Presenting Episode 3 of the Tea Kettle, hosted by Omar Najam & Sandeep Parikh!
When the kettle whistles and the tea is ready, it's time for the DesiQuest after-show—and what a show it is! Omar Najam and I, Sandeep Parikh, are all cozied up inside the teapot, steaming with excitement. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we'll release another episode of the Tea Kettle with me and Omar and a very special guest, or guest from either behind or in front of the camera.
In this episode, special guest Luis Carazo talks about creating his character Namir, and his strategy during game play: from not breaking character when he doesn't know how to respond to a question from a fellow player, to how to determine when - as a guest player - to sit back and when to take the reigns of the game. Lead Producer Ash Minnick also joins us to discuss the great lengths production went to to keep guest stars and other surprise elements secret from the cast, and the behind-the-scenes domino effect that takes place following curveballs that arise during session 0 and the filming of an actual play.
Presenting Episode 3 of the Tea Kettle, hosted by Omar Najam & Sandeep Parikh!
When the kettle whistles and the tea is ready, it's time for the DesiQuest after-show—and what a show it is! Omar Najam and I, Sandeep Parikh, are all cozied up inside the teapot, steaming with excitement. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we'll release another episode of the Tea Kettle with me and Omar and a very special guest, or guest from either behind or in front of the camera.
In this episode, special guest Luis Carazo talks about creating his character Namir, and his strategy during game play: from not breaking character when he doesn't know how to respond to a question from a fellow player, to how to determine when - as a guest player - to sit back and when to take the reigns of the game. Lead Producer Ash Minnick also joins us to discuss the great lengths production went to to keep guest stars and other surprise elements secret from the cast, and the behind-the-scenes domino effect that takes place following curveballs that arise during session 0 and the filming of an actual play.
Oh, oh, hello everybody, and welcome to the Tea Kettle episode three. It's the teen episode, teen. Ah yes, and this is the DesiQuest after show podcast exclusive to our Patreon backers. We love them, so we love. We love these Patreon backers, we love all of our backers. This entire endeavor cannot be possible without you, dear listener, so thank you, thank you so much. I'm your host, Sandeep, executive producer and cast member, who plays Ash, and my co-pilot is none other than the supersonic Omar Najam, who plays Murkha.
Omar Najam:
Oh my gosh, thank you for that supersonic shout out.
Sandeep Parikh:
Oh, thank you. The shout out is equivalent to you. It's like they're the one and the same.
Omar Najam:
They're both as supersonic as each other. Wow, I wish I was a Christmas in my parents place so I could turn to them and tell them what you just said about me. That was very nice.
Sandeep Parikh:
Thank you, yeah you like, I broke the sound barrier. Mama, dad, I'm important, I'm a fast little boy. A fast little boy indeed. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we release this, another episode of the tea kettle with me and Omar and some special guests from the show, and this week we've got super special guest, supersonic special guest, Luis Carazo. Hello everybody. Is our actor and actual player? Is that what we call ourselves? Are you an actual player?
Sandeep Parikh:
I will just let people call me, whatever they decide, a live player a D&D maestro yeah, I don't know what we call him and he plays Namir. You play Namir. So welcome to the show, luis, so happy to have you. Thank you for jumping in. Thank you for jumping into our show like the actual DesiQuest show. And now jumping into the podcast, so happy to have you. And then, of course, we've got Ash Minnick, captain, captain of all logistics and madness, our lead producer on the series Ash.
Ash Minnick:
Welcome to the Tea Kettle, that's me.
Sandeep Parikh:
Captain logistics. Captain logistics Indeed.
Ash Minnick:
Did you say this before? This is also teen. Is that how it's said?
Sandeep Parikh:
Teen.
Ash Minnick:
So if you're speaking Hindi, it's the teen or thrun if you're speaking..
Sandeep Parikh:
Three, yeah. The teen kettle, yes, yeah. Like you know, if this is a movie poster, you know how they always try to like. If it's a sequel or whatever, they try to incorporate the number like somewhere, weirdly to their thing.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, like this yeah that's, that's what this is. Yeah, well done. Well, before we dive in team team, team kettle, all right, before we dive into our dissection of episode three, team, we ask that you please take a moment. You know, write in comments. We love the comments, we love to hear from you guys. So go ahead and do that. And if you haven't already, head over to the DesiQuest. com to shop, to hop on our mailing list and to shop shop to your drop. You get a special discount on some sweet, sweet merch if you jump into our mailing list. So do that.
Sandeep Parikh:
And we've had a handful of sponsors, as Ash well knows. That really took a big chance on us to make this show possible, and so and each one of these want to shout out one of them. So for today, the honor is going to go to Hero Forge. Hero Forge I think it makes sense, right? We're doing this because this episode is like super minis heavy. So this is the episode where you really get an up close look at at our minis. Hero Forge sponsored all the main cast minis, which allowed us to put even more funds onto the screen. So thank you so much to Hero Forge.
Sandeep Parikh:
I personally had such a blast building my character, ash, on their site. Like I don't do this. This is one of my first times ever building a character like this, and so it was so easy, so fun Really customizable tabletop miniatures with dozens of like fantasy species and thousands of parts to choose from. Like I get to create my the Burana like monkey, half monkey kind of creature, using all their stuff, and it was. It was just so easy and fun. I mean, guys, I was able to hold a giant pretzel.
Luis Carazo:
Like.
Sandeep Parikh:
I did not think I was able to find a pretzel and be able to hold it, so huge shout out to them. Thank you so much, omar, your turn.
Omar Najam:
And hey, if, if you like our banter, you know what, check out the ABCD podcast that Sandeep and I host on EffinFunny, which had about all things being American born, chatty creatives and you know I would also say chaat in general.
Sandeep Parikh:
I mean chaat. Yeah, it's a chaat chat.
Omar Najam:
It's a little spicy, it's a little fun. It's a little bit of a snack. It's also nutritious. It's very crunchy.
Luis Carazo:
I'm enjoying this so much. This is really great.
Sandeep Parikh:
We're gonna get to you, luis, okay we're gonna get to you. We have to pay some bills.
Luis Carazo:
I love this so much, it's making me hungry.
Omar Najam:
We also talk about stuff that's in the news, that we're confused, about some cultural identity stuff that we're working on, and we Every episode play a ridiculous game as well as choose a Desi of the week so you can find over 30 Episodes of the show over on the Effin Funny YouTube or wherever Podcasts are found as well.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yes, now we've paused that show, released that show for a bit, so we can do this show, but we're gonna be back in action soon without further ado. The tea kettle is a whistling, so let's spill some chai.
Ash Minnick:
About episode number Three. Does music play now is that like no actually what plays it?
Sandeep Parikh:
That's it what plays. Is you guys making music? Yeah, that's what plays, perfect. So this is a huge episode. You guys, this is a bit pivotal episode Emotionally. It's the first time we get into To combat. I mean there's just like a lot. This. Finally, shit hits the fan for this episode. But I want to ask you, Luis, what is it like guesting on a show like this, to come in sort of media res and just like Fitting in. You weren't there at session zero, you weren't there for all. You're just like. You just like jumped in and you did so beautifully. How does that like? What's it like from your perspective?
Luis Carazo:
Wow, that's a really great question.
Luis Carazo:
I was a little I wouldn't say I was nervous.
Luis Carazo:
I was definitely excited, but there was an awareness that I had where I was coming into a world that I didn't Personally have a connection to in terms of the lore, and so I just wanted to make sure that I was absorbing it as a character.
Luis Carazo:
The character that I was playing was a bit removed from the world that we were in as well, so I get to discover a lot of the lore through him, because he was inhabiting a certain area but also was searching for some of his own roots and, with yep, what Jasmine had explained to me you just sort of a bit of an explanation of the world and and being able to understand, based on that, how the character that I was creating can fit in it and and the mysteries that he Wanted to solve for himself and how that might pertain to the other characters.
Luis Carazo:
It made it a lot easier for me to just sort of jump in and respond to what you all were doing and Kind of fly by to the seat of my pants along with you all to see how it all kind of comes together with a greater narrative. And yeah, I mean, I guess I've also kind of been doing this for a little while and and at some point I knew well we're gonna, we're gonna get into combat and that's gonna take up a lot of stuff, so I definitely know how to do that. So that helps, that helps a little bit.
Sandeep Parikh:
But yeah, you know, just following you guys, yeah, but but it's interesting because, like our characters were had Kind of almost similar journeys, in the sense that we're, like, you know, trying to try coming back to this land to Discover something about our roots or something about ourselves you know, being not natives of of Vehaar, so like but in a way your position is like the like more of the expert. You've been there longer, so like was it nerve-wracking to be like, because, like that, I was like, oh, I could ask this guy questions, and now you've got to like be able to, you know, yeah, well, if I ever, if it ever came down to it, I knew that I can turn a jams to Jasmine and and basically say so, yeah, what do I know about this?
Luis Carazo:
But part of what I think was making sense to me was, I Think, the questions that you could have and would have asked, I would have responded with yeah, I remember having those questions and never getting the answer to that.
Sandeep Parikh:
My answer to you right, that's what you said, yeah.
Luis Carazo:
My answer to you is the questions that you've come here thinking you would find answers to are very often never going to be answered.
Sandeep Parikh:
Right, mm-hmm, yeah, and just like accepting that discomfort. Yeah, now you had this like very Yoda kind of wise, sage vibe for my character, which is really great.
Luis Carazo:
That's awesome, because those characters are fun. Lots of pressure because you got to at least believe that you know where you're doing that Got me wise.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yes, he's super wise on that side, like okay, I got to drop a new like like adage.
Ash Minnick:
I have kind of a related question for you, Luis, kind of on that note, because so similarly, Luis and I have both been NPCs in the world of darkness and that show is insane because you never break character and you know you go into it and I have on multiple occasions gone into it where Jason Carl handed me like three pages of information and was just like at some point talk to them about the geography of the valley and I'm like how are you that?
Sandeep Parikh:
So you can't like in those shows you can't go like. Hey GM, can you help me with this thing? I don't know. Right, you can't do that Really.
Ash Minnick:
You can. It's just it's like nobody breaks character at any point and we" in costume and it's so. It's like this feeling like you have found a bond and I found it helpful to very similar, similar to what Luis just said like find character aspects that make you very vague. So when people were like vampires always lie. Some people ask me questions that I as a person didn't know the answer to. I would just either lie and make it obvious I was lying or I'd be like I'm not telling you that, I'm not giving that info away, you know, yeah.
Sandeep Parikh:
Hey, so sorry to interrupt, but the rest of this episode is for our Patreon subscribers only. So if you'd like to hear the rest of this juicy conversation, let me tell you it gets juicy. There's another 15 minutes 5050 of this conversation over at patreoncom. Thank you so much for supporting the show.
