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1.0 Dungeons & Dragons Code!

Stern Pinball·video·1h 0m·analyzed·Apr 2, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.014

TL;DR

Stern D&D 1.0 launches Challenge Mode, Looping/Belongings rule, Question Mark shop with 1000+ bug fixes.

Summary

Brian Eddy and the Stern Pinball team unveil Dungeons & Dragons 1.0 code update, showcasing three major new features: Challenge Mode (a roguelike dungeon crawl where players bring leveled-up characters), the Looping/Belongings rule (collecting items on every shot with incentives to loop), and the Question Mark Fizmo purchase (a randomized 333-gold mystery item). The video demonstrates extensive content depth, approximately 1,000 bug fixes, new speech by Brian's son David, party-of-four mechanics with character-specific buffs, speedrun tracking, and co-op gameplay where all players share party state and progress. Eddy emphasizes this represents the game's deepest ruleset to date after two years of development planning.

Key Claims

  • D&D 1.0 is the deepest game Stern has made in a long time with years of content to explore

    high confidence · Brian Eddy, official announcement video at start

  • The Challenge Mode, Looping/Belongings rule, and Question Mark feature were planned over two years ago

    high confidence · Brian Eddy discussing development timeline

  • There are approximately 1,000 bug fixes in 1.0

    high confidence · Brian Eddy explicitly states 'a thousand bug fixes'

  • The Ranger character received a damage buff from 2x to 3x in 1.0

    high confidence · Brian Eddy: 'I made the Ranger's damage. Instead of 2x, it's 3x'

  • Challenge Mode uses a party-of-four system where all unlocked characters can randomly appear in your party

    high confidence · Brian Eddy and Dwight explaining challenge mode mechanics; David Eddy credited with writing character features

  • Players can bring saved/leveled characters from regular game into Challenge Mode or co-op without saving changes

    high confidence · Brian Eddy explaining cross-mode character progression

  • Potions have a max cap of 3 in regular game, reduced to 2 in Challenge Mode during playtesting

    high confidence · Brian Eddy discussing balance changes: 'We experimented that while we were playtesting, and it was three and I reduced it to two'

  • Wizards of the Coast required explanation for why players could be 'bad guys' in the game and approved the feature

    high confidence · Brian Eddy: 'Wizards of the Coast wanted us to explain that, and we're like, well, you know, you can maybe be a bad guy... and then they were fine with it'

Notable Quotes

  • “I think this has to be the deepest game we've made in a long time. It has quite a bit of content. I think you could play this for years and still see stuff.”

    Brian Eddy @ Opening remarks — Defines the design philosophy and scope of D&D 1.0, emphasizing content depth

  • “We planned that rule, like, again, like two years ago. There, there, he collected a backpack, three of eight.”

    Brian Eddy @ Mid-gameplay — Confirms extended development timeline for Looping/Belongings feature

  • “Email Brian at zach.sharp at externpimple.com”

    Dwight (with Brian Eddy's approval/joking) @ Closing remarks — Humorous interaction; also referenced as '1-800-KICKERS' joke about support/feedback

  • “The question mark is 333 gold, and it's random. You might get something worth a trinket, which is like five grand. Or you might get a magic item, you know, worth like two grand.”

    Brian Eddy @ Mid-gameplay — Explains the risk/reward mechanic of the Question Mark Fizmo purchase

  • “So in co-op, just like in challenge mode, you can bring in your saved characters, but they won't save at the end.”

    Brian Eddy @ Co-op demonstration — Clarifies cross-mode character progression rules

  • “My son David wrote all that. Now whatever characters you have unlocked will randomly mix into your party so that your party is different all the time depending on what you have unlocked.”

    Brian Eddy @ Challenge Mode explanation — Credits David Eddy's work on party system; explains replayability mechanic

  • “I've been afraid that the game is too easy. The challenge mode is too easy. Nick is of course one of the best players on the planet. Isn't a good judge.”

    Brian Eddy @ Mid-challenge mode — Reveals balancing concerns and acknowledges limitations of using expert player feedback

Entities

Brian EddypersonDwightpersonNickpersonJackpersonDavid EddypersonZach SharpepersonTom KizavatpersonElizabethperson

Signals

  • ?

    code_update: D&D 1.0 introduces three major new systems (Challenge Mode, Looping/Belongings, Question Mark) alongside ~1000 bug fixes and extensive new speech content

    high · Brian Eddy: 'There's a thousand bug fixes. Lots of bug fixes' and demonstration of all three features functioning

  • ?

    design_innovation: Challenge Mode introduces roguelike mechanics where players bring leveled characters into persistent-state dungeon crawls with party-of-four permadeath system

    high · Brian Eddy explains Challenge Mode as 'basically the dungeon crawl but you can play until you die' with cross-mode character progression

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Looping/Belongings rule designed to ensure constant feedback/reward on every shot and encourage repeated shot sequences even when unlit

    high · Brian Eddy: 'We always want something happening at the shot. So it's not like you're still getting something... Now it's more pronounced. There's speech and display effects and the looping rule.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Question Mark feature introduces mystery purchases with random item rewards at fixed cost, creating risk/reward and discovery mechanic across playthroughs

    high · Brian Eddy explains 333-gold cost vs. wide range of possible rewards (trinkets worth 5k to dragon letters) and unique items not on map

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Brian Eddy expresses concerns about Challenge Mode difficulty being too easy even with expert testers; adjusted potion caps from 3 to 2 during playtesting

    high · Brian Eddy: 'I've been afraid that the game is too easy... We experimented... it was three and I reduced it to two'

Topics

Challenge Mode Game DesignprimaryLooping and Item Collection MechanicsprimaryQuestion Mark Fizmo Shop FeatureprimaryCode Quality and Bug FixesprimaryParty System and Character ProgressionprimaryCo-op Gameplay and Shared ProgresssecondaryBalance Changes and Difficulty TuningsecondaryDevelopment Timeline and Planningsecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.183

Well, hey everybody, I'm Brian Eddy and we are here today to do something pretty amazing. It's a long time coming. We're really excited. We're introducing D&D 1.0. Yes. So I'm here with Dwight. Jack, of course, is always here. And Nick, one of the best players here, to help show off some of these cool new things. And I'm pretty excited about this. It's been a long time coming. Dwight and I talked about this over two years ago, and finally seeing all the little features come together is pretty amazing. All of our plans are up in there and more so. Plus more, yeah. I think this has to be the deepest game we've made in a long time. It has quite a bit of content. I think you could play this for years and still see stuff. Especially at our level. Yeah. For me, definitely, yeah. But it's a big day for us, so we want to jump in. We want to show you some of the cool new stuff. Okay, cool. So we're going to have Nick play the regular game. Nick is going to play. Brian and I would just drain over and over again. Nick can actually show you stuff. I'm going to move over here. Great, yeah. Commentator boot. Hey. You're good. Can I move this in? Oh, you want to get closer? I want to get closer. Hold on. It's a little loud. Is that good without being on top of Nick? Okay. I was going to move like another foot. Another foot? Is that bad? No, you're doing great. Okay, let's move it. This is all spectacular. Yeah, all right. There we go. Is that good? That's good for me. All right. Let's do it then, Nick. Pile it on, dude. Alright. Sign in. So, we're going to let Nick play and level up a brand new character that he's recently reset. And then some of the new features are... So, Nick knows his syllabus as well as I do. Some of the new features are... question mark in Vizmo, but we need to know where that's at. We need to discover that. Okay. That might take a while. I could cheat. I love a challenge. Do you want me to cheat? No cheating! Okay, no cheating. Alright, so we need to learn from Fizzmo where the question mark is. We'll learn that on the fly whenever we can. We also want... so another new rule in the game is the belongings and the looping rule. When you shoot each shot, you're going to collect some belongings. And if nothing's going on on the screen, it'll tell you about it. It might even have some cool speech. Cool. There's lots of new speech all over the game. There's lots of tweaks and balances all over the game. If I remember them on the fly, we will bring them up. But go ahead and just play. Cool. Oh, there's a thousand bug fixes. Lots of bug fixes, yeah. Thanks to everybody out there. I'm ready to go. Yeah. Look at that. See, there's torches. He collected torches. Every time you collect all eight, you get a bonus. And all of these go to help your actual end of all bonus. making you want to tilt less often. Fizmo, let's see if there's... No question mark there. No? And you need some cash, too. The question mark costs 333 gold. There's other new things in Fizmo. Now when you buy something in Fizmo, the next time you go to buy that, it costs 10% more than the last time you bought it, this game. And you can also buy Rage. Sometimes Rage is free when you're driving on the freeway. But now you can go to Fizmo's and buy Rage. So if you're the Barbarian and you've used your Rage this ball and you want to go buy another and you want to enable it to be able to use it again this ball, you can go do that at Fizmo. Nick, it is wild now. I've been playing this game a lot, so all the shots down. Nick is one of our testers. So he and the other testing team have been helping us get to 1.0. Yeah. The dog drops the potion at the cellar door under the temple of Time War. In-house testers. Then you hear a muffled, help from deep inside. Level 2. All right, we're going to try and level Nick up. One of the new features is the challenge mode, and we're wanting to show how you can bring a leveled up character into the challenge mode. Diego leaves Greenus with a bottle of water. Oh, you got extra wallet too. Anytime you play two modes, you can light extra ball, but there's a new way to light extra ball. You can collect 50 gems. If you collect 50 gems, you light extra ball. You collect gems from hitting the gold targets, or you can just buy 10 from Vizmo. And there's other ways to collect gems. Treasure chest gives you gems sometimes. all those little arrows that are lit solid, that's looting he's killed monsters on those shots and now loot is just sitting there waiting for him to go pick it up so if he shoots one of those little yellow arrows it'll show a little looting symbol on the screen really fast of course if he doesn't then it won't Oh, there we go. So looping, looping is a new rule. Every time you, the first time you loop, you collect torches, I believe. But the second time you loop, it'll spot you one of the other shots trying to complete your set for you. So you can just sit there and loop all day and collect belongings. Yeah, that's a long time coming. Yeah, we planned that rule, like, again, like two years ago. There, there, he collected a backpack, three of eight. What did you say, Brian? We always want something happening at the shot. So it's not like you're still getting something. Yep. So now you're always collecting belongings. It was sort of... The rule was partially there before. It was sort of tracking every shot you shot and giving you a bonus during the end of all bonus. But now it's more pronounced. There's speech and display effects and the looping rule. There's a reason to shoot that loop over and over again when it's not lit for something else. Magnifying glass. I bet you need the ramp. The ramp is what, a machete? Hey, I'm trying to shoot the ramp. Your shield might just give you the ramp. I don't know. Maybe. It might not. Can you talk about what that means? Yeah, so the shield, you know, the shield, when the ball rests against the shield, it might give you the ramp if it's resting on the left side. And there he goes. one of the best players in the house, baby. It took me like two minutes to shoot that shot. But it gave me the magnifying glass. Another new thing is every time you shoot a shot, it flashes that shot yellow really quickly, and that's it telling... Mostly what it's doing there is it's showing you, it gave you that... It's giving you the belongings. There, he's collecting treasure. Another way, one way to get gems, but you got potions instead. You're either going to get potions or gems. Potions rule changed a little bit. You can now... now there's a max you can have. I think it's three. And yeah, he has three... he's maxed out on potions. Potions are good for when your party is... when your party needs healing. If you see green shots lit up between levels, shoot the green shots. It'll heal your party and consume some of your potions. Travel to Westgate. We need to see more Fizmo. Exactly. Have you done just the one Fizmo? Yeah, just one. Okay. Are you being systematic? Sure. Okay. So that's one of the bugs that was just fixed, was you could be selecting the town center, and if you tilt it, you wouldn't see your selection. That was a bug that Nick found and I fixed. Rest, rest, and see what happens. Try resting on the other side. Okay. There's Fizmo. And you have to look behind the overcost and sold out. Rage is there, though. Oh, look at that. Rage. So now we know if we play the Barbarian later, we can go to Westgate and collect more Rage instead of driving on the freeway. fishing tackle collect it you know it's good to have fishing tackle on a dock it is yes iron spikes but you want to did you ever use your range weapon I did I used it So, one of my new favorite characters is the Ranger. I love playing the Ranger, so what I did in 1.0, another 1.0 change, is I made the Ranger's damage. Instead of 2x, it's 3x, just because I want more damage when I'm playing the Ranger. And I have that control. But the challenge mode is really fun with the Ranger. We're going to get to that in a little bit. Not with the Ranger, though. He's going to play the Cleric. So this is not a new rule, the dragon multiball. It was like the last release or maybe the one before that. But now the dragon multiball goes up in levels from 1 to 10, and it sticks to your character. So in the beginning, in the first level, it's very chaotic. It pretty much didn't change from the earlier version. But as you work your way through the levels, you have less falls, and it's much more about collecting the super jackpots than it is hitting the dragon in the face. In fact, collecting a super jackpot gives you hits on the face. Yeah, starting dragon multiball lights a shield. So this is largely a Brian Eddy rule. Brian wanted to do this. He's the one that thought up the whole dragon spitting out balls, and this is mostly his vision. See, Nick doesn't use his shield like I would use it So Nick is of course Now he's in town celebration He beat the dragon So beating the dragon will take him to level 2 But also beating the dragon right now Will give him half price On anything in Westgate At Fizmo's Fizmo gives you half off if you beat the dragon in that town I love this tune This is a very good song When I asked for this tune My suggestion was a tune that was like It was like the Sturridge people Partying on the Titanic Right? You guys remember that scene? That was what I asked for And I got something very similar Alright so See the prices are half off It's 37 for bump It's only 45 for a plus one bonus multiplier is he going to save his money? how much money does he have? 500? town celebration total? 20 million? that's not very good thanks Dwight I didn't get my super jackpot not my pinky finger so should I tell you why so there's a reason why you lose your pinky finger here in the story I won't spoil it but it makes sense yeah put in the forums or in this YouTube channel put in the comments if you know why you lose your pinky finger it's just the tip of the pinky finger not the whole thing Alright, again he has a little yellow triangle there on the ramp. That'll give him some loot, give him more gold. Nick rocks. Alright, so... Yeah, you can collect ore to win, or you can beat all the bad guys. I think you still have to collect ore even if you beat all the bad guys. Oh, Lissandra was saying something there, and you cut her off. That's okay. I'm sorry, Lissandra. We already know Westgate, so Westgate's still giving you half off, though. Yeah, but there's no question mark. No, so we've got to go somewhere else and find the question mark. All right, let's go to Greenest. I can go cheat anytime you want me to. No, it's okay. You don't have a map on your phone for this? I might. We're going to find it. All right, where are you going to go? So there's three large features. They're not really large. Challenge mode is the biggest feature. The looping belongings rule all being implemented. that's kind of cool. And then the question mark is the other new feature. Like I was saying before, there's a thousand little tweaks and bug fixes and lots more speech. My son's been working on this game for a while now, adding tons of speech. There's lots of fun speech in the game, too. I won't spoil. There is. But like speech that we couldn't put in until we were almost done with the game. Oh, we want Fismo. Yeah, I know. All right. I I didn't mean to... Remove those dwarves? You were gonna remove the dwarves? Get out of here. No, I... Oh, you're on the good guy side, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Balinor's moving in. I'm not gonna kill him. You're just removing them. Nice shot! Yeah, Wizards of the Coast wanted us to explain that, and we're like, well, you know, you can maybe be a bad guy. I'm not a bad guy. Yeah, and then they were fine with it. 380 million. Nick is just getting warmed up. Alright, we collected gold there too, from the looting. And a backpack, holy smokes. You're just collecting stuff left and right. Remove the Dwarf Success. So this is Balinar, this is your early, your Balinar who becomes one of the three final bad guys. He's, this is your early introduction to him. Alright we're, we're, what do we got? Oh, a trinket. Yeah But we don want trinkets that was a release from about five releases ago Trinkets are pretty cool though and the question mark spoiler alert can give a trinket So I'll tell you what it, I'll tell you, should I tell him what it does or should we show him first? Do we have faith that Nick's gonna find it? Alright, he's got 900 gold. I'm going hunting for it now. Alright, I dare you. Oh, you started a mode. The dice game is pretty fun though. It is. Yeah, I think it's pretty fun. Game night. So it's a spinner game. It's a spinner rule. You get points. The only way you get points is spinning. The only way you can boost the spinning value is by shooting it into the thing that's going up and down. What do you call that, Brian? Dungeon. Dungeon, yeah, that's it. So he's got the value up to 7. Uh-oh. It's okay. Well, worst case is we start a new game, and because... And physical stuff won't change until Sunday. So everything only changes on Sundays, mostly in the game. So whatever we've eliminated, we've eliminated Ariel, Greenest, and Westgate. And now we're... Look at that! There's a question mark. All right, here we go. Here we go. Quiet. I think I got a dragon letter. I think you got a dragon letter. Spot dragon letter. So he paid 333 gold for that, which was overpriced. For a single target. Which is way overpriced. Well, it was not in that case, but that's the whole point of the question mark. The question mark is 333 gold, and it's random. You might get something worth a trinket, which is like five grand. Or you might get a magic item, you know, worth like two grand. And you might get something. Now you can go to Darkhold and get the question mark and get things that aren't on anywhere on the map. Because each Sunday, the map picks all kinds of things where Fizmo sells things. And some things aren't for sale, but the question mark might sell everything. Yeah, that's a lot of goblins. Oh, speedrun. Oh my god, I forgot all about speedrun Too many crickets, that's another major feature of speedrun So So far Nick has been playing for 14 minutes on this game This one game And he's well on his way To finishing the game And how long will it take? The speedrun tracks All of the time the ball is live So if the ball is sitting in the shooter groove The speedrun will be stopped All the rest of the time, it'll run until you finish the campaign. When you finish the campaign, it might see if it's your best time or not. One cool thing about this speedrun is it's green because it's currently his best time. It's currently beating his best time. It says he doesn't have a best time. It's currently his best time. Yeah. All right. Thank you. I did. You did get the question mark, and we talked about speedrun. Yeah. Do we want to play one more game or no? Or do we want to go into the challenge mode? Yeah, let's show them. to make it green and then your speedrun counts as long as it's green or red. If it's red that means it's past your best time which means you have you at least have at least one best time. Cool. Alright, it's challenge mode time. Alright so another new feature is the challenge mode. I can't believe I forgot about speedrun. Alright so the challenge mode is from the gameplay menu. It has a new kind of, it's basically the dungeon crawl but you can play until you die. It has lots of new rules though. And one cool thing is you can bring a character that you've been building up in the regular game into the challenge mode. Don't start yet. Okay, I'm not. So Nick just played this character. He's up to fourth level and now he brings it into the challenge mode and he brings with it whatever he's got from playing in the regular game. It won't save. He can go up levels and get gold and stuff during the challenge mode. It won't save, it won't make his cleric better, but you can level up in the regular game and then bring it to the challenge mode. That's cool. Right, it's very cool. Which makes it a little different every time as you're going up and playing the challenge. Yeah, depending on your equipment and stuff, and if you go get cool equipment or artifacts or what-forth. What else do I want to say about the challenge mode? Oh, so it's basically the dungeon crawl, but it has this sort of HUD across the top. It's different than the dungeon crawl it's all about whenever your four player whenever your your party of four oh that's another thing that's new that i gotta talk about remind me to come back to that in a minute but whenever your party of four completely dies one by one then you're out you're done or if you drain you're done yep um finding a trap doesn't end it for you anymore it just kills one member of your party so finding a trap kills one member and of course if that's your fourth member then of course you're done. It gives you a little stats at the end of score and so forth and if you beat the high score to date it lets you on the high score to date table. When you die in the game, you die in real life. Well, shh. Spoiler alert! And Brian collects your soul. None of that is true. Please only call 1-800-KICKERS. They're behind the mic. Alright, so I think that's all I want to talk about Challenge Mode. challenge mode. I guess we'll talk about it as we play. Oh yeah, the layout will reset once a week, of course. The party of four. So that's after this. Or whenever... Alright, so he's going to fight some animated armor. Rope collected. Thank God. tools collected. Alright, so there's... If you're going for score and you're good at battle, battle is a good way to get score. A couple of updates ago, I greatly increased... I greatly increased how much points you get for damaging an enemy and killing them. Hey! Watch the shield! Yeah. But each shot now will give you points. There. So now, see there, he jumped up 10 million there for 11 million for that. Treasure is a good thing to get. It can give you more potions, which keeps your party alive if you shoot the green shots. And his crossbow is increased. Oh, right. So see, there's the HUD. The HUD now tells you what level you're on, how well your party's doing, how many potions you have, and what your score is. Oh, he just lost one of his party members. All right, so now he's down to three out of four. You can get him back with the green potions. So he has two green potions and the green potion lights up on the Vuck, the shot behind the spinner, if during...when he's not in an encounter or in a decision point. I'll show, we'll point out when the green arrow lights. Oh, nice shot. What are you doing there with the X-Men? I'm using my ranged weapon. Yeah, yeah. To shoot the enemies. All right, so see there he's got green, and it'll heal his party. There we go. Now, his party isn't necessarily full. It says 4-4. That means they're all at least non-zero. if the green arrow continues to show up that means that there's still some healing that can be done oh he's gonna so now the legendary armor is pretty cool it will yeah for the next ten times he gets hit it won't do any damage Until your party dies or you drain. There, he killed another party member. So, as you go down... I'm responsible. As you go down levels, there are more and more traps. But going down a level also is a good way to get points. And every time you go down a level, your shield lights again. So, make sure to use your shields. And your ball save kicks in again every time you go down a level. You haven't gone down a level yet? Oh yeah I have, you're on level 2. Oh, that's because the treasure room takes you down a level. Right, that's right. Uh oh. Oh, so he has one of his paladins down. That was from the trap. Now this Helm Horror wants to kill him. Oh, he ranged weapon, did some damage. But look at that, the Bard's now down. He's down to two characters. Yeah, this isn't good. Oh, look at that. Somebody got hit again. I'm not sure who. All right, so this is... I guess I can talk now about... Trap-ups, let me talk when you get a chance. I'm going to die. Oh, yeah, you'll die. Go, play, play, play. I'm sorry. No, no, play, play, play. All right, all right. All right, so you're trapped up. All right, so you saw there the bard was one of your characters on your party. That's another new thing in 1.0. My son David wrote all that. now whatever characters you have unlocked will randomly mix into your party so that your party is different all the time depending on what you have unlocked. Cool. I'm going to heal. And they... But see the arrow's still green? That means this party's not healed yet. It just means they're all non-zero. They're all greater than zero. It doesn't heal any characters. It gives health points to all four members if they need it. But if you were at zero, then of course you need it. That's okay, I have a ball safe. He's got two potions, so I think two is the max now in the dungeon crawl. We experimented that while we were playtesting, and it was three and I reduced it to two. I've been afraid that the game is too easy. The challenge mode is too easy. Nick is of course one of the best players on the planet. Isn't a good judge. Isn't a good... for whether or not it's too easy. That's it. What about shields too? You get a shield every time you go down to level 2. So 224 million, that's gonna get you on the high score date table. You made it to level 3. Stern Nick. Alright, so the other thing I wanted to tell you about the party of four is all of your party members now give you a small benefit, a small little buff. little buff depending on who they are. Like, even if you're not a cleric, but if you have a cleric in your party, you'll get extra healing when you go to heal. And so forth. Yeah, so all of your party gives you a small buff depending on the makeup of your party. Alright, that's the challenge mode, ladies and gentlemen. Was that cool? Yeah, that was cool. I think it turned out pretty well. And we've been planning that forever, but of course, you know, it takes a while. Yeah, it doesn't call into a big monothon. Yeah. It's a great challenge. Yeah, I actually think, in my mind, it's tied with the bonus round. I think the bonus round is pretty fun because the bonus round is infinite. The bonus round is infinite ball save, so you just play until you die. Yeah. I want to try co-op. So I think a lot of people don't know just how fun co-op is, and here's an opportunity for us to show. Yeah, we can run through like a two-player co-op. Yeah. Let's play at least two or three. Yeah. Jack, do you want to play? I think I'm going to watch you guys play. I'll watch and then I can comment. Otherwise, I'll just drain and piss everyone off. Is it going to be just me and Brian? Does Nick want to play? Nick should play. Okay. Yeah, sure. I can play. So the fun thing about co-op in this game, how it's different than co-op in other games, is everyone in the party, everyone playing is in the party, and you pick up where the last person left off. So you play, and you might be in the middle of a dungeon, or you're in Arabelle, and then the next person to go, even though the last time they played they weren't in Arabelle, they are now because that's where the party moved to. Yeah, I like that. Who wants to start us off? Go ahead, Brian. Stern, Brian. I'll be second, I guess. Oh, I should have used my Stern account. Whatever. It's fine. One of the things I think I would encourage everybody to do now that we're at 1.0 is reset at least one character and play right from the beginning. Yeah. Because then you'll experience everything. And email Brian about any problems. Yeah, right. Email Brian at zach.sharp at externpimple.com. Yeah, yeah. It's Brian's new name. Exactly. I thought it was 1-800-KICKERS. No, it's not that. No, don't call 1-800-KICKERS unless you really need to. Those guys are friends of ours. Okay, so I want to choose co-op on the gameplay menu. Yep. Let's get it. And I'll push start. All right, here we go. Player three, Tiamat, is hatching a new plan. I'm really counting on you guys. Let's see. So in co-op, just like in challenge mode, you can bring in your saved characters, but they won't save at the end. Okay, okay. So you can level them up in the regular game. And then bring them in and everyone can play their high-level character that they want to play. Okay. All right. In co-op, for people that don't know, your scores are all the same, right? And experience points, like if Brian gets experience points, he's giving everybody else who get experience points. All right. I might... You might not get the experience points one for one. I think you get like half or something. I'm glad I didn't have to cheat with that question mark. Well done Nick. Yeah So and then also you see in the regular UI there you see there a little purple box If you playing co if you successfully navigated the menu system co it say right there Oh, yeah. Oh, there you go. Okay, okay. I made it nowhere. Okay. It's my turn to make it. But if you do shoot a shot, like a yellow shot, and it gives you a prompt, you should discuss with your teammates where you want to go and what you want to do. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Not yet. Oh, okay. Shoot a yellow shot. There you go. Well, wait. All right, now. Now ask him. What do you guys want to do? What do you want to play? Go somewhere else? I heard that there were question marks at the... Arabelle? No, at the Darkhold. This thing? So you should play in mode. Play in mode. Yeah, play in mode. The Spy on Puck? This one looks terrifying. Like 100 years ago, my son wrote Spy on Puck. Spy on Puck. It might have been 99 years. Is that a drawing of me? It was. Tom Kizavat drew all those. And he said, what does Jack look like? And I got a picture. Oh, look at that. Gems. You've got five gems. You're on your way to 50 gems, which will give you an extra wall. Use the shield to shoot the shots. Stealth award. So this is a game about stealth in the beginning. If you cannot hit the slings, this is a cool, there's more gems. Oh, Elizabeth. This is a cool Elizabeth idea. Right, Elizabeth, she invented the whole stealth thing, and it's awesome. Yeah, it's one of my favorite moves. And stealth is used in two or three places throughout the game. Shield is ready. See, and so he's comboing those shots, so it was giving him extra stealth awards there. Combo. Look at all of our scores climbing. It was... Yeah. Brian's so lucky. Good job, Brian. Carrying the team. I appreciate it. Spy on Puck. So this is a little bit of the story. Puck's getting orders from some black dragon in a crystal ball. Come on, Puck. I wonder who that is. All right. What do you want now? Team, team, speak up. So, sure. Just to see what... You've got plenty of gold. You can go see what the cursor mark gives you. Two more shots, so he could have been attacked there. That's like in the last release, the one before this one, we added a whole bunch more travel monsters, but Jack got lucky and he's not being attacked. All right, now Fizwell. So if you were more economical, you would have played a wizard mode. So, here we go, we'll do, I'll pause. This is like an old-fashioned, oh, you got another dragon letter. Dwight, what are you doing, bro? So, I swear it's random. He's got 10 gems, light extra ball at 50. Uh, shoot this thing? Oh, wait. That's a dungeon crawl, that's not a bad thing to shoot. Okay, let's shoot it then. Let's crawl through the dungeon. So, Fizmo will give you another question mark if you... Oh, Fizzy, my guy. As long as you have gold. We're going straight. We're going... So, it's a right-hand turn, so the arrows are only lit on the right-hand side. Oh, I get it. I'm trying to backhand like a... Come on. This dungeon has no relationship to the challenge. Correct. It's a unique dungeon. Correct. Oh, really? Okay. Ooh, critical hit. And that was one of my favorite shots you just made. You shot the critical hit, the ball had backspin, and then rolled into the buck. That was awesome. Yeah. I love doing that. I see an intersection. Straight. All right. Cool door. Yep. Well, giant room. Giant empty room. Stairs. Going down to the next level. giving him so this isn't the challenge mode there's no HUD, a trap will kill him I'll never find a trap I think you're wrong I feel like you hit a button on your phone to make that happen I might have am I passing? I have ways of cheating should I stay here so I can get another fizz mode? yeah try that Pass? Yeah, pass. Nailed it. Maybe save that for you. Oh, you're two balls away, though. All right. Dragon letter. 10% of your score. Yo, I'll take that. See, that's one of the big awards that cost way more than $300. Yeah, that's great. Now where? How do I do that? What do you want to do? Am I just passing? No, no, no, you're not passing. Carabel? On it. Nailed it. But see there, that was team effort. That was team effort. Even though it looks like Jack's doing all the work. Oh, wait, I... I didn't blow anyone else's shield by doing that, did I? No, no. Okay. No, it's just yours. Okay. Yep. and just instinct if it's lit when I drain. Because we'd have to take you out to fill our shield. Maybe use the Iron Bank. Yeah, Iron Bank. I still use Arrow to Juniper Amari. I still like the Iron Bank's rule, even though it didn't turn out that great. I love it. It's like the last ditch. It is. I never intended it to be the last ditch thing. I wanted it to be like I'm done. I want to catch that now because it's huge. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a nice, like, I almost made it. Yeah, it's a gamble. For me, it's a game about the end. Yeah. I'm going to turn all my gold that I've been collecting this whole game into points. Yeah. Yeah So you took him to Arabelle, and now Nick's continuing from Arabelle. Again, a hundred years ago, my son wrote this mode. That was a long time ago. One of the first modes, I think. Yeah. This is me wanting not every mode to be a battle. And I thought, well, early on, maybe you're just chasing a dog. You know, because that's... Well, D&D is sort of like that sometimes. Sometimes D&D is like you're just... Well, and he took that thing you want, and you've got to go chasing him. And he leads you to the cellar door. See, in the story, he leads you to the cellar door where you have to go save Diego. There you go. Nick's seen this before. Wants to just get to fighting the rats. So the rats were all spawning, but they wouldn't start timing out on him until he was done with that video. But they'll still spawn. And part of my thinking of that is you can then see where they're going to be and you can plan to shoot there. And or use your shield and or your range weapon. All right, Brian. I know, I think you got the points on that round, Jack. We're sharing those. I'm planning on doubling it this time. Goals, right? Alright, so he's still in the crypt. Brian is. I continue on. I gotta take out the rest of... So you want to shoot the yellow shot? To go down? To fight the gelatinous cube? Just that one there, a shot right there in the middle. Earlier you called that a dungeon. Is that the dungeon? Yeah. Dungeon Crawl. You're in a large room with alcoves built into the walls. One alcove seems to be caved in. Something seems to be moving in the distance. Ooh. Shoot the ooze. Fun fact, a gelatinous cube, its umbrella name is ooze. It's in the ooze family. Oh. Are there sentient oozes in D&D? That's a good question. I don't know if they're sentient. I'm going to have to ask you to roll an insight check. Oh, yeah, if I hit the shot? Okay. Roll a d20 here. Do you actually have one? Of course. Five! Oh, okay. So he's level one. Again, this character hasn't played Dragon, hasn't beaten the Dragon yet. So he's level one. He can level it up, and then it becomes a different game. It becomes a different multiball. I like the half off. Yeah, if you beat the dragon you get half off at Arabelle, at Thismos. So you could have played the dragon in the Darkhold and then got half off the question mark. That's a lot of question marks. It's a lot of dragon letters. Alright, here we go. I did get 10%. So how many things are on that question mark? About 25, maybe 23. That's great. Yeah, but again only if you can get like rages on there. But you can't get rage unless you're a barbarian and you've already used your rage. Like if you're a wizard you can't get a magical bow and so forth. Got it. Beautiful. So yeah, that's again a recent update is wizards can't get ranged weapons because they have magic missiles and fireballs. Do you want any of this? 10 gems is a partial way toward extra wall. I love that for us, my lord. Keep going. What does the team say? Nick probably knows the best. So another new thing in this 1.0 is double scoring. Got a little bit harder. I no longer spot you spot you advancements when you go up the lane. Going up the lane was too easy, just off the sling. So now you have to do it the correct way, like hit the target, hit the target again, and then go down the lane to start double scoring. Of course... Where are you at? Oh, you're in the Cobalt mining town. Cobalt mining town is pretty cool. Cool mining town, you mean? Yeah. Rescue or break? Yeah. So Balanor, who turns out to be a bad guy, and you have to kill eventually. Oh, spoiler. You're actually doing work for him. Oh, yeah, on the right ramp there. Right, your teammate wants you to get that extra ball so that you can get as many points as he got. Nailed it. First try. What? I know where that target is. I found it. I'm going to shoot this. Then I'm going to shoot that. And then I'm going to shoot this. And then I'm going to let that come over. And then I'm going to go up the ramp. Up the ramp. Feed the left flipper. And then the right ramp. And then one time. Nicely done. Look at that three-way combo. It's almost as good as mine. Almost. We're getting there. Extra ball. Ooh, that was close. Stay alive. You can play it. Oh, wait, do I play it? Yeah, you play it. Me play it? Yeah, yeah. It's still your ball. Still my ball. And on the fly, nailed it. You've got plus one javelins. That's going to do extra damage when you're in a fight. It can go all the way to plus three. Boy, I love that center scoop. Alright, get over here. Stop yelling at me. Dude, that target and I? Best friends. You keep beating it up. I don't think it likes you. In fact, it's probably a magnet now and it's just attracted the ball. Okay, white shot, here we go. Area searched. You're looking for that chest plate, which I see in the background there. I don't know why you can't find it. It's right there in the back. Oh, it's right there. Oh, hold on, let me hit the over there button. Any of the scion shots now will end the mode and give you your cutscene. Give me the dang armor. But you've successfully won. Anytime you see the blue arrows like this, you've successfully won. It's just getting the cutscene and a bonus points is what it wants you to do. All in. That was a double? Yeah. Now, if he tilts, all of his belongings bonus will go away. Belong to Cobalt Town. Okay, don't do that. Got it. Brian wants those points. Don't tilt. Alright, what's next? And then Nick can get to the bottom and fight gargoyles. So this is a fun little story that's happening in this town. The miners, the kobolds have been directed by some black dragon to mine this ore and they're mining it but they're all robotic. Ball one's stuck. He's going to do gelatinous cube multiball. We haven't seen that yet today. So it tried grabbing your ball there, and then it failed. Oh, there was a ball there. I see. Everything's fine. Yeah, I know. You're doing great. Get in there. Everything is points. Deflection. It is. But you're fighting the boulette. The boulette, also known as the boulet. But belay is the wrong way to pronounce it. The boulet? Yeah, boulet is correct. It's like Gillette. There you go, super jackpot. And just for yucks, so we said this already, but like a while back we announced that there are three more major updates coming. This is the second of the three. The second of the three. There's one more planned update coming. A second? Yeah, got it. Man, worth it. Thank you. Oh, man. We doubled. We did it. The doubler. I mean, I just warmed it up. I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, somebody has to... This is why I didn't want to play. Pretty good. There's no way of looking good. There's just... Nick has those fancy, like, short flipping, short plunging tricks. Ready? No. You have extra ball. I do. Oh, but bottom of the mine gargoyle time. Alright, so there's an infinite number of gargoyles. Yeah, oh. He said he has to get to the bottom of mine. Yes, it's a stealth. There we go. Coast is clear. There, he made it past this without a fight. So far. There we go. And these good players, they get those troll horns. It's a Zorn. It's a crazy like cave monster. They're kinda creepy. It's got like three arms, I think. And only one eye. This game features monsters with only one eye, if you haven't noticed. That's it. There's what, there's like 50 monsters in the game? There are, there's like 50 monsters in the game. There's a lot of monsters, a lot of content. Alright, Brian. Azoran attacks! Alright, they warmed it up for you, Brian. They did. I'm hoping to have one good ball at least. Like half a jackpot or nothing would be good. And I'm determined to use my shield this time, too. So you want to shoot the Vuul there behind the spinner. Oh, that works, too. That was your skill shot. That gives you a critical hit. So, Brian, that's why you have teammates. Yeah, so that's a good point. This is the beauty of co-op. You have a couple of good players. You can see a lot more of the good work. See, Brian's score is 668 million. Isn't he awesome? We're showing off the beauty of co-op here. Alright, here we go. So we need to hit a billion. You need to hit a what? A billion. Oh, we don't. Well, we... If you want to, but... Alright. Yeah, there you go. Tavern Brawl! Ooh, the doubler. So Tavern Brawl is lit from playing three modes. Oh, so I stole this from everybody. I don't know if that's true. No, I don't. Those are all coming back. Get them. Yep. Nope. Tavern Brawl is our Gary feature. Gary Stern. That started when we did Venom. When we did Venom, Gary came and played and we saw that he was good at getting all of the really close things to the flipper and we wanted like a wizard mode that was like one more step past all of the easy things to do. Oh, I... And this is the Gary feature. You got here because you played Dragon Multiball, Gelatinous Cube, and Dungeon Girl. That's awesome. Are those shares between players in co-op? We're about to find out. I think they might be. Jack is kicking butt, Brian. Stay alive. Love you. Because I don't think... I don't think... Did Jack do all three? I guess maybe he did. So maybe it's just Jack. Give me the shield, baby. Your one billion score is getting closer. Get in. No, I love you. Just a second. That would have lit Super Jackpot going in there. All right, I've got to be careful here. I've got some warnings I'm messing with. Tiny's Dice Game begins. Tiny's Dice Game? All right, Tiny. So Tiny's Dice Game is from playing three modes. I had it wrong a minute ago. Oh, you moved. So this is sort of like miniature golf, where the dungeon goes up and down like a windmill, and you're wanting to shoot the shot behind it, but going in the dungeon still is beneficial. I'm feeling lucky. And all the other shots add to your time, so you're balancing how much time you have, what your score is, do I want to go collect the score. Tiny, get out of the way, bro. Are you standing in front of my dice? No, stop counting. I think it was Josh Sharp that actually suggested using the dungeon as a miniature golf kind of feature. Oh, nice. It's so funny that after Jack just absolutely completely destroyed the tavern, now he's playing a friendly dice game with everyone. Well, you know, that was, you know, the Tavern Brawl was yesterday. The guy cleans up. Tiny's good at that. He knows that happens a lot. So Nick still has Tiny's Dice Game lit. He has an extra ball lit. He's in good shape to hit it. So, but I think, yeah, I think the Tiny's Dice Game, Claire, carried over from as a co-op. Guys, where should I go? Yeah. Team, team, team. I'll give you that left. I just need... So the bottom line there tells you how many modes are in each spot. I want to see you play Darkhold. Okay. Oh, because you beat... Did you beat Westgate or Arabelle? What did you beat? We beat Arabelle and Cobalt Town, I believe. Okay. And then you... We have an extra ball! So every time you beat one of the towns, it lights the bonus round at Darkhold. And when you come to Darkhold you can see goblins sort of pouring out of it. That's how you know it's lit. Oh, question mark dragon letter light Tavern Brawl. That's a really good one. I'm gonna do that. Is that really lit? I guess so. So, in case you missed it a minute ago, this is the Gary Stern mode. No, so now we feel like we've been robbed for the dice game, and now we're destroying the tavern again. And that's Tiny there in the background going, wait, guys, guys, wait! It's a frenzy, it's a multiball, it's an all-shots, it's a fun little multiball. It's more of a classic multiball compared to like the dragon. Oh, I think you're going to light super jackpot there if you shoot the dungeon. I'm trying. There we go. Yeah, super jackpot's lit. Is that true? That is true. Yeah, it is. Oh. These good players use up those tilt warnings. Apparently I'm not aggressive. I need some of your rage. You can buy rage from Fizmo, did you know? No. Rage lets you... It's Big Baboom. It's the boom from Deadpool magnifying glass. It's been... It's Hulk from... It's Hulk from Venom. Tavern Brawl again. Okay. Light treasure chest. That's good. Now we're going to have a nice game of dice again. We play in board games. Over in the other room. Tiny's Dice... The Chinese bar is really big. Like, it has rooms for brawls and rooms for dice games. Oh, I didn't mean to shoot that, but I did. Oh. Nah, that wasn't a very good spin. We're getting close to a billion, though. We are. All right, you need more time, and you need to build a little more, and then just kill the spinner. Make one shot and just... You need more time. Yeah, 16 million is not that great. I'm trying, Dwight. Oh, more question mark action. Fizmo's lit again. Yeah, Fizmo lights every single time you do something else. There's a treasure chest that the question mark gave you last time. Yeah. Increased strength. Yeah. I'm wasting all my gold on the question. I got you. You got a short bow of blood range weapon. All right. Is it level one or two? Level two. So level two, the numbers are a little bit different. It's a little bit different from level one. I think you gotta get to level three before he starts. He's blocking the super jackpot shot and then when you hit him he moves away from it. There you got the super jackpot. Well done, Nick. See, the super jackpot probably gave him some of the hits that he needed. Well, I can get half off question marks now. You can. Are you over the billion yet? Oh yeah. Oh, look at that. So Brian finally got over a billion. It took a co-op game with Nick and Jack. Thanks to you guys. Yeah, half off question mark. It's probably still gonna be like 300. It's 221 and a half off. Dude, we've gotten it so many times. I got you. I didn't drag a letter. Alright. Bonus round. Bonus round? Sure, yeah. Nick, play your best. Alright, alright, I'll try. Like, beating Keith Elwin in a majors is on the line. No, no. That's a lot of pressure. What's extending time? Hitting the target? Good question. He's got double scoring going so hitting the target or going down the lane will extend your double scoring time. You want to balance the time. Your wisdom will increase all timers and your... And there's a character, I think it's the bard that will give you extra double scoring time. I died already. That wasn't very good. Keith Elwin wins. I didn't say... No, it's over now. How much was it? It was like 400-something. Oh. Alright. Yeah, because I think it's only your next thing that you purchase is half off. I might be wrong on that one. You're at 10 gems. Good game, guys. Well done, all three of you. You guys killed it. Congratulations. What a team. Thank God, right? I mean, you guys would have gotten nowhere. You have to clear a letter or end it. Oh, it's my initials, right? It's a lot of things. Oops. You just put E back? Okay. Well, yeah. I forgot how it was like. All of you will sign in. Dead flip. I've seen better. Again, that's Michael Dorn, who did an awesome job as Wrath the Relentless. I would love to meet him and shake his hand. DF. Which is different than DTF. Okay. Right. I'm glad you saved that. That was a good show. It's been a long day. I think that worked out really well. I can't wait to see how people abuse the game. Don't forget to leave some messages in the comments. Leave messages in the comments. We want to answer any questions. Alright, Internet. Thanks for joining. Let us know down below and we'll see you on the next one.
Lissandra
person
John Popaduikperson
Stern Pinballcompany
Wizards of the Coastcompany
Dungeons & Dragonsgame
Challenge Modeproduct
Looping/Belongings Ruleproduct
Question Mark Fizmoproduct
Spy on Puck Modeproduct
Dragon Multiballproduct
Speedrunproduct
Party of Four Systemproduct
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Wizards of the Coast required explanation for and approved 'bad guy' alignment gameplay option in licensed D&D pinball

    high · Brian Eddy: 'Wizards of the Coast wanted us to explain that, and we're like, well, you know, you can maybe be a bad guy... and then they were fine with it'

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    personnel_signal: Brian Eddy's son David credited with writing party system code and extensive new speech content for D&D 1.0

    high · Brian Eddy: 'My son David wrote all that' regarding party-of-four mechanics and 'My son's been working on this game for a while now, adding tons of speech'

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    gameplay_signal: D&D 1.0 positioned as deepest Stern game in recent history with multi-year playable content; designed for years of discovery

    high · Brian Eddy: 'I think this has to be the deepest game we've made in a long time... I think you could play this for years and still see stuff'

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    design_innovation: Co-op mode where all players share party state and position, creating collaborative narrative progression distinct from solo or competitive modes

    high · Brian Eddy explains co-op mechanics: 'everyone in the party, everyone playing is in the party, and you pick up where the last person left off'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Speedrun tracking with visual feedback (green for personal best, red for exceeded) integrated into core game to encourage time-based play alongside score

    high · Brian Eddy explains speedrun pauses when ball in shooter, tracks only live ball time, compares against personal best with color coding

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    product_strategy: 1.0 designation signals feature-complete release after two-year development cycle; invites community playtesting and bug reporting

    high · Brian Eddy: 'One of the things I think I would encourage everybody to do now that we're at 1.0 is reset at least one character and play right from the beginning' and request for bug reports