(Tinzien) Following a recent guest appearance on a D&D podcast, I was ask the question as to where a new listener could jump into the pile of episodes without having to start back on episode 1.
This lead me to write up a longer than intended post where I outlined a rough episode guide to each of the major story archs through episode 168. I’m including it here for the sake of posterity.
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[Finding a place for someone to begin other than episode 1] is sort of like finding a spot for someone who is going to be variably late to a Lord of the Rings movie marathon – you’ll get an idea of the characters and go from there but there might be a couple “huhs” in there. Not a problem though. I’d suggest at least listing to the recap episodes which are scattered in the first 100 episodes (and listed clearly as such) if you start higher on.
I’m a sucker for the holiday episodes which are totally out of cannon but a lot of fun.
– Episode 87 is a take on the classic Grinch who Stole Christmas story mixed with Dr. Who
– Episode 102 is an April Fool’s Day story harkening back to the old 1964 Scooby Doo cartoon.
– Episode 130 is an action filled Christmas special adventure…. on a train… with fisticuffs…
– Episode 160 is a video only episode. Don’t ignore the stories of children.
Episode 41 – 43: The party first encounters the Drow in a big way, we find out one of the cast is a closet poet and also a creative use of spiders. *coughs*
Episode 53: I imitate one of the player’s voices that he uses for his character in order to have said character meet his past or present self.
Episode 64: An emotional episode that showed that just because you see Monster X, does not always mean it’s a monster.
Episode 69 – 70: The Slurp Slurp stories which set up towards the Trial arc as well as my take on The Seven Pillared Hall.
Episode 98 – 99: Getting treasure is not always easy. A party conflict set of episodes.
Episode 103 – 108: Want to see what a perhaps “sentient” Ioun stone can do to a Drow city?
Episode 110 – 116: The Trial of the Chained God series mentioned in the DMBlock episode.
Episode 118 – 119: What happens if the party wakes up in different bodies?
Episode 126 – 131: Death-knights…..
Episode 132 – 133: The party meets The Green Dragon Empress for the first time.
Episode 140: The party has to make up stories that would be find in the mental hive mind history of the Kalashtar (Zanatari the battle cleric’s race)
Episode 143 – 145: Being awesome and having a town are cool, but sometimes you get forced into the role of playing Mayor or a parent to what you have wrought.
Episode 146 – 147 AND 156: Spooky episodes involving charmed or murderous animals. The ending was delayed until 156 due to some other stuff happening.
Episode 148 – 154: The Kalashtar story arc. A very complex storyline and an errand that I thought would take 20 minutes of game time but turned into 7 episodes.
Episode 155: The party encounters something that a future version of one of the party might have created.
Episode 158 onward : Current story arch and some stuff involving a lizardman outpost and a possibly cursed or possessed box. Leads into the jailbreak stuff, etc.
