Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Double Your Dungeonmastery
20 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, Mark and Ben explore the exciting and collaborative world of co-GMing—trading off gamemastering duties with a friend. Co-GMing offers a way to prevent burnout, combine creative strengths, and make storytelling even more fun. We'll discuss the importance of working with the right creative partner, dividing things up, and tips for how to kindle that creative synergy. With a good Co-GM, you can work on big, ambitious campaigns and do things together that would be difficult as a solo act. Tune in for practical advice on how to co-GM successfully, with ideas for building a dynamic partnership and creating a memorable campaign that benefits from two brains, two perspectives, and a whole lot of creativity.
Recommended
Transcript
Opening Monologue: Fantasy, Friends, and Foes
00:00:00
Speaker
I know that we started out as foe. But after that courageous act that you showed me against the one they call Derek, maybe someday we could become friends.
00:00:14
Speaker
Friends who ride majestic, translucent steeds shooting flaming arrows across the bridge of Hymndale. I would follow you into the mists of Avalon, if that's what you mean.
00:00:26
Speaker
you want to see something super cool that only three people have ever seen in their lifetime?
Introduction: Ben and Mark on GMing and Level 20
00:00:59
Speaker
Alright everybody, we are back for another episode of Tabletop Tune-Up. I'm your host Ben Dyer with my trusty colleague Mark Lehman. Hello everybody, how you guys doing out there? I think they're doing well. I'm just going to make that bet now.
00:01:14
Speaker
Well, this week we're talking about GMing with a friend. And Mark, you and i have co-GMed a very long game. It's the only game I've ever gone all the way to level 20. And I don't think that's an accident.
00:01:27
Speaker
We're going to talk about what's involved in GMing with a friend and how you do that smartly, or at least how we did it. I don't know if it was smartly, but we did it. That's right. So ah Mark, why don't you give us a
Transition to Online Gaming During COVID
00:01:38
Speaker
little backstory? How did this evolve?
00:01:39
Speaker
It was kind of a natural progression of of something that we had been playing. So when COVID started, Ben, you had asked me if I'd run a game for some of your friends, your colleagues.
00:01:51
Speaker
and Because I had been running games online at that point. I had been running this ah game club out of Minneapolis, St. Paul. And so I had really learned how to play online because everybody was looking to keep their groups going.
00:02:04
Speaker
And since I was part of this this game club, I i just said ah jumped into it. I learned how to do it. I think we were using Roll20 the time. That was our first platform, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And so I had kind of had all this kind of knowledge in how to run games online. so So I took your group, your her friends from work. We grabbed a couple of your friends and you.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I ran ah bit of an intro game that I had been working on and kind of fine tuning in my club days. And I kind of had this thing down to a pretty good art.
00:02:39
Speaker
And at some point near the end of that game, ah we it's only ran about three, maybe four episodes, if I'm not mistaken. And this was kind of one of your standard like intro games. We've talked about tutorial games before.
00:02:50
Speaker
it kind of hit all the marks. ah Teach people how to play because I don't think some of the players had played before, right? Yeah, it was definitely new to a couple players. So I thought, who better to introduce this than somebody who's been actually doing a whole lot of intro game sessions for brand new players for
Engaging Players with Big Hooks
00:03:04
Speaker
a while.
00:03:04
Speaker
So one of the things with that intro game that I run is I leave it on a real big hook. And the hook, the fun of that game is the hook at the end. It allows the those groups that I do the intro games for to go off on their own and come up with their own, like what happened after that hook.
00:03:22
Speaker
So you kind of give them a cliffhanger and then that kind of pulls them into their next game session. And the next GM, because you hand off GMing duties, whoever it is that they then kind of reform around as a GM, that person can take it wherever they want to take it.
Recruiting Players for a New Game
00:03:36
Speaker
And they, and the places they take I've heard feedback from people, a lot of fun places. That's great. So in this particular session, I got near the end and I told Ben, I said, Ben, these are some great players.
00:03:50
Speaker
They're like really good. And he just, they kind of have a really good vibe and, and just a really kind of like, they really get it. And I'm like, your game that you play, every other Saturday, you got of drop that game.
00:04:02
Speaker
tweet this yeah Go talk to those people and tell them you can't play with them because you're going to be joining this game.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yep. I remember you were like, I'm putting my foot down. You got to play this game. Exactly. And I was like, you know, this is a group that you kind of land and you're like, I want to craft something around these people, these, these players.
00:04:23
Speaker
So I said, Hey, do you want could you do me a big, huge favor? I need time to write this adventure, but I want to keep some momentum because we're having a lot of fun here and COVID sucks.
Running 'Forge of Fury' as a Transition
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah. It does. So asked you to run forge of Fury with a few little changes along the way, just so i could transition from that adventure into the next.
00:04:47
Speaker
Right. We'll talk about some of those transitions and thinking about some of these high level pieces in a moment. But Forge of Fury, for those that don't know, this is a adventure for Dungeons and Dragons. It's actually a rewrite, I think, of an adventure from an earlier edition. But in the fifth edition, I think it's in the Tales from the Yawning Portal book. And it is really a fun adventure. I think it starts around level three and goes through like five or so, five or six.
00:05:10
Speaker
which was exactly kind of where we left off. So it was like really good segue. And there's a lot of hooks within that adventure and places you can go. It's really easy to drop things into it.
00:05:22
Speaker
It's a really fun adventure. I'm not a big fan of boxed adventures, but this is one of the ones I think is fantastically designed and easy to modify. And that's what we needed to do. We need something we could modify.
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, that was a really fun one to run. The thing was, Ben, were giving me time to come up with a overall campaign storyline. And that's what I needed. And as I started develop this thing, i was like, you know what?
00:05:47
Speaker
This break is really nice because I'm now playing a character in in your game that you're running. Right. And when we kind of got to the end of that, I was like, you know what? There's a spot in my game that I could have you run later down the road.
00:06:01
Speaker
It probably presents some burnout on my part. And then you ran another part, like another four levels past for rila you know where you left off with Forge. And it just kind of we kind of went back and forth like this for
The GM Rotation Strategy
00:06:13
Speaker
a while.
00:06:13
Speaker
Essentially what we did was we as GMs traded off GMing duties at these intervals and it kind of evolved out of just a need to buy some time. And i remember at the end of that, that second sequence I did, i think that was when we decided to,
00:06:30
Speaker
figure out how we were going to bring this thing like all the way to level 20. We sat down and did a lot of whiteboarding and kind of had some high level stuff, but let's let's just kind of back up for a moment and kind of look at what exactly was it we did? Well, basically what we did was we imagined a campaign that was going to take place over time and we carved out different segments and we'd say, all right, I'm going to do from like levels three to five and you're going to do from like five to eight and I'll do from like eight to 12.
00:06:55
Speaker
And we had kind of a high level of what was going to happen in those levels. Like by the time this segment I'm doing is done, these things will have happened. These NPCs will have had these fates or this information will be available or they'll have that artifact or whatever it would be.
00:07:11
Speaker
And then the other person was actually playing in the campaign that you were jamming. And we're going to refer back to this game a lot here. As we kind of go through, we're going to talk about this game we were running, what we were thinking about like while we were switching back and forth. So we're going to kind of go into all this over the course of this this episode about jamming with a friend. you know It's not an easy thing to do.
00:07:32
Speaker
So Ben, there is so many different ways somebody in the audience or you or me, we could we could have done this. Yeah, the way we just described is the way that we did it. But of course, that's not the only way you could do it.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it kind of worked for us. It just kind of progressed that way. But I can see, depending on your relationship with that person, there could be so many different ways to do this. And we're going to talk a little bit more about our process of doing this.
Benefits of Co-GMing
00:07:56
Speaker
But what are some of the benefits of co-GMing? Because why would you even do this to begin with? Well, I think the first thing you said, I think, is the the maybe the best reason is a lot of campaigns, I think, they kind of peter out. Like your creative well kind of runs dry.
00:08:11
Speaker
You know, you've been doing whatever you've been doing for 5, 8, 10, 12 levels, whatever it is, if it's D&D or there's other games that have long progressions associated with them. And you kind of just go like, oh, I'm out of steam.
00:08:24
Speaker
It's exhausting. Yeah, it can be. And it's not just exhausting in the sense that you're tired. I mean, you may be physically fine, but the point is, how creative can you be all the time, week to week, week in, week out, month after month?
00:08:36
Speaker
And it takes a toll. And that note, you know, like when you're jamming with your friend, and you know, two brains are better than one. You know what I mean? Like we're just be able to feed off each other creatively is kind of a fun thing.
00:08:48
Speaker
That's why we play these games, right? Yeah. And that's something that i think you and I always did pretty well in that is, you know, nobody had an idea that somebody else couldn't improve. And I think we did a lot of really fun handoffs.
00:08:59
Speaker
And a lot of times also, I remember we would come to each other with problems. You're like, hey, I'm trying to think of how to do this. What do you think is good? Or or even you say like, I think this encounter good, but I feel like it's missing something. What would you do here? what would you add?
00:09:12
Speaker
And that was a really good to have somebody who could kind of come behind the screen and you could have that chat with. Yeah, I mean, there were so many times where you just threw little suggestions here and there that would strengthen my session the next week.
Collaborative Idea Development
00:09:26
Speaker
You know, hey, I like what you did in that one. Maybe more of that or less of that. You know, having more hands also in in this creates less work. were they Many hands makes for less work, as they say on, what's that show?
00:09:41
Speaker
It sounds like an old aphorism. I mean, that's one of those ones that goes back a long way. And I think that's true with these games. There times where you just need a break. Somebody else can pick up the slack, maybe fleshing out an NPC a little bit more.
00:09:53
Speaker
When you're doing this with your friends, collaboration is a gas. It is so much fun. I had so much fun kind of planning all that stuff out with you. And we had a great time doing that. It is a lot of fun too. And like people who run games, they often need people to bounce ideas off of.
00:10:08
Speaker
And it's kind of, it can be kind of a lonely job when you're running the game by yourself. As my wife can attest, she probably gets all these, I think it's a good idea. And she's like, no, no, no, it's not.
00:10:21
Speaker
But it's nice to have somebody who you play in the game with to kind of bounce an idea off Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, let's get down to it. So how do we do this? If we've got somebody in our audience who's listening to this and going, hey, that all sounds neat. How do i collaborate effectively? How do I code GM and set this up?
00:10:38
Speaker
God, do you even
The Chemistry of Co-GMing
00:10:39
Speaker
want to? it's I guess the first thing, like, is that person that you're thinking about, is that somebody you can collaborate with? Yeah, I think that's the number one thing. You know, when you we've talked before about how chemistry is the thing that really makes things happen in a game. Like I've played good systems and bad systems.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I'll tell you this, a good system can be ruined by a bad player chemistry. A bad system can be, I'll say overlooked by good player chemistry as everybody comes together to play. So, you know, when you're thinking about something even more creatively intense, let's say, which is working with another person actually deliver a game like that.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah. You got to think about like, how do I collaborate with this person now? is this a person that I co-write with? this I would have a great time doing this with not just a friend, but somebody that you think you've got an effective partnership with when it comes to the work.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's the first step. And if you can, let's move on. One thing i would really look at is the strengths and weaknesses that GMs might have. I know that there are some parts in that game that I i was a little...
00:11:40
Speaker
trepidation about running. think I handed you one of the bigger tasks than that. I wanted a big epic battle kind of like with giants is basically all I was thinking of. right And i I think I handed it off to you because you were so good at like running these kind of big scale operations.
00:11:57
Speaker
And it was great because I got to learn by watching you run these. And it was something you were good at. One of the things that we did then was we knew enough about each other that we knew, oh, Mark will be really good at this and Ben will be really good at that and so on.
00:12:11
Speaker
So one of the things you were really good at was coming up with really interesting character stories and and NPCs and things like that. and so There was a fair amount of world building that you set up that I was like, oh, great, cool.
00:12:23
Speaker
And I would i i remember like asking you about NPCs or asking you about like where certain NPC stories might go or how to add some interesting
Switching GM Duties and Character Roles
00:12:31
Speaker
deeper layers into different kinds of story elements with our characters.
00:12:34
Speaker
The thing was we were looking at each other's strengths and catering to those because we want to give the players at the table the best the best that we have. Yeah. And if and that that's one of the benefits of having two people. You can shore up each other's weaknesses.
00:12:48
Speaker
So think about how you're going to collaborate, how you're going to play into those strengths. It may be that you give different people different editorial roles, right? I might go to Mark. If he's kind of the key story guy, I might go to him and go, all right, I'm going to pitch you some ideas.
00:13:01
Speaker
What do you think about this and that and the next thing? And then you and i would have these kind of discussions or whatever. Everybody may have their own version of this, right? Like you with your fellow GM out there, you may want to figure out some way to collaborate that maybe doesn't reflect the way we did it. And that's cool.
00:13:17
Speaker
Who knows, right? the The trick here is start thinking about the structure that you're going to use to actually do the work, which is different from when you go off and just sit there with your notebook or whatever you use to write up your own story.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, and if that means somebody is taking point, and um that's okay. As long as that's the relationship you guys have established with this in the context of this campaign. And sometimes that might be a good thing.
00:13:41
Speaker
Some people might actually benefit more from a ah stronger co-collaboration. um just It just depends on how you guys want to V-up that work. But I will say this, because you got two brains, two minds, get big with it.
00:13:56
Speaker
go go Be ambitious. Yeah, I think there's a really nice point here, which is do the thing you couldn't do if you were by yourself. You know, take advantage of the fact that you've got multiple people working on this and you can all of a sudden start doing things with maps.
00:14:11
Speaker
You can do things with actually come to think of it. That's the thing i I don't give you enough credit for. Mark, you have a trove of maps. One of the hallmarks of the work that you do of the GMing that you do is we start up one of these virtual tabletop situations and Also, a map comes out that looks like it's just the perfect map for the thing we were going to do.
00:14:30
Speaker
Going to go meet a God today? There it is Is the town on fire? Wow, there it is. It's on fire. And you do such a good job of like finding the right story, character, location combinations to put on the screen.
00:14:43
Speaker
that's something that, that is ah strength of yours, but it's also something that because you could do that, I could do other things. And then we had a much bigger, richer story because we had a lot of, as you said before, many hands making light work.
00:14:58
Speaker
That's right. So we have these, this storyline, we have all these things. This is, you've got kind of ah an assignment of skill sets that is going toward this thing as a coach gym, but,
00:15:10
Speaker
In our case, we also had player characters that we were playing. and And one of the things that Ben and I worked really hard on was keeping each other in the dark on the stuff that we that we were trying to run. Like we would have a segment. We kind of knew like the overall plot and maybe the ending.
00:15:28
Speaker
But all the stuff in the middle, we didn't really know. So like I kept Ben in the dark on a lot of twists and turns, and he kept me in the dark on a lot of twists and turns because we were playing also in that game. And we didn't want that meta knowledge that we would have to ruin that experience for the other players.
00:15:44
Speaker
Let's back up one second here. i want to make sure we're clear on the structure here. So what we did is in the overall campaign, we assigned different segments. And then in each of those segments, if you weren't GMing, you had a player character ah who was going to be You as a GM and the and the character was kind of in the dark about what was going on. Mark, talk a little bit about what those characters were doing when we were behind the GM screen.
00:16:07
Speaker
They always had something to do. Yeah. They always had something to do that was pertaining to some sort of side story or quest. I mean, i guess in a sense, maybe they were just excuses that we could swap out, but they were fun excuses.
00:16:20
Speaker
I think it's a neat little trap door plan to make sure that if you're going have that kind of alternate GMing character, right, that you play sometimes but not others, have some kind of background project that's maybe connected.
00:16:32
Speaker
And what was cool, this is something you did too, was you you figured out you had a character named Ramis. And when Ramis was not with us because you were in the GM's chair, He was off like researching something thing that then when we met him again, all of a sudden we had new information or we had twists and turns. Or sometimes when we didn't meet up with him and we expected to, right then he was missing and we had to go find him. And that was something that would happen while you were behind the GM screen as well. so There's a lot of really interesting ways that you can cook up some side stories and and add some interesting layers if you give your alternate GM's player character something to do, some little side quest that you can then use to enrich and and bring back into your game.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah. So just to kind of end on that is that because we were playing other characters, we made a real point of keeping some of those surprises close to our vest so we could ah so they can be engaged as well as a player.
00:17:31
Speaker
And I think that worked ah to our advantage and to the other players were at the table. I think it really helped the credibility of the game. That the players didn't look at you as the GM who's alternating out at the moment and say, well, we can't really, like if he suggests something, we have to think of that as kind of the voice of the GM.
00:17:50
Speaker
We never really experienced that because of the way we divided it up. Well, and because the players knew that you were responding to this fresh in the same way that they were, right? This was a surprise for you. And so you could interact with that naturally and they could treat you like a player, not as a GM.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah. That's a little bit about how we did it, but there's a lot of little like little notes I'd like to go over.
Keeping Surprises in the Game
00:18:10
Speaker
They're kind of random, but I just think they're important to just discuss.
00:18:15
Speaker
These aren't like how-tos or like don't do. They're just kind of like random thoughts about co-GMing. And let's start with what we kind of just talked about a little bit, but manage that meta knowledge.
00:18:28
Speaker
It's very important that you're managing the player knowledge and your GM knowledge internally a little bit. If you're as a player, you've really got to manage that well. Right. So it's kind of two sides to this, right? One is what is your other GM? No, what is your partner GM now when they're playing?
00:18:43
Speaker
And so you don't want to have detailed too much of what's happening in the segment you're now running. But also, as the GM who is alternating out, you don't necessarily want to try to suss out how this is connected to what you know the story is going to eventually turn into, right? You're not necessarily trying to essentially put that GM hat back on.
00:19:03
Speaker
Another note, let's just touch on Ben. And this is one like I am known for. i think Fighting for your ideas. like You can fight for your ideas, Ben, but let's not die on that hill.
00:19:14
Speaker
You know i mean? You and I would have sometimes different views about how we should execute a certain... part of the story or or what an MPC's significance was or what their story might be overall and so on.
00:19:26
Speaker
And I remember a lot of times we would kind of, be okay, well, let me pitch you this and let me pitch you that. And I, I really remember you did a great job of this. You would, you'd pitch an idea and then you go how are you with that? Like, do you believe it? Does that sound good to you?
00:19:38
Speaker
You know? And i hope I did the same thing. My, my recollection of it is that broadly speaking, we both tried to make sure that we didn't do anything that the other person wasn't on board with. One of the things you got to get good at is expressing your ideas and selling them. You got to be a little bit of a salesperson.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah. Like this is why I think this is a good idea. And, you know, and there might be, there might be times if you're trying to do that veil of secrecy where you just, you just have to say, hey look, trust me. This is a good idea. Like I've, we've gotten this far.
00:20:06
Speaker
i don't want to ruin this for you because you're playing right now. You just have to trust me that we're going to get there. And then that took a lot of faith, both on my part and your part, when those things happened, we had to put faith in each other.
00:20:21
Speaker
And that goes back up to that point we made earlier about like knowing who you can build with and having that trust. It's also about kind of being gracious with your, your co-GM.
00:20:32
Speaker
You can't sync up all the time and you just want to make sure you're doing, you're doing right by them and they're doing right by you. It's a collaboration.
Challenges and Rewards of Collaboration
00:20:40
Speaker
You want to get back and forth is good. I will say this too, you guys, if you take this on and you start collaborating and doing this stuff, because you're human beings, you will have some of this friction. It's not like an if, it's not like a, do I have a positive relationship with this person or not?
00:20:55
Speaker
You know, it's funny as I think, you know, we've talked in our Valentine's day episode about the fact that we've both been married for a while. And I think, i certainly think some of those skills came into play. You know what i mean? Like you've got to know like what to fight for and when to be done with it and stuff. So yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
A hundred percent. I think what's cool though is I don't want to exc extend this metaphor too far, but I will say that like, if you, if you are smart about this, then the collaboration you get is great. And then there's a great story that comes out of it. And we certainly had a great time with that. We had talked about like why you'd want to do this.
00:21:24
Speaker
Remember that this collaboration is fun. Like what do you always say? Like, this is something we get to, we get someone get to do. It's not something we have to do. Yeah, and this is such a unique thing. like You don't typically have co-GMs.
00:21:40
Speaker
I mean, I have to get to level 20, though, Mark, and you were the convenient instrument for me to do that. so You were so close. Why not just go all the way to level 20? don't You don't get to do that very often. That's right. so Yeah. So I think we've kind of covered everything here. Everybody just have fun.
00:21:56
Speaker
You know what? like Enjoy it for what it is. Yeah. one One last quick note is remember that when you're in that player's seat, you're there to also help serve the GM's vision as a player.
00:22:07
Speaker
Help your fellow GM tell the story. Be a great player in that respect.
00:22:17
Speaker
In this week's tune-up segment, someone has submitted a question for us that says, who is this person? oh it's Actually, this is a friend of mine asked me this a few weeks ago, and I was i was holding off on it, Ben, because he might he's going to use it in a game that he just ran. So I have carte blanche.
00:22:36
Speaker
you can We can talk about it now. His players might not listen. That's right.
How to Make Exploration Engaging
00:22:40
Speaker
This is from my friend Miles. He says, how do i make exploration and long travel interesting? I'm kind of summarizing what he sent me.
00:22:49
Speaker
I want to give people a sense of a harrowing passage. and but I don't want to make a simple montage with a couple of skill rolls that's done in like five minutes. So he wants to have this experience of people traversing a very difficult desert or could be any sort of really tough terrain.
00:23:06
Speaker
How do we make that passage feel like, you know, Harween trip it is? Yeah, this a great question because one of the core things in D&D, and I'm assuming this is D&D he's playing?
00:23:18
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I mean, d and d has these pillars of exploration and combat and I forget what the third one was. Social. Social, I guess.
00:23:30
Speaker
Anyway. And so, so there's this question of like, what do you do to kind of make exploration kind of fun and interesting? And if you think back to like, think back for a moment to like the Lord of the Rings movies, there's a lot of travel
Setting the Mood for Exploration
00:23:41
Speaker
in those movies.
00:23:42
Speaker
There's a lot of terrain changes and there's a lot of season changes and things like that. And they just have like a musical montage, you know, and the music sweeps. I'm serious though. Yeah, it does. Because we're not playing in that kind of medium.
00:23:53
Speaker
Like we need to have ah version of that musical montage, right? But we have to play it out. I think what you need to do, I mean, you're you're you're pointing at this. I think you need to, first of all, establish mood.
00:24:07
Speaker
And there's a lot of ways you can do that. Remember that this is such an imaginative medium that you're going to be more successful if you can find the triggers for people's imagination. So you could use concept art of a desert, you know, of the the blasted wasteland that is an impressive sun. I mean, there's so much out there you could choose from.
00:24:25
Speaker
You could have the music elements, right, that reinforce that. And I don't know exactly which music elements are going to do that for you and what kind of cultural elements might be around that desert or what kinds of things make sense, but even just sort of ambient sound effects you could do. Like what if you just had this ambient sound effect of a, of a windswept desert, you know, and then ah occasionally, maybe very occasionally you'd hear like a, a vulture in the background or something like that, ready to pick your bones.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah. Those are all things that contribute to that kind of ambience. So number one is set the mood And then number two is, yes you're going to have skill rules, but don't make them happen all at once.
Skill Rolls and Consequences
00:25:04
Speaker
Put some time between them and put some of that descriptive stuff between them. I'm going to make a suggestion too in the skill rules. There needs to be some some consequences for the skill rules and they need be tangible. Like if you can't find water, D&D has pretty good exhaustion rules.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah. Utilize those. You want to make them come out the other side of this desert pretty beat up, pretty sun-drenched. We're not here to like murder them. right but But in game terms, you could have them suffer a few levels of exhaustion.
00:25:33
Speaker
Maybe they have an encounter, so they get a feeling of like what is an encounter like when you have these exhaustion? um That could be like in a random encounter, or maybe there's things that steal their food in the night.
00:25:44
Speaker
Get creative with these types of encounters. They don't all have to be a ah combat encounter, but there should be some encounters within the span of travel that show you that they've been traveling.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things we've talked about before is having different kinds of currencies in your game. And in an encounter like this, your rations and your water would be a principal currency for you to keep track of.
00:26:06
Speaker
You're talking about consequences. What happens if you fail that navigation rule and all of a sudden you're an extra day in the desert? Do you have the water supply for that? ah do you have the rations for that? Can you survive?
00:26:17
Speaker
And get kind of creative with some of these skill checks too. I mean, I could see situations where they they ah the group finds some remains of some ah other travelers who had gone before.
00:26:28
Speaker
And you could find out that they didn't actually die from and the sun and the heat. They got bit by maybe scorpions or
Enhancing Storytelling with Diverse Encounters
00:26:35
Speaker
something. I don't know. but Whatever they want to do. Right, right. Which would give them a a sense of maybe a threat to come.
00:26:40
Speaker
like Yeah. these little These little elements add to the danger of that environment. And don't umt skimp out on them. Well, and also think about what happens when people start to get exhausted and think about what happens with their perceptions and their potential to see hallucinations or things like that. Or maybe there's just magic effects in that area. Uh-huh.
00:27:00
Speaker
What if only one of your players says, wait, do you see that temple over there or that tower or that oasis or whatever? And everybody else is like, I don't see anything. The harpies of the desert are are drawing you in. That's right.
00:27:14
Speaker
i mean There's all sorts of fun you could have. I would say this. At the end of the day, players need to role play out this exhaustion. And so if you are setting that mood, creating these encounters and letting it know that like, Hey, this is what's happening.
00:27:32
Speaker
Let them role play this out. like Let them experience that.
Conclusion and Feedback Invitation
00:27:35
Speaker
Well, friends, I think that's our episode for today. And although it will be a harrowing passage between now and our next episode, I'm sure you'll make it and have great adventures along the way. Let us know how things are going with you.
00:27:49
Speaker
If you want to drop us a comment on our YouTube channel or you'd like to email us at tabletoptuneup at gmail.com, we'd love to hear what you're up to with your games and how they're going.
00:28:01
Speaker
Please do so. And until we meet again on the far side of that desert, keep those dice rolling.
00:28:57
Speaker
you'd never ignore To roll the dice, spin the fate, watch it unfold
00:29:08
Speaker
storyteller, works so rich and refined the other's the rule keeper, precise on the