Trivia / Rusty Quill Gaming

• Acting for Dozens:
  • As the Dungeon Master, Alex plays a wide variety of NPC roles.
  • Players who end up playing multiple characters adopt a different voice for each. The most notable example is probably Ben, as Zolf and Grizzop have extremely different voices.
    • There is a running joke that all of Ben's characters should have a meeting, just so Ben has to act out all of them. The joke is partially fulfilled in the much-anticipated "BenQuest" special starring all of Ben's RQG characters, though they are played by the other players rather than Ben himself.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Bertie's death was arranged because player James Ross had to leave the podcast to take care of his newly-born child.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Helen says she likes to alternate between playing male and female characters in tabletop games. She plays the woman Azu in the main podcast, but plays several male characters in the specials.
• Playing Against Type: Many of the characters created in the specials are contrasts with the players' characters in the main campaign.
  • Bryn tends to play big and burly fighter-like characters, contrasting with Squishy Wizard Hamid. (This also adds another layer of humor to his joke about Hamid wanting to play "a hero who can swing a sword really well" in Cel's recursive D&D campaign.)
  • Helen tends to play dark and dastardly characters, contrasting with All-Loving Hero Azu. She also says she likes to alternate between playing male and female characters in order to play a diversity of perspectives.
  • Alex, who is known for playing annoying and deliberately unsympathetic characters, chooses to play a sweet and likable character for the Fiasco special. Unfortunately, this makes the result a lot more depressing than intended, since his character has a very sad ending.
• What Could Have Been: The metacasts and Q&As occasionally reveal alternate ways that the story might have gone.
  • In particular, it was just as likely for Bertie to leave as Zolf in episode 65, with Alex even saying that if the decision was completely up to him, Bertie would have left instead.
  • The party was intended to be captured and taken to Eiffel's Folly at the start of season 2; however, they performed so well that they were able to escape instead, leading to an entire dungeon going unused.
  • Similarly, the tomb in Cairo was a very obvious Side Quest, but the players elected to ignore it in favor of the plot. Alex later revealed that there was to be a Cloak of the Bat in there for Sasha, but it tragically went uncollected.
  • Metacasts reveal that Alex and the players planned for several additional subplots with the characters who died in the season 3 finale (including Eldarion, interestingly), but obviously, those subplots had to get cut short.
    • The history between Vassyk and Grizzop was a particularly notable victim, as Vassyk had barely even been mentioned before then and was intended to get a lot more development. (Alex even notes how much he hates the trope of I Have Your Wife when the loved one has no prior characterization, even though that's literally what ended up happening with Vassyk.) Fortunately, Ben was kind enough to reveal their Back Story in a metacast.
    • The players imagine that Zolf's reunion with the party would have been very different if Sasha were still alive, as Zolf had a much stronger personal connection with them than Hamid. The players say they're somewhat disappointed they didn't get to develop that relationship further.
    • Eldarion, if they survived, would have had a fun rivalry with Einstein, due to their similar magical specialties. They would also likely have had more interactions with Sasha.
    • The mystery of Sasha's parentage was planned to be resolved, though Alex hints it may still have relevance in the endgame.