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GM Interview - Bob Gerard Part 1
23 Plays26 days ago
In this interview episode, Mark and Ben welcome their friend Bob Gerard, a podcaster, Star Wars superfan, storyteller, learning expert, and of course, a fellow GM. We ask Bob about his early experiences with role playing games, his thoughts on storytelling, and what it's like to visit Tokyo for the latest Star Wars Celebration. Our conversation with Bob ranged all over and we had to cut it into two parts, so tune in for part 1 this week and check out Bob's podcast Short for a Stormtrooper to get some great Star Wars discussion and exciting interviews.
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh
00:01:01
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to Tabletop Tune
Meet Bob Gerrard: Storytelling Expert
00:01:04
Speaker
Up. I'm your host Ben Dyer, here with my co-host Mark Lehman. Say hello Mark. Hey, everybody. mar what do you have to say for yourself? What and the kind of intro was that? was That was cruel.
00:01:15
Speaker
and don't know what that was. Unusual. I don't know what you did to Chewbacca, but he is not feeling good, clearly. No. That's Chewbacca having a root canal or something like that. Oh.
00:01:25
Speaker
Super cut of everything he had to say in, don't know what, the first couple of movies. This is kind of in honor of our guest, right? Yeah. Hey, guys, we're doing an interview today with one of my good buds, longtime player friend, and I actually work with him too. So, you know, can you have too much of a good thing? Well, not with Bob Gerrard.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah. Bob is a guy who has worked in, he's done all kinds of great stuff. He does all kinds of stuff with storytelling at work and innovation in corporate learning. He's somebody who's got a podcast that we're going to plug in a little bit here.
00:01:56
Speaker
ah He's somebody who has and just like this weird thing confluence of strange experiences. For example, he has watched a movie with Quentin Tarantino.
00:02:08
Speaker
He has played D and D at like Geneva with, I think some of the early D and D luminaries. I'll i'll have to confirm that in a moment. So many kind of just strange things that are just so fun. um And it was, frankly, he's been a great friend of the podcast.
00:02:22
Speaker
He had originally introduced me to Tad Lechman, who we interviewed a while back. Bob, we are so glad you're here. We're looking forward to this
Star Wars Celebration: Community and Culture
00:02:28
Speaker
conversation. Welcome. I am super glad to be here. And I got to tell you guys, I did love that introduction, although there was a little bit of an error in the Shiriwa grammar at the beginning. i Wow. Yeah, I noticed a little bit of a tense problem in a couple of the lines. But other than that, right on.
00:02:48
Speaker
bet they were hoping we wouldn't notice, but Bob, you did. yeah I did. there There are those of us who could do. so yeah i am super happy to be here with you guys. This is super fun. We're super happy to have you. and And you guys, Bob is a huge Star Wars fan. You just went to Star Wars Celebration in Japan in Tokyo this year?
00:03:05
Speaker
I did. Yeah. What was that like? That was amazing. um Yeah. You know, it was very nerdy and it was very funny because my sister was with me and her husband, you know, made some comment that I overheard on the phone about like, what's the nerd quotient here? I'm like, this is coming from a guy who likes to go and watch trains on the weekend, you know? This like 100% is the quote. Right.
00:03:30
Speaker
yeah Exactly. But we all we all have our different nerddoms, so you know don't point fingers, dude. No, God forbid. Well, i'll tell you I'll tell you two things. is One thing, having it in Japan was great because there was a lot of the Japanese influence on Star Wars that came through. They had this amazing exhibit that Lucasfilm put together that was focused on the Star Wars Visions anime series. Yeah. And, you know, they had a lot of like mock-ups, are like maquettes from that and um and costumes where they took the anime costumes and actually created real costumes. They had actors doing cosplay with them.
00:04:10
Speaker
Really, really cool. So there was a lot of different content about the influence of Star Wars and samurai films, particularly on Star Wars. But then in general, the thing that's great about Star Wars Celebrations is that They are so connected. Like the community is really rich and everybody just loves each other. They love being there together with other other Star Wars fans and you meet people and you make friends and it's great.
Exploring Star Wars Fandom
00:04:34
Speaker
And then you all go back to the internet and hiding behind the screens. You all hate each other again, which is like a moment of Star Wars fandom in general. Wait a minute. ah Star Wars fandom hates each other?
00:04:44
Speaker
you know well You know what we say about Star Wars? it's like It's the thing that we love to hate the thing that we love. Yeah, I just hate it. I'm just joking. I know.
00:04:56
Speaker
Mark has a love-hate relationship with Star Wars. I do. we can get at it
Dungeons & Dragons: A Personal Journey
00:05:00
Speaker
another time. but yeah But Bob, I do love you. so I'm glad you're here. Thank you. Yeah, it's great to be here. we We got all sorts of questions. We want to pry open that brain of yours yeah and find out some secrets of jamming.
00:05:15
Speaker
Well, I would be happy to share, but I'll tell you, I've learned so much from both of you guys too, ah which is really interesting. Ben, you got once you start us off, Ben, you got something good for us. Maybe just to start a little bit of backstory here, Bob, what was the first RPG that you remember playing?
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, the first role-playing game I ever played was Dungeons & Dragons. And it was, I don't know what version you officially call it, but it was the one that came in the box that had the dragon on the front.
00:05:46
Speaker
So it was... The white box? Is that the chainmail one? No, it was after the white box chainmail three booklets, but before
Impact of the Satanic Panic on RPGs
00:05:54
Speaker
the whole red box, blue box book. Oh, okay.
00:05:57
Speaker
Right. So there was a box set. It had a dragon on the front of it. One of the things that was amazing about it was it didn't come with dice. It came with chits, like little squares, like four little chits for a D4 and six little chits for a die six. And you cut them out and you put them in a, in a hat and you would draw out of them to do. That's for some real poor kids. Yeah.
00:06:22
Speaker
And that's TSR. Well, that's TSR being really, really poor is what it was. You couldn't afford to put dice in the kit for, you know, at that point, which was really funny. But yeah, i um I started with it. Well, I just love to pretend is the thing that I realized.
00:06:40
Speaker
that I love every form of pretending, just pretending to be somebody who I am not. And that comes through in being a theater kid and just the things that I love to do. So when I heard and it would have been like the late 70s, early 80s,
00:06:58
Speaker
that there is this thing called Dungeons and Dragons where you could pretend to be in a fantasy world, kind of d and or a kind of ah Lord of the Rings-esque, Tolkien-esque. I was all for it. I remember spending months trying to find it.
00:07:13
Speaker
course, this was before the internet. So you had to call hobby stores and say, do you have Dungeons and Dragons? Usually they were like, I don't know what you're talking about. But fortunately, i grew up in Cary, Illinois, which is far northwest suburbs of Chicago.
00:07:28
Speaker
It is also very close to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Yeah, you were right there. We were right there. So, you know, we got to do things like ah go up to the dungeon hobby shop in Lake Geneva and see Ernie Gygax there and talk with him and things like that.
00:07:46
Speaker
so Now, how but how old were you about this this time? If you don't mind yeah asking, like were you like in high school? you No, it was it it was junior high. I was probably like 11 or 12 as I was really getting into it. And the honest story is that I bought this first set.
00:08:04
Speaker
And I tried to understand the rules and I tried to play. I was just so confused. I could not figure it out. We tried a couple of times, never got anything off the ground. But then finally, my sister, the same one I just went to to Tokyo with, um she and a bunch of her friends started playing Dungeons and Dragons. And she's several years older than me. So they kind of knew what was going on.
00:08:27
Speaker
Had a really good dungeon master. And he was willing to let me play. All of my sisters, like, you know, they would have been 18, 19, 20 year old friends were cool with a punk kid coming and playing with them.
00:08:41
Speaker
And that's really where I learned how to play Dungeons and Dragons. i Going through the keep on the boat on the borderlands. Oh yeah. I played Bosomus, one of the box set characters and, you know, I'll never forget it.
00:08:54
Speaker
So ben Bob, your parents weren't concerned about you, you know, the satanic panic apparently. Like, but see Ben and I had to play other games. Yeah. No, Mark, that's that's actually a really good question because my parents didn't know enough about it to be panicked by the satanic until they did, and then it became an issue.
00:09:13
Speaker
My dad, a very conservative Christian, and he took me to my first Gen Con. This would have been, i think, in 80, maybe, 81, back when Gen Con was still being held at the University of Wisconsin Parkside. You know, like,
00:09:28
Speaker
tiny, tiny, tiny little thing. And he took me up there and I remember he was starting to get the EBGBs because, you know, there were pentagrams and stuff like that, that people were selling. And he made some comment about like, oh it was interesting except for the demonic stuff.
00:09:43
Speaker
um But the, the, the first like regular campaign that I had got broken up by one of the, one of the guys, dad's, caught the satanic panic was like, I don't want you playing it. and that basically destroyed that campaign, which was a bummer.
00:09:58
Speaker
So yeah, live through the whole satanic panic, live through the mazes and monsters. It's going to drive you
Reviving Childhood Worlds for Modern Campaigns
00:10:04
Speaker
crazy. You're going to be Tom Hanks down in the yeah you know in the maze and all of that kind of stuff.
00:10:10
Speaker
also It took me a while to forgive Tom for that. We've got to move on. Yeah, we do. let's move on. So you had one of the things that you did as a part of your early career fantasy pretend, i don't know if it was D and D related at the time or not, but you invented a fantasy world. And here's what fascinates me. Not that you did that then, but that yeah you're revisiting it now as a campaign, as a, as a world you want to build up and make a part of a modern D and D campaign. So, um, yeah, it's cool.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I, I wanted to ask like, what is that like? What did you find that you wanted to keep? What'd you throw away? What did you have to kind of grow up a little bit? Like, give us a little bit of the backstory in this. Yeah, well, you know, there's there's kind of two aspects to that, Ben. So the i think the original one that you're thinking of was a world called Shaman and Griffic, two countries in a different world.
00:11:03
Speaker
And this was a world that I created with a couple of friends of mine from school when we were in fourth grade. So this would have been 77. And, you know, we basically just... We were gifted kids. So occasionally, like, we would get led out of class to go down to the library and try to stay out of trouble.
00:11:22
Speaker
So we spent weeks where we would just go into the back room with a tape recorder and we would tell stories from Shaman and Griffith. And we invented this entire story. That's amazing. And that always kind of clung with me. And so this is such a great story is Ben was leading a campaign where he wanted us each to kind of have our own worlds that we were visiting. What it was, what is that? It's the Citadel, right, Ben? Yeah, the, oh yeah, no, this is the, um Mark, help me out here, Planescape.
00:11:55
Speaker
Oh yeah, the. Sigil. The Sigil. And so so I said to Ben, like, I want to play in this world. I want to build out this world. And it's kind of yeah, um A little bit of a Narnia feel to it because that's what I was really into when I was in fourth grade, a little bit before I started reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Sure, yeah. you know And so a little bit of a softer fantasy with talking animals and things like that.
00:12:19
Speaker
but By the way, I'm just going to insert this real quick. Can we just be thankful that George R. Martin was not putting out books at that point that you were going to read? Oh, my gosh. I know, right? I mean, honestly, mine would have been like The Road Warrior. I was super obsessed with post-apocalyptic Mad Max, even as a little kid.
00:12:35
Speaker
yeah you know, Narnia, it's so perfect for you, Bob. It was great. It was great. But so, you know, what we did is we we played. So Ben DM'd this, you know, he kind of got some of the beats from me and he DM'd this and he did such an amazing job of um basically putting a bow on this story that I started when I was in fourth grade and you know I don't know if you know this, I got really emotional at the end of that, Ben. Oh, that's I was totally choked up. It really, really hit me a big impact. Oh, that's great. but That was great.
00:13:10
Speaker
um But then i I have been working for 20 years on a story. The pitch for this sci-fi story is that a um A kid is obsessed with a fantasy video game.
00:13:24
Speaker
ah you know It's like an adventure game. It has multiple parts. And at the end of one of the games, it's a cliffhanger. And you know so he's totally on the edge of his seat. And then the next game doesn't come out.
00:13:36
Speaker
And so he's trying to figure out like what the heck is going on. He visits the developer of this computer game. It's like a single author. And that's where he learned that the fantasy story, the fantasy story the fantasy world is actually a real world.
00:13:51
Speaker
And this guy who creates the video games has a way to get into that world. and watch what's going on and then turn it into a video game. But in the world, the hero actually got captured and is stuck in there. So he can't go on with the game until the sounds like such a perfect kids on bikes game.
00:14:09
Speaker
Exactly. That's such an 80s Spielberg like. yeah And it also kind of touches on like stuff we see, don't know, years, like maybe about 10 years ago, there was kind of a a resurgence of anime that kind of centered around video games and these kind of like fantasy worlds.
00:14:27
Speaker
This kind of predates, sounds like predates some of that. that's A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. So, um, so that world is the world of Anterra I created, i called it that. And, um, then my same sister, this is the third time I'm mentioning to have to tell her to listen to this podcast. i don't know she does.
00:14:45
Speaker
Um, she used that name to write her first novel. That was basically her master's thesis for her communications masters. And, um, And then she never got it published. And I told her, if you don't work to get that book published, I'm going to take the name back. And she never got it published. So I've taken the name back.
00:15:03
Speaker
And now I'm taking that world of Anterra. And that's the world that we're playing the current campaign on that I'm running with ah Ben and my two boys and another friend of ours from work.
Storytelling and the Hero's Journey Framework
00:15:12
Speaker
This is all copyrighted stuff, folks. Don't even don't even try it.
00:15:16
Speaker
That's great. But I am in that game. i I am exploring. I don't want to say too much because Ben's part of it, but I am exploring the adventures that I played as a kid.
00:15:27
Speaker
There's yeah kind of a secret, very narcissistic flow to this whole world that I'm creating. i'm I'm wondering now if I should kind of lean into a little bit of that kind of, ah you know, 80s kid behind the avatar kind of thing, you know? Like, what if it was some kid in his basement in the 80s, like, playing the character that I'm playing in that game?
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. you should. You should. It's not it's not clear. It's not really clear exactly what's going on. It's it's a little bit different than a normal... D&D game because d it's D&D. It's not D&D.
00:15:58
Speaker
um So we can see that you're like really into storytelling. I mean, obviously you've created this kind of realm. Storytelling is a big part of your life. Absolutely.
00:16:09
Speaker
You obviously do it and and ah as a professional. I incorporate it wherever I can. Yeah, basically. So like like what tips would you give to our GMs out there?
00:16:20
Speaker
Like what do you find to be very useful for us out there? Yeah, it might sound a little cliche, Mark, but when I discovered... Joseph Campbell in The Hero's Journey. Yeah.
00:16:34
Speaker
And then I found another author author, this guy named Don Miller, who kind of got obsessed with that and obsessed with storytelling. And I worked with him ah but at my company to create a course where basically, how can you as an Accenture, that's the company that Ben and I work for, how can you as an Accenture person use the concepts of telling a good story to do a good job of living a satisfying life and making a satisfying career.
00:17:00
Speaker
And it was all really based on the hero's journey. And the way I summarized it for that class, which is what I have stuck with, is that a good story is about a hero who wants or needs something and has to overcome conflict to get it.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. At Accenture, I usually say challenges because when I say conflict, that usually people interpret that as meaning you have to get into an argument with somebody. But no, it's really just anything that's standing in the way of you and what you need. And The story is about making sure that you understand who that character is, what their goals are and what they need,
Returning to D&D: New Rules and Old Friends
00:17:37
Speaker
and then throwing the obstacles at them and making those interesting, satisfying things, making it a continual build.
00:17:44
Speaker
You know, the old cliches about ah story has a beginning, a middle and an end. that we all learned in in grammar school, ah those totally apply. you know in In the beginning of any story, you've got to know who is that hero, what is it that they want, what is it that they need.
00:18:02
Speaker
And you have to understand, i call it the hook. You've got to see the point where the hero decides, i am going to go after that I am going to stop resting on my laurels and I'm going to go after what I need, no matter what the cost is.
00:18:18
Speaker
And then The second act, the middle of the story, it's all of those challenges. And then finally, hopefully a satisfying resolution where the hero gets what they want, or maybe they don't get what they want, and it's a cautionary tale.
00:18:30
Speaker
So that's the way that I think about stories in general. That's the framework that I i used it, um that I use that with. And so that helps me with everything I do. Story related. Yeah. and with And with like role-playing games in particular,
00:18:45
Speaker
You're not just focusing on a hero's journey. You're you're focusing on hero's journey, multiple. So the the balance is kind of like having these individual storylines, but yet having a group storyline.
00:18:58
Speaker
What a challenge and what a fun challenge to have. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the thing that's interesting, because I did want to come back to, though, about the idea about how much I learned ah have learned from you guys is I did a whole bunch of D&D in junior high. And we're talking, you know, pre-version one, not even Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
00:19:20
Speaker
You know, it was a kinder, simpler day of Dungeons and Dragons. It was a lot of like, you know... A combat is roll a 20-sided die. Do you hit? What's your damage? That's it. Like nothing else, right?
00:19:33
Speaker
All theater of the mind. the absolutely no. There's no bonus actions. There's no reactions. There's no bonus. Yeah. Like it's all very simple. And then I was away from it for a while. I always kind of kept in touch with TTRPGs and, you know, I was, um, I got the rules for paranoia. I of course got the rules for the star Wars role-playing game.
00:19:57
Speaker
Uh, but I in general couldn't find people to play with for the most part. Oh, no. No. Right. And so it wasn't until I started playing with you guys again that I've really started playing modern Dungeons and Dragons.
00:20:11
Speaker
And um so I've just learned a lot about it from from you guys. But, you know, you can tell on a Monday night when I play, I still don't have all of the rules completely figured out.
00:20:22
Speaker
Well, Bob, you do know how to cast a killer moonbeam. So, I mean, that is true. I see it through a lot of trouble. that was
Star Wars Fandom and Future Topics
00:20:28
Speaker
And you, had we had been, let's, let's transition over to talk about, I want to talk about star Wars.
00:20:33
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. because We're here with one of the biggest star Wars fans. I know. Ben, take us with us. Go with us, Ben. Oh, yeah. Look, hey, so here's the thing about Star Wars. Star Wars is fully about telling amazing adventure stories.
00:20:48
Speaker
And Bob, on your podcast, let's take a moment and plug that.
Bob's Podcast: 'Short for a Stormtrooper'
00:20:51
Speaker
Everybody out there, go check out Short for a Stormtrooper, which you might think is a weird name for podcast, but A, it gets you the Star Wars reference, and B, it tells you the most important thing about this podcast is that in 15 minutes or so, it's over.
00:21:03
Speaker
Now, you always That leaves you two things. You're always going to be wanting more with Bob's podcast. no yeah you know next week yeah That's right. And the other thing is, it's really, really helpful because a lot of podcasts, and you know we're a little guilty here, we can kind of run long sometimes, but the thing is, Bob's podcast is one that you'll clean your kitchen listening to it, or you will commute somewhere, or you'll be you know picking up your kids from school, whatever it might be. It fits very neatly into your Daily schedule.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's a little short for a podcast. It is. But it works. On purpose. That's the goal. And yeah, it's been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun doing it. You've had some great guests too.
00:21:46
Speaker
I have. And I've got like new guests coming up. So. Oh, I'm sure you picked up a few from Japan, huh? I did. i literally did. So I went to a panel in Japan about Ahsoka and the underworld and the mythology of underworld myths and how that came through in the Ahsoka TV series.
00:22:07
Speaker
It was led by a guy named John Booker, who is the director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and Marie Claire Gould, who runs a podcast called What the Force that focuses on Star Wars and mythology.
00:22:19
Speaker
A great name. It was great. It was a super great panel. So I went up afterwards to John. I was like, hey, do you want to come be on my podcast? And he was like, yes. And so I interviewed him last week. And that's what I'm currently running on my show is ah I just aired the first of ah it's going to be a three part interview with John. Fantastic.
00:22:38
Speaker
Which is great. And then um tomorrow I am recording what will be. the episodes that come after that, where um I'll go ahead and and spoil it on your guys' podcast. so breaking news, but this is with E.K. Johnston, who is a genre writer. She's written four Star Wars novels. She wrote the Ahsoka novel and she wrote three novels about Padme.
00:23:03
Speaker
um And she's written a bunch of other books, you know, in a bunch of other IP settings. And I'm interviewing her tomorrow. And so that's Really exciting.
00:23:15
Speaker
Starting to get like real people who create real Star Wars. Real stuff. You know, stuff that is canon. Let's not forget the not real people too, because the fans I find sometimes just, no, I'm serious. Fans are not real people.
00:23:30
Speaker
I find that the ah some of the fans, like some of the people we interview ah who are just, you know, GMs out there, we find them to be just as interesting as those who maybe have well well-known names.
00:23:44
Speaker
Absolutely. And there's no knock on fan fiction. Actually, I think E.K. Johnston, that's how she got her start, was doing fan fiction. and you know And then that moved on. I'll talk to her about it tomorrow and I'll know for sure.
00:23:56
Speaker
Hey, everybody, this is your host, Ben Dyer, and I'm here in the edit. I wanted to let you know we had a great talk with Bob Gerrard and boy, did it go quite a bit longer than our usual episodes. So we're going to make this a two parter.
00:24:10
Speaker
Tune back in in two weeks when we will give you part two of our interview with Bob
Part Two Announcement
00:24:15
Speaker
Gerrard. We'll talk about fan fiction. We'll keep talking about Star Wars. We've got so much more to share. And he was such a great guest. We're looking forward to having him on again in the future.
00:24:22
Speaker
So join us again in two weeks. And until then, keep those dice rolling.
00:26:00
Speaker
Tune up, level up your mind Tune up, your risk has now begun Tune up, I'll show you how it's done
00:26:34
Speaker
Do not love, never love your mind Do not love, but never call me out Do not love, pick up, show you how to love