Welp. Time to bite the bullet on this one. But we’ll close out with some good Dungeons and Dragons fun.

Update & Disclaimer

Before we get to the reason for the season, we’ve got a bit of an update and some clarification to set out there for this particular Dungeons and Dragons project. First and foremost, yes. We know Episode 1 of Renegade Knights, in particular, wasn’t up to the usual standard of our original material. I own that one the most since it was mostly aspects of the writing process that I’m personally responsible for.

An updated version of Episode 1 has now replaced the previous one in a new upload. Hopefully, it’s more acceptable than the previous iteration. (Admittedly I’ll probably update it again as I’m extremely self-conscious and have a tendency to stealth-update things when I get the impression people don’t like them). Apologies that it was as disappointing as it was. That said, we have a disclaimer to issue for future episodes.

While the quality of Episode 1 was less than satisfactory and we’ll commit to fixing other episodes that are met with similar scrutiny, I want to be clear. This is still a low-priority project for us that we’re mostly doing for fun. We’re solely making it to share the fun we have playing Dungeons and Dragons in a creative format. Because of that, we are not treating it to the same level of review that we issue to things like Burning Sky or Ghost Light Exorcist. Which is a long way of my saying “We do not edit these before release.” What you are reading in these episodes are essentially first drafts.

We are discussing plans to collect episodes into complete volumes. In this case, the collected editions would be more significantly and professionally edited. We’re not sleeping at the wheel. Look forward to updates on that. If all of that is understood, then we hope you’ll continue reading and enjoying what we’re having fun putting together. Also, we kindly ask (hell, I’m begging, at this point) that you continue to offer feedback as it’s our only way of being able to fix these things and take notes on what to correct in future edits. I cannot stress, enough, the importance of engagement in that pursuit.

Now, then…

Renegade Knights 1 and 2 | What Had Happened Was…

What Had Happened Was… exists for us to convey exactly the kinds of changes that are made between the session and the actual episodes. Sometimes things that work in the world of Dungeons and Dragons don’t translate well. Not into conventional storytelling. So we tweak stuff. Below are some examples of that.

Episode 1: See, What Had Happened Was…

You’d probably be surprised but most of this episode went down exactly as it happened in the session. Lavi rolled up on the prison, unintentionally seduced the majority of the guard force by storing important documents between her boobs, couldn’t perceive why they were so nice to her, and got led down to Kyu’s cell(block) by a female guard. S’all she wrote on that. We tweaked some dialogue, here and there, but there were no real changes. There was a major addition, however, in the entire first interaction between Lavi and her butler… Butler.

In the original story, dude didn’t have a name. And it was late when we transcribed it, so we didn’t bother coming up with anything creative. We were the tired. The whole exchange there is new. In the original session, Lavi just… appeared on the front steps of the prison. We added that bit to provide a wee bit more context of the story and inject a bit of Lavi’s character at an earlier point.

Episode 2: So, It Happened Like This…

By contrast, Episode 2 is… pretty much entirely different. I mean, from the ground up, toootally unrecognizable from how we actually played it. In fact, the best way we can think to actually get across exactly how radically unlike the session it was is to show you in this form:

• The note from Lavi’s father encouraged Kyu to take the money from Lavi and make his own daughter an accomplice to a prison break. (Swell guy, ain’t he?)
• Kyu pickpocketed the money from Lavi, then lied about it, rather than conning it away from her. (Lavi rolled veeery low, that day)
• There was no hidden passage in Kyu’s cell. Rather, there was a tunnel in another inmate’s cell that required crawling to get into. Lavi didn’t care for this.
• Speaking of other inmates, Kyu didn’t really sneak out with Lavi, so much as she set a crazy inmate loose in the prison as a distraction. Meredith was not amused.

Pretty much the only thing about this episode that happened exactly as it did in the game itself was the way in which Lavi freed Kyu’s hands. It was a Firebolt improvised into a blowtorch and, thanks to her being level 0, it went exactly as well as it did in the actual episode… poorly. The “Fayaboruto!” bit is a joke we threw in because when playing, EvilBob actually said it in that way, as a reference to DanMachi (a mutual favorite of ours) and I responded with “Faya-what?” as a Dragon Ball Z: Abridge reference (another mutual favorite of ours). It was so funny, we included it.

We changed most of these things for a number of reasons. The most notable was that we wanted to bring out more of Kyu’s conniving character. We felt the most appropriate way to accomplish that was by having her swindle Lavi out of the bail money entirely without prompting from Lavi’s pompous old man. Changing that, however, meant changing other things. Like the contents of the note. We decided that Lavi’s pop wouldn’t intentionally increase the danger his daughter was in while assassins are after her. Really helps get across exactly how awful Kyu is too. But we’ll get to that in later episodes.

We also changed the bit with releasing “Crazy Pete” (or whatever we named him) as a distraction. This is a comedy and all, but it was just a bit overly silly and random for some of our liking (Mine, okay? It was me. I’m the reason you can’t have nice things). Instead, Kyu opens up a hidden passage in her own cell that I assure you will be explained later (though it is a reference to something, if you can figure it out).