One more thing about original-recipe, “always low-key berserking” Byron. The script includes a lot of notes for him that assumed a bigger role for his out-of-game counterpart than he would have, most notably that Byron would grow more snappish due to his “real-world self” experiencing marijuana withdrawal. “Eventually learns to cope with it by switching from berserking strategies to a more soldier-like approach (in essence, he cleans up and joins the army).”

As the guy with the least going on outside of freelance adventuring, Byron was already defining himself as a good vehicle for our ideas about adventuring as a metaphor for the struggles of the middle class. But our lingering ideas about his being a little crazy meant that he sabotaged himself a bit as a freelancer, which isn’t quite the same as doing everything right and still having the system screw you. On the one hand, good on him for figuring out how to derive multiple income streams from a single job. On the other hand, Byron, you really should negotiate your rates up front, and you really, REALLY should do some negotiation or maybe even just count the money before you shout your catchphrase and call it a day.

Byron the Berserker’s catchphrase is derived from Bob the Builder, but neither Phil nor I was interested enough in that series to follow up on that connection.