Welcome to Tavern Talk Thursday! This is a weekly column where we chat with a member of the TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) community to learn more about how they found themselves at the table, what they love about tabletop gaming and other fun things. Think of it as a little sneak peeks into the minds of our fellow players and DMs.
Another week means another trip to the tavern. And this time, we are chatting with the enchanting storyteller Gary Barker. Each week he manages to wrangle a group of average yet eclectic adventurers as they traverse through the world. When Gary isn’t leading the Average Adventuring Party, he is working hard to adapt their house settings into a series of documentary-style source books while similetaneously not getting lost under the mountain of TTRPG books and board games he keeps collecting. We really do vibe well with game/book goblins. Keep reading to learn what else our storyteller loves about the TTRPG community!
Be sure to follow Gary on social media, which can be found through the Average Adventuring Party linktree, along with ways to support.
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Gary Barker
Julia Roth: Let’s chat about your TTRPG backstory! How did you find yourself at the table?
Gary Barker: Technically, my first game was probably at around 4 or 5 years old, with my uncle running me through the old VHS DragonStrike game (I’m old enough to have VHS tapes be a technological highlight). Great times and all, but I think my first voluntary game took place when a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend took one look at me and decided that, based on appearance alone, I fit the TTRPG gamer trope to a tee and asked me to help him playtest a module he was writing.
He was a killer DM (I routinely tell the story about how a housepet killed my 1st level wizard with 1hp in the first session), but he was a great storyteller and had me hooked afterward.
JR: Favorite world to adventure in?
GB: I’m going to reach into the wayback machine a bit and pull out The Secret of Zir’an. In addition to being your standard fantasy nerd, I’m also a huge history buff – especially regarding American history from about 1840 to 1950. This setting ticks all of those boxes by advancing a fantasy setting from a medieval-esque tech level to a Pre-WW1 tech level.
It’s every magitech, dieselpunk, pulp-era adventuring trope you could ever want packed into a single setting, and I love it.
JR: Favorite one-shot adventure?
GB: Without a doubt – Paizo’s “We Be Goblins.” Most players have a hidden desire to be weird and chaotic murder hobos, and the story of some Gobbos just looking for fireworks and a good time gives them a chance to act that out.
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JR: Backstory of class first?
GB: It depends on the game system. If I’m playing something class-based, like D&D or Pathfinder, I’ll pick the class first since there are very few things worse than coming up with a cool backstory and then finding out you can’t (or can’t easily) make it work mechanically. I say that a bit hypocritically, though, since, as a GM, I tell my players to come up with the backstory first, and I’ll bend the rules to the point of breaking them to make their vision come to life.
JR: Favorite spell and why?
GB: Ghost Sound from Pathfinder 1e is probably my personal favorite because it led to the GM having to re-write an entire section of his campaign due to me being petty. The party was traveling in this hyper-formal kingdom where bad manners could get you in trouble with the law, and the GM leveraged this multiple times by having our characters fined for small things like putting our elbows on the table while eating. So, when we finally got an audience with the King, his vizier was hitting us with all of these technically polite but back-handed insults that we couldn’t respond to for fear of something happening.
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The King comes out and greets us, everyone kneels, and I silently cast Ghost Sound on the vizier to make it sound like he broke wind. The King was so insulted he put the vizier to death, and the GM made everyone go take a lunch break so he could rewrite the section because I accidentally killed the BBEG.
JR: Who has been your favorite character to play?
GB: There’s this 3rd edition spin-off system called FantasyCraft that lets you play as unusual classes/species. On a lark, I built a Rock Troll Fighter named Krug, who ended up being a Huge character with a strength and constitution of 30ish and an intelligence and wisdom that hovered around 3 or so. He only got 1 skill point per level, and I surprised the GM when I put that point into Religion instead of a physical skill.
You see, Krug had found a holy book (in actuality, a child’s coloring book), and he heard voices from above (usually his friends hiding behind him and speaking to him when he couldn’t directly see them), so he was convinced that he was a priest.
And really, the only thing that Krug loved more than being with his friends was eating cows, so, naturally, he had to be a priest of the God Of Eat Cow! It was hilarious to play a spectacularly dim-witted, fun and goofy individual who was also incredibly and accidentally dangerous with the sole mission in life to spread the joys of eating steak.
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JR: Do you have a particular race/class you enjoy?
GB: Creature feature horror movies are a personal favorite of mine, so the more monstrous the species/race, the better. Give me your Gator-folk, Shardminds and Wilden over Elves, Dwarves and Halflings any day.
In D&D 4th edition, there was a primal class called the Warden that was basically wonky Druid/Shaman with elements from the other classes thrown in. The different elements and natural aspects gave you a ton of adaptability and made you feel very unique when fighting next to your standard fighter/paladin/rogue.
JR: Is there something that you build into every character? A fun trait or special item?
GB: As much as I try not to, my love of puns and dad jokes slips through in all of my characters. They could be the most bitter, jaded, and grim character ever written, but if the opportunity to make a play on words comes up, you can bet I’m going to take it
JR: What is your favorite system to play within?
GB: I’ve only been a player within Exalted 2nd edition a handful of times, but the way it handles resolution mechanics, encourages resource management and constant engagement and gives you meaningful character options outside of combat always keeps it within my top two. Also, the system does a great job of empowering characters and players by making them feel like they’re the best at their chosen specializations.
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JR: Tell us about the wildest adventure you have been on?
GB: I started out the current AAP Podcast game by obliterating the entirety of existence across all planes, which is pretty wild, and it set a high bar for me to keep testing myself against.
JR: What has been your most impactful moment at the table?
GB: When I introduced a time skip due to players going adventuring in the Astral Sea. Time is consistently described as “different and wonky” there, so when the party came back, almost 30 years had passed on the prime material plane. Having one of the players realize that her father had died of grief in her absence, her “younger” sister was now technically older than her, her mother had remarried, and she had another, fully grown sister she’d never met was one of the best (and worst) emotional roller coasters I’ve ever been on.
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JR: Favorite dice to use?
GB: A couple of years ago, my girlfriend gifted me a d20 that has “Oh My!” on the 20 spot and “F**K” on the 1 spot. It always betrays me when I roll it, but hearing everyone give their best George Takei impression when I roll a 20 keeps it coming back to the table.
JR: Would you rather face off against an entire dungeon of undead or charm your way through a royal court?
GB: Royal court all day, every day. I’m a fan of spy stories, trashy romance novels and having thousands of tabs full of random knowledge open in Wikipedia at a time, so I’m probably more suited to political intrigue than zombie slaying.
JR: Favorite TTRPG monster?
GB: The Rust Monster because the internet troll portion of my brain likes watching all the players scream like little children and try to run away when it eats their first magic item and spits out dust.
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JR: Good luck charms or rituals before a game?
GB: I’ve got to get my head clear with some pre-game banter and silliness before going into serious DM mode. If the AAP Crew and I don’t start with that, everything always ends up going completely awry. Granted, everything usually ends up going awry anyway, but at least we’re in a good mood after goofing around.
JR: Who is sitting at your dream table?
GB: I’ve been listening to the Critical Hit Podcast since 2009-ish, and I would love to have Stephen (Schleicher), Brian (Bergdall), Rodrigo , and Rob (Rasmussen) at my table. Those guys were the first podcast that I ever subscribed to on my brand-new 1st generation iPhone, and I think they’re all masterful storytellers and roleplayers. Just to be clear, I certainly won’t turn any high-profile player down – if any celebrities want to join us, they’re more than welcome to hit me up, and I’ll find a way to make it happen.
JR: What are you most looking forward to within the TTRPG world?
GB: One of the best things to come out of the last few years is all of the indie writers finally having the bandwidth to sit down and get their work out into the world. Having so many new options has me feeling like a kid in a candy shop, and I can’t wait to get my hands on all of the new systems coming out of the TTRPG community, whether they’re good, bad, or ugly.
https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/tavern-talk-thursday-stephanie-crugnola/
Who I Am: A nerd by the strictest definition. I enjoy diving straight into my favorite fandoms without a care in the world. I live on video/board games, fantasy movies and TV, and all things geeky.
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