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Lich Please! Episode: 21 Ft ELDRITCH PODBLAST
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🎲 Welcome to Lich Please! the ultimate destination for Dungeon Masters and adventurers alike! 🐉 Join Iwan and Alex as they delve into the art of DMing, explore the intricacies of homebrewing content, and embark on a journey through the realms of world-building. With regular special guests, we bring you insightful discussions, tips, and inspiration for your Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
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Transcript
Introducing British Collaboration
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Lich Please podcast. As always, I'm here with Alex, and out of our many collabs we have done in the past, we have our first British collab today.
00:00:17
Speaker
what a treat hello thank you so much for having us yes thank you for coming yeah first british people we've had on podcasts yeah it's crazy um british yeah there's not too many of us there's not that's true that's true that's true oh spritz
D&D Culture in Britain
00:00:40
Speaker
Oh, I know D&D shorts as well, yeah. But a lot of Americans. True. A lot of Americans. True. Yeah, we've had quite a few American guests. A few big ones as well, yeah. But first British, that's nice. In fact, it seems we're talking about Britain. What do you think of the D&D culture over here?
00:01:05
Speaker
over here I definitely it's it's tough isn't it because around where we live because we live in the northeast of England and it's not a particularly big place or a popular place to live um it's not very big up here we've got like one or two game stars um but I remember there was one one recently what was it called that we used to go to
00:01:27
Speaker
Oh gosh. Oh, geek retreat. Yeah. Oh, I heard of this. Yeah. Yeah. Even that shut down here, sadly. Yeah. Oh, man. To be fair, the scene here specifically in the town we live in is wonderful. It is blossoming. There is a lot of people interested. And not just in D&D, like in TTRPG, in tabletop games in general.
Growing Interest in D&D
00:01:51
Speaker
It's a small community, but it's
00:01:54
Speaker
it's good it is good yeah but um in terms of the uk i mean we went to um comic con yeah when critical role were there and the the the dnd fans were out and far yeah truly yeah i think it is big here i guess maybe it's just not big where we live yeah yeah what about what about you guys
00:02:13
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, I live basically in London. So it's relative, like people know it. Like there's game stalls where I live, you know, people run sessions. Yeah. It's, it's relatively big where I live, but people know that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:32
Speaker
So I came from a farm in Mid Wales. Interesting. So how was the scene on the farm? There wasn't much time for D&D between getting up at 5 a.m. and milking cows, but I'm shocked. Yeah. Came to I came back to do my Masters at uni the last just last January. There wasn't too many at that point. But then the society broke off into role playing society and tabletop like RPG.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I walked into that lecture hall for like the first thing September for the opening of society.
00:03:06
Speaker
And there was like 50 people. And I was like, have I come to the wrong place? Like what's the wrong room? There was like 10 of us last year. And then there's like all these new people, 200 people turned up eventually. Wow. Really? And the fourth largest society in the University of Lincoln. Wow. I love that. It's so great. Wow. Bloody hell. And is that specifically for D&D or is that kind of like TTRPGs in general? No. Vampire of the Masquerade.
00:03:34
Speaker
a load of other like indie, uh, TTRPGs, loads of stuff. Oh, I love that. See, I think, I think it's all changing, right? You know, like regardless of like how small the towns are that you live in, you know, it's, it's cool to, you can be whoever you want to be now.
From 'Satanic Panic' to Cool Hobby
00:03:51
Speaker
I think, you know, back when D&D first like came to its inception, you know, the whole satanic panic thing, it was not okay to play things like D&D or like TTRPGs in general.
00:04:00
Speaker
And now I think it's... And then it went from that to, you're a nerd. And you would be lambasted not for being satanic but for just being a nerd. But now a nerd is like cool. Yeah, I think the thing is with the community, whether how small or how big it is, I think people are just so like fiercely passionate for it. So it doesn't matter if there's like four of the five of it. Exactly.
00:04:25
Speaker
you will love it to your car. Yeah, 100%. I think that's the beautiful thing about the TTRPG community is they're just so passionate. I agree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, 100%. I think people are realising as well that it's not literally like wearing a cosplay sitting there and
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like it's not that. I can't remember what happened. I texted him being like, he wanted to go to the driving range or something to play golf. And I was like, I can't win. I'm playing Dean Dean. It was like, ah, yes, I forgot you dressed up like a wall. Maybe more people on the outside looking in. Yeah. Still probably think of it.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's changing, though. It's changing. It definitely is. All right, 100%.
Guessing Game Segment
00:05:12
Speaker
So I reckon we go into my favorite segment because I'd just be really excited for this one. So just to go over the rules again is I'm going to read out certain amount of stats at a time, make a sound, or just be like, ah, just guess whatever, whoever gets it first.
00:05:36
Speaker
wins it's a monster it's always a new monster i'll never repeat so
00:05:41
Speaker
You know, it won't be any of the ones I've done. Is it from the manual? Is it a cobalt? Yes, it's from the manual. Oh, wow. Cool. So. Oh, are you head for absolutely blow all this out of the law? No, no, no, you're building up expectations. No, no, no, no. I'll look a fool. Jackson never played TV in the blind. No, never, never. It's my first time.
00:06:10
Speaker
So I will start with the AC, the hit points and its speed. AC 17. Hit points are 135 so 18d8 plus 54 and speed is 30 feet.
00:06:23
Speaker
Okay. Um, but it's a, it's quite a high AC and that's pretty high in hit points as well. I don't know. It's a cobalt. It's not a definite. No, no, it's not definite. Oh, I can't, I can't even make a legitimate guess here. I mean, they're big though. That's big. Yeah. It's like super average. Yeah. You know, yeah, you know. Yeah.
00:06:54
Speaker
You ain't got any guesses or? All right, I'll go. It's a wraith. No.
00:07:06
Speaker
I never have any getter until you get to like the strength and deck and you can kind of like. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's it. Oh, it's dumb, but it's. Well, I'll throw out some new stats then. We'll go strength, decks and con. 11 strength, 16 decks and 16 con.
00:07:27
Speaker
Okay, so it's Dex's best creature. All right, okay. Me going, yeah, all right, okay. I'm holding it in.
00:07:50
Speaker
I can see the cogs moving. He's trying to figure it out. It's been a long day. I'm glad someone else cogs going.
00:08:07
Speaker
We'll go on to intelligence, wisdom and charisma. 20 intelligence, 14 wisdom and 16 charisma. Okay.
00:08:18
Speaker
it is a lich i should have done this before with a lich please podcast and i've never thought to do it understood understood yeah wow that was um i'm surprised you got that
00:08:55
Speaker
I think the next stats, let's get up, the next stats I was gonna give were
00:09:04
Speaker
same fro skills and the resistance immunities as well but for them yeah damn so you had two three verse guests damn
00:09:28
Speaker
You guys are meant to make the league bigger, OK? Damn it. That was some good shit. I'm impressed. No, I'm impressed. I am genuinely impressed. I would have never done it. Yeah, I think that actually might be the least amount of stats I've given for someone to get. Yeah, we actually... I think... I don't think we finished. Aaron got it very quickly. Oh, yeah, no, that's true. Yeah, he did very quickly. Yeah, I did the Albert and he got it like...
00:09:58
Speaker
he must have got it yeah i actually think it was the first yeah that's an album yeah i think so i think you're right it's gonna come up at some point cool well so moving on uh how did you guys get into the indy
Personal D&D Stories
00:10:23
Speaker
It was through our good friend Matthew. Who plays another game still now. Yeah, we still play with Matthew now. On a week to week, yeah. He played it at work. He works for a game studio called Double Eleven. Yeah. And he, I think just through people he worked with. Just a bunch of other fucking nerds. Yeah. I feel like everyone.
00:10:46
Speaker
all right just a bunch of fucking man you know it looks like a in like a in a game studio like making like video games so there's gonna be something yeah yeah oh yeah absolutely you know what it came to us it it was during the the the pandemic and yeah and you know i think we can all relate and say that we all were fucking having a heinous time yeah and you know you couldn't see your friends so the
00:11:16
Speaker
in order to be able to still kind of hang out, you know, in a way. He was like, how about we just try this? Because we tried it with him once before, years before, years and years before. And we played one session, like half session, we were like, nah. And then we...
00:11:34
Speaker
three, four years since that first time. And he said, should we try it again? And like when he asked, I was like, I'm the sort of person where if I'm going to do something, I need to know every single thing about it.
00:11:49
Speaker
to get interested in it. So it was like, let's play the India. I was like, cool. Is there any things I could watch? And it was like, well, there's an actual play called Critical Role. And I was like, cool. I'll watch that. And then I watched. And here we are. I've now watched all three campaigns. And like.
00:12:05
Speaker
We played, we played this campaign for a year and a half. Yeah, we did. Yeah, which was long for us. Yeah. Yeah. And we loved it. Yeah. And then after that, I tried to dungeon master and now I'm still at a dungeon master. Indeed. So yeah, that's what we both got into because we play together. All thanks to one pal. Thank God as well. Thank God. How about you guys? I bet you're going to say a bunch of fucking nerds, right? I introduced my mate Matthew. Well,
00:12:35
Speaker
I just, I had an uncle who played, and I played Gloomhaven before. I don't know if you guys have heard of Gloomhaven. It's like another TTRPG. It's pretty cool. Check it out. It's on Steam. There's like a game version as well. Obviously a real life version. Yeah, it's pretty fun. Yeah, and he showed it to me, and he'd been doing D&D for ages, like 15, 20 years. He'd do it every Wednesday, something like that. And he told me, you're an off-go two years ago?
00:13:03
Speaker
No, I've not been playing for two years. Year and a half ago, I think. And maybe a bit more than a year and a half ago. He was like, oh. Yeah. You joined in, like, what, about a year ago now? I joined you guys a year ago and I joined my first campaign a year and a half ago.
00:13:16
Speaker
But he told me to just check out online. There's groups for it. I was like, okay, cool. Went on Facebook, found a group, an American group, started staying up on Mondays from like one to four. And then I joined UN's group last year, Jan. Yeah. And we've been going since. So that's how I got into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Campaign Participation and Homebrew Ideas
00:13:40
Speaker
That's cool. That's really cool. What about you, UN?
00:13:42
Speaker
Uh, friends of mine were like, Oh, I want to try D&D. And one of them was like, Oh, my dad used to play D&D edition book. So let's just play. We did a couple of sessions. Um, and then we all got, it was like, we were all like going off to uni. So it was like, okay, we should probably stop now and focus on this.
00:14:01
Speaker
And then it was second year uni, my friends were like, oh, I kind of want to try D&D. And I was like, I've played a few sessions. I'm like, great, you can DM. And I was like, sure. Thanks for volunteering. They picked up fifth edition and I was like, this doesn't look like anything I touched. And then I've just been DMing since.
00:14:18
Speaker
Oh, nice. Do you enjoy DMing? I prefer DMing, yeah. Oh, really? So you basically got put into the role and that's just kind of where you've stayed then. We are a minority, you and I. Truly. We just say this, basically. We just love to torture ourselves and never play. I don't know why.
00:14:41
Speaker
well in like a few months i'll be uh you know i'll be releasing you wind up yeah are you gonna be like like the full-time dm are you doing something no i have my own campaign but we're splitting each other into arcs we'll be splitting each other into arcs so when we finish the first pack yeah it should be good i think i'll enjoy
00:15:08
Speaker
Second, because I did a one shot for them on the campaign, well technically third, that was one time really premature, like I was three months in to play in D&D. And I went, yeah, let's try it. And it went really bad and I didn't touch it again. Yeah, I know. I feel you. I do. I really get that.
00:15:24
Speaker
So you're gonna do like a continuous story where like you do an arc, Ewan, and then you do an arc, Alex? Is that gonna be a thing you're gonna like take over from each other? Or are you gonna be like separate stories? That would be fun. That would be fun, no. So yeah, it's a whole different campaign. So Ewan's doing the one we're in now at Oolidor, and I'm writing up a whole pirate campaign. Roles, ship combat, everything. Yeah, I've tried to get everyone to do a homebrew class, sub class.
00:15:52
Speaker
Cause fuck it. There's no real, any pirate subclasses in D&D. So, you know, there's one. People are going to be like the swashbuckler and then like, you know, then more now. I mean, it does, it gives pirate. Oh no, it's giving pirate. It's giving pirate. Imagine if you had a class of just, just swashbuckler. That would be the, that would be just move around instantly.
00:16:18
Speaker
True. That's exciting though. All Homebrew stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's because, uh, like Yuan, I'm addicted to law. Um, like I Lord dive the shit out. I love the shit out of his campaign. He sent me them documents. I, I learned them in like a week. Um, like I love Lord dive. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot.
00:16:45
Speaker
I think we're actually quite lucky, most of our party actually does
00:16:51
Speaker
Law dive because they find it fun and there's so much law very annoying. Yeah No, I i'm the same I I love fucking love law live for it die for it. Yeah because obviously we live together um, she gets like the the She gets to just ask the off the grid questions. So after the session she'll come up to me. She was like
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, to be fair, I don't take notes, which seems really weird. Yeah. I Lord, I don't take notes. It's all in my head.
00:17:37
Speaker
to any of you take notes. Yeah, everyone else does, apart from me. I think I'm the only person who doesn't take notes. Like me as a player, when I do play on the rare occasion, I can't take notes because I can't take notes and engage. I can't take notes and listen to the dungeon master. I can't take notes and role play. I can't take notes and I can't do anything. So I have to just be like fully in it. And I'm the same. I'll usually remember.
00:18:04
Speaker
most, but Margot, Margot gets the like the deep cut, you know, when you need that note from like 30 sessions ago to refer, and Margot will have it. I also write the notes that's like weird duck in pond question mark. Yeah. So also writes the most fucking random shit on as well. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys have a Google doc that you can all edit? Cause that's what they have. See, listen, I would love some shit like that.
00:18:33
Speaker
the only one it would be me it wouldn't even be you it would be it would be me like online friends who we've met like through the community like a whole discord server for their law and they have like
00:18:51
Speaker
the channels for their characters. I would love that. We would die for that. None of my friends would. No, no. I think Abby would. She would try for me. He would never look at it. He'd never touch it. Nope. Never.
Dungeon Master Experiences
00:19:05
Speaker
Never. Never, never, never.
00:19:07
Speaker
Matthew is a extremely enthusiastic, wonderful player. I love him to bits. He's brilliant. But my campaign is called the Everflame, her sacrifice. And basically like the gods gifted Everflame to the world, which keeps out the dark and keeps out the monsters and the scary and stuff like that. And there was like a anagram that was T-U-O-F. And the Margaret said, oh, it's the union of flames. She like figured it out. And Matthew was like, I don't think so. There's never been a flame mentioned in this campaign.
00:19:50
Speaker
How do you find it with all of your players How do you find that like as the DM
00:19:59
Speaker
Like, do you find that they solve things more often? Are they more like, um, you know, conspiracy theorists that they were to not? Yeah. But I think that's also down to me because they have to deal with prophecies, but I've given them five different prophecies that are marginally different. There's like a few words different and they have to just, it's, it's been.
00:20:21
Speaker
One of my players writes a diary in character perspective. It is amazing. I love reading it after session because it's so well written. I love that. It's really cool. I love that because, you know, Abby does take notes too. She she's more concise than myself. Yeah. I mean, if it's like pertinent, like if there's like a BBG monologue in or I'm given like a bit of a law dive, you'll just take notes consistently forever. Yeah. And, you know,
00:20:50
Speaker
It's normally myself and Abby who work out like the big plot points, right? So I was just wondering for you, like, do you ever do you find that things are not not foiled, but uncovered quicker because people there's so many people taking notes. Yes. Yeah, I guess so. But I say it's fine. Like they've done the work. I'm not mad about that. They've earned it at the same time. And I've also ruled with like all the law of giving them
00:21:20
Speaker
If they remember something from the lore they've read, that's fine. I won't make them do a hysterect to remember that. They just know it because they've done the work themselves to remember it.
00:21:30
Speaker
But if they ask me that question, I'm absolutely making them roll for it. And if you don't get it, that's on you. To be fair, if they take the time to write down the shit that you say, and then they use that, that's fair. Yeah, they think about it and make actions on it. To me, that's probably one of the most rewarding things as a dungeon master. Absolutely.
00:21:52
Speaker
Like, when my players come to a conclusion through the things that I've told, I'm like, you're clearly listening. And, you know, I'm telling at least a decently cohesive story to the point where you can put those two things together. And then it just, you know, it makes the brain happy. It makes the brain do the good thing when my players are like, oh, this. And I'm like, well done. Yeah. Well done. Yeah. Apart from Matthew.
00:22:26
Speaker
We obviously we're all online they've got a chat without me Which makes me Gary I love that that's the biggest compliment I think that I've got Not only not only do we have a chat without him
00:22:42
Speaker
We have chats with our other players about their backstories. I say this all the time because my character's backstory, he's really honest, everyone knows it. Everybody else apart from one other character has secrets.
00:23:00
Speaker
So A, I am not messaging the other player about everyone else's backstories in session. And B, if we're going in depth on someone's backstory, let's go into the group chat, all right? Because I will figure it out. Give me a few weeks. I'll do it. Yeah. No, I feel like because we're just in the start of like a new campaign now.
00:23:21
Speaker
We did our 10th session last night, so it's still like super new. Like, I don't know if you would agree, but for me, one of my favorite parts is the beginning like quarter of a campaign where your characters are getting to know each other. There's secrets coming out, the secret's still being held. You can see how like you're tied together in a way, because Jackson had an incredible job like tying us together. That's my
Campaign Length and Structure
00:23:45
Speaker
favorite part. Being a conspiracy theorist about all of your friends is my favorite thing ever.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, we do. I think the chat as well is actually labeled conspiracy theories. It is. Yeah. Right. So you guys got kind of crazy because it was like what, 15 sessions in and you were still unsure of what everyone's race was. Yeah. That's how deep the secrets went. Everyone claimed to be a half elf and it was hell.
00:24:20
Speaker
Apart from me, once again, I love my character, but if I had known there were going to be so many secrets before the campaign, I would have made secrets, right? I can't be the only person who suffers. No, no, no. I am so with you, Alex. I am so with you on that because, like, to be fair, how many of you are in your, how many players is there?
00:24:42
Speaker
five five at the minute five so we we used to be a dream and we've gone to a four in the last two campaigns and um half of them were so incredibly secretive about class race everything incredibly so and the other like me and abby uh we fucking blew all over in like the first couple sessions
00:25:05
Speaker
because Abby just gets really excited. She's telling people what race she is, what class she is, parts of her backstory. Before we've even started the campaign, she's like, I'm just so excited. And we get into the campaign, and Josh is 10 sessions in. And people are still guessing what class Josh is. There's just the contrast of the two.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, I do tend to tell everyone everything about about any things I haven't happened yet I hit because I just hate it. I hate it being in my brain. Yeah Yeah for you guys campaign I have a homebrew subclass now we're not level three yet, um, so
00:25:46
Speaker
I haven't had the chance to tell everyone about it, which kills me on the inside. You want to say, oh, one we've been going and you're not level three yet. Yeah. So by the way, I was looking at my subcloth the other day. I made it on the 25th of June last year. Oh, my God. Still haven't been able to use it.
00:26:10
Speaker
January last year. Yeah. Goodness gracious me. See, you know what? We're already level five.
00:26:25
Speaker
I can't remember when we started. But we're 10 sessions in and we played weekly, so we basically started 10 weeks ago, but we did start at level three. Yes, we did start at level three. We did. This is the first time we've ever started not at level one. Yeah. And do you think you've already played it? Yeah, very much so. Yeah. Like basically I ran a one shot in this world that was basically like a
00:26:45
Speaker
almost like not a cataclysmic event but like there was an event where meteors ran down from the sky and eldritch beings came out of the meteors and basically took took this city and in the one shot they were like guards of like a glen around this like mecha this like almost like mecha sort of
00:27:05
Speaker
capital city that is like the religious hub of the world and they basically just fought a bunch of fucking eldritch beings died in the cause of it and then the campaign started where like where the retake was happening so they were coming back into the city it's been like six months nobody's been in since and that's why you were level three because i didn't feel like it was why would they send a bunch of level ones into a city that's very dangerous so that's why we started
00:27:33
Speaker
and our campaigns are quite short as well in comparison to a lot of people's yeah yeah yeah i i potentially i'm very much like alex i it eats me inside very very badly and i'm very excited to tell my story and as i've gotten
00:27:51
Speaker
older as a dungeon master as i've gotten more experience as a dungeon master i've been able to like hold on to it a little bit more but yeah i think maybe like 40 to 45 sessions is in my normal length so probably not even a year yeah of campaign but they're usually quite
00:28:09
Speaker
uh high high pace like there's not much like downtime and hanging around and stuff like that man because that's what my players enjoy yeah and what about what about yours you add like what is like the typical length you'd say like of one of your campaigns um so i've been DMing for this group since about 2021 we did lost mines um and then we went into another homebrew of mine i did a sort of i think
00:28:33
Speaker
I was really, I, it was, I just, I watched dementia and I was like, I love this. I love the style of it. I did a fantasy high type up game. We did all that. And then at the end of it, I was like, okay. Cause that was my first time home brewing the world and sort of building off an idea to begin with. And then I went, this is my first time fully home brewing an idea and a world myself. Um, I think that building on what you said, um, with the sort of the length of things and the story.
00:29:00
Speaker
think what is going to work well for us is we're going to take a break after my arc one and go into Alex's so it breaks it up nicely into we'll get a break from this we'll do a bit of something else and then come back to old characters and
00:29:15
Speaker
It might refresh things, people are still interested. 100% will, I think. That would feel so good. That's such a cool idea. Yeah, that really is. That's a great idea. Yeah, I think I am. I'm excited to DM, right? But I'm going to be sad when I can't play my character.
00:29:31
Speaker
because i know i know as well true true yeah but um because i know when i when finish arc one is when i will be given level three
00:29:57
Speaker
right like on some level i hope that it's sooner than that but i just the back of me knows that you answered me like oh alex you get level three last you can suffer i'm actually doing the exact same for my campaign i'm starting with one shot uh and that one shot will be the quest
00:30:26
Speaker
that the level three party as well, believe it or not, will be set off on. And I've done a one shot for them in the world to do some world building. I'm going to run some more shots for other people. If for the world I'm creating for world building, because as
00:30:46
Speaker
A, I love law diving. I'm really bad at writing. So it's a bit of, I like to prefer, it just makes it easier if I make other people decide what happens for me by playing the game, right? Like it's just easier. Yeah.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you don't have to be a good writer to, first of all, DM a game or like playing a game. You don't have to have that skill like playing your strings. Yeah. Like, and I think Margaret is Margaret. I don't know. You loved it. Like, I don't think we.
00:31:22
Speaker
Every time we run a campaign now, I don't think Margaret will be happy unless I run a one shot setting up the world cry. Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. Because obviously they went into it with the pre-existing knowledge of what had happened to us render this city and why they are going in and what sort of like vibe it was, like this Eldritch Forest sort of vibe. And it really helped, I think,
00:31:48
Speaker
with the character creation for them all because it was simple it was like you will be a task team go in for whatever reason you want you know Abby's going in because she wants to get like lost knowledge because she's a librarian y'all go and begin to find like family members and things like that everyone's going in for a different reason but they built their characters around that reason and the character concepts and the role play because of that i don't think it's ever been as good as it has been
00:32:13
Speaker
Everyone's been so on point with their roleplay and so focused with their goals as characters because they have already been in the world. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I would always, always, always say do it. Do it. Like if, especially if you're a first time DM, do a one shot first in the world and see what people think and see if you like
One-Shots and Character Deaths
00:32:33
Speaker
it. And I go from that fucking hate it and you don't want to commit. Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
yeah no my one shot was a um the one i went for them was a heist uh a heist on floating island uh which went well and uan's character died um right at the end right at the end that's the most heroic of them had a great time he was a great character as well well he would have survived um
00:33:06
Speaker
Basically, he made one death save. It went shit, because he failed it, obviously. And then someone went to heal him. But yeah, and then you rolled on that one. And you died. Because there was a lot of time before when they went to heal them. So I was like, oh, shit. You should probably do another death save, because it's been like a while. It's been like 20 seconds. You might have just rolled one. He rolled on that one. He died. I was like, oh, well, that's a shame.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, it was really bad timing. Yeah. What were you playing? I was a wild magic. No. What's the one the barbarian that gets like claws when they rage? The beast? Nice beast. Yeah, I think it's both. Yeah, it was like a fairy.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, I had a great time. I had no weapons and I was just slashing stuff. It was great. I had a great time. Yeah. Oh, I love a beast barbarian.
Favorite Classes and Multi-Classing
00:34:10
Speaker
A massively underrated subclass. Yeah, for real. Because it gets the clause, isn't massive. Everyone's like, nah, fucking hell, I could be rolling a d12 with my great axe. But the action economy of it is so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you.
00:34:22
Speaker
we we tested it with a brand new player playing with us and you'd set up this like brief encounter show how to play and this kind of ripping through everything and you're like okay i'm gonna up the level of this one yeah i mean i upped the level and i'm not even joking they avoided every single encounter until the last one i was so sad so right before they got into that room i was like oh you know what have another boss
00:34:49
Speaker
you've ruined my day have another one i mean they they cleared it like none of them even went did any of you go down i think you did well you had died yeah but i was like that was they escaping the island that he died like it was literally 10 seconds before the one shot was going to end and he's just dead
00:35:16
Speaker
But I mean, I'll throw a little Easter egg in the campaign. I've said before, I'll throw Easter eggs in the campaign for their one-shot characters. And I've also said if they find Easter eggs from, like, so I love, like, animated TV and shit, right? A lot. I said if they find Easter eggs from one piece that I'm absolutely throwing in the pirate campaign,
00:35:36
Speaker
being a pirate campaign. They're going to be hard Easter eggs. I said, if they find one, they can get a point of inspiration as they find it. They're never going to find it. It's going to be so hard to find. If they find it, yeah. That's fun. That's such an original and fun and cool idea. Yeah, that's just fun. Because that just allows the players to be on the lookout for things that they know, especially if they're fucking fans of One Piece as well. Yeah, exactly. I know so many people who would love that. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to start watching it now.
00:36:04
Speaker
You might make it in time. I haven't watched the manga or anything like that. The anime, sorry. I haven't read the manga. But I did watch the live action. And do you want to know what? I have it on good authority from One Piece fans in the community that it was actually really good. I liked it.
00:36:36
Speaker
I was really skeptical I like I'm a huge one-piece I was really skeptical but yes the live action is very good best life action of like a
00:36:48
Speaker
and animate our scene. So that's the thing. That's what we heard. Honestly, that's what we heard. You have you have a good reason to be nervous because most of them are dog shit. Certainly. So like the fact that they did such a good job. Like I remember one of our friends was like the ending scene of the first one when he's like in the boat. It was like I was actually crying because it was just like it was so accurate. I was just so happy that they didn't butcher it. Yeah. Which which is which is good. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it should be good. Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
A second ago on my fairy class, what is your favorite class and subclass? They can be different. It's a moon druid. Listen, it's a moon druid. Not only is it a moon druid, it's a moon druid.
00:37:43
Speaker
Multiclass of the barbarian. I like to be unkillable. I like to do a lot of damage. I actually learned because my last character in Jax's last campaign, she was a moon druid. Multiclass into a berserker barbarian. The one dnd berserker barbarian though, because the fucking, the player's handbook's one.
00:38:07
Speaker
to punishing I think with the exhaustion and I wasn't intending on going into barbarian it was just kind of the path that seemed right for my character at that point because I do love multi-classing I love the druid because I love like the transformative aspect of it I guess I like
00:38:27
Speaker
I like being able to go from one state into another that gives you something completely separate. Yeah, I like like that actual like act of doing that. And then, you know.
00:38:42
Speaker
Just fuck loads of damage. And then you just... And then you can't die. And then you basically just can't fucking die. Because you just get rid of one health bar and then on the next turn, if you don't deplete the actual character's health at that point, you just fucking use your bonus action and... Listen, she was absolutely like totally OP. Yes, she was. This was also a point in like my D&D journey where I...
00:39:09
Speaker
I wasn't and still I'm not to some levels okay with my character permanently dying. And you at that point were not okay with my character not being able to not permanently die. So I was like, I'm just gonna have to make a fucking unkillable then. I know, I'll just make it impossible to kill. With the feel of it. Yeah, so that's mine. And you know what honestly, like between Druid and Barbarian,
00:39:37
Speaker
I fucking love a barbarian. I love being able to just be angry and just do more. I love that. I really do.
00:39:45
Speaker
okay look i'm gonna have to give some honorable mentions because this is almost impossible for me because i love so many classes my honorable mentions are the mercy monk because i think it's really cool yeah the ability to just go you're poisoned now um gloomstalker ranger or
00:40:09
Speaker
uh horizon walker ranger love a ranger very good but my heart and soul lies with a gish character and the best gish character in the game is the blade singer wizard yeah for sure it is just the fucking coolest
00:40:25
Speaker
like being able to, like you said, like transform your gameplay. You can go from a wizard to a wizard that's got like a 25 AC. If you get crit, you're probably still dead. But, you know, absorbing elements and shielding and mirror imaging and being a tank with a D6 hit dice is just something that I think is really cool. Yeah. So any GISH character for me is cool. I second that GISH. I play swords bad at the minute.
00:40:49
Speaker
It's so good. Like, SOD's bad. Being able to, like, SOD play, be a full spellcaster, and also give out, like, badic inspirations, you're just so versatile. Yeah, that's it. And that's what I love about a class in D&D. I agree. What about you guys? You guys. What's your favorites? Go on, Alex. Ah, well, obviously Monk, right? Like, the reaction was clear. I love Monks. The first class I played was a Dragonborn Monk.
00:41:15
Speaker
was a multi-class. So originally it was just a dragon ball monk way of the ancestral dragon. So it was a dragon with a dragon. So I had like, yeah, I had like, what was it? Five breaths.
00:41:29
Speaker
before I had to rest. It was crazy. I loved it. And then when I got high-leveled, I'm multi-classed as a ranger. And I took the Draken Warden subclass. So I was a dragon with dragon. It was great. Yeah, it was great. Though that character has been killed since.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yes, so I couldn't use that anymore. Yeah, it's a bit sad. So Monk has like a special place in my heart. I love, and I've talked about this before, I love martial archetypes, like martial classes, right? Because I can't fathom
00:42:10
Speaker
Creativity with casting classes like I know people prefer it because there's more spells But but if there's more spells that just means I'm only going to use spells That's really boring in my opinion. So just use martial archetypes. Yeah, like the martial classes. Yeah, so fire monk Barbarians are cool Only use them in like one shots and stuff and never really using a campaign
00:42:35
Speaker
Paladins, Baldur's Gate 3 is where Paladins is. Yeah, that's fucking insane. Yeah, we heard that, we heard that. But definitely Monk and my favourite sub class will probably have to be Way of the Ancestry Dragon. It's just that special place in my heart. I feel that, I really feel that.
00:42:57
Speaker
I really couldn't pick. I don't think I've played enough.
Role-Playing Dynamics
00:43:00
Speaker
I don't know. That's also fair. What's the favorite subclass of a player that you've had at your table? Yeah. Ooh. There's one correct answer for this, Joanne. Just letting you know. It is absolutely Goliath rage. Yeah. Goliath rage. Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
100% nothing cooler than a fucking deal with summit. Yeah. Matthew's playing a Wallach in mine now and his patron is like for me because it's quite a dark campaign. It's quite like just a dark concept of you know, this city just been fallen like his patron is basically a
00:43:40
Speaker
don't know I really I really like as a DM warlocks yeah I just I love the patron aspect of it I really do like a warlock
00:43:57
Speaker
Granddad, he's a genie warlock and in this like gym that he has, he's just an old man. But he's just fucking loads of fun. He's a kleptomaniac. He loves it when Matthew like Matthew's character like brings him loads of random things. He brought him a gun. Yeah. Very, very happy about that. And it's just like being able to play that I think as a dungeon master gives you like a way to constantly and consistently role play with the pie. Which I fucking love. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. Definitely.
00:44:27
Speaker
I think, Yuan, you're playing a warlock in my campaign. I am playing a warlock in your campaign. He's going to write his own. Oh, could you give us any spoilers? I've had this counted in mind for a while. He was just like an old lady who somehow got involved. And he's just very much like, I'm just here now.
00:44:57
Speaker
one of the other players is playing my grandson we are going to be completely different races so we're going to have to figure out that like i want it to be like obscurely different like as different as different can be just yeah um well i can't tell you well i can tell you because but i feel like if everyone else listened to it i don't know if he'll tell everyone else's race i don't see why he wouldn't i think i think mike has told me i just have forgotten um but i kind of want it to be you know
00:45:27
Speaker
In Ice Age, the grandmother Sloth who worships that big whale thing. Yes. That's kind of the vibe I have in mind. I like it. So like some eldritch sea being is like who she's made a pact with somehow. Because she thinks he's a pet and he's like feeding it. And it's like now it's just ice cream. That sounds so sweet. Oh, that's great.
00:45:47
Speaker
the big Leviathan next to the ship and he's just figuring it out. To actually touch on that aspect about role-playing with the parties at the end, I've actually asked everyone to
00:46:01
Speaker
or well I've requested and you know obviously if they don't want to do it they don't want to do it but I said you guys can just have a god that you worship and you don't have to be religious so you can speak to them and stuff and to be fair a lot of them have just written into their backstory so I'm going to be messaging everyone what their god is saying it is Greek gods by the way
00:46:20
Speaker
because I didn't want to just come up with my own gods. So I just ran Greek gods because I like Greek gods. To decide it as well is the Percy Jackson live action was announced when I was thinking about it. So I was like, ah, well, there you go. It was either that or Norse. And then Percy Jackson came out. I was like, okay, sure.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I think most people, I think like three people have got gods in their backstory to talk to. And the thing is as well, they have not chosen main gods, which makes it so much better for me, because it means I can do what the fuck I want with them. I have found one now. Oh, have you? I think it's like chemo playa. It's like a daughter of Poseidon, who's like the god of like goddess, like storms and stuff. Oh, interesting. I think that's
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah should be uh, I like how you have the stipulation of like is there a god but you don't have to be religious like a cleric or a paladin to have a god and to have like a deity like I like
Lore and Worldbuilding
00:47:20
Speaker
that stipulation a lot. That's a really really really really cool idea. Yeah, it's actually because of um because of Yuan's campaign um that this is a thing yeah because um he is gods and we have obviously like paladin and cleric in our party say obviously we have a paladin and cleric in our party um
00:47:36
Speaker
I'm the fire but just out of so curiosity and being told to I started praying to people and then I was the first person out of all the religious people to speak to a god and then I was like this is fun
00:47:52
Speaker
um let's just make everyone speak to gods because it's fun like fuck yeah and there's so much world building that you're creating there by like you know Ewan's gone out and picked up a really obscure daughter of Poseidon and it's like okay well there's another god that's going to be part of like a prevalent part of my campaign that's a world building that your players have done that you don't even have to do yeah yeah
00:48:18
Speaker
and you get to have that those kind of like one-on-one conversations like if you and your players want it you can have those like one-on-one conversations that make them feel more connected to the world and to their gods and um listen everyone loves their five minutes have been able to talk to their god 100 everyone loves that show love that moment it's a good thing yeah there's something that i'm wanting to do is why they've i'm going to be leveling i'm
00:48:45
Speaker
I know people are sort of delicate about this but I'm levelling them to level 3 differently because they're each going to get a little subplot getting their subclass because I think that makes more sense because I mean you can get a fighter that goes from being a fighter to being an elder tonight and instantly firing off spells.
00:49:00
Speaker
And it's like, I like the idea of there's a reasoning in them getting their subclass. Yeah. Yeah. That is one day being able to do it, but you know, you kind of led there with being like, you know, I know people have something to say, but like we are firm believers of if.
00:49:16
Speaker
your table enjoys it. Yeah, that's how you enjoy it. If that's how all your players enjoy it, then do whatever the fuck you want. And also, it is a fucking massive thing. Yeah, because they're not playing the game as long as you're having fun and your players are having fun. This is what we always say, because we do, you know, we do videos like unpopular opinions and horrible house rules. And before we do any of it, we always put the disclaimer and it's like, if any of these house rules work for you, if you if these opinions work for you, doesn't matter what we say, as long as everybody's having fun, as long as everybody's, you know, like.
00:49:46
Speaker
On the same level and everyone's safe and it's not like a hateful like opinion or a hateful fucking like house rule that you've got Then like doesn't matter when anyone says as long as you are having fun. And as long as it works for you, exactly Yeah
00:50:01
Speaker
So, um, we asked you lot these this question a few days ago. We talked about we told you we're gonna ask So Yeah a time where you guys have had a
00:50:25
Speaker
like a really good moment as a DM, good moment as a player, both, someone else's good moment, just a good moment. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to go first? No, you go first. Okay. I think, I think, I think I'm going to know.
00:50:38
Speaker
for me so i used to be in a band i used to be like a lead singer of a band and we used to play a lot of shows and like i was the singer i was the front man and like i've always been you know like a theater kid i've always been a musician i've always been somebody who's like very confident and i like to be you know center stage i'm not trying to like hog the that's just where i i thrive yeah it is so like being a player
00:51:03
Speaker
obviously i loved it because i still wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons i saw an interest but as soon as i sat down at the table and was like telling a story and describing things and role-playing like big plot hooks for my my party like i just love feeding off energy and like
00:51:20
Speaker
Performing basically like I get a big kick out of being a performer. So as a dungeon master I think the first time I sat down and performed for my party in the first ever session I did and realized that I was getting the same kick that I was getting about off being on stage in front of people just really like Married me to being a dungeon master forever I think and I think that's probably The first session ever for me was the one I'll always remember. Yeah, really. Yeah, I think so I think so it just it was like
00:51:49
Speaker
It was transformative for me. I was like, oh, my God, I can still get this like performative kick out and like have that itched scratched in my life by Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, which was just like, yeah, for me. So that's probably mine, I would say. Yeah.
00:52:07
Speaker
well actually I waited up between two but this is kind of this is a surprise surprise a bit of a long one but um it was actually how our second campaign the one we just played before this how that all concluded
00:52:32
Speaker
to give you some context to why it felt so good. The whole campaign was based around, it was Norse mythology, and it was all based around how
00:52:46
Speaker
At first, we learned that Tia was chained in a different realm, and then the children of Loki were basically wreaking havoc. They were supposed to be chained, they were being released. And as the campaign went on, we learned that their mother, Angoboda, the wife of Loki, all she wanted was to release her children. And we found out, just through story beats, through NPCs,
00:53:16
Speaker
Angoboda belonged to a race of people. What were they called? The... The Jotna. The Jotna. And...
00:53:26
Speaker
It turns out that, um, what's the dude, Odin? Her, herself, her family, um, her whole people had been betrayed basically by Odin. He had promised them
00:53:47
Speaker
this new life, this new world, if they married the two realms together. And they were essentially abandoned. And not only were they abandoned, for a reason that we didn't know at the time, her people were cast off. They were sent away from their home and their land and they'd lost everything. And we went from viewing this
00:54:09
Speaker
race of people and Angoboda as, you know, the baddies, right? We'd seen them as these selfish people who were impatient and wanted to come back and then the script was flipped to, well, they were just people existing and they lost everything and they were actually given a really bad hand. And the whole campaign accumulated with us facing Angoboda, right? She had found Odin, she was,
00:54:38
Speaker
on the verge of ending Odin and we were actually given a choice. Do you either let her kill him? For his crimes. For his crimes because what he had done to these people was horrible for whatever reason he had and he did have a reason but it was still bad. Do you let her kill him or do you stop her and by stopping her you you kill her? Ultimately our characters decided to stop her and kill her
00:55:07
Speaker
the choice was that like they either both die yeah because she was basically in self-destruct mode so she was it was either they both die or just she dies and he lives and that was like you can basically let him die or save him that was that was the choice yeah and we chose to save him
00:55:25
Speaker
And then the campaign ended basically with Angoboda died, but when she died, she was kind of freed of all of this hate and this vengeance she needed to get. And the scene was literally, we all cut to being in this tall field of golden grass and the sun was shining and Angoboda was sat in the middle.
00:55:49
Speaker
And our characters just went and sat with her, and she was watching her three children and her husband playing. And it was very much a redemption in the end. It was, yes, okay, we didn't save her, but we saved her from herself.
00:56:06
Speaker
It was just a really poignant moment. The scene will always stick in my head, and then kind of fast forward a little bit.
Impactful Campaign Endings
00:56:15
Speaker
One of our players, Matthew, who played Hermetta, he had asked to, he wanted to die with Valhalla, right? He wanted to go to the halls of Valhalla and dine with Odin. And actually, when that was finished, when we,
00:56:28
Speaker
done that with Angoboda, he had said, I can die now. And Odin was very much like, your time will come. Fast forward to the end of the campaign, we all do our wrap up stuff. And Hemeta actually asks my character, Raela, he's old, he's sick, he asks her to kind of do the final, kill him.
00:56:51
Speaker
We wanted to die valiantly. The greatest warrior he ever met was what he said. Which was him. She did, she killed him. And the whole campaign ended, the whole thing ended on the scene of Matthew's character finally getting into Valhalla and he sat at the Great Hall and he sat at this table with his family that had long passed the spirits of
00:57:16
Speaker
Angaboda's children and Angaboda and Odin and Odin just raises his glass to him and he says right on time. And it ended. Damn. Oh, that will. I just got goosebumps. Damn. Oh, my God. Damn. That's amazing. Without weeping. Margaret was in the car earlier and she was like, I really want to tell the end of campaign to Jack, but I'm afraid I'm going to cry.
00:57:46
Speaker
It was such a powerful moment. You know, for all of our characters, it was a powerful moment. How Angaboda's story ended, it wasn't this, oh, she's a bad person, she's dead now. It was, she
00:58:02
Speaker
Who's the bad guy? There's no Odin was bad. You're always the bad guy to someone else. He was bad. There was many bad. It was just like When does the cycle of being bad stop? Yeah, like we can just kill to keep fucking like getting vengeance on people and we can still like one up each other to be like I could be worse than you I could do something more hateful than you can if that's the way we want to fucking keep going But it's like you basically stop the book like the book stops here. Yeah, the cycle ends here Yeah, like and you know
00:58:30
Speaker
she thanked you for that she was well she was also welcomed into the halls of Valhalla and um it was it was a very powerful moment yeah damn sorry i was speaking for an incredible long time no no no that was that was amazing it's fine absolutely wow thank you it was beautiful and you know well done to Jack it was it was yes massive yeah that's
00:58:50
Speaker
yeah did you like rework the whole of like gigantamakia so i sat there the whole time i was thinking yeah i'm not a lot about norse mythology i did you rework did you guys like go the whole campaign through gigantamakia i don't even know if you pronounce it to be honest but yeah you know what i mean yeah uh which one is this uh it's when in norse mythology that four killed all of the giants basically minus like um i'm gonna say loki
00:59:18
Speaker
So I didn't I didn't do that. I I did I did a bunch of research into like what's it called the pros ever and the The other one there's basically two there's not a huge amount of like actual written knowledge on nothing I did as much as I wanted to and I had an idea of a campaign and for me like like probably with you going into like Greek mythology like I'll take what I need for it to work for me and to work for my campaign and
00:59:46
Speaker
but I am more than happy because Abby was a big Norse mythology buff and I was like I'm gonna just tell you before the campaign starts like you're gonna hear names you're gonna hear places you're gonna hear like all of these things but just like maybe forget some bits that you've known because it's not gonna follow it perfectly canon um I just I just had this I don't know what it was
01:00:06
Speaker
Basically they need is the children of looking needed to be like banished from the realm before they become became too dangerous Which you know is cannon law for Odin, you know He sees for Confederate getting far too powerful and he's like not not having this gonna chain him up and that idea of the chains
01:00:22
Speaker
basically he sent them away and Tia they like all of the gods gave their strength to Tia they all ascended into like Valhalla to like get away because they were weak from like that ritual and he basically had a chain around his right arm a chain around his left arm a chain around his midriffed and he was just holding the children of Loki in Vanneheim and that was like the whole thing and like that god-given strength was supposed to be able to be enough
01:00:49
Speaker
for them to just wither away and die in Vanneheim, but...
01:00:54
Speaker
Anger Border feigned death, and she feigned killing herself, and basically found a way to feed them strength through belief, through people who were sick of the gods and things like that. And they would be sacrificing people, anything that they could find, to the children of Loki. They were gaining strength. They brought down Tia, and then she brought them all into Midgard. And then she was like, right, that's it. Let's go and kill Odin now. And basically, that was the whole story loop.
01:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredible. Really good. Damn. Yeah, that is cool. I love Norse mythology. So just just hearing that was like, yeah, this is this sounds so cool. Yeah. Wow. You guys, we can't tell you. Yeah, you can. Oh, God, I've got to think now.
Humorous D&D Moments
01:01:44
Speaker
Yeah. So this is our thing. Yeah. Yeah. Because we've talked about like some of our favorite moments in the campaign.
01:01:56
Speaker
That's probably, yeah, I think that's probably easier. I think, honestly for me, I think one of my favorites was just last, like Monday, when I sent you to, so I've made them gods at, it sounds crazy, but they're gods in like a bag of holding that is just for rats, and they were collecting rats with like infinite food. They put in this huge rat, it was called Gorlok.
01:02:23
Speaker
And now there's a whole culture inside and they're worshiped as like the divines. They were sent into the world and now there are these like gods in the pack and they were finding out what they were gods of.
01:02:35
Speaker
Obviously some of them are very unhappy about it because it had like stained glass windows of like life events for them that they didn't want to remember. And they were like, why the hell are they here? How the hell do you know this? I just had a great time DMing that. That was just, I think, but I will always think the last session was my favorite. That's a good sign that you're enjoying it. Yeah. I think.
01:03:04
Speaker
Oh, this is actually tough because I know we put you on the spot here. I'm sorry.
01:03:09
Speaker
Usually I say there was this interaction we had once where this joke came about of double elves and half elves and elves, right? Because everyone said they're half elf. My character, I play as an idiot. Like I play him as like, he is so stupid. He's got minus one intelligence, but I play him really dumb. Yeah, so I was talking to the paladin who was like his friend in the game. And then people are like, oh, I'm a half elf. And then I said to him, whilst we were both going to the toilet at the same time, I was like, yeah,
01:03:39
Speaker
I'm like double the half-elf size, am I not an elf then? And he was like, yeah, that might be true. And then one of the other characters, yeah, one of the other characters was like, yeah, but I'm an elf and I'm not double their size. I was like, oh, so I'm a double elf then. It makes sense. And that's been like written in law, like it's canonical that that exists.
01:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, um Yeah, that's like probably my favorite member of this campaign my favorite moment of dnd is like from when I started Would have to be so my other campaign on the mondays as well the one I started in um, yeah I have been missing a few sessions because obviously can't stay up really late anymore. Sometimes like it's just life and whatever but um, yeah so
01:04:28
Speaker
When my character died, firstly, I was really sad, but I didn't have the energy to be too sad because it was five in the morning. So I was just like, ah. It truly is. You either give it your fucking all or nothing. Yeah, I was like close to falling asleep.
Character Death and Resurrection
01:04:46
Speaker
And then it was really unlucky how I died as well. But yeah, so I died. And then I woke up as I shit.
01:04:53
Speaker
um i'm actually dead i've got to make a character well yeah well i had backup characters anyway so it was all right i'm just gonna make backstory but then the best moment came out two sessions later three no three sessions later so i had introduced my new character we had like two sessions and then there was like a time skip um because we developed in the city we were in when i came back to the session
01:05:21
Speaker
after a six month time skip they put up a statue of my character in the sea and I was like wow yeah I was like okay cool yeah I was like okay shit um that is sick uh yes that's probably my favorite moment like a whole statue oh yeah um I'd be crying
01:05:43
Speaker
Oh, that's really nice. Oh, I love that. I feel like being able to commemorate a character like that as well. And like, not just you guys, not just the party for like, you know, the world in a hall or wherever you were to be able to commemorate like that. Oh, that's very sweet. That's really, that's really nice. I like that. Yeah, definitely.
01:06:07
Speaker
I was a bit, yeah, I was a bit touchy, I was a bit sensitive, so I, you know, I was afraid from speaking for a bit. I was just like, ooh. Wow. Because it dawned to me as well, I was like, oh, my character's actually dead. I can't play him anymore. And it also meant that my little drake was left alone.
01:06:30
Speaker
um yeah luckily my new character has adopted that drake so i still have it um yeah uh yeah no that's definitely one of my favorite moments and i've said to you around before if my current character in his campaign dan if he were to die i don't know if i had the mental ability to stay in that session i think i'd call
01:06:50
Speaker
like I just straight up invested into this character like in terms of things like character death how do you guys like deal with it yeah how do you deal with it character death
01:07:17
Speaker
So I've always said that in terms of, I've got quite a few plays who are quite knowledgeable in D&D, especially one of them, Michael, is also a DM. So I've said that if a character death does happen, I would pause the session then and there, and I would be like, can you, Michael, help me go back and look at everything we've done to make sure every rule was run correctly? Because I would hate for someone to then have that character. It's not like we then realize, oh, I ran that rule wrong or that rule wasn't run correctly. Yeah. Oh, that's good of you. Just to make sure that everything is right.
01:07:46
Speaker
I don't like the idea of it being like a reverbified time runs out. I would then give that person an opportunity to finish, I guess, in that moment, have that dialogue with their character, finish it off, have that interaction. Because there's nothing worse than, oh, you're just dead now, sit there quietly. Just the dead body on the floor, baby. That is the worst. I think I would never run it like that. But it's have that, in a way, round out the character quicker than you would like, but in a way that is still satisfying. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
01:08:16
Speaker
Like do you guys like run like revivify rules or anything like that? I have changed things because I don't like the idea of it being 300 gold because just to bring a diamond back to bring. I like the idea of, for example, like a memory thing. I'm not quite sure how to run it, but a character sacrifices a memory of that person because then it becomes a role play scenario of the other characters talking about a favorite memory with the dead character.
01:08:42
Speaker
and then they lose that memory oh man that would kill me off that's how i would like to do it but figuring out the mechanics of that would be yeah yeah wait at the minute yeah oh man
01:09:01
Speaker
How do you guys run or do you avoid sort of character death? No. I am very much to me as a dungeon master. You know, I've got to have fun as well. And like I love running like tough combats. Like I will make sure that most of my combats are tough to the point where, you know, they can be deadly and characters can die. Yeah. Last campaign we did have two deaths, three deaths.
01:09:30
Speaker
But I do just run optional Revivify rules where you can, like the critical role, Matthew Mercer, people can help with the ritual. It can lower the DC. We leave it to the dice to decide if you come back or not. And at the beginning, I was very much like,
01:09:48
Speaker
Death has to be an option because then what's the point in combat? And I think what I actually meant was something needs to be lost. Something needs to be at stake. Otherwise, what is the point? Yeah. So because we play with different people, like for me, I understand that like Josh and Matthew, if their characters died, it would probably be like, OK.
01:10:14
Speaker
It happened, I'll make a new character. But for Abby and Margaret, they invest so much into the characters. They live and breed their characters, artwork of their characters. They think about what's going to happen to the characters after the campaign. If I was just to be like, that's it, dead and gone, to them, I feel like they would, well, Margaret's last character in the last campaign.
01:10:37
Speaker
uh she she made it unkillable almost because she was so worried about dying so when when uh abby died late in the game like died died died failed the revivify the dc was six and she rolled a five and she died like
01:10:53
Speaker
literally we were about to go to the last fight we're about to go to Valhalla and basically march on to you know the halls of Valhalla where Odin was to have that last fight with anger border there was like two sections left of the whole game she died in the fight with Fenrir and basically I said to her like
01:11:12
Speaker
look i don't want you to die at this point because there is literally no point bringing a new character in with like two other left that would just feel turbo bad for everyone at the table you me all your friends that want to like have this last fight with you so
01:11:28
Speaker
it was what can she lose what can we lose narratively where it's still going to be important to you so basically she was a vampire but she had found a way to like quell the thirst of a vampirism she'd found a way to like push it back and she heard there was a vampire hunter earlier in the campaign that wanted to kill her he realized that she wasn't dangerous he died she turned him she brought him back to life um and they were basically going to go around the whole of uh mid guard
01:11:59
Speaker
giving vampires the choice. You either get your thirst quelled or you die by our hand because you're dangerous. And in that moment, she was like, well, I've set up this entire campaign to fucking go around with Vinreal, the blood hunter.
01:12:14
Speaker
And do this thing could could he take my place and I was like sounds good to me So he basically came up and said goodbye to everyone. He like said his farewells He lived down next to her cried. There was obviously different places
01:12:30
Speaker
She came back to, like, finish the fight because he knew, like, I'm not as good of a fighter as her. I can't go to Valhalla with a group and fucking do this. She needs to go. So I was like, OK, well, what we're going to do is after my next campaign or like when we take a break or something, we're actually going to run a one shot where we go to the keeper of souls or whatever and bring back Vinreal. Yeah. So it's like we're going to have a one shot in that world where we go and get back this guy who sacrificed himself for Abby's character. And it's just like that sounds way better than I'd be just dying.
01:13:03
Speaker
So yeah, I think Death just being dead and that's it if you've got plays that enjoy that fair. Yeah Some plays just like yeah cool dead Hey, I got I got backup characters I can go I deserve it. Fuck me Like that's why they play the game but some people
01:13:25
Speaker
That's not what they want. And I'm easy. If you just want to die, fine. If you want to just lose something in place, like a memory, like you said, like an NPC, like something you've given up something, fine. As long as death has some weight. I think that leads me nicely into the next section.
Power Word Kill and Session Zero
01:13:46
Speaker
So we used to do a homebrew rule that is like so commonly used that it's basically become raw. We've actually, I've actually run out of struggling to find ones that are commonly used.
01:13:55
Speaker
So I've looked for questions. And one I found a lot online this week was someone asking, how do you use Power Word Kill against the player? And when I heard that question, I immediately had two thoughts. And I'm just curious to see if you, Jack, had the same ones that I did. OK. OK, go on. Mine was, if you're asking that question, you're not ready to run a Power Word Kill. But first it was, just do it.
01:14:39
Speaker
the danger of combat and the danger of someone being able to just be like dead you're dead you're dead yeah like that excites the fucking shit out of me as a dungeon master and that would excite the fuck out of my players yeah i know if i did that you'd all look at each other and go
01:14:49
Speaker
Like if you're wanting to use it, just do it.
01:14:54
Speaker
oh it would be it would be a mad scramble yeah like like these these like finger of death like if it reduces you to zero hit points disintegrate disintegrate yeah your ash and dust you're gone like these things are exciting because they build tension so i think for me if you want to do it do it but be ready to understand what's going to come after be understand that like
01:15:18
Speaker
Is everybody ready to deal with death? Is everybody ready to deal with character death? Like, do they understand what's going to come after? Because that's really fucking important when you're running like hard combats, I think. Yeah. That also comes back to what we talked about in our, I guess, in what we had our introductory talk, we were discussing what we were going to talk about in sort of
01:15:40
Speaker
but like the importance of a session zero and making sure that everyone at the table is sort of like feels included and is listened to essentially and I guess it's comfortable at the table and which is something we spoke about wanting to
01:15:54
Speaker
sort of talk about and express. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Oh, you do me. Me. Oh, my goodness. You know, it's no secret. I am a huge what we are huge advocates for session zeros. Right. Yeah. Like, especially if you're playing with people you've maybe not played with before, people you haven't played with in a long time, like, you know,
01:16:20
Speaker
we haven't had a proper session zero since like the last campaign because it's just the same people every single time granted jack jack goes in and he checks with people and makes sure that there's like nothing has changed yeah if that makes sense in terms of like is there something you don't want bringing up is there things that you don't want me to touch on but you know on a more mechanical level like well like you said
01:16:43
Speaker
having the rules for death set out like from session zero. So everyone knows like at that point, if people aren't comfortable with it, they can talk to their DM and see if there is something that can be worked out or they know that that's just maybe not the right table for them. You know? Yeah. Like setting out rules like that. Like, oh, my God. Rules like what do we do if someone can't turn up? Like we all know scheduling is the BBG of D&D. Big time. 100 percent.
01:17:11
Speaker
That's how it is. We're all old and we're all busy and it's hard. So what do you do when someone can't make it? What is people comfortable with? What are people not comfortable with? Session zeros are so important in my opinion.
01:17:27
Speaker
I may get a little ranty here, so tell me if I get a little ranty. You win! You win! Like, they used to be, and I think, I don't know if it's a generational thing, or just like, the times be changing, but like, people used to be like, oh, if you run a session zero, you're a fucking snowflake. And like, all this like, bullshit.
01:17:52
Speaker
And I don't understand personally where that comes from because all you're doing is we've all lived a life. We've all been through different things. Alex's lived a life, Ewan's lived a life, Margaret's lived a life, I've lived a life, but we've all lived completely different lives. What might matter to you, what might upset you, what might trigger you might not be something that upsets or triggers me.
01:18:13
Speaker
Me just knowing that like we come to D&D to have a good time and have a fun time Why would I ever want to bring you to Dungeons and Dragons for me to? Trigger you upset you make you have a shit time I don't turn my PC on and just play a game that I fucking hate like I I turn my PC on to play a game that I love I come to Dungeons and Dragons to play a game that I love if
01:18:34
Speaker
A session zero is to make sure that we're all gonna have a good time together and we're all not going to have a bad time together. That's all a session zero needs to be. It doesn't need to be anything more or less than that. And the people who have beef with session zeros, in my opinion, are fucking stupid.
01:18:49
Speaker
I know I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There it is. It needs to be nothing. It's just like we're just doing it to make sure everyone's just going to have a good time. Yeah. Because that's all we want to do. We don't block out four or five hours to just have a bad time. Yeah, true. True. What would be the point? Yeah, at least we fucking shouldn't. We got to work for that shit. This is not why we do that shit. I think as well, being an only online player currently,
01:19:18
Speaker
I think sessions is really important to get to know people. If you've joined a new campaign online, especially God, obviously in real life, like you might just might be random people, but more time than that is probably like a friends of friends, right? So you might know them. But online, when you when you join a campaign, it's very likely you don't know a single person. Yeah, sure. And all you talk to is the DM. So be it's a session is really important to get to know people, because
01:19:44
Speaker
You could hear this really cool campaign, be like, yeah, let's join. They don't do a session zero, but you're like, whatever, cool, fine. And then you go into session one, and then you realize, oh, this campaign's good, but I don't like some of the people I'm playing with, right? Oh my god, 100%. That would just ruin it. For my session zero of Joanne, when I first joined the group, so I was new. I think one other new person, maybe, I might be wrong,
01:20:12
Speaker
Was there another new person? God, I'm trying to think back. I don't know. No, it was just me. It was just me completely new. Yeah. Yeah. We had one of the new person. Yeah. So a like I'm fine with people. So like I was like, OK, cool. Like I'll just I'll figure out like I'll join or I'll talk to him a bit. We'll be fine. But yeah, like I know that.
01:20:41
Speaker
other people if you went into a campaign without session zero and didn't get to know people it just they i think that a they would struggle to play their characters up because yeah yeah the only reason i can play my character like i can is because i got to know everyone in session zero otherwise i wouldn't know how i because you get engaged on how people like react to yeah it's like how people react to my character like if if i knew everyone was really serious
01:21:11
Speaker
my character would be serious. If I knew everyone was like down for fun, which they are and it's great, then my character is not too serious. He will have serious moments, but you know, it's more relaxing that I don't have to be serious 100% of the time with my character and stuff. So I think that's why I definitely think session zero is really important because you have to get to know the vibe of the party and you know,
01:21:41
Speaker
You can also sort out, like, small things with your characters with the DM and stuff. Sessajira is just a good thing to have. I see no reason in not having it. It's just like... It can literally just be like, you know, if it's RL, order some fucking pizzas and get some drinks in and just hang out. Roll your stance and talk about what you're gonna play and, like, we can go over, like, you know, different campaign settings because...
01:22:04
Speaker
bringing like different homebrew rules, like, you know, maybe it's like a more of a gritty realistic campaign. So we'll do like some of the homebrew rules for that. Maybe it's just more of a stupid fun time. So we're a little bit more lax.
Finding the Right D&D Group
01:22:16
Speaker
We'll take these rules out, but like having a session zero to like go over those things and be like, these are the homebrew rules. So we get into the game.
01:22:23
Speaker
It's like we've done we've done remember that story that we did where it was like, um My dungeon master never told us about this homebrew rule until the moment I cast divine intervention and I rolled my d100 achieved divine intervention But my dungeon master was like no actually that's not how it works in my game and it's just like well What fun goes that i've already rolled it and i've already changed it and now you're changing it a year into the campaign It's just like these these are things that need to be done before we even start playing
01:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And like, don't get me wrong. You can still have a session zero and like get to meet people. And, you know, sometimes the first impression you have of someone is going to change, right? You can still get into a game after having a session zero and be like, I actually fucking really don't vibe with those these people. But you gave yourself the best chance to win the session zero.
01:23:13
Speaker
Sometimes tables just aren't right for you. Yeah, sometimes your players are not right for you Sometimes the DM is not right for you and that's so fucking normal I think that's something that isn't said enough in D&D is that like sometimes like the people you play with There's no other reason that you don't want to play with each other other than then you just don't like playing with each other It's so normal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
01:23:34
Speaker
I do think people feel like they're in dead to finish the campaign But like personally if I didn't like a campaign, I would just leave like i've done it before I've done it before Um, can you imagine helping yourself to like have like the time commitment just something like a long game of dnd Like a year long that you just didn't like and not enjoying all the people you're with like that's that fucking sucks for everyone Yeah, yeah, exactly. I guess
01:23:58
Speaker
on the flip side of that not to get too much into what exactly happened but we recently took two players well i say recently took two players out of our campaign yeah um but i think the the change like not saying anything was wrong at the time there were some people came to me and were like um we feel like overspoken and like we're being like pushed aside by these players why took it to them and
01:24:21
Speaker
things happen there. But I think the change in just the general vibe and some plays have come so much more out of the shell. Mike being one of them is so much more talkative now, so much more engaging in the campaign. And it's been amazing. And it's like, sometimes I guess it's much easier for me as a person who plays purely online with people I don't know, to be like, it's an awkward conversation, but I don't have to deal with them in my everyday life. I am so in a way glad that I have that. And I definitely
01:24:49
Speaker
I'm very much thankful I don't have to deal with people in my everyday life and ruin them from a campaign because that is stressed that I think if you can do that, amazing. And it does need to be done sometimes. But if that's something you can do, absolutely. I have more power to you for that because I would struggle with that.
01:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, like, first of all, good on you and good on your players for coming to you and being like, we feel like this, by the way, like they obviously trust you and the fact that you have enough communication between yourselves to be able to do that. So that's, that's, that's a green flag. That's really good on you. To make sure that that open line of communication is there for them, to let them know that they can come to you is actually a big thing that I think not every dungeon master
01:25:31
Speaker
for sure and you know you say it was like it was an awkward conversation it was horrible and it always is right it's never nice but you know I am also a firm believer of man yeah having to do it with like IRL with people maybe like you encounter in your like everyday life outside of D&D
01:25:50
Speaker
That is hard, but I'm also a firm believer of like things can just not be right and you can not want to play D&D with someone but still want to be their friend. Those two like are not mutually exclusive to one another. Not at all. I'm also a believer of if you are honest with someone and you communicate with them honestly, non-defensively, non-aggressively.
01:26:12
Speaker
and you level with them. If there's any hostility from that, then that's a fucking them problem, not a you problem. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I totally agree with that. Especially the point that you made about...
01:26:28
Speaker
like you can be like best friends with somebody even but when it comes to dungeons and dragons dungeons and dragons is such a i say dungeons dragons ttrpgs are such a specific thing like role playing and combat and things like that are something that you know you would never get an inkling of how somebody would do that in real life yeah so you could be best friends with somebody and know somebody
01:26:49
Speaker
Like as a complete stranger get together and actually enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons with the stranger more Yeah, because they just play the game the same way that you do. It's a very intimate thing Yeah, I agree very personal things like just because you are friends with somebody doesn't mean that they are going to Yeah
01:27:10
Speaker
Yeah, but good on you. Good on you for doing that. And I'm glad that your players feel better for that, too. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, I was. Yeah, it made the dynamic bad, to be fair. I do. But it was nice. Everyone started like fucking speaking more. I mean, yeah.
01:27:26
Speaker
my character speaks a lot anyways so i'm speaking about the same yeah give a take i'm with you on that one one's vibe is just not fucking right true and the the matter of fact is they have to leave the game and that's no one's fault no one it is simply just vibes is what it is
01:27:48
Speaker
Have you guys actually personally ever had your own encounters or horror stories or anything bad that happens D&D related to you a lot whilst your career in D&D, I guess?
01:28:03
Speaker
So like we've really just played with like our first group was like me, Margaret, Matthew and some other people. And then that quickly evolved into the group that we have now. There was like a few different tables and stuff like that.
01:28:21
Speaker
The one that I mentioned the other day like that just comes straight to mind is Matthew was our first ever dungeon master and we tried to play D&D with us and then a couple of people who were like yeah yeah we'll play whatever that's cool. Yeah and his like first like serious campaign too. His first ever serious campaign and
01:28:40
Speaker
We were in, like, there was, like, a thing that had recurred. There was, like, this green liquid that had come up really early in the campaign and then had just come up in, like, a dungeon. A story beat. A story beat. A connective, you know, like, oh, this and this. They're the same thing. Oh, my God. We're, like, telling a story. And I was like, oh, sick. This is, like, connected. Matthew's, like, telling a story. This is really cool. And one of the other players, literally just out loud in front of Matthew, in front of the rest of the table, just went, it's just shit storytelling, isn't it? And we were all, like,
01:29:10
Speaker
I fucking don't remember this at all. Yeah, but we mentioned it. We talked to him last night about it. Because we played last night and I was like, do you remember this Matthew? And he was like, yeah, I was so fucking pissed off. I was like, I'm not even remotely surprised to just say that out loud in front of your London master. That's fucking rude as fuck.
01:29:27
Speaker
It's awful. I know. That is a fucking, that is like a shot to the chest. That is horrible. That's horrible. That's so bad. Yeah. You know, in terms of like, so it's, I wouldn't even say that this is a horror story and like, yes, of course there has been like negative things. You're about to blame me. Yeah. Oh my God.
01:29:49
Speaker
like of course there's been like negative things that have happened but like the one that stands out to me is we um i'm sure you guys know this when you first start playing dnd all you want to do is play dnd all you want to do you want to be in 46 cameras
01:30:04
Speaker
And then just cram it into me, just inject it into my veins. It's all I want to do. Yeah. So we were going through one of them and much like you, Alex, we went on a Facebook group and we found a group like locally, a local group. So we were like, Huzzah! Huzzah! And you know what?
01:30:24
Speaker
The weirdest thing was we met up with them. We had like a first a couple of few meetings. So I do want to preface. They were kind of like three point five enjoyers. Yeah. But OK, we were so new to the game. We didn't really understand, you know,
01:30:41
Speaker
we say 3.5 enjoyers to you and you can get a picture of how they liked to play because we were so new and Matthew was our first DM and he fucking spoiled us like we didn't know that there was a distinction so we met up with them I do want to say incredible people yeah really nice people really nice people but we met up with them
01:31:00
Speaker
A couple red flags. One of them being, I was like, I was going to be a wood elf. And I wanted to have ginger hair. Not wrong with that. And the guy was like, well, that's ridiculous. A wood elf would never have ginger hair. They would have black hair only. I've ordered you a mini and she has black hair. And I was like.
01:31:19
Speaker
all right you know when you just want to do something you don't see the red flags yeah yeah yeah to piggyback off that i was playing a dwarven rune knight fighter and i was like
01:31:37
Speaker
I won't like, cause you know, we, we, we, we don't mind doing like character voices. It's a good distinguish, especially like at the table to be like, I'm talking to my character. I'm not, it's not a mandatory at our table. I don't give a fuck as I care more about you acting as your player than talking in the voice. That's not a big thing, but you know, like, I like to put on voices and stuff like that. And I was, I was like, I can do a good Scottish accent. I was, I was like, just so you know, I'm going to do a Scottish accent. So it's not a surprise at the table. And he was like, no.
01:32:05
Speaker
And I was like, what do you mean, though? And he was like, you have to have a Norse accent because that's just how it is. And I was like, I can't really do a Norse accent. And he was like, well, look, you can do a Scottish accent. You can do a Scottish accent, but everyone will think you're dumb and I'll probably have to reduce your intelligence score. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, wow. That's.
01:32:32
Speaker
Unbelievably, we were like, right? We were like, let's play. I'm in, count me in. So we met up with them like a few times and the vibes fucking great. The vibes were really good. And then we got to the game and then all of this shit that was never discussed, like, I don't know if you guys do encumbrance, but he ran encumbrance and, um,
01:32:59
Speaker
we don't like encumbrance especially when you have to say you drop your pack before the combat starts and if you don't say it before the combat starts you have to use your action to drop your pack and if you don't you have half movement yeah it was just like you all you didn't tell me before again you told me this is as i've turned up and his combat started so we had to sit there and we had to like write down all of our encumbrance and get our calculators out and do all this and then like
01:33:25
Speaker
I don't know. It immediately because none of that was because we didn't have a proper sessions era. We just met up for some milkshakes and vibes. Yeah. When we actually got into the game, we realized that it was fucking absolutely certainly nothing that we wanted to play. And then that was the one session and that was it. So it's not really a horror story, but I feel like it's a it's a it happens to people more often than not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will say if people are looking for a group on Facebook,
01:33:55
Speaker
the Dimension 20 fan pages I've advertised them multiple times for plays and never like I've had some amazing people from there because it's really diverse people there's like I think Dimension 20 do such a great job of having a diverse cast having such a variety of people yeah that people the fans are just great I've got so many like my entire Wednesday group is recruited solely from
01:34:17
Speaker
uh dimension 20 groups and they're amazing really nice oh man really good i will definitely take a look at that and i'll definitely let people know because man you know people always looking for games of dnd always 100% this is just the dimension 20 facebook page yeah there's like i think looks like dice posting or it's like they always like give it a the name of whatever season they're doing i think it's like
01:34:40
Speaker
junior year posting. It's something like that now at the minute. Got you. I'll take a look. That's that's fucking great. Thank you. Really good. Yeah. As someone from from Facebook group chats, avoid Facebook group chats. It's my advice. For real.
01:34:55
Speaker
I got lucky. People don't get lucky on Facebook group chats. It wasn't just like, you know how you were like, oh, the Dimension 21. It was just like in general, like local, you know, we just happened to be in the same town.
01:35:16
Speaker
the red flags speak enough but how are you supposed to know the red flags when you don't have any experience with it right? When you don't know what a red flag is or isn't because you know you're still figuring out like what you do and don't enjoy at the table you're still figuring out that you're like maybe like a little bit more of a lax 5e time not a like crunchy 3.5 sort of time and also like i don't know like
01:35:40
Speaker
roleplay I think for a lot of people like roleplay is a big make or break like combat can be combat and you can grow to love a certain style of combat but like if you're uncomfortable during roleplay and what people like
01:35:54
Speaker
enjoy there. I think that's a big make-or-breaker for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why it's important. Like, you know, like we like Lich, please. And us Eldritch Poblas, we go over things like horror stories. And I think it's important to highlight like that these things happen. And then for people, I mean, I'm sure so many new people watch your podcast and they learn from hearing these horror stories. Okay. Well, maybe this is a fucking red flag. It's so important to highlight these things.
01:36:23
Speaker
Even maybe, there's one thing that we say quite a lot is your first group is probably not going to be your forever group. Because TTRPGs are such a curated thing, like role play and things like that, you're going to get to the table, start to figure out what you do and don't enjoy, and then you can probably find a table that fits you far better after that. There are people that are lucky and fall into a fucking group, and they love it, and it's exactly what they want and all that stuff.
01:36:52
Speaker
Rarely is your first group, your forever group. And I think a lot of people get turned off being like, well, I guess D&D is just not for me. It's just like, no, you just were unlucky. You just didn't get exactly what you wanted from this first group. But there will be a group out there that does it exactly like how you want. Yeah.
Railroading vs Storytelling
01:37:11
Speaker
Speaking of horror stories and when we read our horror stories,
01:37:14
Speaker
What an amazingly smooth transition by the way. We have a list of like our worst story and like our tamest. Our tamest we've read is I think it was just basically a new DM and this player who was like an experienced DM just posted the story and was just like just shitting on them and it's like that's it's just
01:37:37
Speaker
It's just a new inexperienced DM. You guys might have read it, but the DM had turned it to microtransactions and was making a player pay them actual money to come back to life.
01:38:06
Speaker
I don't know if we've read it actually on our podcast but I have definitely read that story before. I thought it was mental. That was rough and I said to you I lost a few weeks ago I think.
01:38:21
Speaker
Um, that person who posted that story had more stories from that campaign, um, in which we couldn't read on the podcast because it's wild. Um, yeah. So this one's a horror story, right? But it's, it's kind of like advice. I'd say the time it was, um, should I be worried about this game? Uh, now it's a great question. Um,
01:38:48
Speaker
Good day. I guess we'll find out. So it's from the player.
01:38:55
Speaker
On a burner because I don't want to be, I want to be discreet as possible since his campaign is a homebrew and recognizable to any members. This whole campaign started a couple of months ago, around late December of last year or early September. I can't quite remember. It was all going pretty well. The only thing that really bothered me was the DM NPC. Always, always bothers people. Yeah. Here we go.
01:39:19
Speaker
They even put brackets. I know that should have been the first red flag. So the DM NPC, the whole story revolved around for the entire first part of the session, I guess, campaign is what they meant. I didn't dislike him as a character completely, but I would have appreciated if not all our consequences affected his life in some way that we had to quickly fix.
01:39:41
Speaker
After the boss fight to end this part of the session, I think it all collectively went rather well. We all took a break to give a DM some time to write a new story for us, new adventures and so on and so forth.
01:39:54
Speaker
This is when, at least for me, the problems began. So this part of the session is revolving around my character's backstory. My character found out something that was incredibly important to them, slash triggering, something to drive them to do more in the upcoming story. I didn't have a problem with that. It was the DM NPC that gave me as what I could describe as an illusion of choice. One really dumb answer, which would get rid of the information I got as a character or something that could affect the DM PC later on in the story.
01:40:21
Speaker
This was when I felt like they had already written the whole storyline. I wasn't too entirely pleased with the first session, I was being honest, and I have theories of what they're going to do to my character and quite frankly, I'm a little afraid.
01:40:33
Speaker
A couple of other things that I've been noticing is railroading players when it comes to their actions, shutting down ideas without a second thought. I'm not really confrontational what our DM is. I've been vocal to one player about my concerns, but either way, I'm still scared to say anything in a way that will come across to the DM and upset them. But the more I sit here and marinate on it, the more I'm dreading going to this campaign and playing it. What should I do?
01:40:57
Speaker
yeah i mean leave yes yes you probably should leave but the thing is right there's there's there's you know a saying that we always go on about which is just like i don't know if you want to be a dungeon master or you would just prefer to be an author yeah because if you if you have
01:41:23
Speaker
as a dungeon master you can be you know some people aren't great with change some people are a little bit more like rigid with the storytelling they struggle to improvise and things like that and that's fine as long as your players know that that's the case if you're like yeah it's gonna be like this like open world and free choice and I'm gonna give you like decisions to make and it's just like if you are giving me the illusion of choice yeah it's already decided
01:41:43
Speaker
that is that is the time where you shouldn't be a dungeon master you should just write a book because what is the point in getting everybody in a room to ask a question that you already know the answer to yeah and and you know like it sounds like OP obvious it's obvious to OP that this is what's going on right like yeah like it's like speculation it's like quite obvious that this has been going on like you know
01:42:09
Speaker
I'm a certain believer of there is a difference between railroading and actually just like telling a story and leading your players. But man, one of the biggest things is the second that your players think that you're railroading them, then it's over, isn't it? Yeah, it's tough for them to think that you have a choice when you don't. Yeah.
01:42:29
Speaker
There's many like this and especially when you're inserting yourself as a prominent DM PC straight away And then not giving anyone a choice. It's like
01:42:40
Speaker
Do you just want to be a player or do you want to just be an author? Because I don't know if it's truly working out. Yeah. I want to know what they mean by, you know how in the beginning they were like, everything that we do impacts the NPC. Do you think they mean, what do you think they mean by that?
01:43:03
Speaker
That's a great question. I don't think it explains this. It could be the adversaries, I don't know. Yeah, it is very likely, and just going off what they were in here, is that the story is probably in the back of the DO's head about his character, and they just happen to be there.
01:43:28
Speaker
Who the fuck is that fun for? Who's that fun for? There's not over any blizz. Maybe a DM. Maybe, but definitely not the players. The DM's on the fucking radar. They're playing, they're DMing, they're telling the story, no one can change it. What's your guy's opinion on that? What do you think? Joanne, you can go. I think first,
01:43:58
Speaker
I said, we say it every time, but like most of these stories could be resolved with communication. I think there should have been communication. I think, oh, when you started to specting railroading, you should have been like, he's like, we are not happy with it. As a group gone, we are not happy with this because then the DM has no choice but to change or they lose their story. Yeah. Like that's the decision you need to give. Communicate. I don't know. But yeah, I think leave. I think the group needs to come to a given as a group, like
01:44:28
Speaker
We want like this needs to change or we're leaving and then you couldn't leave as a group and pay play together or find another DM or yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So no, I agree. I tend to like to read the comments like yeah. Yeah. And usually on.
01:44:46
Speaker
Now, I don't know if you use the subreddit for it, the D&D Horror Story subreddit. I'm sure you do, or just search on Reddit or whatever. But usually, when I read stuff, the comments just hate the DM all the time.
01:45:00
Speaker
I think this is the first time in which I've read comments where they've just gone, just speak to him. It's the most reasonable comments I've ever seen on a post. In that situation, if you just go to the dungeon master and you literally air out those grievances and air out those concerns of being like, it feels like we don't really have a choice here. And it's already written and the dungeon master goes, yeah, fair enough. It's like,
01:45:28
Speaker
Yeah, like cool. I find that in a lot of these, like the person like OP who has the grievances, they've actually articulated perfectly what the issue is. And yeah, nine times out of 10, sending that exact message to the DS will probably resolve. Yes, 100 percent. Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah, I feel like OP always has their answer. But, you know, it's just as we said before, it's a fucking scary thing.
01:45:56
Speaker
talking to people. It truly is no matter how close you are with them or not. I'm really really surprised that everyone's saying just speak to him. Honestly we do an advice section where like subscribers can send in advice and 99% of the time they put in the conclusion to their own advice. You said it best already. All you need to do is just
01:46:24
Speaker
talk to them make sure that you know you say clearly it's not adversarial it's not like you started off with I'm really enjoying it I want to keep playing but there's just these few things like is there any chance we can like talk about it it's like that'll probably do you don't probably need to do much more than that that's all you can do you have to open that line of communication first for it to get solved yeah for real yeah I mean it's just a lost call
01:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually, it's wild though. And you go, you go. Oh, cool. I was gonna say it's wild. The first comment even says like,
01:47:01
Speaker
definitely talk to him or just politely bow out of it like i just i'm not sure i'm on the right subreddit like that's incredibly reasonable yeah well there you go yeah and you know what so many people i notice when you read the comments on these things so many people are like uh oh people are just gonna tell you to talk to him and uh it's really bad advice but it's like
01:47:30
Speaker
Man, what are the fuckin' advices there? Like, we always say, how can you expect someone to change if they don't know? If they don't know it's a problem, how can they do anything about it? And granted, there's, of course, caveats to that, right? Like, if someone is intentionally being an asshole, or someone's intentionally being X, Y, and Z, then, you know, they mean to do it. But something like this, you know, it sounds fucking annoying. But they might just not know it's annoying, so talk to them? Yeah, they might just not know.
01:47:58
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, they know it's an island they could don't go before. On railroading as well, I think like a player of mine in my Wednesday campaign was running a one shot and they were like, how do I get my place to do this thing I needed to do, but without like.
01:48:15
Speaker
forcing them into it. You need to remember that at the end of the day, D&D is a game. If you want your players to do something, you can just communicate them as yourself. Like, hi, like just, if you can just do this one thing for me, it'll open up the story and we can do so much more.
01:48:30
Speaker
You can't just tell your players to do something. You have a DM to make things easier on yourself. Like it's a game guys. Like just do this one thing with the story. It'd be great afterwards. You can do what you want. Of course. Oh my gosh. Of course. And that that exactly that you win is something that isn't said enough.
01:48:46
Speaker
Like, the DM being able to just say above game, like, hey, just fucking do this thing. Like, you're allowed to do that. That's not railroading. That's not metagaming. And you have to have a certain level of party buy-in, right? Like, I always say, as D&D players, you have to suspend your disbelief to a degree, right? Just, you know that you're together as human beings at the game, and you have to do the thing.
01:49:14
Speaker
Right. And I think there's one place in Dungeons and Dragons where railroading is absolutely 100% fine. And it's in a one shot. Like we, and I've got this story to tell and we're not going to do it again. So by the end, we need to be in this position. So just fucking take the bit and do the thing. It's like in a one shot. That's fine. But I do think a lot of people are so scared to railroad them because of all of this discourse online and stuff like that about, about railroading. But it's like Margaret said,
01:49:44
Speaker
like to follow to piggyback on that point like your players most of the time oh sorry my dog sneezed most of the time 99% of the time your players actually want to play the session that the dungeon master has planned so most of the time they're just gonna do it like if you give them the bait they're gonna do it
01:50:05
Speaker
And that's not railroading. That's telling a story. Dungeons and Dragons and TT happy Gs are a collaborative storytelling game. So let's collaborate together and tell the story. Let's collaborate together and play the game. That's not really what it definitely agreed. No, definitely. I think I, on my one shot as well, I'm pretty sure I kept thinking that you got to go to the basement because they were upstairs and I was just like, oh, the basement seems nice. Hmm.
01:50:39
Speaker
they made like four or five perception checks to smell or see things and it's just like you smell wine you smell a lot of wine from downstairs
01:50:52
Speaker
You hear the dance music? Yeah and then they explored like every other room. Don't get me wrong, I wrote a lot of rooms. It's kind of my fault but they got into the part where there was like a bunch of like people to speak to and then I was looking at the time I was like oh one of them spoke to them just having a conversation was like yeah the basement yeah where the vault is I just said it as the characters yeah
01:51:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah, let's go downstairs like yes I feel like as well like sorry. I I don't know if you can hear our dogs scream crying in the background There's always like a point where he's like you've had enough time away from me Every time I feel like you know how you said like
01:51:44
Speaker
um like people say i'm scared of railroading them and i think as human beings in everything but you know also in dnd we're scared of this like invisible person that's judging us right like because we see the discourse online we see people on the reddit being like
01:52:01
Speaker
Oh, railroading's this and railroading's that. And we build this invisible person in our mind who's judging us when actually fucking no one's judging you. Apart from yourself. That can be said about anything in life. It can even be like, I see a future where I think that somebody's judging me. It's just like, we haven't fucking got that. Yeah, no one's judging you.
Overcoming Gameplay Fear
01:52:23
Speaker
We haven't got that yet. No one's judging you. And if your players have a problem,
01:52:28
Speaker
uh they'll tell you yeah they will yeah they'll tell you yeah you guys definitely would yeah oh yeah 100 yeah yeah oh no 100 yeah we would yeah and i think and this might be controversial i think for online players right
01:52:46
Speaker
And this is going to only work with online players. You can't do this in person. If you really don't want to speak to someone and you really don't like their campaign, just block them. Just block them. If they can't get a hold of you, they know you're not going to be there. They just get someone new, right? Especially, especially if like the idea of like your safety or like that, you know, someone could like bombard you or someone could post about you. Just block them. Say you're leaving, leave and never come back. Yeah. Exactly.
01:53:20
Speaker
Yeah, I've left the whole server by just blocking everything. I blocked the own server and admins.
01:53:27
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I'm gone. Like I'm out of here. And you know what? There's nothing more annoying and being so real in our Lord age of 20, 24. Like online discourse is scary. Like people have to be able to be in contact with you.
01:53:46
Speaker
So fucking easily is scary people's access to you scary and there's nothing more stressful than Thinking something has happened and then seeing like your phone blow up and seeing these things Safeguard up here. Yeah We never see you
01:54:17
Speaker
So I have one final question. There's something I do which I call magpying is which when I see something nice and shiny another DM does I just take it. So is there anything like that that you've done? I think for me it's the thing that Matt Mercer does is where he will go give me a deception
01:54:35
Speaker
or a persuasion check and don't say which. And I love that. I've taken it. Amazing. Yes, we do that, too, because, man, I I love the bamboozled. Oh, I love that one. It's so good. Yeah, that's a brilliant rule because if you're like, oh, yeah, I'll roll deception. It's like, well, my character might not know you're lying, but I now 100 percent know that you're lying. So I think that's that is a really good one. Just like roll the dice. Don't tell them. Just tell them it's all. That's a good. That's a good one. I really like that one. I saw.
DM Techniques and Tools
01:55:06
Speaker
for me like again where where i feel like i excel is with improvisation and i'm happy like i'm really like telling a story i like homebrew my own stories and stuff like that that's where i excel as a dungeon master in terms of like
01:55:23
Speaker
rules and stuff like that. I don't really come up with that many of my own. I just steal them. I remember a brilliant one that I will never ever fucking and I have no shame. I'll steal it and I got it from here. Don't care. As long as it better. So the best one that I ever took was XP to level three. The YouTuber Jake. I don't know if you know him, but he has like a homebrew rule that he implements and he has an advantage disadvantage token.
01:55:49
Speaker
And we talk about it on our table all the time. Instead of inspiration, because inspiration is great, but a lot of people award inspiration for great role play or something like that. And let's just say Margaret role play is really well at the table. And I'm like, that was brilliant, Margaret. Have some inspiration. And then Josh role play is really well. But I just didn't think to give inspiration. He's like, why didn't I get inspiration? Was I not role playing well enough? Is there a problem? Does Jack not like me? Does Jack hate me?
01:56:15
Speaker
It's like, and then all of these things can stem from that. So what the thing is, is you have a token, on one side it has an A, on one side it has a D. At the beginning of every session, the advantage is up. At any point where you fail a skill check, anything like that, you can flip the token over and just gain advantage on the roll. And then at any point after that, while your disadvantage is up, I can make you use it.
01:56:38
Speaker
So if I need you to fail a saving throw or something like that, I'm like, use your disadvantage and flip it back over to advantage. So then they can then use the advantage again. And it can also work really well if someone's having a shitter, which players do, like if Margaret's rolling like shit. You and rolling three natural ones first. Like absolute shit. And they've already failed something. I'll just be like, just use your disadvantage. It gives us the pity disadvantage.
01:57:05
Speaker
Roll it again, you've already failed, but then your advantage is up. So it's like giving back to the player. So they might be able to succeed. That's really good. I like that a lot. That is interesting. Yeah, it's really good. I stole that 100% from Jake from XP to level three. And I think like as dungeon masters, we're very much, we're not alone, but you know, like we're the only dungeon master at the table. So we need to look out for each other. So if you've got a good role, I'll, if you're okay with me using it, I'm fine and you can use anything that I do.
01:57:34
Speaker
And that's very much like, share these things. Yeah, I love that. Magpying, did you call it? I love that. It's a problem. Yeah, magpying. Oh, I love that. That is such a wonderful, wonderful question. That's great. Yeah. Yeah.
01:57:46
Speaker
One thing I've taken from Abrilla is she always goes, how is your character feeling? And I've taken that without a doubt. It's so good. It's such an amazing question. That is, oh my God. So I DMed very briefly. I think it's six sessions briefly. And it was after we watched Exandria Unlimited where Abrilla DMed for them.
01:58:14
Speaker
I honestly, I noticed the exact same thing. She would so often go, what's your character feeling right now? How does that make your character feel? What an incredible question. Such a fucking great question. I'm not kidding you. That is the advice. You know, I'm sure you guys hear this all the time. People saying, how do I get like the quieter person to role play? How do I get into role play? That is such an incredible question to ask. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we're on the same wave. Yeah.
01:58:40
Speaker
I mean, I think we've stolen quite a few things to be fair. I personally have already stolen things for my campaign. Yeah, like all of the ship combat rules are stolen. Yeah, like, I think we said we talked about this recently, I don't know if we're gonna implement it. So we had a guest, must have been a while ago now, that talked about inspiration, but I think it was Taran that might have said it.
01:59:05
Speaker
When you get inspiration, you don't use it for yourself. You use it when someone else is having a really good moment for them. You can never use inspiration. And it's like, what was it? Give them a natural 20 on something. Yes, I think it was in Countersmiths at this. Yeah, it was, yeah. Inspiration was not advantage. It was a natural 20, but you couldn't use it for yourself. So if your friend was trying to get something done, you could give them a natural 20, something they possibly succeeded. But you had to narrate how
01:59:35
Speaker
that your character was giving them that natural 20. Yeah. Oh, my God. What an incredible one. Be able to tie it into like actual in game shit. I love that. That's that's very that's brilliant. That's a really good one. You say, oh, we are using that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We're using that. It's such a fun one. Yeah. I like that.
01:59:54
Speaker
I think the only role I have actually come up with by myself and it's a very small one is I was playing a lot of divinity originals in two. I just finished it. Yes. You know, like in combat, you get like extra damage when you're like above somebody and you get like, yeah, I changed it to because we use tail spying. So like so do we.
02:00:24
Speaker
I love to. Amazing. That's why it's so good. So you can obviously have height differences in maps. It doesn't really work with top-down maps unless you know where the high ground is. Basically, if you have high ground on somebody, you get to roll an extra D4 on your attack. If you have low ground against somebody, you roll a negative D4. So it's just a little bit, but it's definitely made the maps a little bit more dynamic. People have been searching for the high ground. People have been like, I need to get at least on level with this, or this person's going to be able to hit me easier.
02:00:53
Speaker
And it's made the maps more interesting to be honest. Agreed. Yeah. Nice. And I didn't even, I didn't even come up with myself. I stole that. That's how it is. And I feel like that's how you learn that, you know, you hear, it's like, you know.
02:01:08
Speaker
I was gonna say wives tales. That's not the right term. But you know, you take things that work and that inspire you and then someone else will hear it and then go from there. You know what I mean? That's the joy of D&D and you know, I think I'm not a dream.
02:01:26
Speaker
But you can still enjoy the rules that we implement. Yeah. And like one thing that I saw that, you know, I kind of took when I built my most recent character, it was actually someone in our community. Her name is Dana's Lit List. She's a book talker. And she actually made as a gift for me a mood board for my character in that campaign.
02:01:44
Speaker
And ever since then, I'm like, well, I'm going to make a fucking mood board for my characters. Every character. Oh my God. Every character from now on. I'm going to make a mood board for them. Like having like, it's like a three by three grade. Nine images.
02:02:00
Speaker
nine images and um it's just like pillars of what's really important to my character and if i'm ever doubting if i'm taking my character maybe in a way that you know if i'm ever doubting anything i look at the mood board and i go that's my fucking bitch right there
02:02:15
Speaker
These are the fundamentals, these are the things that matter to my character. And like, sometimes you do get a little bit off course and you get a lot of tracks. So like refreshing your memory of things, like the pillars that are important is awesome. That's something that I took from someone in the community, which for a player, I would always recommend. So much, so much fun. That's a very cool idea.
02:02:38
Speaker
So how do you think, so you've briefly mentioned that how you think Talespire has like changed your games. I think we would say Talespire was completely like before combat was kind of like, it was something we did, but it was kind of like a slog and it wasn't as fun for everyone. But Talespire completely changed that. Like I think our first session, we normally go for three hours, seven to 10.
02:03:00
Speaker
but I think we ran for like six hours and it was like half 11 before anyone noticed what time it was. And we were like, oh shit, we've overran, but we'll finish the combat. It just changed our combat, like the way we run it completely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've always used Talespire. Well, Matthew used to just get, just have like top down like maps. So one thing, I'm just going to just say hello to my dog because he's screaming. It's completely fine.
02:03:28
Speaker
He's fucking losing his mind out there. I do want to say. Yeah, Matthew used to, when he DM'd for us, he subscribed to loads of like people's Patreons who had loads of YouTubers getting sponsored by it at the minute. It's like a, it's a funny name, but they just do like, like hundreds of thousands of different maps. Yeah. But basically like some of them are insanely talented. Some of the Patreons are amazing. Oh my God.
02:03:56
Speaker
Incredible. And he I'm not kidding you, he would load us up on Photoshop. He had custom icons for us and he just moved us around in Photoshop like on the map. And seriously, for our first game, it was it was great for us, honestly. And then you move straight into using Tailspire like immediately, right?
02:04:15
Speaker
I started with Sales Buyer and we've never done anything else, I don't think. Well, we did try Dungeon Alchemist, actually. Well, Dungeon Alchemist, I will say Dungeon Alchemist will be amazing at some point. But right now, I think it's still like in its early stages. It is gorgeous, though. It looks stunning. And like the fact that you can just like click and drag and then it's just like there's a crypt.
02:04:37
Speaker
yeah it's done and it's like fully decorated inside i think is amazing it's like it doesn't have the beauty of tales buyer i think is the area of effect that you can like lock and place and move around like if someone's got spirit guardians on them and they like move and you can just move the dome with them it's like for things like that cones area of effects
02:04:59
Speaker
is so good i don't think i could go to any other like um any other system until they have that in it i mean and it's it's still in early access am i right in thinking yes yeah i think so yeah for early access it's incredible it's very good and how long have you guys been using it for
02:05:19
Speaker
a while now uh six months six six seven months yeah yeah yeah it's like in the time that we started using it which was maybe like a year and a half two and a half years ago wow it has really come along i bet it's even changed since you guys started using it
02:05:36
Speaker
you know how you can like lock the domes and things like that at the beginning you couldn't do that you could put it down but you couldn't lock it and you couldn't move it so like they're making like all the new aberration like types the ship types all the modern types of terrain and all of those things where you can lock and move domes and circles and stuff like that that's all been added yeah so they're working on it a lot and they listen to community feedback too
02:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, tell us why it's great as well. Because I like it as well because stuff in the map that Yuan just lets us take and just use. I think two sessions, three sessions ago, we were in a combat in like a goblin cave. There was chains off the wall and I just said, yeah, I want to take them. I just want the chains.
02:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, if I can take the chains, I was like, thanks. Yeah, I want to hit somebody with that chair. Yeah, tell us why it slaps. I love it. Do you want to know my only gripe? Oh, I've got one gripe. My only gripe is it's collision is so sensitive. And there's sometimes where you like clip and then your character will just fucking disappear. Yeah, yeah.
02:06:55
Speaker
If they can just start a bit of the collision out, I think it'll be perfect. Agreed. We used Above VTT for a long time. It is a Patreon-based... It's a Google extension that's free and links in directly with DD Beyond. And it is infinitely better than the one that they've got currently. It's so good.
02:07:21
Speaker
It's got the area of effect spelled AOE things. You can pull monsters directly from D&D and beyond. Oh nice. You can get all this stuff up. It's very good. Genuinely incredible. What did you say? YouTube map say? Above VTT. Above VTT. It's really quite good. Doesn't? For free, yeah. Yeah.
02:07:42
Speaker
There's a few like that as well that I've used in my previous experiences. Owl Bear Rodeo is pretty good. What did I use?
02:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, that one's good. People like that. Yeah. And I see the clip. Now, I think it's called, I don't know if this is Dungeon Alchemist. It might be similar, because I know alchemy is in the name, where it uses AI to give you your map.
02:08:15
Speaker
That's yeah, that's like it is done. Yeah. Yeah. Wild. Wild. Yeah. It looks insane. You just you just click like, I don't know, like pack or like a bazaar or something like that. And you just drag a number of squares that you want it and it creates it. Populates it. Populates it has all of the like bits and bobs and knickknacks and stuff like that that you want in it. And it is unbelievable. It's just at the minute like
02:08:41
Speaker
It's really like primitive. It doesn't even have a grid. I don't think you can't like on like squares and stuff like that I do think eventually it'll be The biggest issue was like the lack of like actual minis, you know in tell spy there's a million billion minis Yeah, and you can import your own minis. Yeah
02:09:02
Speaker
I do think with Dungeon Alchemist you can import your own minis, but you know, just the stock ones that are there, there wasn't a big range. I think that was the issue. There was like four enemies or something like that. Yeah. You know, I was like, there's like a rabid dog and there was like a zombie on the map. And I'm like, just use your imagination, I guess. You know, like it was just a little too early access for me right now. But I do think, yeah, do check it out there for real.
02:09:31
Speaker
Oh yeah, a hundred percent, yeah. I mean, I actually, until I played with Johan's campaign, I'd never used, well, like a month or two before, I'd never used
Creative Combat and Strategies
02:09:40
Speaker
maps. My first campaign was Imagination Only. It was just uncool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, my mind went crazy. Like, I was making up so much shit in my head, but yeah, yeah, I've never used...
02:09:53
Speaker
Yeah. Some people go hard for the theory of the mind. There's a few people in our community that ride or die, like just the theory of the mind. Because they think that like, because some people don't really take the combat as seriously. And they don't want it to be as big of a part of the game. It's more for like dramatic effect thematics and stuff like that. And I think if that's the case, just rocking theory of the mind is great. But I think when you want to like run really tough combats and like really like
02:10:23
Speaker
specific monsters that do specific things and have specific like abilities like push pull like lock you in place and things like that i think spacing is really important yeah for me anyways yeah i mean how how did you find theater of the mind alex how did you find that
02:10:38
Speaker
Honestly, it made me think of, so as I was saying earlier, I always find myself more creative with martial types. It makes you think so different about combat, like an insane amount different, because you can't see any of the enemies. So like in my head, there would just be like, oh, I know where everyone,
02:11:05
Speaker
on my side is, because we've talked about where we're standing, don't know where the others are. And then the deal will give you a piece of information like, okay, cool. So there's a goblin over there. And there's like goblin there, there's a goblin there, cool. And piece it together. And then I'll just be like, oh,
02:11:23
Speaker
Stick me in a place where all of them are lined up for my dragon's breath. And they'd be like, cool. Yeah, just right there. But you'll get a teammate. I was like, ah, they'll be fine. Yeah, definitely makes you think differently. Combat is a lot different than obviously using maps. With maps and stuff, if I see something, I'm just going to run it and kill it.
02:11:53
Speaker
with fear of mine it's like oh I might not see everything maybe play it smart I never play it smart I will just kill things but like it makes me think more yeah it was cool yeah it was a bit yeah yeah I would say I run maps for someone like you because you are so creative in combat
02:12:18
Speaker
to give you that visualization of oh there's a wall there i can slam them against that wall oh yeah yeah i can pull that wall down on the wall i want to give you that
02:12:27
Speaker
The visualization of it gives you more options of things to do because you're crazy in combat. We had a three-hour combat where you didn't use your axe once. Actually one of our players notes was literally like the next session was like Alex used his axe.
02:12:48
Speaker
I hate, I hate using my weapons because I hate rolling the same dice every time I hit something. I want to do something else, right? I just bought dice, let me roll them.
02:13:00
Speaker
Like the chair. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I've jumped on someone with my shield pointed down on them. Like when they're prone on the floor, I've like strangled someone with a belt and then tried to pull them like in half. I just do shit, man. Like it's just bad.
02:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's just honestly I do I you know how you're like I prefer playing a marshal because I can be more creative with it I agree. I think with spells and don't get me wrong. I do love spells as well I'm I'm Only now getting to grips with them because obviously I played a moon druid barbarian for ages I had fucking no spells to deal with
02:13:41
Speaker
Now I play a sword but there is more to deal with I agree as a marshal. I remember in my very first campaign I played a berserker barbarian We were fighting a Balgura and it was this big fucking massive thing and it kept Moving away. So I was like, can I just stick my sword into it and just ride it and just stay on it and the DM was like Yeah
02:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, I do like yeah, and I think another good thing like that tail spider and things like that is great for is Rogues because physical things for them to see that they can like hide behind or potentially use this cover to then peek out from and get snake attack and
02:14:30
Speaker
is really helpful. And, you know, then you can make it a little bit like, oh, this one's a little bit more sparse. I'm going to use my movement to get over to the other side of the map because that's the only place where cover is and things like that. It allows you to especially for line of sight things. It's also good for like you can literally line up the characters and see if they've got half cover, quarter cover, full cover. You can't see you're going to have to use your movement to find them. Like that's really good for Tailspire, I think. Which I like.
02:14:59
Speaker
it really gets them thinking about like battle positioning and yeah okay we let's have a plan when we go in of who's going where and I think that's just made combat so much more interesting especially as like a DM because I will I always depend on the creature but I will roll an intelligence check to see okay how does this creature understand like okay the cleric that some person is down and that's a cleric if I take out the cleric now yeah that is two people that it's
02:15:27
Speaker
when they think about stuff like that, it makes it easier for me to also sort of give them the monsters, well, a brain as well rather than just being mindless. Yeah, yeah.
02:15:39
Speaker
100%. Do like a smart enemy. Big fan of a smart enemy. But I also love, you know, stupid enemies because sometimes you just like do the stupid thing that is not gonna like be the most tactical minded thing. And I do like to run monsters like that. Running, being like this thing doesn't know what flanking is. Why is it gonna flank? Why am I gonna get myself a flanking position? It's got one intelligence. It doesn't know what it is.
02:16:04
Speaker
It's not going to know how to do that, but then thinking of counterspell distances and I'm going to move here so I can get more people inside the cone of cold that I'm going to cast and things like that. Thinking as your enemy, I'm a big fan of as a dungeon master. What's important to them? Do they want to survive? Do they care about getting out of here alive? Are they just on a path of destruction? Love that. Yeah.
02:16:30
Speaker
one of our guests said that they'd planned this big encounter with like a wyvern rider and it was meant to be a really cool deadly encounter and one of their players cast command and they were like oh the saving throw is too high like the guy would it wouldn't work like oh i'm not casting it on the rider i'm casting it on the wyvern and they were like oh uh yeah uh damn yeah you that's
02:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, okay. That's fine. That works. I fucking love that. I love that when you like completely just get outsmarted. I'm like, damn, I didn't think of that, but I felt like well done. I love that. You'll never think of everything as a dungeon master. You can try. And you know what? I bet for everyone, that was a really fucking cool moment as well. Exactly. I love that. I love when I get outsmarted to be fair. That was my favourite time. Yeah, for real. Yeah, it's happened in our campaign as well.
02:17:22
Speaker
with Tyr and the Slard, famous story. Level two fired a bunch like a Slard and our Paladin cast Compelled Jewel, and then we just battered the shit out of the Slard before he even killed anyone. It was great. We wiped that command like 20 minutes, and we didn't have the whole party. It went really well. Yeah. Yeah. Unbuilt Jewel is an underrated spell. Yeah, yeah. For tanking. It really is very good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. 100%. I do.
02:17:53
Speaker
Do you think it's good? The moments in combat and the ones where people do batshit crazy things and somehow it pays off. Yeah, and they come off. Yeah. Or sometimes it doesn't pay off and it's just hilarious. And then it's just hilarious. Yeah. It's not effectively fucking funny. Yeah. No. Do you have any banned spells at your table? No. We don't do banned spells. I think, and I can only say this now because I am, you know, like three campaigns deep, two and a half years in the dungeon master and every single week. Um, I think that
02:18:24
Speaker
As an early dungeon master, I think if you need to, do it. But there is a counter for a lot of things. And there is a workaround for a lot of things. There is a way to overcome a lot of problems. Like if your player is just like casting slow on you and then they're just running away and you can never catch up and stuff like that. Just, you know, something that they're doing every time. There is a counter for everything in the game. And just with experience, you will learn that. But I think if you need to,
02:18:51
Speaker
just going to your players and saying, I'm really struggling to balance the spell at the minute. Is there any chance that maybe we could not use it for a little bit just until I can figure it out? Or is there any way that you can tell me that I could maybe counter it that won't feel really bad for you? But I'm just struggling to make even a remotely engaging combat because you do it every time, and then my combat is just finished. That open line of communication is good. But I think there's plenty of resources on
02:19:20
Speaker
the internet to find out how to counter slow how to counter haste how to counter counter spell there's there's way to do it it's just figuring it out but i don't have any do you no no no i don't i don't agree with it i think it like if you're going to use it i need it's like i'm also playing the game as well and it's part of my fun to figure out a way to
02:19:40
Speaker
to circumvent that to get around it as a DM because I'm also a player at the end of the day. I'm also playing the game as well. I think people do forget that the DM is also a player. They do. They do forget that often. Yeah. I think figuring things out and like yesterday we had a fight with like there was a particularly
02:20:00
Speaker
slow enemy and I'm like, I know what's going to happen here. I'm going to get fucking kited the entire combat and I'm going to do no damage. But immediately Matthew cast a hunger of Hada. I think it was. And obviously it's like blind inside it and stuff like that. And luckily the creature that was running had had blind sight. And I was like, just stood on the end of it. And I was like, I was like skewering people and pulling them into the.
02:20:25
Speaker
Oh His hunger for da so he took the hunger for da damage and then the poison damage from the creature and Like it went nowhere near the way that I thought it was but my my players at the minute have Fascination with spike growth like low level spike growth can be a particularly hard. They like to find a choke point Stick spike growth down stand on the other side of it. Just push push and pull
02:20:55
Speaker
we've got a bard that can like flourish and move things we've got a warlock that's got repelling blast we've got telekinesis on two of them yeah we got a monk that can push so they're just they are falling into the cheese grater trap currently so uh that's been you know just so fun for me
02:21:16
Speaker
we fucking stan bane as well yeah bane so like when they're trying to make the perception check to perceive the spike growth i'm failing because then so you know like but i'm a i'm a dungeon master who loves combat love a hard combat so i'm okay with it but i could see a
02:21:35
Speaker
uh earlier in their life dungeon mastering dungeon master getting my party that she's great on their enemies and being like do you want to know what fuck this fucking spalken rotting hell uh but you know like
02:21:52
Speaker
i know how to counter it and but you know at the same time i don't want to counter all the time because that's what they love doing they love seeing the cheese grater happen so i don't want to just negate that because that feels bad for them but sometimes now and then an enemy will be smart enough to not go into it or can fly or something like that sometimes there's not gonna be a choke point yeah sometimes there's not gonna or i'm gonna do a map without a choke point
02:22:16
Speaker
create the checkpoint, bring a shovel, dig a hole in the floor, problem solved. So I understand why people ban, but I think banning is only a temporary fix, whereas overcoming is what we should strive to do, I think. So we'll go for one final question in which we ask everyone, are there any small creators you want to shout out?
02:22:43
Speaker
Litch plays. Thank you. Yeah, you and us. Because I know there's a lot of people in our community that we've told about this interview, and they've been like, Oh, send this it so we can watch it and stuff like that. So I will tell everybody because I know they'll watch every second of this. If you haven't, please subscribe to these guys. Because this has been a load of fun. Oh my God, so much fun.
02:23:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. We've had a great time. So it's been awesome. So please subscribe. Same wavelength, very much same wavelength. Yeah, very much so. I would like to give a shout out to Diana of the Rose. She is a D&D
02:23:27
Speaker
creator as well. You most likely will have seen her on TikTok, but she also streams on Twitch. She is absolutely so wonderful. I'm sure you guys have had these people where, you know, the community is, it's not huge, but it's big enough to be intimidating. And Diana was one of these people for us where when we started streaming specifically, she really made such a huge effort to make us feel welcome.
02:23:56
Speaker
and included. And that really means a lot. So down of the road. Someone I would love to shout out. Careful Cantrip. Yes, as well. They are. We're going to be doing something like this with them soon, I think. Yes. Yeah. Amazing. They reached out to us. They also welcomed us on Twitch and stuff. So they're really they're really nice.
02:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, and then small business wise, a dice maker. I would really like to shout out Mercenaries dice. Jen is a member of our community. She has made so many amazing sets of dice. She's a really wonderful person and a huge supporter. Dice are beautiful. And she has some sets, some specific trans sets where she donates 15% of the proceedings to like a trans helpline, which is a huge thing to us.
02:24:43
Speaker
And, you know, like as a small business to to give away a portion of your profit to something that you believe in is tough to do because small businesses, you know, don't be making a huge amount of money in this fucking economy, sadly. So, you know, to do that is a is a big thing and a really honorable thing, I think. So big up to absolutely to Jen from the most narrow. Yeah. What about you guys? Oh, you guys.
02:25:07
Speaker
It's a great question. Usually we just reach out to people and get them on the podcast. Actually, a big shout out to you as well for coming on. Honestly, you guys have a lot of followers and it's really nice reaching back out to us and saying, yeah, you come on. So thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
02:25:30
Speaker
Big shout out to... Someone who we did have on, but we didn't manage the episode we had issues with was Richard the Wondering DM. It's amazing, has some great insights. We had an amazing conversation. It was very, very good. Amazing. He's not checked him out. He's a really good experience. I'd definitely say as well, you guys might know him, Gabe Groomsfan.
02:25:53
Speaker
He's on TikTok. He's the guy who does the filters with like the monster stats and stuff. Really cool guy. He also has quite a big following and we were like, yeah, we reached out to him and got him on our podcast like a few months ago. So yeah, big shout out to you guys. Big shout out to Gabe and Richard. 100%. Yeah.
02:26:10
Speaker
Yeah. You know what? One thing I wanted to ask you guys, like, you know, in terms of when you just reached, reached out to people, was it, is it literally as simple as you just went, Hey, do you just want to, do you want to talk to us? Yeah. A lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, do you want to, I think people in the community are so enthused about D&D. I think D&D is one of those things that people, I mean, we barely had a conversation about what we were going to talk about and we've gone for two hours and a half.
02:26:41
Speaker
this one yeah yeah actually actually this one i think that our previous longest was richards about an hour 40 but we did lose that episode so it's actually a shame um yeah we have 50 minutes more yeah yeah it's been a joy it's really been it's been amazing yeah we've really enjoyed it it's been a challenge any creator to come on and go longer
02:27:07
Speaker
cool yeah so um yeah yeah thank you guys for coming um we do stream on every platform i say every i mean every i'm pretty sure we're on every fucking platform yeah yeah yeah everywhere cool yeah thanks everyone for listening and uh five stars in Spotify
02:27:37
Speaker
the review really does help a lot more than i think people think and it really is great to get that smash that like button do it get the algorithm cooking say something weird try me the weirdest yeah
02:28:21
Speaker
I'll comment then.