWife: We could talk about it all day, I think.

We’re trying to make it as if you’re really living in the world

DM Eguile: What are we already at over 100 hours of basically session play time?

DnDWife: Yes.

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah. And we have only just begun. They’re level four, folks. That’s it so far.

DnDWife: Yeah, we’re doing a really slow kind of uptick in levels here. We’re trying to make it as if you’re really living in the world.

DM Eguile: And we’ll go into more, hopefully on my kind of DM style and kind of give little tips that hopefully some other DMs might like to steal from me and use in their own games, because that’s what we all do.

DnDWife: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

DM Eguile: The running joke we have is always, Simpsons did it.

DnDWife: Yep. Everybody’s already done it. 

DM Eguile: But we hope that we put a unique enough twist on it that it’ll know to be something different, because we really are, just a couple a’ nerds.

DnDWife: Yep. But thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you joining us on our first episode!

DM Eguile: Oh, yeah!