Welcome to Nerdpreneur,
where we have fun conversations with nerds
making money with their nerdy passion.
And as always,
I am joined by my co host, Frank.
Hello.
And today we have some
very special guests on actually,
and they are two founding members
of a company called Only Crits.
Yes. So my name is Eric Burton, and I'm
one of the co founders of Only Crits.
Hi. I'm Rory Hoffman, and shockingly,
also a co founder of only crits.
And if you haven't already guessed,
these guys are dice manufacturers. Well,
dice distributors.
You've told me you're kind of
like a one stop shop for all
your dice and adventure accessory needs.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's right. So I basically handle
most of the dice side of things, and
then Rory handles the adventure side of things,
and then we thought, like, well,
let's come together and give both
to the consumer and give them what they want.
I think the point was for a new player to
be able to get an adventure and a dice set,
be able to play the game not knowing
anything and have a module to
start and then use the module and kind
of build their own homebrew off of that.
So it's not a full, like, 20 level adventure.
It's just a one shot to get you started.
Are you looking to, like, introduce
the game to more and more people? Like, expand
it to people that have never played D and D?
Is that sort of the idea
with having it focused on one shots?
Yeah, I would say yes. The idea being, like,
the easier it is to play,
the easier it is to present to friends.
We don't have too many
filters on distributing our adventures,
which ideally allows
people to send adventures and be like, hey,
do you want to run this one? Have you played,
can you run this one?
And it going from one person sort of
having to accumulate all of the stuff in
order to play D and D to being able to
distribute easily to a bunch of different
people being able to play D and D. I'm.
Immediately fascinated with how
the two of you brought this together.
Did you two know each other already?
Yeah, we've been friends
since elementary school.
I think I've known Roy since I was five.
Whoa.
Yeah. Let's go way back.
Yes. For a long time.
So could you tell me,
what is your nerdy passion,
and how did the two of you really discover it?
Well, mine is mostly, like, video games.
I think Rory was the one that
introduced me to dungeons and dragons,
and that was right
around when the pandemic started. You know,
everyone's at home,
and Rory kind of reached out to me
and a few of our friends and was like, hey,
I have this game,
and I always wanted to play it. Like,
I played a one shot with a few friends, like,
a couple years ago.
Didn't really know what was going on at all.
I didn't have a character sheet, even.
I was just role playing.
So when Rory brought up the idea, like, hey,
I can dungeon Master, I was like, yes, please,
let's get this going right away.
And that was in March of 2020.
So it was right at the start.
I mean, honestly,
it took me three tries to get into D and D,
partially because I
was finishing up school first time.
Sort of realized right
near when I was about to graduate, I was like,
I should be playing D and D.
This sounds exactly like what I want to do, and
just didn't have the time or understanding of,
you don't need the whole
rule book to start playing D and D.
And I kind of thought you did.
So I saw 350 pages.
I read the first 20, and I was like,
I want to leave this for the moment.
When did the decision to start selling
dice come into the equation for you two?
Dice would be something like,
it's a game I love, right?
And this is just when I was getting started.
So a few months in,
it's a game I love.
I have so much passion for it,
and I'm doing business,
which I also love doing.
So it's not like I'm running a
business that I don't want to be running,
or I want to be running it,
but just for the money,
or there's only half a passion there.
Whereas this was, like, when
that idea first came to me, uh, in September.
It was September 9.
It was the day I had the idea, 2020.
And I just remember it kind of
exploding in my mind and being like, man,
I could sell dice, um, with Rory.
He could make adventures,
and it would be perfect.
And I was just sitting there kind of like.
And it just came out of nowhere. I just,
I just realized it was like, wow. Like,
it's the best of both worlds.
I have such a high passion for this,
and I can do what I love in terms of work,
combine them together. Right? And
then you get to have your cake and eat it, too.
That's when the idea sparked.
So I called Rory, like, instantly that day,
and we talked for 2
hours about the first adventure,
how we were going to make it work, like,
when the launch date was going to be,
and all these details and just, oh, yeah.
It was such a weird feeling because it
wasn't like I was thinking about it for, like,
weeks on end. Should I do it? Should I?
It just came out of nowhere one day,
and the next day I was started, and I just,
I just started working on it,
started designing the website,
and a month later,
we launched with one adventure.
I'm curious, like,
when you guys got that idea
and you started immediately on it,
have you always been, like,
an action taker like that,
where you get an idea and you start on it?
Or was this because you were so passionate
and you were aligned in your passions
that you all of a sudden took action?
There's only so much willpower you can
have to do something you don't want to do,
and so I can do something for a week,
even if I don't really wanna do it,
but I think it's good for me. So when,
when you start, you know,
you're kind of all
hyped up on this willpower, and you're really,
you're ready to go.
And then after a week,
that's really when the test starts,
is to see if you can stay consistent.
I think that because of the passion,
I was able to stay consistent over
the last two years or year and a half.
Generally, though, I think I really
like to get after it immediately,
and then I just slowly
teeter off in terms of willpower,
and then that's when. Yeah, like I said,
the passion kind of holds you up and lets
you continue because you know you're not doing.
Something you don't like with
the adventures that you started. So, Rory,
you were building these homebrew adventures for
a while because I'm on your website right now,
and you guys have bunch of Homebrew
adventures here available for purchase.
How did you start making
these is really what I'm getting at.
For that first session that I ran,
I ran the lost minds of Fanda lover.
I don't know if. Yeah.
And then pretty much since then,
I've homebrewed adventures for better or worse,
but I didn't actually start writing
them down until October of 2020
when we got the business going. Yeah, I mean,
it's interesting because it's been a
conscious effort to try to fill out our library
of adventures because we don't want to have
a nice variety of adventures to choose from.
Where do you get your ideas from? Or where
do you get inspiration to create an adventure?
I mean, it's tough because inspiration is.
It's one of those things that's
always creatively the question mark.
And of course,
there's not a single source of inspiration.
I wish there was somewhere
I could just go and get inspiration,
but it's a myriad of things.
I do my best to be consciously reading
a lot of fantasy because inspiration
comes from there pretty often. And, you know,
watching other D and D campaigns and whatnot,
I can't remember the quote.
There's something about if you're writing same
thing in a different style, it's plagiarism.
But if you're taking from a bunch of different
sources and putting it into your work,
then it's not.
There's a lot of that going on
where I have an idea from
a book and it's. I can't, you know, obviously,
I'm not going to write
out just the plot line of the book,
but I love taking a small part and then
figuring out how that small part can turn into
something more than it just was.
There's a podcast I'm listening to, and
they totally reference a part from the rock.
They're trying to get
onto this island that's a supermax.
And the DM starts explaining that
there's actually a furnace system that'll
dump the trash into the ocean after
it's been put through the furnace. And the.
The players are like, you're talking, like,
the rock, and he's like, wait, what? Like,
the rock? Like, oh, my God,
it totally is. You know, sometimes
it's a subconscious inspiration. He's like,
that was not intentional,
but I came up with exactly that movie.
And, I mean, some of the stuff is like,
that is cool.
Being subconsciously
inspired by the rock is cool.
One of our adventures,
the one called a foul endeavor, is. I
don't know if I should be ashamed to say this,
but it's almost entirely based off that thing.
Would you rather fight a horse
sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?
That sounds funny.
Yeah.
I mean, that was. I was like, you know,
it's d and d.
I bet I can build a duck sized
horse and turn it into something bigger.
I want to keep that duck.
That would be a great mount.
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about what are some
of these things you do consistently or that
you needed to do consistently to really build?
Yeah, no, totally. Like, like, so you want to.
For me personally, like,
I always make
sure I check my email and. And, like,
go through the orders every day,
no matter what. Even if that's, like,
the only thing I am doing that day,
I always try and do at least that.
And the reason is because you want to have
some framework or keep it on your mind. Right.
Keep it in the front.
You're not forgetting about the
things you have to do that are important.
And a part of that is stress, in a way.
A part of it's like, hey,
I've got a thing I need to take care of,
but stress can be good
if you get it behind you and you
get it pushing you forward to your goals.
Put my stress behind
me instead of in front of me,
so it's not holding me back,
it's pushing me forward.
So checking the orders on a day to day basis,
definitely something that you're doing
to even keep that mind on top of it.
What about for you, Rory, with, like,
the adventures? Are there, like,
daily things you do to keep yourself
motivated in writing or to create
these things or for the business that way?
Yeah.
So, consistency is hard with writing
because there are absolutely
days where I want to write,
and there's nothing in my head,
but having distinct goals has been key,
and that's something that
I have struggled to do myself.
And it's like you were
talking about having a partner. Absolutely.
Knowing Eric needs an
adventure at the end of the month,
send on a product page has been great
because it's okay if I don't write for a day.
It's not okay if I don't write
for a month or a month and a half.
And that not being a question,
it being a necessity that I write something
by the end of the month has been huge.
The other thing I found is just
when we were starting out and
we wanted to sell adventures and dice,
and I was in charge
of the adventures and we had one, was daunting.
So the only thing that I've found to stop it
being daunting is doing it consistently. Like,
you're never going to sit down and
write twelve adventures or a 20
level campaign in a week or a month.
Even that will never happen.
So the only thing that stops it
being terrifying is doing it consistently. And,
you know, for, again, for me,
consistently has been a month,
and that's been fine.
I wanted to ask about the dice making process.
We don't need to get into the weeds too much,
but I don't know a lot about it.
And I'm curious primarily what your process
is for creating them and where they are made.
Yeah, for sure. No. So we
work with suppliers overseas.
I basically reach out to
agents and suppliers overseas in China,
and I found two really
good ones in September and October.
And it's the same two suppliers
that we've been working with to this day.
So one of the suppliers
is all the sharp edge dice, all
the sharp edge sets that you see on the site.
They do that side of things,
and then all the other
dice are done by the other supplier.
And so we've been, um,
working with them in a kind of close knit
system and talking every day about, you know,
new orders and what's out
of stock and what needs to be done.
But in terms of the manufacturing,
that isn't an area of expertise I have. So I
do need assistance for that process. You know,
I would love to be amazing at everything,
but unfortunately, I can't be.
Wouldn't we all?
Yeah, so, so that is.
That is one area where, yeah,
we basically outsource that.
And we have a team that does that for us.
And they've been.
They've been really good to us,
worked with us since the beginning, got
us set up with the amazing dice bags we have.
One of the things
I really like about your product, too,
is the way it comes. Just like, you
have this lovely box that you open and it says,
only crits on the top there.
And it's just like,
it's a very nice setup when you receive them,
even the one.
Because I've now got a number of your die sets.
I have the ones that
are the holo die die sets, because you,
I remember when you
guys only had the plastic ones. Like,
you only had polymers at first, I think,
and then you then had metal ones,
and then you started to expand beyond that.
Now you have hollow dice with, like,
little dragons in them that are awesome.
And stone dice.
I had to get the stone dice, too.
I just. Yeah, they're, they're awesome.
So there were so many.
There's so much expansion
that has happened along the way. Now.
How do you decide on, like,
adding new products and are there new products
on the way that we can look forward to?
Yes, we are planning
to add new products, definitely. The.
The products are kind of
like a slow roll in all the time.
And how do you decide?
I mean, that's difficult, right? Like, I've
always tried to find just beautiful sets, and
there hasn't been, like, a specific, like, oh,
it has to be metal or
it has to be hollow or anything, because
we've sold all different sorts of stuff.
I do like for them to be high quality,
that's one of, like,
the main thing is.
So it's definitely
customer satisfaction. Right. And, like,
so getting feedback, like,
I've taken stuff off
the store before after realizing, like,
this isn't a good product or getting
too much negative feedback because
you learn from your mistakes, basically.
Right. Like, it's got to
be a high quality product,
and it's got to look good.
And this is something I learned
is that if it's nice for me, it might
not be nice for someone else and vice versa.
So I've held off putting things in the
store because I didn't really like the look of
or the designs or style, and then, like, people
love them. Right. And, you know, it's like,
whose ice cream flavors
is the best one of those things.
Totally.
Is that, like, the ducky dice? Because
I saw the ducky dice and I was like, that's
such a unique sort of dice to put on there.
And is that one you loved
or was that kind of like, oh, man, the fans.
Everyone loves that one. Every.
No one doesn't like that dice. No one.
I've never heard a bad thing about that one.
It's perfect.
It goes with the,
with the duck adventure, too.
That was the point, actually. Yeah.
So if you buy that set,
that adventure comes for free,
included with it,
because that's one of our best sellers.
People always love that set. So we're like, oh,
let's give an adventure with it.
Yeah. I think that's really a neat idea
that you guys are doing that,
adventures and dice together, and then they,
they overlap with the theme.
I really like that. Okay, so, disclaimer,
I am not a guy. I'm
not a dice goblin. I don't. I have my, like,
six sets of dice,
and I'm pretty happy. I mean, granted,
I will see beautiful dice and go, like,
I'll drool a little bit, and then
I'll just be like, okay, well, that's nice.
But I do see
what you guys make and think, like, wow,
an adventure with it.
Ooh.
That might be the extra little incentive
I needed to actually buy these dice
that I already thought were really cool.
What are some advice?
If someone else wanted to
get started in a D and d business, like, what
advice would you give them just starting out?
That's a hard question. Rory,
what do you think?
I would say,
keep in mind above all else,
that this is a hobby for fun.
I think it's really easy to get
caught up in the weeds of D and D rules.
The D and D community can sometimes be
overwhelming just the breadth of professional
DM's and players that now exist online.
And that is great.
It's excellent on the whole for the hobby,
but it doesn't change the
fact D and D is a hobby for fun. So if
you're going to try to make money off of that,
it doesn't have to be this big, professional,
perfect business.
It's just something that lets people
have more fun or fun easier. Obviously,
that's not really business advice.
That's great advice, actually.
I would just say, like, I'm, like,
so glad that that came out
because how easy is it to get?
Because you are fostering people having fun.
That is what this game does.
And if you're not in alignment with that,
it's gonna be very hard
to be successful in this market.
I think that's really smart advice.
I think leading off of that,
one thing we also stressed since the
start is not making everything perfect, hiding
or not swearing or using cursed language.
We try to be reserved,
but we also like to have
fun and poke with our emails,
our blog posts,
some of our techs, like. Like,
we're people too fucking right.
There you go.
I was wondering if you two could go into
a little bit of the nitty gritty of marketing,
because how people get started
in a business is they got to get clients. And
I'm curious for you guys getting started, like,
because you said, I
go check the emails
every day for orders and stuff. I'm curious,
how does that actually happen?
So the biggest thing for us.
And kind of what my most amount of
experience and knowledge was was marketing.
And that was specifically on Facebook.
Facebook and Instagram,
and running ads on there.
And that would be videos and photos kind of,
and having that promoted through Facebook
and Instagram to get more eyes on them,
and then branching out from there,
reaching out to influencers on Instagram, um,
when I got started,
that was a big thing I did
when I reached out to Chris
and I think in October, um, and, you know,
50 other people just like you.
I think one of the biggest things when
you're starting a business is you need to
be okay with not getting responded to because
it's not going to happen 100% of the time.
It's more likely going to happen
five to 10% of the time. So, you know,
when I want to do a big
kind of reach out to influencers,
I'm going to reach out to a lot of them.
And the ones that respond,
I'm going to hold onto. So, happy, right.
It's hard when you're starting,
you have no followers, you have nothing.
You don't have anything to show for yourself.
So why would someone want to work with you,
talk to you, promote your products? You
really have to reach out to a lot of people.
And then the ones that do respond,
you have to treat well,
and you have to be respectful,
and you have to be professional.
Your emails need to be very, very well done.
And then from there, after Instagram,
recently we've branched to YouTube.
So we've been working with
a youtuber named Bob Worldbuilder recently,
and he has amazing, funny,
down to earth style of YouTube video.
And I just love them.
He's great.
I watched Bob the builder.
Can we just say what his name is again?
Bob the what?
Bob World builder. So, yeah,
reaching out to youtubers
and then creating a brand of your own.
So that would be more Rory's style of work.
Yeah. When you guys have a fairly distinct
brand from the logo all the way through, like,
the visuals and stuff you do, like,
what are some of the things you did to
decide on that branding and maybe
tell us a little bit more about what
is your brand if you had to define it.
And, I mean, it's hard to define a brand
because especially two years in is both
a long time and a short time where it's like,
and it's hard to sum
up a brand without talking about,
without being able to see
our images and our covers and.
But to that end, in terms of, like,
the process we went through to,
to build some of those
things is almost from the inside.
It's not disappointing, but it's,
it's a lot more practical than I thought
branding was before we got into this,
right down to the, the URL. Like, we had to,
we had to get the,
the URL for the website that
we were going to sell our dice on.
And that was a process of like, well,
you have to buy the name and
names are different prices for websites,
so we're not just going to buy dice.com
even if it was available
because it was going to be expensive.
And so it's a trade off between, oh,
we think this is
going to be memorable, unique, affordable,
and that for the first little bit,
sort of carried through. I mean,
Eric like designed our logo because
he could and because part of it was
to keep it simple so that we would
be remembered when people saw the logo. We're
slowly and doing our best to build that out.
I mean, we're
really looking now to start to
find artists that we can work with
consistently and branch out so that it's
not just the two of us doing, doing everything,
but I mean,
that is an insubstantial thing to,
to grab ahold of is brand.
So it honestly means a lot just to hear
you say that we do have a brand and you
can see it because it's like, oh, thank God.
I don't think,
I think that only crits is fundamentally
like a minimalistic dice company.
From the website design
layout to the color scheme,
I tried to keep everything very minimalistic
and a part of that is to stand out.
Like a lot of other websites are quite busy.
So I tried to make things
simple in terms of the interface.
So when you come to the site,
you know what's going on,
it's right there and
you can choose whatever you want,
but it's not like you've got, you know,
50 different options.
So one of them is just minimalism
and then the next thing is quality,
keeping things very high quality.
So you kind of have the
aspect of very professional brand,
but then kind of on the back end,
once you dig in a little deeper,
then we're goofy and we have
these silly adventures and
we send out emails that are quite funny.
So kind of once you get
into the rabbit hole a bit more, it develops.
But on the front side it
is very minimalistic and professional.
One other thing that's really important,
I think that a lot of people forget
when you're making a brand is colors.
You really want to stick to a color.
And once you find it.
Whatever works,
stick to it.
For new business owners,
it's not something very,
very known or talked about.
We picked purple and it's been great.
So we use white,
black and purple and that's it. Very simple.
I love purple.
I love using that as a royal kind of pop color.
And I'll just say that while we've
talked to a number of other people
who have their own nerdpreneur businesses,
this color thing
has been a common theme, I think, about melogy,
who was the harpist
doing celtic and video game music.
She's got a very distinctive
pink style to her vibe. And, you know,
you guys have the purple and I know, like,
when we're talking to Zephir games,
they have a lot of ideas around colors for
their board game that they were deciding on.
And so I just think
it's not something to take for granted.
That consistency with that stuff really
makes a difference in keeping people,
keeping you recognizable.
You know, it's,
it's part of a brand
that you have to be recognizable.
And that visual aspect, especially
on a medium like Facebook or Instagram,
where you're placing ads,
it has to be recognizable.
Especially when it's so busy,
like you want it to pop up for like a
millisecond and instantly know what it is like.
A lot of youtubers will have the same
style of thumbnail for that exact reason.
Do you design
all your own Instagram ads, for example,
like the ones that
come up on the stories and things?
Do you design all those?
Yep, pretty much. Pretty much all of it.
Especially when we got started
and the budget was very small. So, like,
me designing the logo, like,
I don't know a lot of photoshop,
but I know enough to make that. And, you know,
that that helps with the simplest
simplicity because I don't have
to do something super complex as well.
So it works hand in hand.
And then for the ads and
kind of getting photos and videos,
part of it's been me filming and taking photos.
And then we've also worked with a bunch
of awesome people throughout Vancouver,
people that I know and
people that I've hired as well.
We have so many great photos and videos now.
They're dice bags and
then we use those and run ads.
So you would like hire, say, for example,
a videographer or a professional
photographer to take shots of your
dice or products and then would
you put it all together into an ad?
Or is that something that I would.
Put it together into an ad? That's correct.
I was just going to say, like,
I was going to ask, what
program are you using to design those ads?
Yeah, so for the video ads,
I use a program called Animoto,
and that's a
simple drag and drop. Video files, photo files,
and then a little bit of text.
So it's really easy to use.
It's nothing crazy like premiere. Like,
you need to kind of have some understanding
in premiere to use it, whereas this, like,
drag and drop, very simple.
And that's all I need.
As long as the shots are good, right?
The most important thing is photos of the dice.
What I love about what you're
saying is that it doesn't have
to be perfect for it to get started.
I've heard this before,
but scrappy is the new perfect. You know, like,
it just needs to be done and get moving,
and then you can adjust
as you kind of move out there. And as you said,
make mistakes and grow and learn from.
Perfection is the enemy of productivity.
Do you guys have day jobs,
or is this your whole gig?
This is my full time job,
and it has been since the pandemic started.
Same for you, Rory.
I was freelance writing.
I still kind of am,
but I've paired it way back
because this has been doing well. So. Yeah, no,
this is just about it.
Wow.
That is.
I just want to, like,
hold the phone and say,
that is awesome. That is crazy. I mean,
you guys are two almost. You've. You're
almost on your two year anniversary here, and.
And that is.
That is just. You guys are, you know,
making a living. I mean,
one of you is in Vancouver, British Columbia.
That ain't cheap. Yeah.
And you're making it a book.
Yeah.
Well, congratulations, guys, because that's,
like, awesome to see. And that's, like,
I don't think we've met anyone that we've
talked to yet that hasn't been, like, doing
what they're doing passionately full time,
and it's paying
the bills and hopefully more. Right. Like,
that's what's so awesome about
the idea of following your passion, going
after this and creating a nerdpreneur business.
And you guys are only at two years.
It's certainly
a little bit of imposter syndrome. I mean,
it's not like. Yeah, it's not.
It's nothing crazy,
but it's weird.
No, I hear you, man. I mean, I think
the imposter syndrome is everyone.
Everyone deals with that. I mean,
there's a little bit of that
that we hear all over the place. And, I mean,
I'll admit I even feel
that way even in my day job.
You know, when
you tell people what you do, are they, like,
shocked and surprised to be like, wait, you.
You sell dice? Like, what?
Or maybe write adventures.
Is it hard to explain that to people?
Yeah, I mean, it's almost like a
fun party trick
that my girlfriend will be like, hey, Roy,
tell them what you do.
And at first it was like, oh, I'm a writer.
And they're like, cool.
What do you write?
Write tabletop role playing games. I mean,
now I've stopped prefacing
it with I'm a writer because
that doesn't really get me anywhere. But, no,
it is weird. And some people, more than once,
people have been like, no way.
We've been trying to get into d and d.
Are you also a dm? Like,
can you teach us?
Sometimes people are like, that's weird.
I've never heard of that.
But people are
always pretty stoked that it's like, yeah,
you're actually doing something that, yeah,
you're passionate about,
which is crazy.
I want to know,
what was the day, like,
you quit your job?
It was really great. Yeah, I loved it.
I remember I was managing at a restaurant,
and this was during the pandemic,
so it was kind of like the
perfect time to quit because
a lot of people couldn't come into work.
It wasn't like, oh,
I'm leaving because I have
something better to do. But more like, hey,
here's a great reason for me to leave,
because the pandemic's picking up.
You guys don't really
need me here right now because, you know,
restaurants aren't open.
So I kind of, like,
just slowly slid out.
And then they called me, like, I guess,
a few weeks later,
and they were like, eric,
we're ready for you to come back to work now.
I was like, whoa.
Oh, I don't know. I don't know about that
because my business is working.
The taste of sweet freedom.
Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, I remember, though,
walking in there that day and being like, okay,
so how can I get out of here,
but without making any enemies?
Just being very polite. Yeah,
you don't want to leave and
make bad blood ever. But, yeah, it was amazing.
I'll tell you that.
That's awesome.
Let's do the random roll because
I know we have a dice company
here and you guys have dice to roll.
We've got to make sure
we get some rolls in here today.
This is what we kind of call our random rolls,
our D 100 roll.
So questions that we're going to ask are going
to be associated with the number that you roll.
And these are less serious, bit more fun. So
we did a bunch of business talk and, you know,
branding and whatnot. Now
we're going to switch things over. So, Rory,
you look like you're ready.
Would you mind just rolling that D 100?
We'll do this a couple times for each of you,
but we'll just start off with Rory right now.
Can I say,
before we get going,
we're actually now officially selling D 100s.
Whoa.
That's so cool.
Yeah, you can't see it, but it's a
ball with 100 numbers on it.
So no more two d ten s. Okay.
Exactly.
Get to have one d one hundred.
D ten s. Perspective.
It might roll for a while,
so give it a minute.
That's all right.
You got 89.
Ah, this is a great one.
What makes a great friendship stronger?
Oh, I would say communication.
More than a net. Necessary communication. Now,
if you're reaching
out to a friend because it's, you know,
you haven't talked in a while, that's nice.
But when you're reaching out a friend because
you got something you want them to see or hear,
and then that makes it stronger.
That's really great.
Given that the two
of you have been friends before,
entering in on this business. That was.
That was synchronous. Like,
that was a new question we added
in last week or two weeks ago, and I'm.
And I was like, trust me,
it's going to be great.
But it came up. That's awesome.
Good.
Perfect.
Nice. All right, Eric, go ahead.
All right, let's get it going. Here we go.
So I have two.
You get to draft one mythical
player for your football team.
A mythical player for my football team.
So it could be any, like, DC, Marvel, whatever,
you know, or anything.
How about Darth Vader?
Yeah, that would be great.
Imagine Darth Vader. Wow. Well,
tell me why. Why Darth Vader? For you.
He could use this to just
pick everyone on the enemy team up. Then
I get the ball and run it to the other side.
And if the refs complain, he would.
Have to kill them.
I mean.
Yeah.
Like, no one's
going to stop Darth Vader. It's like, yeah,
throat choke you or something.
Yeah. Force choke you to
death and that'll be it.
Yeah. His lightsaber skills are alone
will make him a great defensive lineman.
Honestly. I mean, he could
just be a great blocker for, like,
a Tom Brady or something because he could
probably hold back the entire line or everyone
would be too scared to cross the line.
That's what I was thinking as well.
I'm just surprised you put Tom Brady
and Darth Vader on the same team.
You were choosing potentially mythical Sci-Fi
heroes and characters and Tom Brady. I mean,
I live in Seattle, okay? Like,
but Tom Brady,
he's practically a superhero.
I'm just saying.
Are you saying he's a Jedi?
Don't you dare.
I don't know. I mean,
he could be a sith lord.
We don't know. I mean, he is vegan, so I.
Didn'T even know that.
Imagine how good Darth
Vader would be at throwing the ball.
You just throw it all
the way to the end every time. No issues.
Darth Vader versus Tom Brady.
I'd watch that, though.
I wouldn't pay HBO for the subscription. Well,
let's thank you.
Thank you for entertaining us. Well,
let's move on to rapid fire. Okay.
Star Trek or Star wars?
Between Star wars and Star Trek, I would pick,
personally Star wars.
All right, that's okay. You know, it's fine.
You want me to leave now?
No.
Okay. I mean, we've got to have, we've
got to have a good balance in this earth.
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
A little bit of variety.
Same for you, Rory.
Star Trek or Star wars?
Both. What? Both. They're different things.
It's actually funny. This is, I got a,
I got a relevant story for this, really,
to draw out this quick question.
We had fan expo in Vancouver recently,
and I very fortunately
got to see William Shatner speak, which was,
he's a little rambly now,
but still very inspiring guy.
Yeah. And Canadian.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, exactly. And someone asked him,
would you support a Star
wars and Star Trek crossover? And he was like,
Star wars is fantasy. It's in space,
but it's just a mythological tale.
Star Trek is trying
to be based off of technology. It's, you know,
stories about humans. Um,
and I was like,
that's actually pretty right?
That's pretty good.
Yeah. And I was like, well,
I like both of those things, so why,
why can I say anything
other than both, you know, both. Great.
Who shot first, Han or Greedo?
Han. I have a, I think it's a false
memory of watching an original
cut of Star wars when I was, like,
crazy young on a vhs that we then lost,
which might be wrong, but no, I gotta say, hi,
goblins or kobolds? Ooh, that's fun.
I have used kobolds more in my games,
but to be fair,
I don't think I fully comprehended
the usefulness of goblins
until a little more recently. And kobolds,
some of them can fly,
and that's really fun.
I often have kobolds
tied to people on the ground,
which has been an avenue for hilarity.
Three favorite pizza toppings.
Olives, onions, bacon.
We haven't had any of those on here yet.
Really?
No. That's great.
It's been a lot of pineapple pizza, people.
I do like pineapple and pizza,
but top three now it's down the list somewhere.
Okay, Eric, favorite or, sorry,
maybe not your favorite,
but your go to karaoke song.
Oh, man. Okay, Rory, you go ahead.
I need some time to think.
I love the one that I love.
You take this one.
Don't do karaoke all that much.
Well, especially nowadays.
Yeah, well, exactly.
It's a lost art from pre Covid times.
So the key, I believe,
is to get one that everyone inevitably
ends up singing along to, which I think,
for me would be bohemian Rhapsody classic.
I feel like everyone's got to sing along,
so get the crowd in on it.
Going off of that. I think mine.
I saw a good friend
once would be brown eyed girl.
Ooh, another classic karaoke tune. Awesome.
Yeah. I'm surprised. You know, I always
feel like it's getting hot in here is going
to be the top of the list for people. You know,
everyone knows that song.
They can sing along to it.
Oh, yeah. But nobody wants karaoke
people to take off all their clothes.
I'm just not gonna lie.
I used to go to karaoke in Ottawa,
and if you're a regular there, keep.
Keep.
Keep them on.
Nah, don't need that. Okay. Gotcha.
All right, how. How
many cats or too many cats?
Three.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Well, thank you so much, guys.
This has been so awesome.
And where can people find you, support you,
and buy some adventures and dice from you?
Yes, you can find us at only crits.com.
and you can also
find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Those are our social media
outlets at only Crits Co. On Instagram,
onlycritz on Twitter and Facebook.
If you search that.
Also TikTok now.
And also tik
that Rory's been getting into. Yeah,
we're officially on TikTok.
And use code epic for 12%
off your next dice set@onlycritz.com.
Awesome.
Yes.
Anything else? We got
any final words from you, Frank, or, I mean,
we are still figuring out our sign off.
What should we do to sign off? Keep it nerdy.
If there is one final takeaway.
Yeah. Follow your passion and be optimistic
and thank you much for having us on. That was.
Seriously, thank you.
Appreciate it.
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