Dungeons & Disciples

Tony Benda 0:00
Hello everyone, and welcome back to dungeons and disciples. This is Episode 11. My name is Tony Benda and I am Joshua Shaw. It is so great to be here today. We have passed the 10 episode mark. Officially, that's exciting, because our last two episodes we did is like a giant chunk of audio that I cut in half. And, you know, I guess, made two episodes out of it, because we had our guests last week were and the week before, I guess, were Steven KACHER, brother in law, and tuck Choate, good friend of ours. And that was their first time being on the show. And it was a blast. And you couldn't even tell though, like that they were like, you could never tell that Stephen was like, a first time podcast. I know he was an actual and we just got a, yeah, you know what's exciting, at least for today, when we're recording this, we're almost to 1000 downloads.

Josh Shaw 1:13
It is very

Tony Benda 1:14
exciting. And I think by the time we have Episode 11 out, we may hit that. I hope so. I hope so too. They're not. It's not about the analytics necessarily. It's about the reach and the ministry expansion and all that kind of good stuff. But, yeah, we have some some fun times today, because

Josh Shaw 1:31
today's gonna be crazy, but I'm excited about it. Would you like to introduce our guests? I'm gonna give you the honor to listen. This is what I will say. I am so excited. This is what I will say. I'm gonna start by reading a scripture and kind of allude to it. Okay, okay, okay. Matthew, chapter 19, verses 13 through 15. Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray. But the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, leave the little children alone and don't try to keep them from coming to me. Watch this, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. And after placing his hands on them, he went on from there. And just hearing from the mouths of young children of God is so essential. Because, like, for me, like, I can listen to a preacher all day, but there are just sometimes that a kid says something and I'm like, yo, you want to preach. I'll give you the mic. That's fine. You take it. You take it. Yep, if that doesn't allude to some guests we have today, and now, Tony,

Tony Benda 2:41
introduce our guests. All right, so I've known these two out of four siblings for a while now. You know their parents very well. We traveled to Gen Con with their dad. Here in the studio today we have Xavier and fish. Welcome, gentlemen, hello.

Xavier 3:02
It appears we are on the wrong podcast. We must have taken the left turn in Albuquerque, but we are very excited to come to this podcast and talk about guacamole today. I'm very excited for this so

Fish 3:17
and Hello, I am fish.

Xavier 3:19
Oh yeah, I'm Xavier.

Tony Benda 3:21
So what these guys are referring to is they actually have their own podcast, formerly called we're all trying to be we're all pretending. We're pretending, we're all pretending to be adults. Here and now their show is the Fishers of Men podcast is available on all platforms. Go check them out after this episode. Of course, we'll leave links in the show notes.

Josh Shaw 3:43
And of course, I was told the name, and then said, yeah, man, look for the pairs of legs. And I didn't know. I didn't know what to look

Tony Benda 3:50
there's her work on their podcast. It's, it's legs, well, it's there. They're standing against a brick wall.

Josh Shaw 3:58
They're not just bare legs. No, they're just

Fish 4:02
likes the talk, yeah?

Xavier 4:06
So Xavier, the talking like

Tony Benda 4:07
truly Xavier and fish. Welcome to the show. Officially, it is great to have you guys, yeah, today's would be a fun episode. Just, it's different. It's you guys have been playing DND now for a little bit, and we'll be kind of diving in a little bit about, you know, your DND journeys, I guess. But I guess the first thing we do with all of our new guests is it is,

Josh Shaw 4:31
it is rolling for character traits while we're getting them set up. Tony, I want you to kind of dive into a little bit about why, why? Why bring kids on? Why talk about DM for kids? Why, why mention it like, what? What is the importance? What is, what is so essential about why we're bringing them on today,

Tony Benda 4:50
I will consistently say that DND is not just an adult game. There are obviously things that are either. Darker or age appropriate, depending on what style of gaming you're playing. We have talked about the curse of strahd and the curse of the curse of strahd before, and that is a that is more of a that's an intense campaign. It's

Josh Shaw 5:12
an intense campaign. And

Tony Benda 5:13
we've talked about, like, the darker side of DND, especially in our episode about stigmas and things like that. We discussed how things can get dark, but it doesn't have to be. It can be super fun. There are different things out there that specifically prepare you for d&d with those under the age of 18, which is a blast, and we'll talk more about those. Oh yeah, but I don't think it's ever too early to start talking about storytelling with young folks and playing games, because that's literally what it is. It's just having fun with people that you care about so and

Josh Shaw 5:48
that's our and as we're talking about this, our guests are currently rolling for their numbers and their stats. Oh, boy,

Tony Benda 5:53
I like it.

Josh Shaw 5:55
Xavier's already hopping to it. He's like, I'm

Xavier 5:58
not I got all my stats and they're way too high than they should be.

Tony Benda 6:03
Listen, I trust your roles.

Josh Shaw 6:05
I do. I trust the rules.

Xavier 6:06
I got a 15, a, 12, a, 16, a, 13 and a, nine, a, 13 and a, 14. Okay,

Josh Shaw 6:12
so you got a nine. You got a nine in there. You

Tony Benda 6:14
got a single digit. That's way too high.

Josh Shaw 6:17
The Nine is too that's like commoner status. All

Xavier 6:20
the numbers, all the numbers, is just like, I don't know where to, like to put them, because, like, quite a few of them are like, I don't know. I don't think I have, like, any, like, one of mine, maybe like a 16. But like,

Josh Shaw 6:33
all about to see fish, have you rolled

Fish 6:37
yet? No, all right,

Tony Benda 6:38
so for those listening at home, what they're doing is they're rolling 4d six, and they're dropping the lowest number, which is good, because this is kind of like a way to balance out the stats a little bit. That way you're not stuck with all sevens or all or all eighteens I get. Well, maybe 18 is the highest you get, because of three sixes,

Josh Shaw 7:02
unless you pick a character trait, like a barbarian, you roll 18 on strength and get, like a

Xavier 7:09
20. Yeah, since we're all since we're all humans, can we get A a plus one bonus to all our stats? Oh,

Tony Benda 7:16
my goodness. And what human? Okay, I

Josh Shaw 7:19
will say this plus one bonus to everything that is true. This is why, like children, this is crazy.

Tony Benda 7:24
He has memorized, memorized the player's handbook, most, most of all the books. And I just like,

Josh Shaw 7:29
You know what's crazy is, I remember when we did dark vision, I said, Listen, if you're if you're just one that memorizes the player's handbook and the Bible, dude, more power to you.

Unknown Speaker 7:40
We met him. Are you

Xavier 7:41
here? I told Mr. Tony when I met him afterward, I said I was riding my bike when I hurt when I was listening to that. And that hit me hard. I was like, Oh, I do know more of the player's handbook than I know of the Bible. Okay,

Tony Benda 7:54
I will say this though, you guys know quite a bit more of the Bible than most people, either your age or in general. So, oh, don't

Josh Shaw 8:01
worry, we're gonna push you guys to the limits. You don't, guys don't have your exegetical papers on the sufferings of job ready?

Fish 8:12
My mom's doing is, I will study, if that, yeah,

Josh Shaw 8:14
we'll have to talk like, what's exegetical,

Tony Benda 8:18
man, I want a hermeneutically accurate exegetical, dude,

Josh Shaw 8:22
I know I've already I'm done with college. I don't want to go back right now.

Tony Benda 8:25
That's right, you did graduate recently. I did again. Congrats. Anyway, school is fun. Yeah, school is very fun. All right, so teen years of it, there's a lot of school kind

Fish 8:36
of gets old.

Josh Shaw 8:37
That's Hey, so am I? I'm old.

Tony Benda 8:41
Okay, you guys probably have the best of, like, the schooling world, though, because we do, yeah, we're homeschooled, right? Homeschooled, which means you get to, like, do school for a bit, and then you guys get like, the rest of your day, in a sense. I mean, you guys do other activities too. You're in musicals, swimming, swimming practice. You guys do VBS things. Diana

Xavier 9:06
currently auditioning for position as assistant director of our next VBS. Oh,

Tony Benda 9:10
that would be awesome. We'll

Josh Shaw 9:12
have to have some conversation. This is the next part President of

Xavier 9:15
the United States. I don't want to be Hey, that's

Tony Benda 9:18
all right. He has other aspirations that I've heard about before. It's gonna be fun. Bless,

Xavier 9:23
being a pastor. Yep,

Fish 9:28
it has been revealed. And you

Xavier 9:29
know what's great about that is I get to do even more years of school than all the people that went to college for four

Tony Benda 9:36
years. True, because you're gonna get your Masters. You go get your

Xavier 9:40
Masters, and then if you want to get your doctorate, which I don't know if I will, but there's

Tony Benda 9:45
time to think about.

Fish 9:46
There's definitely time. This is the good

Xavier 9:49
thing about knowing what career you're going into at a young age, is you can just plan, yeah, this dude's

Josh Shaw 9:54
preaching. We haven't

Tony Benda 9:55
even got in yet. He's putting me the same already. All right,

Josh Shaw 9:59
do we have our roles? Yes, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna go back and forth. All right, so, Xavier, you're gonna assign one of your numbers to whatever trait you want. You can start, highest rule, lowest rule, whichever. And we'll go to fish, and then we'll go, we'll just kind of trade back and forth until

Xavier 10:15
you guys are all set. All right. All right. I will start. I'm gonna start with my lowest I'm gonna put my nine, which is a number far higher than this stat deserves in constitution. Oh my I cannot run or do any strenuous activity for the life of me. I I, like, I will run like a top speed for like, 10 seconds and then be winded and like, drop to the ground, same I, I, I had, like, I can't do spicy food, like you guys were talking about eating, like, hot wings, like I can't even do that.

Tony Benda 10:51
Don't be this. Most of us cannot. Cholula is like, where I stop. I don't know Thai curry is, like, my limit, that I would die.

Fish 11:01
I like a good type of units is that depends

Tony Benda 11:05
on the place you go to, if they make it like your family. Like tuck said in that in about the Indian food, he's like, I want, I want you to make it like I'm family. I always

Xavier 11:15
ask for it hot, and then they never bring it to me on so many ways. And they never bring it

Tony Benda 11:21
like that. Okay, Mr. Tuck can take some hot food, but so your Constitution's nine. Yes, how about you fish?

Fish 11:29
Um, I'm gonna start with my lowest, which is an eight.

Tony Benda 11:33
Ooh, where you put that? Um,

Fish 11:39
I'm going to actually put that in intelligence, eight

Tony Benda 11:44
in intelligence, okay? Why? I want you to argue for the reasoning, because you guys are pretty intelligent. Well,

Fish 11:52
I'm intelligent with God, but I'm good at math, but I would say it's like the lowest of all of these,

Josh Shaw 12:00
I get an A minus in math when everything else is a plus.

Tony Benda 12:08
I hear that, well, okay,

Josh Shaw 12:10
college calculus just isn't my coherent face right now, I'm so sorry. You're

Xavier 12:18
over you're you're overestimating homeschool kids a slight bit.

Josh Shaw 12:24
I was published school. I have no idea. I've

Tony Benda 12:26
met quite a few homeschooled kids that you know are smarter than the average bear. I've

Fish 12:31
100% of every math except two of the last C like, Oh,

Josh Shaw 12:39
see, it's an A. Thanks. Josh, I got C's.

Tony Benda 12:42
Well, seeds get degrees. C's are good.

Josh Shaw 12:45
Amen, amen. Well, C is

Xavier 12:48
not failing, that's true. It's trying.

Tony Benda 12:55
Well, Xavier, what is your next role? So you did constitution, and in fish did intelligence. So where is your next role?

Xavier 13:03
Keeping in line with me being terrible at physical things, we have a 12 in strength. Okay, I am quite weak.

Tony Benda 13:12
Hey, you listen here. That's better than Zook strength. Okay, actually, that's better than my character strength. That's funny. Yeah,

Xavier 13:20
I'm not, I'm not very strong. I can't lift a lot, you know, um, it also makes me look a lot weaker when I'm compared to fish, as you will see in probably a little bit. Um, he is ripped. He has a six pack.

Tony Benda 13:37
Do you really have a six pack acid?

Xavier 13:39
Yes, he does. I've

Fish 13:40
had a six pack for like, two years. You

Xavier 13:42
want to know how goodness I do? He's on our swim team that'll

Tony Benda 13:45
do it, that will do it. I've also seen you guys play pickleball. So pickleball, yeah, I mean, pickleball takes some athleticism.

Fish 13:54
Kind of Pickleball is more

Tony Benda 13:56
dicks. You're gonna have to talk to King David about that. Who I mean by King David is my brother in law. David. He's very good. Who reigns the king of all board games. And we call him King David, but he's a pickleball Wiz.

Josh Shaw 14:09
I was, I was digging in my mind scripture, scripturally. I'm like, no, no, you can you. There's no way you can biblically justify that King David. Was talking

Tony Benda 14:18
about King David from the Bible, playing pickleball. I'm talking about my brother in law, David, being the king of all board games destroyed

Fish 14:23
me. I did a one v1 against him. He's crazy. And then

Tony Benda 14:27
his sister, Diana, also known as Princess Diana, yes, is also very good at pickleball, because they were doing a tournament. Your dad's supposed to do a tournament with him, right? He was okay. But then I

Fish 14:40
was a cousin's birthday.

Josh Shaw 14:43
Jeez. All right, fish, what's your next one?

Fish 14:47
Um, going because he spawned my strength or something. Um, I'll put my 14 on strength. Okay,

Tony Benda 14:57
that's pretty good, though I love.

Fish 14:59
To work out. I work out at home. I've weights. We have monkey boys, which I love to like, do pull ups on, or stuff like that. And then I've done swim team for the past two years.

Xavier 15:13
I also want to say the 14 is only, there's only a 14 in strength because he got low rolls, not because his strength is out of 14, I

Fish 15:21
see that's my second highest, okay, okay, that's still good. That's great. But I'm not very good at like, Oh, I'm wrestling and stuff, but I'm very good at like, you see more endurance

Tony Benda 15:32
kind of thing, okay, which does, like, athletic I got you. That's good, though,

Fish 15:42
good at running and stuff,

Xavier 15:44
queuing in line with the rest. I have a 13 in dexterity, next lowest. Same reasons. I'm just not very movable. I'm not very dexterous. I can't, like,

Tony Benda 15:56
I mean, you're pretty agile.

Josh Shaw 15:58
He said he made the motion I can't touch my back, like, and

Tony Benda 16:02
then he touched his back.

Josh Shaw 16:05
That's our determination for dexterity. If you can't touch your back, you're just a commoner, just a commoner. But,

Xavier 16:11
like, No, I just anything that revolves like physical strength or using your body not good at, okay, I excel. My greatest weapon is a blob of gray Play Doh stuck in my head. That's, that's

Fish 16:31
what I use.

Xavier 16:33
I see I have no, no physical stuff. That's all right.

Tony Benda 16:40
How about you fish? What's your next thing? Well,

Fish 16:42
I'm gonna go with the opposite of Xavier. I put my highest wall of 15 into dexterity.

Tony Benda 16:51
Okay, ooh, that's pretty good.

Fish 16:54
I'm very quick and stuff. Pews, very fast.

Tony Benda 16:59
And then we mentioned you're a swimmer, which takes a lot of dexterity. I almost said dextricity. No. Dexterity could be a word. It could be a word, but not today. Though,

Josh Shaw 17:08
every time I've listened to an episode, I've made up at least one word. I'm realizing it. So what? What were you gonna What was your

Tony Benda 17:16
word? Dexterity, dextricity,

Josh Shaw 17:19
that's our, that's our made up word of the podcast. I like that. That's our made up word of the podcast. It

Tony Benda 17:25
was fun.

Xavier 17:28
No podcast. Dexterity, dextricity is not a word good.

Tony Benda 17:32
He's our made up word. Looked it up. Thank you. Xavier,

Josh Shaw 17:36
thanks to that play. Doh, up there.

Tony Benda 17:38
He's using it speaking of what is your next role, okay,

Xavier 17:42
my next one is 14 in intelligence. Okay? I feel like this is always an awkward one to talk about, because you don't want to say, like, Oh, I'm smarter than everybody, but you also, like, normally you don't want to say that you're dumb, but you don't want to say that you're really, really smart. I just, I mean, I think I'm just like, I'm smart. Like, just a little bit like,

Tony Benda 18:01
and that's okay, describing yourself with a character sheet, I will say, is a very humbling and awkward experience, because you don't want to sound like you're

Xavier 18:09
placing yourself above people.

Josh Shaw 18:11
Yeah, unless you're Stephen cater and then puts an 18 by strength that's well deserved.

Tony Benda 18:16
Yes, it is.

Josh Shaw 18:17
That's well deserved. We still haven't got the we're not going to put that photo up. No, no, no, we won't. No,

Tony Benda 18:22
it's okay. What photo Steven was a bodybuilder,

Josh Shaw 18:29
and not even like, not even like, what you would like seeing, like a video he was like, doing bodybuilding competitions. Oh, yeah. And for whatever reason, it's always been backwards in my mind. For bodybuilding competitions, they don't show how strong you are. They just, they don't do physical they do physical things. They just squeeze really hard in a Speedo, like body sculpting. They're just like, I'm gonna squeeze everything in my body while wearing a speedo,

Tony Benda 18:54
like, body sculpting.

Josh Shaw 18:57
Yeah, yeah. All I'm saying, and I'm gonna say it on the podcast. If I had to squeeze that hard, I'd probably poop. I'd probably poop on accident. Listen, we're all real, we're all friends, we're all lovers of Jesus. If I had to squeeze that heart, I'd poop. I'd poop. I'm sorry. Oh

Tony Benda 19:13
my goodness. How do we roll back from that? I'm sorry. Fish, what is your next ever

Xavier 19:18
gonna Starbucks? I've

Josh Shaw 19:19
had too much coffee already. Hey,

Tony Benda 19:21
I understand what's your next real buddy? Um,

Fish 19:25
I'll put a tin in charisma. Oh, okay,

Tony Benda 19:32
I like that. Why would you say that? Oh, no. Okay, so that means you have better things and other things, or lesser things than other things?

Fish 19:42
Oh, no, it's

Tony Benda 19:43
just one of those middle of the road, yeah. So let me ask you this, do you use charisma for, like an acting thing? Like, if you were to do some type of acting, would you use your charisma or performance check? Is that? Charisma based? Yes, see Xavier. No, he's

Josh Shaw 20:03
got that whole book memorized. I

Xavier 20:04
know performance,

Tony Benda 20:05
I would say in real life, fish, your charisma is not just a commoner one, maybe whatever happens based off of your current roles. But I've seen you on stage. I've seen you describe the

Fish 20:20
motion of the ocean.

Tony Benda 20:22
You got it right?

I'm seeing the lights turning blue on the stage. That was from VBS. But he had a phenomenal part where he did this monolog. It was so great. Do

Xavier 20:39
it? Do it on the podcast? No, he

Tony Benda 20:41
doesn't have, I don't, I

Fish 20:42
don't even know. I'd say I put half of that on my mind.

Josh Shaw 20:47
He's like, one and done. Brother, I'm not doing

Tony Benda 20:50
Listen, there's always more lines coming so I get it. No, that's good, though. Yeah,

Fish 20:55
it was very good.

Tony Benda 20:56
Charisma is, charisma is not bad there.

Fish 20:58
Yeah, I'm pretty good on stage if I'm acting, but not really just regular living.

Josh Shaw 21:04
I get the sense that if you played a bard inside of a one shot, you would go hard or go home.

Fish 21:09
Yes,

Xavier 21:12
type that would play a bard and bring a keyboard, a guitar and as and like a, like a, what's it? What is it? Like a harmonica in harmonica, and just like being like, playing the keyboard with his feet and the guitar and the harmonica, I would

Tony Benda 21:27
also do the same and be like, I would also do the same thing. I've seen number four, your fourth, your youngest brother. I've seen number four without the keyboard. The last session we had, and he was playing background music, pocket Bard. He had this keyboard that was playing like music automatically.

Fish 21:46
He moved it from like one room to another.

Tony Benda 21:50
Oh, anyway, you got two more stats or one more stat?

Xavier 21:53
Oh, two more. Two more. Okay, I put my 15 in wisdom. I think I'm decently wise, I would agree. Also, um, I don't know, um, if I don't remember exactly what wisdom is used for, but I know wisdom is mainly what, uh, clerics and druids use, and clerics are more like divine focused. So wisdom could be like, like knowledge, of like the Bible and like God. So thank you, Mr. Tony, for looking up what wisdom is used for in DND. I

Tony Benda 22:26
wasn't just looking at that. I was looking at the common phrase like so we talked about this before, actually told your dad, this is how we describe some of the stuff there. There's this quote out there that goes, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. So that's the intelligence versus wisdom thing I see, okay, then definitely 15, but the whole phrase is, strength is being able to crush a tomato. Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato. Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato. Intelligence is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato and a fruit salad. And charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad.

Josh Shaw 23:09
I love intelligence. It said intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Yep,

Xavier 23:14
a tomato is a fruit, which is why it is so good that a tomato is the main character of a show called VeggieTales. True.

Tony Benda 23:20
True. Most of our listeners would probably know what VeggieTales is, by the way, I would hope so. All right, fish, you got two more, and then Xavier's got his last one,

Fish 23:30
yeah, um, I'm going to put my 12 on constitution. I am a spicy person,

Josh Shaw 23:42
really. What is this hottest thing you've ever eaten? 1

Fish 23:45
million school units?

Tony Benda 23:46
Oh my goodness. What

Xavier 23:47
did you eat? Hot sauce. We

Fish 23:49
were doing a hot sauce challenge, and I went to the highest but yes, I love spicy stuff. We went to a friend's house, and the person put three habaneros in the salsa. And it was amazing, I

Tony Benda 24:02
see, but not salsa with sour cream? No,

Xavier 24:07
no.

Josh Shaw 24:09
You like mixing

Tony Benda 24:11
sour cream and salsa together? Oh, they find it very

Xavier 24:15
weird. Your sister, your wife's sister,

Tony Benda 24:18
my wife's wife, mixed it in front of that. Yeah. And our,

Xavier 24:22
our two younger brothers would not leave her alone for weeks. It was

Josh Shaw 24:26
hilarious, okay, but you can't change my mind about this one, because somebody enlightened me to this next let me go to a Mexican restaurant, get a small bowl of cheese and salsa and mix it

Tony Benda 24:35
together like queso. Oh, yeah, oh. And then,

Josh Shaw 24:40
yeah, I get a whole thing, a case of right little bowl, dump some just a little bit of salsa in it, stir it with like a like the butt end of a fork, and use a chip and eat it.

Fish 24:48
What about put on a taco that sounds even better. You'll

Josh Shaw 24:52
never go back. It's incredible. I We gotta keep going. This is a really fun. Episode. I love this.

Tony Benda 25:00
Xavier. What's your last one?

Xavier 25:02
All right, if you haven't guessed it already, it's charisma. I have a 16 in charisma. I feel like I'm a very charismatic guy, very I love talking a lot. I like to talk a lot. I make friends quickly. I'm very conversative with people. And I feel like I could probably sell a tomato based fruit salad. I

Tony Benda 25:29
think you could.

Fish 25:30
I think he fairy could. I bet you could sell 1000 bucks of tomatoes.

Tony Benda 25:37
You probably could. I could see that happening

Josh Shaw 25:39
Xavier. I think you could lead a wall to Jesus Christ. That's kind of a vibe that's possible. You could look at the wall and be like, do you know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Next thing you know, you look up, you're just touching the wall, laying hands on him. You're like, speaking of like, This wall was hurt,

Xavier 25:54
speaking of which, has that wall heard of Jesus? He has

Josh Shaw 25:57
at this point, inside of 1235,

Tony Benda 26:02
walls, we have recorded multiple podcasts in this room, not just our own. We've recorded that's what I'm saying. We have

Xavier 26:13
recorded, you recorded temple talking. We

Tony Benda 26:15
did record temple talking here as well. Shout out to Temple talk. Podcast,

Xavier 26:19
lovely. Podcast,

Tony Benda 26:22
all right, what is your last your last number,

Fish 26:26
um, I put a 13 wedding number is on wisdom, okay? Because I know a lot about God. I think I know um, some things, I guess I read the Bible every day. I study him, me and my dad do a Bible study together, and it definitely grows my relationship with my dad. But also God,

Xavier 26:57
that's awesome. I love how we just turned the wisdom set into knowledge of God.

Tony Benda 27:02
Well, yeah, we'll talk about more about that. Yeah, no, I think, I think you guys did a great job with your character sheets. Thank you for doing that and joining us in the whatever this crazy podcast is rolling our own scores and doing Jesus thing. It's worked so far. It has worked so far. I like the new format too.

Josh Shaw 27:30
All right, so now we get into some fun questions. Now we're gonna break the ice a little bit, and if icebreakers is ever gonna listen to this sponsor every now and then, wouldn't, wouldn't hurt. I particularly enjoy icebreakers and Lifesaver mints. So first question, how did you both get into DND? Okay,

Xavier 27:47
so I kind of introduced us both to DND. So my friend got me book called The dangerous book for boys, and basically it had a bunch of things in it about, like, like, cool activities you can do fun things. And up until this point, I think it was like 1011, around that range. Over all our lives, we had, like, played imaginary games together. I mean, we're a family of four boys. We like sword fight outside, pretend to fight dragons and goblins. You

Tony Benda 28:15
guys have monkey bars in your room, yeah, surprisingly, no

Fish 28:19
poke and bones in

Xavier 28:21
actually, no, no, no. Our third Yes. Teeth are both our third. Youngest broke his teeth. So first broke Mr.

Fish 28:32
Tony went to the house like five minutes, I know I

Tony Benda 28:35
showed up five minutes after this thing happened, and this was crazy. It's just frying

Josh Shaw 28:40
in tears a kid without teeth, and you're like, Hi, I'm here to drop off your loaf of bread. No, he

Xavier 28:47
was like, Hi, I'm here to play a DVD one shot with you guys. But it's all have fun. You're like,

Tony Benda 28:51
maybe another time. And number three broke his two front teeth.

Fish 28:54
No, but he is definitely the toughest of us all. No, because if we lose the tooth, we can get, like an ice cream ice cream sundae. The first thing he said, he said, Hey, Dad, do I get an ice cream sundae for

Josh Shaw 29:11
this wild

Xavier 29:16
Yes, there was a section in the book that was about role playing games. And I read it, and I was like, This sounds awesome. This is like, what we've been doing like this entire time, like our childhood, but it's like a board game, like all these games that we love. And it said the best, and it said, like, something like, the best thing to start out with a role playing game is Dungeons and Dragons. So I was like, I brought it to mom, and I was like, Hey, Mom, can we play Dungeons and Dragons? And she was like, Oh, let me do some research on it. So she researched it, and she sat down and she prepped. She was like, she said, basically what you said in your episode on darkvision, where you were like, there are some bad things that can be. You just need to know not to make anything bad in it. And she got us a starter set, and we played the starter set. We did not understand the rules. We. Played it very wrong. I will talk about that incident later. We played it very wrong, and but we had so much fun. And then we took a period about a year where we didn't play any DND, and I just kind of read the books, which is hence how I have like all this knowledge, is I just kind of memorized the books. And then I decided to get us back into it about the beginning of this year, yeah, beginning of this year, I think, or like, ended last year, and we've gotten in back into it, and we've played so many campaigns. We've had so much fun, so much homebuy books. It's, it's all. We've just had so much fun playing DND and, yeah, just awesome.

Josh Shaw 30:41
That's cool. All right, the questions are just gonna get more fun. Yes, they're just gonna get more fun. Yes, they are. What's your favorite character you've ever played in D and D, and what made that character special to you?

Fish 30:54
Um, my favorite is a guy named Mr. Skinny Wiggles, uncles. Uncle. Skinny Wiggles,

Josh Shaw 31:03
Oh, no.

Fish 31:05
He was very fun, and he owned a shop. So every day, every long rest, after every long rest, messenger or something, or my servant would come and give me the income that I made from the shop. So I was, like, super

Xavier 31:23
wealthy. I was a DM running that game, and I calculated a certain amount of gold that he would get every day sent in the mail as a certain amount of revenue from his shop. And so he would receive this every day I kind of made like a custom subclass for fighter called the shopkeeper, and he got a bunch of different perks for it. So who's amazing? He ran a shop called Uncle skinny Wiggles, magic menager Menagerie. And it was hilarious.

Josh Shaw 31:55
I'm mentally taking notes about all of this. By the way, it was this

Xavier 31:58
little, tiny guy that walked around with this super skinny too. He walked around with this giant backpack on his back full of bunch of things, with, like, a bunch of cages with like, random magical pets in him. And he just had all this stuff. And he just, he was very wealthy. The fun thing was, I gave him different, well, I gave him, like, a huge inventory space, but he just had a bunch of junk. So he should have random things. You're like, I got this random pen. I got the

Fish 32:23
I have a rat. I have a rat tail. Yeah, I

Xavier 32:26
have, I have the rat tail you need for your spell. How do I know? I have no idea. But he just had a bunch of random stuff. And it was, yeah, it's fun.

Fish 32:36
It was awesome. What

Josh Shaw 32:37
about you? What about you? Zaid, here,

Xavier 32:40
my favorite character is character who was named Xavier. I named him after myself. I named him Xavier. He started out as a sorcerer, and he went on this little redemption arc during the first couple of sessions, which I really loved. He started as a kind of very dark guy. And we encountered this group of this was in Fish's homebrew campaign. I love homebrew. This campaign was really fun. We encountered a group of you on T that were, am I allowed to say this on podcast? Go for it. Sacrificing people to a God, and that God did not like that, but they didn't know. And we thought, Oh, they're killing the people from this village. We have to stop this. So we realized that, as we were level three, that we could not stop the all easy 1t. So I got exactly what was 21

Fish 33:44
I was 2020

Xavier 33:47
bottles full of alcohol, okay? And I strapped them to me, and I got them to take me as prisoner. And they did. And what I did was I rolled on the floor and smashed them all, and I casted burning hands and fish made it explode, and it blew up the entire temple, and it it dealt so much damage that all the UNT died, and my character also died. Okay,

Josh Shaw 34:13
that was, I was like, There's no way you lived through that. He absolutely

Fish 34:16
died, but you

Tony Benda 34:18
sacrificed yourself

Xavier 34:20
the God that they that they were sacrificing these people to did not like that. Was very appreciative that I got rid of them. And so he brought me back to life. But I switched my class to cleric, and I changed races into a U on T.

Tony Benda 34:33
That's pretty amazing. That is insane. So I

Xavier 34:37
became a cleric of the storms, and so I would just, like, call down lightning. And I love that character. He was, like, he became started as, like, this dark character, and he turned into, like, he was so nice. He always wanted to help people. And yeah, that that was my favorite character. That's

Josh Shaw 34:54
not a testimony character. I don't know what is.

Fish 34:58
It's all into Paul. Was

Xavier 35:00
I was you said, Saul

Tony Benda 35:01
and DePaul, I was

Xavier 35:03
dead, and then I died, but he gave me new life. Amen, born again. This is great. Literally,

Josh Shaw 35:15
that's crazy. All right, so let's talk magic and abilities. Next, magic and abilities. If you could choose one spell or ability from D and D to use in real life, what would it be and why? All

Xavier 35:30
right, mine is very underwhelming. So there are all these cool abilities, like the power to, like, summon meteors and all these things. But I think I just want the mending cantrip. Using cantrips you can cast as many times as you want, all you do is got to cut something, touch something that's broken, broken and it fixes. That's it. Drop a drop a bowl fixed. And you can do it as many times as you want. Drop a ball, accidentally break something, drop your phone fixed. Just simple. I just want the mended thing. Yeah.

Josh Shaw 36:00
Can You Mend? I like that, like injuries, yes,

Xavier 36:03
yeah, mending does not heal injuries. Ah,

Fish 36:08
that would be awesome.

Xavier 36:11
There can be no healing. Can't no,

Tony Benda 36:15
yeah. The nice thing, though, is you can work in like it, and you could just use your mending. Can trip and get paid for it.

Josh Shaw 36:22
You'd be an all star Google. Okay, man, you fix this computer. Oh yeah,

Xavier 36:26
yeah, fine. Let's

Josh Shaw 36:27
go down. Yep,

Fish 36:28
the roof is falling mending. And

Xavier 36:32
that's the thing, is it even if, like, oh well, actually, the mending cantrip can only mend, like, two inches of stuff, then I just touch it a bunch. I just because it's a cantrip and I can use it as many times as I want. That's

Tony Benda 36:44
funny. How about you fish?

Fish 36:46
Um, mine is definitely financial.

Tony Benda 36:52
Financial. He says it's create

Fish 36:54
food and water. Ah, ooh,

Tony Benda 36:56
I see the spell. So

Fish 36:58
we would not have to go buy groceries every second. Hey, man, yeah, you

Xavier 37:04
can do it every day, and it creates, I think don't really need the water. I think it creates 20 gallons of water and up to 60 pounds of food of whatever you choose.

Tony Benda 37:12
My goodness, that's almost like Hero's Feast. But without the it's a

Xavier 37:15
whole thing, exactly. You can just boom, and here's the entire day's worth of food. And you can do it every

Fish 37:21
day. Also the create water. It's a free pool every day. It's

Xavier 37:25
20 gallons. Isn't that like a pool?

Tony Benda 37:26
Eventually it'll fit

Fish 37:29
eventually. Hey, no water bill.

Tony Benda 37:32
That's That's true.

Josh Shaw 37:34
Wait, I want to, I want to backtrack to the previous question for a second. You talked about getting income. How much gold Did you get a day? 10 gold. That's not bad, yeah, that's not bad at all. That's

Tony Benda 37:43
a decent wage that adds up. No.

Fish 37:45
And then some days we would just go in the forest, and then long rest, long rest, the long rest for like two

Xavier 37:52
this guy would be like, Ah, you need to buy this magic sword, but it is this

Fish 38:00
super dangerous quest. We'd just go and camp out in the woods.

Xavier 38:02
He was like, Butch, if you wouldn't slay this dragon for me, I could give it to you. And they're like, Nah, we're just gonna camp out in the woods for 10 days till we get enough gold to buy it.

Tony Benda 38:11
Oh, my goodness, who was the DM at the time?

Fish 38:13
That was me, okay?

Tony Benda 38:14
And you allowed that time, I would just ask DM discretion

Xavier 38:17
was fish. My two brothers and my parents

Josh Shaw 38:22
played in that game. You're like, you want to camp out for two weeks.

Xavier 38:25
We never finished it, but it was really fun. I was not very good at DMing at the time, and my game wasn't my game wasn't great,

Tony Benda 38:33
but I will say, is okay. You said a keyword there. It was fun at the time. And that's the whole point of DND. That's why they play DVD. Is to have fun. Is to have fun? Yes, it doesn't matter what crazy rules you're bending. It's about having fun.

Fish 38:45
We didn't know he was bad at the time.

Xavier 38:47
I didn't know I was bad.

Tony Benda 38:50
That's right, you were having fun. That's the important part. No,

Xavier 38:53
I think I Well, yeah, that's

Josh Shaw 38:55
good. All right. Okay. Last question for the icebreakers, can you share a memorable moment from one of your DND adventures that really stood out to you. Okay?

Xavier 39:04
So have to talk about the incident that happened in our first campaign. In the starter set. We did not know how to play this game. Our lovely fish was the DM we okay. We were playing me as a fighter, our friend, my brother. One of my brothers was a barbarian. One of my brothers was a cleric. We did not read the description of visibility, but we saw the cleric had an ability called turn undead. I thought, oh turn people into undead. And we looked through the monster manual, the small one that is provided for the starter set, and we saw the flame skull. We slaughtered the barbarian and brought him back. Flame skull.

Tony Benda 39:56
Wait. You slotted a brother. We

Josh Shaw 39:58
you. Kill you. Killed your brother's character.

Wait,

Tony Benda 40:08
oh, my goodness,

Josh Shaw 40:09
wait,

Fish 40:10
please continue, because

Josh Shaw 40:13
I have questions.

Tony Benda 40:14
There's more.

Xavier 40:16
He's still got to control it. We went through the dungeon and the dungeons boss, a spoiler alert, is a guy named nesna The spider. And we thought, I know something cool we could do. We went back to town and we bought a huge black cloak and a scythe, and we went back and this scythe, because we didn't know how to play DND, did 4d 20 damage.

Tony Benda 40:41
I love the way you play d&d back.

Xavier 40:43
And I was on the bottom. My brother got on my shoulders, and we had the flame skull. We put on the black robe, put the hood over the flame skull, and I held the sides so it looked like this tall, dark cook figure with a flaming skull head. So

Tony Benda 40:59
you were pretty much death.

Xavier 41:00
Yes, we walked in it said, I am death. Time to die and hit him, and he has like 20 hit points, so we just killed

Tony Benda 41:10
him.

Josh Shaw 41:17
you said, 4020 just roll 4020 I just want to see,

Unknown Speaker 41:23
okay, just

Josh Shaw 41:23
at the same time. Oh, my

Tony Benda 41:26
goodness, that's, oh,

Fish 41:27
that's a, that's a big role,

Tony Benda 41:29
18 plus 422,

plus 17. So that's 35 plus 22

Xavier 41:36
plus so we added

Josh Shaw 41:38
57 points of damage Jessica, because

Xavier 41:40
we added the ability modifiers for all of our

Josh Shaw 41:42
stuff. You guys probably did like 100 damage.

Tony Benda 41:49
That's almost like power word kill worthy. So that's pretty great.

Fish 41:55
Level three, we were level four.

Josh Shaw 41:58
Folks for spoilers, you will never use a D 20 for damage.

Tony Benda 42:03
Not even like God to your players, you really do that. So Okay,

Josh Shaw 42:07
my question at that point, then, is why? I don't even know how to ask it. Why did you kill your brother's character?

Fish 42:16
Because he wanted to cast a spell, but, but he was a blunt and he wanted to cast fireball, so we killed him to make the flame flame skulls.

Josh Shaw 42:26
Did he consent to being killed? Yes, yes.

Fish 42:29
He was like, we let him control the flame skull. Character,

Xavier 42:32
it wasn't like he was out of the game. This is number

Tony Benda 42:35
three or four. Brother,

Xavier 42:36
number four.

Tony Benda 42:38
Youngest,

Josh Shaw 42:39
I don't know how to cast kill me

Xavier 42:47
and bring me back as a flame skull. That's a great

Josh Shaw 42:50
first little thing right there.

Tony Benda 42:52
Well, is that your same favorable favorite? Okay, what is yours? You memorable?

Fish 42:57
Mine is a thing called the floating boat Chase. And this was, um, three's first. He's only done one campaign. They still doing it, but it's three. He was DMing,

Tony Benda 43:11
okay,

Fish 43:12
um,

Tony Benda 43:13
by the way, folks, we're referring to number of brothers. So we have one and two in the studio. Number three is, it's the one that's running this campaign.

Josh Shaw 43:20
Gotta keep track somehow. Yeah,

Tony Benda 43:21
well, this, it's easy with the number system, but it's also like, you know, privacy of people under age of 18, it's good to keep things exactly. Yeah,

Xavier 43:29
keep yourself off social media. Twitter. Yes, they

Tony Benda 43:32
have social media folks except the ones following exactly. Sorry. So three is running this campaign, um,

Fish 43:40
and we were on this boat, this giant boat in space just fly along, and a Beholder was driving it. And we thought this boat was like, gonna kill us all. We thought they were gonna kill us. And we hated

Xavier 43:56
it. It was a giant ship, and a Beholder was the cat this.

Fish 43:59
Was, like two months ago or something. This is, am I? So we, I was a iwaco, so we saw the bottom of the boat through, and then I used the wind spell to go to cast it down so we didn't fall, because somehow there was like gravity in space. So I just cast that. And then we are a brother four. He had this special ability of like, teleporting.

Xavier 44:36
Let me explain. Yeah, he was a sin. I broke. He was level nine. We were all level nine. He gains an ability where he can teleport between two of his knives and he can bring other WoW to one creature with him. We were hovering above this void that destroyed anything that entered it if it stayed in it for too long, and that and right when this happened, he dropped a knife down into that void. Oh, my story. I. Um.

Fish 45:00
And then while we were going, um, the um, this death angel from the boat, he was like the captain. He started chasing us,

Xavier 45:11
writing, riding a chimera.

Fish 45:17
So um four jumped on him, and then tob went both, oh, wait, before he jumped, he stabbed ones nice into the boat, and then he jumped on the death angel, Tobin to the void, and then toe point back up, and he got shredded, and like a black hole. Oh, my goodness. And then we fought the Chimera,

Xavier 45:37
and then, and then Fish's character shot the Chimera three times because he was a multi class build. He was a min, max multi class. Shot it with three arrows in one attack and instantly killed it.

Josh Shaw 45:49
If this doesn't want to make you play dandy with kids, I don't know

Fish 45:53
what does incredible.

Xavier 45:54
I think this is great. We we met, we met a gate, uh, named Bill Gates, the other day, was ever playing?

Tony Benda 46:01
That's awesome. It's really a gate named Bill. Yes,

Fish 46:04
it was Bill Gates,

Josh Shaw 46:06
all right, so got a little bit of fun in DND. We're still gonna talk about it. Don't worry. It's a D podcast, yeah, but we're gonna, we're gonna put your guys's roles that you guys put forth in your character person, or your character traits to the test. Now let's see what we got. It's gonna be fun. All right, so we're gonna talk about perspective as a child of God, perspective as a child of God. So what do you think about when creating a character? No, just, just creating a character. Let's we're gonna take D and D here, baseline, D and D. How, what do you think about when you build a character like view yourself at creating a character. And then I'll, then we'll tack on here, biblically.

Xavier 46:51
The first thing that I think of is, I always put, I love visualizing things. And this is one of the great curses that I have is I cannot draw well at all, but I have such a good, vivid imagination that I can imagine like a perfect picture, but I can't draw it, and that hurts my soul. But I will put a picture of what I want my character to look like in my head, and then I will find a class, race and subclass that fits that image that I have

Fish 47:23
by you fish. Um, for me, I make the most weirdest, funniest, crazy, craziest drama character ever. And I just think of what's the weirdest combinations that you can put on a character do that like

Josh Shaw 47:42
a barbarian fairy.

Tony Benda 47:48
I did one time, I did a I was a level four character. What? Where I mixed? I was a level two barbarian, level two circle the moon druid. So I was able to wild shape and be enraged at

the same time.

No, we played for a one shot and Jared, the guy who plays Creon, he was the DM for that one and a half shot. It is wonderful.

Fish 48:16
Monk Centaur before.

Tony Benda 48:18
Oh, that's fun. That's interesting. How do you play a monk Centaur? You've gotten more limbs

Xavier 48:22
people with your hooves.

Tony Benda 48:26
You do. It's hard to stealth and it's hard to feather, fall

Fish 48:29
on two hooves and have like, That's fast.

Josh Shaw 48:32
Oh, would you say a monk Centaur? I essentially just think of the movie Ferdinand. I don't think I've

seen Ferdinand. Oh, come on. Okay,

let's we're gonna move past that. We're gonna move past that. Okay, so obviously you guys have two different perspectives, how you create characters, right? Or two, two different identities that you guys want to create when you build this character, right? And obviously you two as children of God, right? Maybe two different identities, right? Like, how, how you guys think, how you guys move, how you guys think, still, you're still in love with God, right? But obviously, you're two distinct people, right? Yeah, we're two different people. So how do you keep your How do you both, personally, keep your identity grounded in Christ? Put it this way, as we walk through life, right? We're trying to be shaped and molded by what God says about us, right, what the Word of God is telling about us. But as we walk through the world, the world's going to want to create an identity for us, right? So there's a kind of battle there, right? Being homeschooled, right? Is like, let's just use this though, you guys are homeschooled. Like you guys, your parents kind of control more what how you guys learn, how you guys are educated, how you're walking, versus someone like me, who is public schooled. I was kind of just thrown into what the rest of the world had, and my parents kind of just were in the background. Kind of it. Does that make sense a little bit? Yeah. So I. How do you guys personally make sure your identity stays grounded in the Word of God? Is there things you do? Is it look like praying a certain way for you calling upon God in a certain way? How do you guys keep your identity, or like your character, grounded in who Christ is?

Xavier 50:18
Okay? Does that make sense? Yes, that makes sense. Okay. I was a bit confused by this question. Okay, so I always try to, we always try to stay away from a lot of, not away from the world, but like a lot of secular stuff that might be bad, like, we limit what things we watch, we limit what things we read, um, but we do. We do. We try to set boundaries for ourselves, and we try to surround ourselves with friends and people that will hold us accountable if we're doing something we're not supposed to and if we're living like the world and good Christian and godly people that will help us. So, yeah, one of the best advices for me, if for anyone listening, if you're trying to live more in God, is surround yourself with people that you know live in God

Josh Shaw 51:17
that's good. Oh, you fish.

Fish 51:22
That was such. A great answer. I was, I was thinking of the like, we don't do YouTube or Instagram because of all the bad things that there's good things on it, but there's definitely bad things on it. We have limited the shows we can watch, and for me and Xavier, we can now watch, like, a lot of things, but some things have, like, pretty bad language, or stuff like that, and we have to have the choice of moving away from that, even if we like the show or anything. Do

Josh Shaw 52:03
you guys find it hard to stay away from those things?

Xavier 52:06
It sometimes is. There was one instance with a show that we both loved very dearly, and it ended up going into some stuff that we thought was inappropriate, and so we stopped watching it. But that still, it still kind of hurts us to today, because it keeps coming out with new seasons and stuff, and we just Yeah, it was really, really good and we really liked it. But

Fish 52:29
I think most of the decisions for at least me is a lot easier because we live in a household of God, exactly. So it's a lot easier because we have restrictions and everything. It's a lot easier to say no to stuff

Xavier 52:46
that's good, yeah. And for me, I know that this probably doesn't apply to most people, but I'm very into acting, and there are some shows that I've had to reject doing because they have things in it that I don't agree with that I don't want to portray on stage, so that's good. Yeah,

Tony Benda 53:06
I have been there myself. I will say there are shows locally that I almost auditioned for because I loved the shows themselves. But then I'm like bad and not because there's just some things that you just don't want to portray

Josh Shaw 53:26
that's powerful, though, honestly hard to say no sometimes, but that's that, and that's kind of where I want, like, why I wanted the perspective of you guys is because I think the older we get, we think just like that. But you guys are developing, like, a perspective of discipline very early in like walking in excellence with the Lord, like, uh, flip Philippians, chapter one talks about, like, you guys are making intentional now early in your lives to walk in excellence versus it took me a really, really long time to learn to walk in excellence like that. That's, that's where I wanted to kind of go, I'm not very good with words sometimes. But so the next question that is, have you learned any life lessons or skills from playing D and D that you are, that you're currently or know how to use in your walk with the Lord?

Fish 54:14
Um, I think a good one is teamwork helps a lot, because we play, we have four there's four kids, our family, so we play a lot as a team. So the DND helps, like the more people, the better you got to do against this boss, or against a lot of things. So one of the things is teamwork makes the dream work. That's

Xavier 54:45
good. Yes, that's good. Working together and being forced to sit down and agree with people that you live with, which is sometimes very hard to not fight. And we've definitely had some fights before, but it. Helps to build friendships, and it helps to build teamwork skills. And, yeah, it's like, and also, because we're kids, it's like we're playing like grown ups, and it's like, we get to go out in a world and live like we're adults, and we get kind of practice, and if one of us does something we shouldn't, or something wrong, the others can, and mom and dad can come to them and be like, Hey, this is why this is wrong. This is why you shouldn't do this. And it's like, gets to teach them, and it's like a life lesson

Josh Shaw 55:32
that's really good. I really like that. Yeah, all right, let's move on to the next category. I labeled it making the right call. This is interesting, because sometimes, when we play in a fictional fantasy world, right, we have a lot of freedom to make, really any choice you want to right, without without hesitation. You can make those choices. You can have that kind of free will. Some of those are easy, and some decisions are difficult. And we can really just kind of move in how we want to with our character, just because we can right so as a player, and even as like a as a DM, like, how do you make decisions in the game? What drive like, obviously, we know that the character you're going to play as the character, not as as yourself. So like, how do you make decisions? As you play

Xavier 56:24
i i try to keep in mind what my character would do, but I also I try to build characters that aren't going to do bad things, and then portray and then, like, portray those characters like, I always try not to do things that are wrong, and sometimes I mess up. And can I go on like, kind of a tangent. But the first time that I ever played d&d with people other than my family was our Public Library held a D and D game, and I went to play. And I was not very experienced at D and D at the time, but I was a horrible player. I i was a horrible player. Um, I was think of everything, like blowing up stuff, killing random people for no reason, attacking the people that you were playing with at the table, like stealing a bunch of stuff, looting and pillaging. I was my first character, and I I feel very bad about that, but it helped looking back. I always try to whenever I'm going to make a decision. I always try to that may or may not be longer. I always try to look back and be like, would that character do it? And if the answer is yes, then no, don't, because that is something that I never want to do again, and it was very, very bad, and it was good learning experience, but I'm still so sorry for everyone that had to play at that table with me. So

Josh Shaw 58:09
you created a character that didn't do good, and now you build your characters in the perspective of, I don't want to do what that character did. Yes, that's really good. I like that.

Fish 58:19
Um, for me, I'll go from the DM point of view. For me, from a DM I think, when I'm going and making up in the home blue gods and stuff, I'm thinking, there is one true God, and we put that in the game. There is other gods that you can serve, but we have put in the game. There's not serve but true god that exist, like he followed that God and stuff. There's things that you can follow, but there is one true God.

Josh Shaw 58:57
It's like that reminder to yourself, like this is simply a game. I know who I exactly

Xavier 59:01
you always need to be. That's one thing that we're very in. Our parents too are very particular about in DND is always keeping in mind that this is just a game. There is one God, and all this stuff is not real and not true, and you always have to keep and remember that that's

Tony Benda 59:16
good. That's really good. Yeah.

Josh Shaw 59:20
So let's take it from a biblical connection. Okay, have you guys ever been grounded from playing D and

Xavier 59:26
D? Yes, we were because we so how we work is we normally have one thing that we do, and we'd, like, get fixated on that thing and like, do it a bunch. And so we had done D and D like so much, and we kept doing it like so much that our parents were eventually, like, All right, guys, you gotta stop. You gotta just and we it was like fasting. We had to take a break and not do DND at all. For a month, and it was hard, but I think it was good. And I try to be very more moderate about how I play D and D, and I'm it's not grounded, but I'm kind of on a bit of a DND break now, where we haven't played D and D in a couple of weeks. We're just taking, like, a bit of a break from the game, just for a while because we had gotten into playing it a lot more, uh, recently, um, and we're just trying to still step back and take a bit of a break.

Tony Benda 1:00:28
I think it's healthy. Yeah, yeah. You always

Xavier 1:00:32
need to be taking breaks. Yeah.

Josh Shaw 1:00:33
So during that time when you guys took a step away, what did you guys learn in that small season? Or how did you decide to lean into the Lord during that

Xavier 1:00:44
I learned that sometimes you get so focused on one thing that it's hard to focus on other things, so like your relationship with the Lord, and I realized that I was focusing too much on DND and not enough on other things, and especially like my relationship with the Lord and I try a lot. I try to pour more into that, instead of playing games in DND, instead now it was very eye opening and very embarrassing to myself. Um,

Fish 1:01:19
yeah, we wanted to play DND more than we wanted to read the Bible, and that's really what got us to that. Yeah,

Tony Benda 1:01:29
I have been there. I think we've all been guilty of some

Josh Shaw 1:01:31
point. Yeah, it was very unhealthy and

Xavier 1:01:34
not good.

Josh Shaw 1:01:35
There's like a there's like, a conviction that comes when you do it. You know you're you're playing one day, and you realize you just wake up, you're like, I've not spent any time talking to God. It's incredibly humbling. Yeah, so ever just listening to you guys, you guys, it seems like you guys honor your mother and father a lot.

Xavier 1:01:57
We try to try to

Fish 1:01:58
we try to be sometimes, we try to be honorable.

Xavier 1:02:01
Sometimes that little teenage rebellion comes out in you. But

Josh Shaw 1:02:04
so what do you guys think about? You know, we hear in the scriptures, like to honor your mother and father, but like as children of God, as as kids trying to do that, like, what do you guys intentionally think about when honoring your mother and father, especially like trying to stay away from playing too much DND and trying to respect them for how they uphold that. Yeah,

Xavier 1:02:26
so that's this is funny that you bring that up. That's something I've been struggling with a little bit, is what we're talking about, and I'm trying to get better at it. But sometimes, you know, you you think that you're very right about one thing, and you just want to argue in them when really they they've always got your best interest at heart. And that's something that you've always got to try to keep in mind, is they're your parents, and they always, most of the time, always. I mean, if, if they're telling you to do something that God has directly told you not to do, then don't. But unless they're saying something contradictory to the Bible, they always have your best interests at heart, and they love you, and you need to, you need to listen to them and and you need to always keep in mind. And that's something that I sometimes have a hard time keeping in mind, and that's something I'm trying to work on.

Fish 1:03:17
Sometimes we say the words that come in our mind before we actually think about it. Yeah,

Josh Shaw 1:03:25
that's good. I mean, I do it too. Y'all are alone.

Tony Benda 1:03:30
Agent stage, every age and stage will do that. But recognizing the ability to I don't know, just recognizing it first is huge, because once you recognize it, then you could put a pause to it. So I think it comes down to discipline at that point, which you guys are fairly disciplined with, you know your stuff, yeah, so, oh,

Josh Shaw 1:03:51
what is it? I'm trying to find it. We're gonna edit that out. It was, it was James, chapter one, verse 19. Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. I was on my heart. I love that scripture, but you guys bring it to life in such a beautiful way. The Book

Xavier 1:04:09
of James talks a lot about tongue stuff and controlling your tongue, and that's something that I need to be reading, because tongue

Fish 1:04:16
is like problem. What's that metal thing? A bit in the horse, that story that stairs the yeah,

Josh Shaw 1:04:25
that's, that's good. I find myself reading James, like, once a year, and I'm like, Ah,

Xavier 1:04:31
man, it's, yeah, it's humbling. It

Tony Benda 1:04:33
is very it's very humbling.

Josh Shaw 1:04:34
So our last little bit, I labeled it the lifelong adventure, all right, so what is it specifically about storytelling and adventuring that you love so much as both from a player's perspective and even a DMing perspective?

Xavier 1:04:50
I love to read books, and DND is just like, it's like you're writing a book and then you're. Watching people play through and enjoy this thing that you have written and created, and that's joyful from a DM perspective, but also from a player perspective. It's like you're like playing out a heroic adventure, like all the the myths and the legends and the stories, you're like playing out a heroic adventure together with all with your brothers and friends, and it's just incredible. And I love it.

Fish 1:05:31
I love it because it's like a video game, except you can do anything in it. You have the choice of the character, how the character acts, um, and you could do anything in it. So I really like that. That's

Josh Shaw 1:05:47
good. So as we walk through this life with God, I almost think of it as a journey, right? The ultimate destination is heaven. But even Paul talks about like for me to live as Christ than to die is gain. So I'm here to I'm here to journey alongside you guys while waiting for the one day that Christ will bring me up to be with him. And along that journey, we grow in our faith. We learn more about God, we experience His love, His guidance in so many different ways. So in what ways have you guys had to grow in your faith or grow in maturity?

Xavier 1:06:24
I think something that I've had to grow well, I don't know if this is like growing in faith, but something that I'm struck I struggle with is Bible reading I sometimes struggle with, like constantly reading the Bible, like every day, and being very consistent about keeping up in my relationship with God and always praying to Him and trying to pour as much into my relationship as God as I can. I struggle with that, and I'm trying to get better, but it's a slow process, but something I've had to grow in spiritual maturity. I don't know if there's anything else. I don't I can't really think of anything.

Tony Benda 1:07:07
I will say that you and 99% of the world struggle with daily Bible reading,

Josh Shaw 1:07:13
but, but really, don't be discouraged like that. Did not be discouraged that is something like that is truly growing in faith, right? Because the more I had somebody say this to me one time, or rather, I heard it, and it's like, like for me being married, for Tony being married, if I spend if the only time I spent talking to my wife a day was like at the very end of the day, sitting with her for five minutes and conversing and then never speaking to her throughout the rest of the day, my marriage would be terrible. My wife would leave me. My wife would say, Peace out home, homes. I'm done, right, but we but sometimes we do that with God, like, how strong is our relationship going to be if we only spend five minutes a day with it? Exactly, you know? But that really is a powerful thing with growing in faith, because the more we want to spend in his presence, the more we're going to long for his presence. I had a somebody, a mentor of mine. She was praying one night, and I was just intently listening to her, and she just said the words, Oh, how I long to be in your presence for hours on end. And I got convicted because I was like, do I long to be in the presence of God? Yeah, for hours on end. And that's, that's a powerful statement, don't be discouraged by that. That is, that is a beautiful place to grow in. Like, a lot of people are not there, and a lot of people be encouraged by the fact of, like, Man, I want to spend more time with God that's powerful. What you got? Fish?

Fish 1:08:46
Um, something that glow. And I will. I am working on this a lot. Um, is evangelist?

Josh Shaw 1:08:56
Ooh, evangel, evangelizing. Um,

Fish 1:09:00
I I would love, I love to spread the word of God to people, um, I just love to talk about God also. So I love praying to, um, other people, with other people that don't know him. So, but one thing that's hard for me is I don't like talking to strangers, right? So that's something that I have to grow in, really, to help my me evangelize.

Tony Benda 1:09:32
I agree with that for me too, like one of my biggest things is evangelizing. I've talked to pastor Darrell about this. He is our missions and evangelistic pastor here at our church, and he is helping us. First of all, he's done training where we can learn how to better evangelize first, by understanding what evangelizing is and how we can like, grow in it, like among ourselves first and. It starts with intimacy with Christ, and it starts with having that relationship with Christ, and then being comfortable not having to share the gospel immediately, but fellowshipping with people first, and then you're kind of just breaking down those walls of just personality, and then at some point you're sharing the gospel. I think

Josh Shaw 1:10:15
one of the biggest things I've had to learn in evangelism was, in order to evangelize to people. I needed to know God. And then when I asked God, how I can know him, he looked back at me and said, I need you to know yourself.

Fish 1:10:27
You need to check yourself before you go to other people and spread him right.

Xavier 1:10:32
Famous verse that gets quoted at me, my brother, the famous verse that I love to quote and people love to quote. Everyone loves to quote this is, Thou shalt not seek us to remove the speck from thy brother's eye before removing the log from thy own eye. And everyone loves to quote it in King James, for some reason.

Tony Benda 1:10:52
Yeah, there's truth in it.

Josh Shaw 1:10:53
So Well, the verse that drove me for evangelism is God is the commandment from Christ when He said, you know you need to love me above love Me with all your soul, all your heart and your strength, but then he says to love others as you love yourself. And I think we're so quick we can evangelize and say like, Oh, do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus and or can I tell you about Jesus and a lot of the time, like you talked about fish, like God is inviting us to understand our heart and wants to impact our heart, and then when you can work on loving yourself, the outward expression of loving others is super easy. You know, that's one place I've had to grow in, is God. Where's my heart, and as I've learned to love myself, as I've learned to grow in that, and God has revealed that in me, man spreading the gospel so easy, because you're just like, you're like, doesn't matter, like, I love God, and God is in me, and I am a changed person. And people will just, people will breathe that in you're gonna be walking around like a smoke grenade, like, I can't get out of it. I can't get out of his presence. Like, why?

Fish 1:12:06
That's why I wanna right?

Josh Shaw 1:12:07
That's, that's incredible. How have you dealt with hard situations and circumstances? It's like during this time, like during any hard situation or circumstance in your life, like, how have you responded? Who did jet score with advice? Or, like, was there a mistake that you made that you've really learned from that's helped your walk with the Lord?

Xavier 1:12:30
I think the best thing for you to do, and the thing that I always try to do first, is always go to the people of God in your life, I go to my student pastor and pastors his wife to talk, because those are the people that I feel most comfortable talking to, and I love to go to them. And when I have a problem, I'll be like, Hey, here's my problem, and do you know how I can, how you can help me deal with this? And they will give great advice. And I love talking to him and her. And yeah, I'll, normally, when I have something, I'll call him up, and I'll be like, Hey, can you chat for a minute? I just want to talk to you for a bit. So yeah,

Tony Benda 1:13:21
and they're, they are great resources. Our pastors and our different teams that we have at our disposal are great resources. I mean, that's what they're going to ministry for. So it's cool, fish. You

Josh Shaw 1:13:32
got anything on that?

Fish 1:13:34
Um, it was kind of like saviors. But definitely talk to your mom and dad. Definitely. That's

Xavier 1:13:40
good. Yeah, that too. I'm sorry I forgot to say that

Fish 1:13:44
they know the most about you. Well, other than God, but they definitely know the most about you. They will almost every time tell if something's wrong. Also, they will mostly go up to you before you go up to them, and they're like, what's wrong? Is there anything that's Is there a problem? So definitely talk to your parents about it.

Josh Shaw 1:14:13
Being a parent myself, you guys probably know, but it's for me most of the time when they ask you if there's a problem, they already know that there's a problem. Yes, they already know.

Xavier 1:14:25
And it's kind of frustrating when you say, No,

Fish 1:14:29
it is, are you sure? And they're like, Are you sure? And I'm like, No, and it feels like they're stalking. And they're like, Are

Xavier 1:14:35
you certain?

Josh Shaw 1:14:37
But they're but they're waiting for you. They're waiting for you to, like, say, yes, there is, yeah, they

Fish 1:14:46
want that

Tony Benda 1:14:47
relationship that because that that's closeness of relationship. And I mean, the way we interact with our parents, in that same manner, God wants us to interact with him,

Josh Shaw 1:14:57
right? God's not going to force anything out of me. Oh, Lord, no. Yeah, he can, if he wanted to. I mean, he already knows, like, he already knows, but he wants us to say he created, come on, like, come on, come on, share the burden with me, because I can force something out of you, but like, ultimately, you're still gonna carry that yoke, yeah? But like, if you're but if, when we say, yep, God, there's, there's something wrong, that is like us handing over the yoke

Tony Benda 1:15:20
to him. His yoke is easy, His burden is light. Yo,

Josh Shaw 1:15:23
all right. Last question, y'all how would you encourage others to make their time with the Lord something to enjoy rather than a chore? Ah,

Fish 1:15:32
yes, yes. Well, just to say, if you are a Christian, he will be with you for the rest of your life and after that. So I would make it enjoyable and loving God through it and enjoy it. Because if you are a Christian, you should go to church and you should enjoy it, and you should read the Bible every day, and you should enjoy it. It's not like a chore or something,

Xavier 1:16:04
exactly. And from from an evangelical standpoint, I would say, make it fun. I have a friend who is trying to get someone who he knows isn't saved, a friend of his, to come to church, and he's inviting him through this guy's come to church for the first time in his life, a couple times through different events. Wow, their church has had of like our student ministry has done, like games and a cookout, and he has come to them, and my friend has been able to share the gospel to him through those events. And we're still trying to get him to church. But that's the thing, is, you make people want to come to church by making the church by making church fun. And I don't remember where I heard this, but some pastors said that studies show that like, 85% of people who are to don't go to church and are not religious would go to church if somebody they knew asked them to come. That's good. So you have to invite people. You have to reach out the hand and be like, Hey, you want to come to church with me on Sunday and try to make it fun, try to make Christianity not seem like, oh, but it's just a bunch of people sitting around and talking about an old book about things that didn't even really happen, no, tons of years ago, that doesn't even matter. Try to make it sound like, Oh no, we're a group of kids coming together and having fun, and we're going to talk about God that we believe in. So make it because a lot of people don't know what church is really like they just make assumptions. So you try to make it fun and make it enjoyable for them.

Josh Shaw 1:17:46
That's good. And the beautiful part about like with you guys with DND, is you don't have to, you don't necessarily have to bring up Christ in the middle of like your campaign, exactly right? But you can invite them to a campaign to have fun, and the more you continue to invite build relationship love on that person, at some point they're going to be like, Why do you keep doing this for me, exactly. And

Fish 1:18:09
there's also a way to evangelize. Well, do I like you could be a cleric of God.

Tony Benda 1:18:14
That's good

Fish 1:18:16
God, and there's ways to evangelize. That's right. So that's

Josh Shaw 1:18:21
right, that's also cool is, like, just incorporating your guys's story through that

Xavier 1:18:27
all I would love to to go to a D and D session with a DM that I knew wasn't Christian. Be like, I'm a cleric, and I'm like, which God? And I'm like, All right, sit down. I'm gonna tell you a score, I'm gonna tell you a story. I'm

Josh Shaw 1:18:39
gonna, I'm gonna describe to you this, this, this God,

Fish 1:18:44
come with the Bible. Just come with the Bible, and I have this whole book that details the story. Yeah, memorize the book to memorize the god.

Xavier 1:18:52
Yeah. See, this is my and just handed the Bible. This is my notes for, like, the backstory of the god. That's incredible. Holo,

Josh Shaw 1:19:01
all right, you guys have been awesome on the podcast.

Xavier 1:19:05
Thank you very much.

Josh Shaw 1:19:06
We've loved having you guys. I mean, I'm gonna let you know I'm I am convicted at some of the stuff you guys have even said, just to recognize my walk and to hear how you guys are walking. It is. It's brought me and Tony just so much joy, just like listen to you guys and to whether you guys, believe it or not, receive your guys's wisdom. It truly is. So at the end of each episode, I know, you know, I know we we do a moment of encouragement for everybody. So whoever, whichever one wants to start, give us one thing of encouragement that can be anything from a scripture verse to something you learned that you want to share with everybody, just any kind of encouragement you can provide the listeners All

Xavier 1:19:53
right, encouragement to any of the kids that's listening and to adults that are listening, that have kids share this with. Kids. Just because you are young does not mean that you can't do things for God's kingdom. Amen. Just because you're young doesn't mean that you can't go out there and evangelize to people. Doesn't mean that you can't bring people to the Lord. Talk to people, talk to people in your small groups, talk to adults about things you being young does not stop you from doing any of those things. God uses all people of all ages to do whatever his will is. So I think if you're feeling like you can't do things because you're young, I think that you should remember that God uses all people, and pray to God that he would use you.

Josh Shaw 1:20:45
Keep preaching, gay preaching, I love it. That's

Xavier 1:20:48
that's all I have. That's incredible. Mr. Fish, do something. Um, gotta

Josh Shaw 1:20:53
fan you off over here. Jeez. Um,

Fish 1:20:57
for me, I would like to say, for like, evangelizing, don't care what other people think of you, if they if you they think of you bad, or that's the person that believes in this, or don't care what other people think about you. Just only care what God because God knows the real you, so you need to be clean with him, but don't care what any other people gossip about you or care about you, just be the real you while evangelizing and just being in public,

Josh Shaw 1:21:36
that's good, yeah, keeping Your identity grounded in Christ Exactly.

Xavier 1:21:41
It's like a callback Joey talked about earlier, any

Josh Shaw 1:21:45
moment of encouragement for listeners. Tony,

Tony Benda 1:21:50
I don't know, just take what these kids have said and put it into practice. They're smart kids. They put their intelligence low, but I doubt it. 14 is not low. No, 14 is not low. You guys. You guys have been very encouraging with this whole podcast. I don't have any more encouragement Other than that, just you being on here was encouraging.

Josh Shaw 1:22:08
Thank you, sir, that. And along with an ending scripture that I have is Matthew 21 verse 16. And he said to him, do you hear what these children are saying? Jesus replied, Yes. Have you never read? You have prepared praise from the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you know, like I just mentioned it to you guys. But there is for the listeners here. There is such power and praise that comes from the mouths of the youth and the teenagers and the young kids of God. There is take what these these children of God have said, have put forth and just apply it, because it's powerful, and just keep doing what you guys are doing. Keep growing in DD, keep growing in Christ, because you guys are already warriors of the kingdom. But there's so much more that God has in store for you guys? Yeah, definitely.

Tony Benda 1:23:01
Well, oh my goodness, it's, it's been a crazy episode. It's been a good episode. Ah, this is so different, but it's fun. Loved having you guys on here. We have a signature outro, oh, for, that's right for your show. You guys have a, let's do it.

Josh Shaw 1:23:17
Let's do, let's, let's promo our socials, and then we'll get this signature.

Xavier 1:23:21
Oh yeah, that rotten social media.

Tony Benda 1:23:25
Oh my goodness, yeah, for rotten social media, those who are on it, Facebook and Instagram, we are at dungeons and disciples. That's the word and spelled out, dungeons, a, n, d, disciples. And for our Gmail, if you want to send us an email, it is dungeons, disciples@gmail.com Again, that's dungeons without the word and disciples@gmail.com It has been fun. Every second I have to Oh, we also have a discord. Join us on the discord, there's been a little bit of activity, and then there was no activity, which is great, but it's a hard platform. Discord is weird when you have like six people that listen to your show because only one of them knows what Discord is, and then it falls apart. But anyway, we're getting there. I promise we will be active in the discord. We'll have links to that in the show notes as well. We have been talking about Patreon as well. So be prepared for that, because we want to know what you guys want to know, and we'll fulfill the Patreon. Yeah,

Josh Shaw 1:24:27
when we know we'll do it, when we know we'll do launch it a sap.

Xavier 1:24:31
And for those of you who are on these platforms, definitely go visit them. And for those who aren't, stay away.

Tony Benda 1:24:39
Yeah, one last plug for them as well. Xavier and fish are the hosts of the Fishers of Men podcast available on all platforms, again, that will be in the show notes as well. Go like and subscribe and leave reviews for both of these shows, and we look forward to the next episode. All right, what is your your show notes? Bro,

Fish 1:25:01
hi. Well, Bubble Bubble, toot, toot. Chicken airplane soldier, bye.

Xavier 1:25:05
Okay,

Tony Benda 1:25:09
so they've got their music, and I have to ask, I have to ask, and you need to clarify for our audience, and what is the bubble bubble too? No,

Xavier 1:25:16
we do not clarify for our audience. We will never clarify it. If you understand it, did you understand it? Well,

Tony Benda 1:25:22
I understand it because fish has explained it to me. You should,

Josh Shaw 1:25:25
but if you do, I will remain lost. Don't

Tony Benda 1:25:28
get it, that's all right, our listeners will remain lost. Great. Okay.

Josh Shaw 1:25:31
All right, so you want to know what it is, subscribe to our Patreon. That's

Tony Benda 1:25:40
right. Subscribe to Patreon, but we we close our show one more time in a specific way, and we're going to ask if one of you guys would like to pray us out this week.

Xavier 1:25:52
Steve, very well I shall do

Fish 1:25:56
Xavier. Is the prayer of our podcast.

Tony Benda 1:25:59
I see great. Well, let's go ahead and pray out. Xavier, thank

Fish 1:26:02
you. All right,

Xavier 1:26:05
Dear God, thank you for allowing us to come and share on this podcast. Thank you for allowing for a podcast where two of our favorite things and two of a lot of people's favorite things can come together, two things that some people might think is impossible to come together, can come together into one podcast and and talk and encourage people, while also being really fun to listen to and enjoyable. And I thank you very much for giving the world this gift. And I thank you for allowing us to be on here, and for any thing that whoever is listening to this is praying for, I pray that you will listen and fulfill any what they are praying for, and In Jesus name, I pray Amen.

Tony Benda 1:26:51
Amen. Thanks, guys. Bye.