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GM Interview - Brandon Holland
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This week we interview our friend Brandon Holland, a fellow old school GM who shares with us his insights on the importance of box text, early RPG influences, and the emergent magic of shared storytelling with great players. Join us for a discussion at the GM's table where we're all still learning how to do this unique role well.
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Transcript
Love and Obsession for Gaming
00:00:00
Speaker
You love this game. I mean, love it with your whole heart. Because if you don't, let's not even bother.
00:00:11
Speaker
I love this game. I live this game. And there's a thousand other guys waiting in the wings who are obsessed with this game.
00:00:23
Speaker
Obsession is going to be talent every time. You got all the talent in the world, but are you obsessed? Is it all you ever think about? Let's face it, it's you against you out there.
00:00:35
Speaker
When you walk on that court, you have to think I am the best guy out there. I don't care if LeBron's playing. So let me ask you again. Do you love this game?
00:00:49
Speaker
Tune up, level up your fun.
00:00:55
Speaker
Tune up, your quest has now begun.
Introducing Brandon and His Early D&D Experiences
00:01:20
Speaker
hey everybody, welcome to the Tabletop Tune Up. My name is Mark and I'm here with my friend Ben. There we go. We got a special guest today. We do. We do. This is an old friend of mine named Brandon.
00:01:31
Speaker
We go back a long ways. And before we get into you, Brandon, real quick, do you love the game, Brandon? ah I'm a lifer. I got a life sentence, man.
00:01:45
Speaker
That's right. That's right. ah So tell us a little bit ah little bit about yourself, Brandon. Well, you know, game wise, I can say I've basically been doing this since early 80s.
00:01:58
Speaker
I was, you know, as a little kid when D&D came out and I got hooked. But was also told as a kid that you grow out of things like this. And I can tell you emphatically, that's just not true.
00:02:08
Speaker
ah Passion of mine, and I've enjoyed it, enjoyed it my whole life. Yeah, your parents are, I'm sure, disappointed that you didn't grow out of this. Yeah.
00:02:19
Speaker
I just think they kept hoping, you know, at some point, maybe. That's awesome. Well, we we Brandon, Ben and I have also, we're we're kind of all in that same group, I think. We've we've all kind of started at a very young, impressionable age, um going back to the to the eighty s early 80s.
00:02:38
Speaker
and um And here we are today, the old grownards of gaming. That's right. That's right. And the game has changed a lot. It has. It has, but has it?
00:02:48
Speaker
Like, not Not as much as I would have thought. but Is it the game or is it us? yeah but Yeah, that's true. I don't want to talk about the latter. Well, so let's let's actually hit the Wayback Machine for a minute. There's an old reference. And then let's talk about kind of how you got into this whole thing. So yeah can you talk, Brandon, a little bit about what was the first game you played, first game you ran?
00:03:12
Speaker
How does that look in the rearview mirror? what What is it that got you into this hobby? Yeah. So it was early eighties and I was in third grade when one of my buddies introduced me to D and d um very, ah very taboo back then.
00:03:27
Speaker
And so one of those where I wasn't allowed to play it at home, um but man, I could play it over at my friend's house. And so ah definitely spent some time playing D and D ah on the side. And then because I couldn't play it at home, I i decided I'd just make my own version. And ah you know, start drawing stuff and coming up with basically the exact same idea in a you a third grader's mind of what D&D role playing is. And, you know I would do that in order to still have fun without playing the actual Dungeons and Dragons game.
00:04:00
Speaker
I love that you improvised your way into it. It's so funny. I actually saw some of the pictures that I drew of some of these monsters either copied right out of the books or out of my imagination. And there's some truly funny ones that I envision. That's fantastic.
00:04:16
Speaker
I want to see some of those sometimes, but I had kind of a similar thing growing
Transition to Other RPGs and Creativity in Gaming
00:04:19
Speaker
up. Like my parents didn't want to buy me any toy guns. And so, you know, the first thing we did is we'd go outside, find a stick, looks like a gun, and we're shooting each other anyway. Oh, yeah.
00:04:27
Speaker
I was going to say, like, I built mine with Legos. Like, it was like, yeah my same thing, my parents would not let us have toy guns and the house. Yeah. When you can't have something, it was like, oh, shoot, you know, but but what's funny is a couple of years later, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out with a role playing game and that was OK.
00:04:44
Speaker
So needless to say, I switched gears to Palladium big time, got into their fantasy role playing game and did kind of cruise through all the whether it was riffs or TMNT or whatever, all of that through ah the majority of high school.
00:04:59
Speaker
and And listeners, this is how I met Brandon, actually. i Brandon had moved to the Northwest. His parents had moved up to the Seattle region. And like his parents and my parents met at church and they were like, hey, our kids are going to be friends.
00:05:16
Speaker
You know, like that whole thing. Like, you're just like, oh, grown mom, dad, what are you doing? Like, right. But Brandon had these, these books. Like I'd never seen role playing game. I didn't know what one was.
00:05:28
Speaker
And he had these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle books. was like, this is amazing. Like you get to roll dice and like, this is so cool. And we almost immediately started creating our own game based on those rules.
00:05:42
Speaker
and And I think one thing I'll say is it was so much easier back then to do that because there was, even in the material that was published, so much of it was left to your imagination. you know So you you really could do your own world building a lot back then.
00:05:57
Speaker
is easy. We also had a lot of time that we don't have now. right I remember distinctly us making, i think we had saw the movie Blood of Heroes with Rutger Hauer.
00:06:13
Speaker
And for whatever reason, we were like, we're going to make a game off that. And we we built up the whole rules for this thing. And it was all Palladium, of course. And we never played it. It's like everything else we ever built.
00:06:25
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You get, you know, part of it is the fun of just building. You know, it's funny as you were talking about the bit about how we don't have time anymore, but of course when you get to this part of your life, you get a little bit more money.
00:06:38
Speaker
And so I think you still see the same dynamic, but it's not, I've, you know, I made so many characters. It's, I have books. I have books and games that I will never get to play because I can't get enough time with the right people yeah to build the campaigns there. So so one thing, um Ben, is ah Brandon was a ah gifted writer from ah soon really early on.
00:07:00
Speaker
When I met him, he was writing awesome stories. And one thing i always remember with your games, even the early ones, is you had great box text.
00:07:12
Speaker
And then for people who don't know, what is, what is box text? Box text is that text that we read to the players, right? Early on when you were playing these games and everything was, was so imagination ah born, you, you had to paint a picture.
00:07:30
Speaker
And I would say gamers more, more or less now have the ability to, to create the maps on, you know, on the computer or the, or you have the images and you have,
00:07:40
Speaker
You have so much more that visually is going to take over um an aspect where when I was definitely early on, it was a piece of paper and a pencil with a hastily drawn map um to just kind of show where you might be or you're, you know, the, the,
00:07:59
Speaker
building might be. Everything else needed to be some kind of of text, you know, something to grab the attention and and the imagination of the people at the table so that they could share their vision.
00:08:11
Speaker
and And so I think that maybe i don't want to say it's a lost art because I think there's incredibly creative people today, just like there were, you know, in the eighty s When this really kind of kicked off, but I would say back then you didn't have a choice.
00:08:23
Speaker
You had to have some kind of, you know, some kind of fill in to to get to set the set the mood, set the table, set the scene. Hey, could you give us an example of box text? I asked you to write something up just for our listeners to get a flavor of what we're talking
Setting the Scene in RPGs with 'Box Text'
00:08:41
Speaker
about. Maybe maybe having actual box text that we could i have an example. One thing just to know about text is is it doesn't need to be long.
00:08:51
Speaker
I think if anything, you can you can start to ramble and actually lose the attention of your players if you if you're trying to write this incredibly large story every time you're you're painting a picture.
00:09:04
Speaker
So my advice would actually be to to keep it to like a paragraph in most situations. um I didn't write something new. I just borrowed something from a campaign um from about a year ago. It's just an intro portion to ah a something that was about to happen.
00:09:21
Speaker
But I'll just read it. I mean, it's very short, but it it hopefully sets the scene. Cold winds assault your party in waves and flurries of snow intermittently steal your vision as you forge your way up the snowblasted path.
00:09:33
Speaker
Single file is your only option at this point as walls of white powder press in from the left and right. With relief a short time later you round a bend and through the snow flurry see the vaulted rooftop of what could only be the citadel perhaps a quarter mile away.
00:09:46
Speaker
An expanse widens out before you and beckons your feet to hurry forward to the awaiting structure and reprieve from the cold you've endured, but you find yourself hesitating instead. Perhaps it's the numbing of your senses during the long ascent, or perhaps it's something else.
00:10:01
Speaker
Well done. i was going say, I love that because what's cool about that is it's doing a couple of things really, really well. One is it's giving you a sense of place and setting. So you kind of know where you are and what's happening around you. But then it also gives you this wonderful...
00:10:16
Speaker
feel for how it is that you're probably feeling. You know, you can feel the cold, you can feel the, the refuge of that citadel ahead. But, but then again, there's something about it that maybe is putting you off.
00:10:29
Speaker
That's great. So tell me a little bit about, what it is that you enjoy about running games.
The Role and Challenges of a Game Master (GM)
00:10:35
Speaker
um Some people i think are frustrated writers who end up becoming GMs and you can kind of tell that they want to like write a book instead.
00:10:44
Speaker
What is it about the social experience of being a GM that you think is unique or interesting? I would say, and I do love to write, so I'm not an author, but I love to write.
00:10:56
Speaker
And what I, what I think is so incredibly different about, uh, being a GM is ah you're, you're not the author or the writer, just telling the story and controlling everything that's going to be.
00:11:10
Speaker
that's going to happen. um So to me, being part of something that is a social experience where you're sharing that story with other people, you know, friends and family and, and you you all are kind of creating it together, you might be using the guardrails to kind of keep it in a certain direction.
00:11:31
Speaker
But there's no way that you could predict what's going to happen from, from moment to moment because you, you can't be in the minds of your players and you can't be in control of the dice.
00:11:42
Speaker
You're only controlling the setting. And so there's something about that, that has always ah been very appealing to me as a writer, because I enjoy kind of creating the setting and then seeing where it goes.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. There's a little bit of alchemy to it all. And everybody's kind of, you know kind of pouring their potion, I guess, in there, yeah trying to create something something magical. And yeah, I think you're right. I think that's what attracts all of us to this game in some way, shape, or form, I would imagine.
00:12:13
Speaker
Kind a creative potluck. Yeah. it's I think when you're And this is kind of an interesting thought because when you're playing as opposed to GMing, you still get to have that very vested kind of, you know, feel like you're part of the story. And so this isn't just a GM, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to,
00:12:38
Speaker
do this no matter what. They say they're going to turn left, I'm going to make them turn right anyway. um I think it's a collaboration that when it's done right, you you actually can have a lot of enjoyment as the player um or as the GM in totally different ways, but you're all kind of creating that story together and having fun with that story together and where it takes you.
00:12:56
Speaker
you kind of segued into something that I wanted to ask you because you're what we call a forever GM. um youre You've been running games and anytime you're in a group, you're probably the person running the game.
00:13:10
Speaker
ah You get rare opportunities to be a player. When you, when you do have that opportunity, what is your hope for that game? What is your hope for that experience? Oh, man.
00:13:21
Speaker
Well, OK, so there's a couple of things that come to mind. First off, you don't want to be that player. You know, every every GM has that player that just either derails the game or is you know, is the thorn in the side of of the group in the table.
00:13:36
Speaker
So I think you have a higher level of just being aware of what a GM is thinking and what they you know, what they're what they're hoping to accomplish and trying to be part of that and not be a thorn in the side.
00:13:50
Speaker
um But I would say more you know off of that subject, I would say as a GM, you get all these ideas of these cool characters along the way. You think, oh, man, this one will be so fun to play. Oh, this one would be great to to have in this type of game.
00:14:03
Speaker
you know And then you get the opportunity to play. And it's like you got all these choices, you know because most of them might be ah become an NPC of yours you know in ah in a game that you're running. But there's a few that you just kind of keep in your, you know, in your back pocket and think, oh, man, if I ever if I ever played this game, I'm going I'm going definitely want to be this type of character.
00:14:23
Speaker
um So that it it it becomes a like, you know, you have a lot of choices and you don't have a lot of opportunities. So you got this bag full of potentials. You know, what's funny is they say doctors make the worst patients.
00:14:36
Speaker
And i think GMs are absolutely capable of being the worst players. That could be definite be true. And have you working in a hospital, that affirmism is 100% correct, Ben.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Well, I remember I was playing one game one time where somebody who'd been a GM, this might've been you or might've been somebody else. I can't really remember who it was now, but like, We get to this village and they start running around town asking the names of all the NPCs. I'm like, stop it.
00:15:04
Speaker
Because I i can't like come up with like tons of names off of a cuff. you know They're like, well, who's the guy in the inn? How about the stable keeper? What's the guy of the blacksmith's name? And I'm like, shut up. I don't have to come up with these names.
00:15:15
Speaker
that That might have been me. That sounds like you. Knowing that he didn't write this stuff down. and Yeah. And I'm just trying to put him on the spot. Yeah. That sounds like something would do. I don't know if it was. That's mad.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, so in the spirit of always improving as a GM and ah preparing smartly and all those kinds of things, what was that's kind of your something you've learned lately that has been kind
Managing Campaign Changes and Player Feedback
00:15:41
Speaker
of a revelation? or Or, you know, I'm thinking about how we grow and progress as a GM, even when you've been doing it all these many years, like what's something that you've learned recently that you thought was really interesting or that may have changed how you might run your games?
00:15:56
Speaker
okay i I definitely can answer that. And I think that's a great question. i I think what has changed over the years as is there was too many times where um I allowed that next great campaign to end another campaign early, um shelf it a little early.
00:16:17
Speaker
And looking back, um I would say, man, you listen to your players more. If they're not ready to to give up that campaign, then maybe maybe you have to take a break from it. Maybe you shelf it for a little bit to to come up with like that next you know set of of adventures or tears or whatnot.
00:16:36
Speaker
But I think... it's easy to say i've got this good idea for a campaign i'm gonna i'm gonna you know what guys what do you think about you know let's switch gears and do this and everybody's like oh yeah that's great then that's a good time to do it but if if some of you know now we're still kind of enjoying this and we want to kind of see this right out a little longer um that'd be the biggest thing that i think i i've learned over the years is stop changing the campaigns when it's good for you as the gm but listen to the players because It's easy for as a GM, you say, man, I've invested a lot of time in this campaign. I've put a lot of effort into um building this thing up and creating this. I think we forget that the players have invested a lot of time as well, and they have a lot of vested interest in that player or in that character rather. And and what they've what they've seen with that character and what they've kind of maybe grown with that character in in a certain role or or over these levels.
00:17:29
Speaker
and And it may be where they're just getting excited about what the the character's about to do. and And then all of a sudden get kind of short change would feel like, man, i you know I wanted to see this through a little bit longer and I didn't get a chance to do it. And I think that would be the big thing is listening to the players and making sure that everybody's on the same page.
00:17:49
Speaker
If they're not ready to take a break from it or to end at you are, then I would suggest maybe just putting it on the shelf for a little bit and then circling back to it. Yeah, that's that's some really ah some really strong advice. And actually, it's I think it's something that in this last game I've i've ran, i've I've kind of run into that myself, like just wanting to, you know,
00:18:14
Speaker
put this thing to bed. You know what I mean? Like, I want to get to the finale, you know I want to kind of get there, but you know, we're just, we're just not quite there. And I'm, you know, that's that motivation thing. And sometimes your, your imagination starts shifting to other, you know, you're like that meme of the guy with his arm around the girl, looking at the other girl and you're like, you know, stay focused, man.
00:18:38
Speaker
right So yeah, it's that's great advice. Consider your players, you guys.
00:18:50
Speaker
Was that abrupt or what? Yeah. I mean, that's how the tune-up segment works, you guys. Gosh, I've drilled right in my brain, man. Thanks. Well, here, when we have one of our guests coming in to give us their perspectives on games, one of the things that we like to do is let our guests tune us up a bit.
00:19:10
Speaker
So, Mark, what is the tune-up we'd like to get from Brandon for our benefit as GMs and podcast hosts? All right, Brandon, we got ah question for you and you let us, you let us know what's what, what is your, what's your pet peeve at the table?
Addressing Attendance and Distractions at the Table
00:19:27
Speaker
What's the thing that just gets your goat?
00:19:30
Speaker
Oh man. Um, it, no names. It's, it's not having a, um, reliable, uh, person at the table.
00:19:40
Speaker
Um, and I, I would say that's more of like a, uh, you know, an attendance thing. I understand when people have something that comes up last minute.
00:19:52
Speaker
um I understand real life. So all of us ah have other things going on in our world besides ah being at that table. But I think respecting everybody else's time, um making it as much of a possible ah way of ah being there or or giving notice that but gives people chances to to make other plans and do other things that, that by far and away is what, what grinds the most with, but, you know, I just, if I don't have someone that reliably can, can be there, then it just throws a ah wrench in the entire, you know, uh, night. And then it also, you lose a lot of momentum when you think you're about to keep going week after week on something and you just have to keep stopping.
00:20:40
Speaker
People just forget details. Like you go past a week right and I'm forgetting details as a GM. Imagine what the players are doing. Right.
00:20:51
Speaker
You know, like players, you're lucky if they retain a percent, like ah a small percentage of what you're throwing out there. um Yeah. Attendance is a big one. Ben, what do you got any, Ben?
00:21:01
Speaker
What's yours? Pet peeves? Boy, you know. People chew gum and put it on the bottom of your new table. Here's one thing I think is challenging as a GM that I i struggle with.
00:21:14
Speaker
And I don't know if this is about them or about me, but, um you know, we play a lot of these genre games. You know, we're not playing D&D all the time. We play a lot of everything. And as we experiment with these different places, one of the things that's challenging for me as a GM is when you have players create characters for a game,
00:21:33
Speaker
that don't look like they've really kind of dug into the setting very much. So you know if you have people basically creating characters that don't feel like they've belong kind of in that setting, or if they're kind of creating characters with weird kind of side or meta stuff.
00:21:55
Speaker
um I'll give you an example. This is sort of a toy example. It's not one that I think I've really seen, but you know, if you're playing a superhero game, you're expecting characters that are somewhere in the realm of I don't know, like let's pick who are our favorite comic book heroes, a Superman, a Batman, a Spider-Man, a daredevil, ah take your pick, right?
00:22:13
Speaker
I've met people who are the kind of people who are going to create a superhero whose powers they can manipulate string. Now, is that, could that be useful? Absolutely.
00:22:23
Speaker
It does feel like a little bit of a kind of a marginal weird side thing you'd get out of a, you know, a mystery man kind of movie, as opposed to, you know, what you'd see on the front of a comic book. Yeah. Like as a GM, what are you supposed to do with that?
00:22:36
Speaker
Right. So, so that's kind of my pet peeve. Mark, how about you? What are your, what is it that you have a hard time with? I don't know what my biggest pet peeve is right now, but I know when my phones were really kind of getting bigger, everybody had their phones.
00:22:51
Speaker
When I was playing in person, it drove me nuts seeing people on their phones. Like that just pissed me off. And to the point where i was like, can you just put your phones away? Like put them up by the top of the stairs, like out of you. Cause you obviously can't handle being away from your phone.
00:23:09
Speaker
Like just go put it away. That just drives me crazy. Cause I'm, I'm seeing it. I'm seeing how distracted now uninterested they are. in the story that we're all trying to tell together.
00:23:20
Speaker
And I don't know. I don't see it as much because I'm playing online now. So I'm sure everybody's got a second screen open and they're playing a video game on it. So like, who knows?
00:23:31
Speaker
Who knows?
00:23:34
Speaker
Well, ah Mark, I don't think we should end quite on that note. I mean, here we are being on down. Brandon, why don't you ah take us out here with ah what is what is kind of one of your favorite things at the table when you see players doing that?
00:23:47
Speaker
Oh yeah.
The Value of Flawed Characters in Roleplaying
00:23:48
Speaker
i I, will challenge people to be multidimensional in characters. I, I would love to see more of, um, and I do see, but I'd love to see more of, of creating characters that have flaws that have, um, you not the, the min max, you know, character, ah you know, trying to just get or squeeze every ounce of, of,
00:24:13
Speaker
whatever could be the best combo out there. It's not a video game. And I think you're losing a lot of of opportunity for good role playing and having a fun time with that character development.
00:24:25
Speaker
If you make there the the story, the backstory, the like you know why the character's there and what what makes them so ah unique. and why you want them at that table.
00:24:36
Speaker
if If you would have invested in that, in creation of a character, I think you would get so much more out of out of the character. So I love when I see people bring characters that just have a lot of body to them.
00:24:50
Speaker
Awesome. We're with you on that.
Upcoming Reviews and Podcast Content
00:24:53
Speaker
But I think our time is about up here on Tabletop TuneUp. Ben, we got some exciting stuff coming down the future here. What do we what do we have and and the in the works?
00:25:01
Speaker
Well, we've got a lot of exciting stuff coming up. We're going to keep doing some of our system reviews for games we've played. think we have Traveler on deck next for our system reviews, right? All right. Is it going to Traveler? It might just be.
00:25:13
Speaker
We'll see. All right. Well, so we've got a lot of fun stuff coming up, you guys, and we'll look forward to bringing that to you when we meet next in a couple weeks. Until then, keep those dice rolling.
00:25:48
Speaker
Level up your fun Tune up Your quest has now begun
00:25:58
Speaker
Tune up We'll show you how it's done Tune up, tune up Tune up, tune up Tune up Level up your fun
00:26:16
Speaker
Tune up, your quest has now begun
00:26:22
Speaker
Tune up, we'll show you how it's done Tune up, tune up
00:26:41
Speaker
To get you tuned up, it's time for you to tune up Your game needs a tune up To get you tuned up, it's time for you to tune up Your game needs a tune
00:26:58
Speaker
up It's time for you to tune up Your game needs a tune
00:27:18
Speaker
Turn up, turn up, turn