Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Joy of GMing - with Special Guest Colin Epstein of the ROLL REPORT!
47 Plays7 months ago
Welcome to the sister-series to Anywhere But Now— our Doctor Who Actual Play Podcast! Our special guest today is Colin Epstein of the ROLL REPORT!
Join us for a fantastic conversation about the power that 'Yes And' can bring to your table, discover the Ins and Outs of 'Successful Storytelling', and learn a new way to get into an NPC's head!
We’ll cover some making-of and behind the scenes tidbits of our mods as well, so do stick around, with host Casey Jones.
Learn more at our Discord! Be sure to subscribe and leave a comment, and follow us on BluSky and Twitter for more updates. Don’t forget to send your questions & fan art to [email protected]!
And if you want, Casey can run your very own game of D&D for you!
Music by Tabletop AudioTheme by RJ Pirchinello
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'The Joy of GMing' series
00:00:34
Speaker
Whether you're at a game table, in your comfiest chair reading a book, or listening at home, there's nothing like a great adventure story.
00:00:42
Speaker
But they don't happen by accident. Welcome to the joy of GMing, a special interview series on the craft of great gaming. There's just something magic about sitting down to a good table with great friends, isn't there?
00:00:57
Speaker
If you're a lifelong gamer or a newbie rolling up your first character sheet, if you're a DM or a GM or just can't get enough tabletop talk in your day, this is the show for you. Each episode will bring you amazing guest speakers to talk about writing games and running them, building fantastic worlds and compelling story arcs and oh so useful tricks of the
Interview with Colin Epstein
00:01:21
Speaker
trade. Here are some amazing stories. Get inspired for your next game and join us.
00:01:26
Speaker
for an hour and a half or so of lively conversation. This sister series to anywhere but now our Doctor Who actual play podcast will be released between mods or episodes with our ongoing serialized show. We cover some making of and behind the scenes tidbits of our latest mod as well, so do stick around. I'm Casey Jones.
00:01:48
Speaker
Over the last dozen years, I've written and produced screenplays, children's animation for TV and film, graphic novels, stage plays, murder mysteries, and audio adventures. I've also been writing and running tabletop games for over 10 years.
00:02:04
Speaker
Join us as we dive deep into tabletop with experts in the field. Experts like our special guest today, Colin Epstein of The Roll Report. Colin is a performer, writer, and voice actor based in Berkeley, California. They've been telling stories through performance and gaming for 14 years, bringing curiosity and shenanigans to audiences everywhere.
00:02:28
Speaker
He's written for the DMs Guild, the Alameda Post, and more.
Colin's Projects and Podcasting Skills
00:02:33
Speaker
Look for Faces of the Cage, a supplement for the recent Planescape sourcebook full of NPCs and locations in the world of Sigil, coming to DMs Guild soon. And he spent 2023 bringing the Roll Report to a podcast platform near you.
00:02:49
Speaker
Colin, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, and I want to compliment you on a well-written and extremely well-delivered intro. That is, I've been listening to a couple of them, but I continue to be impressed by people that have their, like, their intro and elevator pitches, like, really down. But I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. You are not the first or even the third, I want to say, person
00:03:15
Speaker
That has given us a pat on the back. Yeah, I took a podcasting course not terribly long ago when I was gearing up for the Joy of GMing. And it really laid out how to, hey, this is what you're about. Here's what people can expect. Here's what's going to be on the show. Ta-da! And it is nice to give it a little flourish. So yay. Oh, very much. Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:38
Speaker
Always nice to have another podcast host at the mic. What can you tell our listeners about your show, The Roll Report? The Roll Report. Well, The Roll Report is available on podcasting platforms near you. At the moment, it features a live play campaign that I am writing and GMing myself with my heroic trio of clowns playing along.
00:04:01
Speaker
kind of happened by accident, but everyone has a pretty strong clown background. So there's lots of shenanigans. We also feature sort of the reviews of our campaign episodes are framed as the D&D NPR station, if you will, campaign world.
00:04:16
Speaker
And also interviews with other people so far kind of whoever I've managed to get to talk to me about We touch on favorite character class and subclass and then go into whatever else people want to talk about we've talked about DM tips I've talked about home brewing and why you should do it whether or not you feel confident with Connie Chung I'm talked about Wow sent in gaming with Kitty striker and
00:04:41
Speaker
had a really nice talk about feminism and looking at the history of D&D and other things with the Slavonly trolls and more upcoming. I just did one with Dennis who goes by the OK-est DM. We've got Dennis the OK-est DM on one of our episodes coming up. Dennis is great. And I was so excited to talk about Sagas, his new system that is coming, I think just past their Kickstarter last week, which is very exciting.
00:05:08
Speaker
So yeah, that is most of our content. We also have some other stuff we throw up on social media, but the podcast itself is the live play, the NPR station equivalent, and fun interviews.
Creative Writing and Freelance Tips
00:05:21
Speaker
That's wonderful. Viewers at home, I am smiling ear to ear. So Colin, tell us more about what it's been like for you writing for the DM's Guild.
00:05:31
Speaker
It has been really, really fun and weird. It is kind of a new venue for me. My writing in the past before I really stepped into the TTRPG sphere was creative writing for the performances that I'm doing.
00:05:47
Speaker
I am an actor, I'm a clown, dancer, wear many other hats here in the Bay Area, and I've worked with theater companies that are collaborative in some nature, so we're writing the backgrounds of our characters. We're helping write little fragments of the behind-the-scenes knowledge that we know about the characters, but that our audience might or might not know over the course of the show.
00:06:11
Speaker
And recently, I also have been working in Arts Admin for a while, so I write in a lot of dry press release kind of stuff, and these things that are essential to arts organizations, but less creative. And so the Faces of the Cage is the first officially published thing that I've been able to contribute to. There's a couple others that I have been writing for, but we don't have as clear of a timeline. Thank you.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I would say people post open calls for submissions all the time and I got lucky enough that a couple people were really interested in stuff that I wanted to write about. Really? Where do they post those open calls if you don't mind my asking? I don't at all. So I've found both of those through Discord servers. One of them is TTRPG Rising Tide.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yes, I know them. I haven't kind of gotten further into like their podcast and what they do, but I have found a lot of really wonderful people on that server and also these these calls for opportunity, just random submissions there. And I think also one of them was from the BigBadCon server.
00:07:20
Speaker
I went to my first convention last year, went to Big Bad Con here in the Bay Area, and it was delightful. And that Discord server also has had people posting when they have an idea about a book they want to write and need people to contribute art or writing or layouts or editing or whatever it might be.
00:07:37
Speaker
Oh, that's wonderful. And then I think there's a couple other places, you know, there is a tabletop games Facebook group that has specifically calls for opportunity. And I was going to look for this one other one. I think Gamosity might be the one that I'm thinking of has a like a frequently updated call for submissions and call for job opportunities as well.
00:07:57
Speaker
Excellent. So what was it like writing for Faces of the Cage? Honestly, it was a delight, especially like when I didn't really know what I was getting into. I was welcomed into this Discord server, like that kind of the head person, couple people in charge of it have their own Discord and they were
00:08:15
Speaker
extremely well prepared. There was a draft for our, so each of us that contributed are creating an NPC with kind of a big, like a history about them and a little bit about their abilities and their motivations. And given that it's Planescape and Sigil, their relationship to the city and to the rest of the factions that are big important players in Sigil.
00:08:36
Speaker
And we were also creating a map or like the outline of a map if we did not feel particularly confident in our ability to manipulate the various map making software and an art brief to guide the artist in creating the thing. Oh, that's wonderful. And I felt extremely well prepared. There was like a very detailed draft document both for the NPC and all of what you were going to write about that.
00:09:01
Speaker
and the detailed draft of like, this is what I, the artist, would really like to hear from you in this draft document. So it was like, man, if every gig is like this, I feel really confident. And then rapidly, exactly. They are extremely well prepared, and I thought they did a really excellent job kind of bringing us on and having us be ready to dive in right away.
00:09:25
Speaker
that's magnificent yeah like as a dyed in the wool freelancer i can definitely attest that the more detail and specificity that is available at the start of a project so that the person that is calling the tune can in fact instruct the piper to mangle a metaphor but for those that want to get a project off the ground like
00:09:52
Speaker
I get that it can sometimes feel a little pedantic or overly detail-coached to say, well, I want it in this format and I want it at this font type and this large and this wide for columns and everything. But honestly, formatting is our friend. If you have an idea
00:10:13
Speaker
of what you want as the finished product, it is so much easier to help get you there. So bravo. Yeah, they did a great job. But yeah, I agree. When you know what the formatting is that you want, the more you can guide people that are trying to work with you on it, the easier it is, I think, for everyone all concerned. One of the other projects was kind of completely open-ended.
00:10:37
Speaker
for a while. And so I started writing for that project. I'm working on an NPC and working on a character background. And both of them I kind of just started. So I was like, well, I guess I can maybe kind of go off of what is in, you know, what's on D&D Beyond and what's in other published books for how to create this background. And it turned out to not be the format that they were really looking for. So I didn't lose a lot of time. I'm not losing any sleep over it for sure. But like,
00:11:06
Speaker
When someone has that draft form, I was just like, oh, I can plug in so, so easily. And I love this. And it makes for happy collaborators. And I'm remembering something I was thinking of earlier, which is that in the dance world and in my outside life of performing, I've worked for a lot of people. And everyone I work for, I learned something about how to not
00:11:34
Speaker
run my own company, or in this case, create my own sourcebook if I haven't a good idea. And I think that's really important as freelancers. If we want to head up a project, we hopefully have had this body of knowledge acquired through many experiences of, oh, I don't want to do it like that project I worked on that was really stressful for X, Y, and Z reasons. Let me try to aim for these projects that was really easy and everyone had a good time.
00:12:01
Speaker
I agree. I think it's absolutely important to have a healthy balance of what you want to see and capture with the finished product as well as what you don't. You don't go into a restaurant and order all the things you don't want.
00:12:18
Speaker
But at the same time, you know, there is some ground for compromise. There is some ground for specificity. But yeah, absolutely. The more detail can be established up front of, this is what we're looking for. This is not what we're looking for. Can really help people stake out where they do and don't want to work, you know?
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, very much. Yeah, I would work with these people from Faces of the Cage in a heartbeat if they had any other book and they wanted me to contribute. I am there in a second because they made it so easy. That's wonderful to hear.
Improv and Storytelling in RPGs
00:12:50
Speaker
I would love to talk with you more about collaborative storytelling and improv in your roleplay. You mentioned a background in clowning, which I think is fascinating despite any number of people who have cholrophobia. Sure. How did you get into clowning? How did that expand into improv or vice versa?
00:13:11
Speaker
It all fed itself a little bit and I think to start like defining clowning is difficult and people will have a lot of different ideas. There is absolutely this, you know, white face and big lips and like face paint and all that and that's very traditional. But also any sort of, I would argue any sort of physical theater where you're really trying to create a strong character that reacts in perhaps unpredictable ways counts as clowning.
00:13:36
Speaker
Sure. So I mean, I started dancing and doing theater in high school, and it was a pretty easy, yeah, like a real nice flow to keep doing that in college and then actually go to circus school after college and even during part of it. So I went to the New England Center for Circus Arts in Brouver, Vermont, and went through multiple New England winters, which was a whole thing coming from the Bay Area where we don't have four seasons. We have three, maybe.
00:14:05
Speaker
And it really, to me, it always felt like something that I enjoyed doing and felt like I was pretty good at. I enjoy performing, I enjoy being on stage, or in the middle of a crowd, working it as it may be, and learning how to yes and people, learning how to
00:14:24
Speaker
give back to your scene partners in whatever way is I think a lifelong learning. I was okay at it and I think I've continued to get better at it both through my performing career and in the last little while through gaming and through the idea that we all have to work towards the same goal of this story
00:14:47
Speaker
making some amount of sense, but like we're all trying to move it forward. It's not like one person has the ball and they're just like shoving it up that hill by themselves. It's like we all got to take turns and we incrementally move it up that hill together.
00:15:03
Speaker
And in probably in that same like five to seven years that games have been more of a part of my life, I've also worked in more immersive theater context. So being embedded in a crowd and I'm a character that's trying to get everyone around me to play my game.
00:15:20
Speaker
or to help me tell my story, or we're all like a game, like a tabletop game, we're all trying to tell a story, we've all engaged in this sort of lark-like collective fiction, and we want to do it together. And in that sense, especially, you know, as a clown, I frequently, my job is to give people a little poke and try to gently nudge them outside their comfort zone and get them to play my game back.
00:15:43
Speaker
If I'm a character that is, you know, this happened a couple years ago, if I am the school AV club president, and our collective fiction is that we're at middle school again, how can I bring people into my middle school AV club world, you know?
00:16:03
Speaker
I think that was a very long way of answering that. I found my way into all of these things fairly organically for me, and I was lucky enough to have some teachers along the way, but I think they all contribute. And in my life, it's like a Celtic knot or a braid. Each of these strands kind of wrap around each other and feed each other.
00:16:23
Speaker
absolutely yeah no uh improv and being trained to be agreeable has had a definite impact so let's just talk theory for a second sure the point behind yes and is to facilitate the scene to keep going
00:16:40
Speaker
and is the polar opposite of no but. So if you're in a scene with someone and they say, I understand you sell Comquats, you get a whole lot further by saying yes, and they're on sale today versus no, you have the wrong store. Go away.
00:16:57
Speaker
Or no, that's not a kumquat, it's a pineapple, like... I understand that a number of people trying... well, not trying, but considering getting into something like improv are skittish about the possibility that they're gonna sound a little dumb or foolish or a joke is not gonna land. Let me remove that fear. That is definitely going to happen. Absolutely. 100%.
00:17:21
Speaker
Good improv, whether it's short form where you're basically just making up a sketch with two to three, maybe even four characters on stage at once, versus long form improv where a scene is set, a problem is identified, and you chew on it for an hour,
00:17:39
Speaker
have different approaches but the same yes and. We want to flow, we want to get to the next beat, we want to tell a convincing and compelling story. And by getting rid of those mental blocks, by getting into the habit of saying yes and embellish, yes and addition, yes and minor alteration, tweet here and there. Improv is a numbers game, a percentages game.
00:18:07
Speaker
There's going to be some amount of, you sound a little bit like an idiot, versus, oh my goodness, the poetry that sprang unpenned from their lips. Those are nice, those are nice, but you don't get to them without stumbling first. And it's hard to aim there. It's like aiming for that really beautiful, could have been scripted,
00:18:30
Speaker
touching, emotional, cathartic, like whatever those aiming for those moments I think often puts them like out of reach versus I think it's a really good exercise in being present with whoever your scene partners is that whether that is people at your game table or people that you're working with in an improv class or the participants at this insane immersive art event where you're being asked to tell them that they're at middle school, you know?
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, being present and really and trying to allow for whatever to happen, I think ends up making for making those moments happen more naturally and more frequently. I agree. But there, there's definitely sort of the the fear barrier to entry. And you're right, it's it's like it's gonna happen.
00:19:14
Speaker
It still happens. I listen since I'm listening to every episode of the roll report before they go out to make sure that we, you know, cut the right things and all that. I frequently am just like, wow, that was I thought that was funny and that was really dumb. They're not mutually exclusive. Something can be funny and really dumb at the same time. This is true.
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, very much. But you're right. You make a valid point about it's not just one person with the ball, whether they're trying to roll it up the hill or get a game of catch going. You know, they have to actually let go of the ball and hand it to someone else or share it with a handful of people. It has been a delight to discover that the same rules of improv and the same rules of interactive theater
00:20:01
Speaker
100% overlap with a good RPG. It doesn't matter if it's live-action and you're walking around a college quad giving the norms a bit of a... Just making them think a little bit, you know.
00:20:14
Speaker
Exactly. Or, you know, in a basement of some studio, you've rented out to practice long form improv for the hour or two that you've got it before your show the next weekend. Being able to build chemistry with a handful of people rely on each other. And well, I know Terry, and Terry is usually pretty good about working in some slapsticks. So I want to make sure that, you know, Terry gets handed an invisible carton of eggs later.
00:20:42
Speaker
I mean if you know the people you're playing off of improvisationally whether again game or outside a game like if you can throw them some low-hanging fruit to just grab and smash into the ground in a great way like why not you know absolutely
00:21:00
Speaker
But yeah, I learned improv in college after a little, you know, a handful of improv games in theater classes in high school, did improv professionally on a sketch level and some long form when I was living in Manhattan. And we did a series, we did a show called Start Trekkin. We would make up an entire episode of
00:21:23
Speaker
TOS classic Star Trek with a new ship, a new crew, and a new mission every episode. But we had costumes, we had toy props, and we had the music and sound effects from the 60s show. I love that so much. It was so much fun. It was absolutely so much fun.
00:21:43
Speaker
and there was at one point probably about a cast of 10 or 11 of us and you know we could even have like background extras racing through the halls but the same tricks you learn to listen engaged
00:21:59
Speaker
resist the urge to just grab the spotlight and hog it the entire time. Sharing the play, sharing the attention, sharing the engagement and the main star syndrome really, really come in handy. I think one of the interesting things about specifically GMing any tabletop game is that
00:22:19
Speaker
You're almost automatically in that I am the star mode simply because you're the person moving that ball up the hill or starting the game of catch. It's your job to have the world and the setting and the sandbox for these for your players to play in. But yeah, again, like listening to some of my old episodes, like, wow, I talk too much.
00:22:38
Speaker
They don't need that much description of the area around them. I don't need my NPCs to be saying that much. Sometimes I think it is a natural thing for GMs to really... I don't think hog the limelight or hog the spotlight, but take up a little bit larger percentage of it.
GM Responsibilities and Player Engagement
00:23:00
Speaker
And I think that is not the worst thing, but it is definitely an easy trap as a GM versus when I found in
00:23:08
Speaker
in theater settings that are not a tabletop where I'm in charge, it's like a little bit more easy to like really toss the ball and like let other people pick it up. And as a GM, it's kind of like, well, I need to pick it up if anyone else drops it, like just to keep us going. It's my job to pick it up. And sometimes it's my job to keep it for a minute so I can give this exposition or whatever. But
00:23:28
Speaker
But how do I hand it back? That is an excellent question. We have come up with a couple of tricks to help with that because it is, as you say, very tempting to wax Rhapsodic and go on about all the detail of the dungeon they're stepping into or the provincial town that they've just approached and blah, blah, blah.
00:23:49
Speaker
This is strictly for the GM, and we'll get to this in a minute, but if there's a player at the table who has a tendency to grab the spotlight and then just not let it go, start to repeat themselves, start to really get into backstory that has nothing to do with anything that we're going on with, the phrase we came up with was, okay, let's take a breath and leave some air in the conversation. Next person.
00:24:15
Speaker
Oh, that's that's great. And like it says it says inoffensive as we can manage to, you know, because we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or anything like that. Like, okay, let's take a breath and leave some air in the conversation. The other thing that I've started doing deliberately is check in moments, especially with Shire players like and honestly, one of the best things you can do
00:24:38
Speaker
as a shy player is tell your GM privately, I'm having a little trouble getting into character, I'm having a little trouble getting into flow, so that the GM or DM can then make a concerted effort. And it doesn't have to be, so, JibJab, what are you doing next?
00:24:57
Speaker
You set them up, you give them a nice, slow lob over the plate. Jibjap, your best friend of 14 years has just died in the street, stabbed in the back with an Etruscan dagger. You gave him that dagger! What are you feeling right now?
00:25:13
Speaker
And then JibJab gets to think and reflect and really respond as the character. They start to talk about it and they get into the emotional experiences of like, wow, that's amazing. Terry, JibJab has just done so and so. What are you doing? And, you know, the ball continues to move around the table.
00:25:33
Speaker
Communication between GM and players, players and players, everybody having the space and the comfort and security to say privately or to the whole group, you know, hey, I'm a little shy. I'm feeling like I'm not been able to, you know, say as much. Hey, I really, you know, maybe didn't like that one little arc that we just did or hey, you know, I'm feeling a little
00:25:57
Speaker
triggered by something that happened in game or something another character did, but everybody being encouraged to voice those thoughts, I think can make a much better tabletop experience. This is something that Kitty and I talked a lot of consent in gaming is opting in, but also making sure that people always have an opportunity to opt in or opt out and to just say how they're feeling about things. When you have a shy player, hopefully they feel comfortable with you as a GM going,
00:26:27
Speaker
privately or in front of the group. Hey, I feel like my character, I'm a little shy. I haven't been able to talk as much. Can we do something about that? Because I love the game. It's not like I want to stop playing. I would like to be more fully participatory and present in this thing. And GM's job is to go, yes, how do we do that? Let's make it better for you. And let's make sure that everyone at the table is really getting that voice.
00:26:53
Speaker
And we have some techniques to do that because yes, improv is a crucial ingredient and skill to have in GMing or long-form storytelling, collaborative storytelling. We have had some truly talented GMs who use 95% improv
00:27:14
Speaker
to start a campaign to kick it off and then to run it and they to this day successfully run campaigns ongoing with next to no preparation. Preparation even that five minutes can make the difference between a shy player just sort of sitting back and watching things unroll and maybe they get to say something when you directly address them.
00:27:41
Speaker
versus making sure at the start of your game that every PC is going to have something cool to do. That does not mean you write out the whole story. You're not a screenwriter here. You're telling a collaborative story.
00:27:57
Speaker
You should figure out, you know, what's gonna happen if the good guys do nothing. But on top of that, next to that, you can say, for instance, okay, we've got a haunted house coming up. I know Character 2 has a lot of troubling stuff in their background. They're gonna find a book on the shelf with their entire life story in it, focusing entirely on every mistake they have ever made.
00:28:20
Speaker
How are they gonna react when they find it? What are they gonna do with it? And it leads to some RP and adding to the tone of the thing and so forth. But by making sure every single character not only has a moment, but also has something they can contribute, you know?
00:28:37
Speaker
It's like the monster's Achilles heel is silver tipped daggers and like, oh, Jim Jap has those ancestral silver tipped daggers they brought with them. You know, not only encourages some teamwork, but also the- Yes, my character can contribute meaningfully to defeating the monster, solving the puzzle, having this cathartic moment with one of the other party members where they can ask me about my life story I found in this book. And I can tell them about all of my many mistakes.
00:29:05
Speaker
in chronological order and excruciating detail as it may be. Or you can do as the character did and immediately threw the book in a fireplace.
00:29:16
Speaker
I, you know, not surprised. That is certainly a good option when you're confronted with a, you know, potentially traumatic character moment like that. Complete rejection is an option. It may or may not trigger as much RP as really engaging with it, but it's certainly an option, certainly a valid character response like that. I would be amazed. I'm imagining this like this moment, you go, you know, jib-jab, you find this book,
00:29:44
Speaker
And as you open it, it has your entire life story and all of its mistakes. Player goes, I throw it in the fire. And just like the moment of silence before everyone, I would crack up and just lose it completely. Absolutely. Yes. And is a great response. No. Is also a great response. We'll keep calling him JibJab because why not? Yeah. JibJab's response to finding his unpleasant life story in a volume was
00:30:13
Speaker
really fun to play with but on that same subject and again this is stuff that can be improvised I am really enjoying flashbacks
00:30:24
Speaker
We're not talking about something long enough to split the party, but even just like five minutes for jib jab It's raining out and you and your family are safely underground deep in your family's caves And that's when you hear the sound of your wife Singing but you've heard this type of singing before it's the song she sings when she's trying her hardest to be brave What is she trying to be brave about right now? Jib jab tell us
00:30:54
Speaker
You know? Just pull them in and get them thinking about their character and having emotional responses to characters they're tied to. And giving your players the chance to expand on the character backgrounds that, depending on your players, they may have spent five minutes or multiple hours on.
00:31:13
Speaker
I'm starting a new home game, and within a week of asking one of our players if they wanted to play with us, we had a Google Doc with 15 different character ideas, like about a page each, just because M8 is already doing that.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think the flashbacks are really, really, really fun. They're a great way to, and again, as we've been saying, give those shyer players, the ones who have not been dominating the conversation, give them a five minute moment that is all them. It is just, it is their character, it's their backstory. The only people role-playing in that moment are them and you to some extent, maybe as an NPC or something.
00:31:53
Speaker
I've been a big fan of the flash sideways as well. The like, what else? What is happening in another part of the city and another part of the realm at this exact moment? And it can either be, you know, again, it's like a jib jab, we're gonna flash sideways back to your your tribe. They are at this moment enjoying a wonderful meal together under the glow of
00:32:15
Speaker
phosphorescent fungi in their cave, perhaps, and they hear a, like, you know, if you want to traumatize them, they hear something coming. It's loud, it's snorting, it's breathing fire, there's a glow at the end of the call, and we snap back to the party.
00:32:31
Speaker
or not. And I've also found it a really fun way to give your players, if you're in a long game and they've been playing those characters for a long time, a flash sideways or a flashback into the history of your party, of your game, can give them a chance to be like, we're going to do a one shot, two shot, it is the same world, but you guys are totally different, maybe different classes, different levels, like whatever it might be. I think those are super fun to just kind of go like,
00:32:59
Speaker
You know, in a recent home game we had a Faerun setting and so the main party is off defeating, you know, this monastery full of assassins where one character was raised. But we didn't have everyone that week and I was like, all right, flash sideways in Waterdeep where you guys murdered a noble family a month ago.
00:33:18
Speaker
the streets are up in revolt because the commoners think they can kill nobles now and you you are now going to be you know level six employees of the city you are the city watch or city watch adjacent and we did like a two-shot game with these other characters and then when we had everyone back for the main party we just picked up where we left off but it was really fun to go your actions as a party have consequences in other places and we can play those out for a minute before we go back to our main story
00:33:45
Speaker
Like, with our games, I have to credit at least some small influence of just the pacing of a television show, not only because our main stay game anywhere but now is modeled off of Doctor Who, but they will cut to the villain to show you what they are doing in response to what the good guys are doing, even if there are no good guys in that scenario.
Enhancing RPG Narratives with Techniques
00:34:11
Speaker
So we try to keep it,
00:34:13
Speaker
nice and short and snappy, but still give them the information of like, okay, congratulations, you are pissing off people you have not met yet for the following reasons. We had in our second cereal, Troubled Waters, takes place on this ocean planet with a science center that uses a ton of electricity.
00:34:36
Speaker
And halfway through the first half of the episode, the first half of the story, the good guys started reallocating power to the rightful places it was supposed to go away from the massive entertainment center with nefarious goals and was like, okay, well, we cut to.
00:34:54
Speaker
the control box for the arena borealis and here's what's going on and the character steps out of the shadows and implies it would be taken care of you know and just like the flashback even if the characters aren't going to immediately claim oh we know all of that right away it's just like oh
00:35:13
Speaker
The impact is there. It's that they know they're going to get punched in the face. They don't know when it's going to happen. And you as the GM can draw that out long enough. They might have totally forgotten about it. And all of a sudden, you're like, you walk into your usual tavern at the conclusion of your mission. And standing in the corner is this character that immediately starts throwing daggers at you, taking care of business for the arena borealis.
00:35:40
Speaker
I love it. Yeah. So one of the things you mentioned, successful storytelling with friends, I wanted to ask you about what you considered successful storytelling. That is it. It's I would say it's a little hard to define in some ways. It's like that the sort of you know what when you when you're part of it kind of thing in some ways. And I'm going to think about a little bit. So my parents are
00:36:05
Speaker
interested in what I do and don't really understand it. They've been on board for the performing career, they've come to see me perform a lot, but they're like, what is this podcast? What is D&D? What are RPGs?
00:36:17
Speaker
And my mom said, how do you win? And I was thinking about that a little bit in both trying to answer her and in this sense, I think my answer is how do you win D&D? Everybody has a good time and you tell the story together. And so I would say a successful story in the context of an RPG game with friends is that everyone feels like they have contributed.
00:36:43
Speaker
everyone is more or less happy about the direction the story is going or if you've reached the end how that story ended there was some catharsis for each of the characters maybe had some growth and I think that's the important thing to me. I really think that defining successful storytelling with friends in context of your game, your home game or your
00:37:07
Speaker
performed game it's for its podcast or streamed or otherwise I think a successful story is one that the people telling it ie GM and players are happy with the end result yeah I was I was hoping you would say something like that like successful storytelling is everybody's having a good time yeah it's a game yeah games are supposed to be fun
00:37:27
Speaker
I do think there's kind of a different context to it when you are making a podcast or streaming your games and if you are performing in that way. And then you're kind of, I think, getting into what is a successful story in a theater context because I could make that argument that that is what podcasting of this nature and streaming your tabletop games is.
00:37:49
Speaker
You know, to name the giant bugbear looming over all of us, Critical Role is extremely successful storytelling, but it is theater. And there's been a lot of talk, I think, in the last four or five years about the Critical Role-ification of games and players coming to tables, expecting that that's the experience they're going to get.
00:38:09
Speaker
and not necessarily realizing like no that's that's theater. So successful storytelling in context of your home game that no one's watching or listening to I think is a little bit different than a successful game that is performed for people to consume.
00:38:24
Speaker
audio or visual. And I think in that context, there's the capitalist version of success. Do I have subscribers on Patreon? Am I getting money for this effort that I'm putting out in the world? But also just generally, are people listening? And do my listeners seem to enjoy it? Are they continuing to listen? Do they leave us comments?
00:38:44
Speaker
uh whether or not they're giving us money on patreon because who the fuck has money to give people on patreon many of us are lucky enough that we do but like it's tough and like we can acknowledge that so yeah so so i do think successful storytelling when you're when you're putting the content out there you can define it differently and i think it's up to you know maybe everyone involved or the creative director of that effort like whatever
00:39:07
Speaker
version of it, you can define that success as you want. And it may be different than just, nah man, I'm having a great time doing some shenanigans with my friends that are dictated by dice rolls, so they're even sillier.
00:39:20
Speaker
Lovely words, shenanigans. One of my favorites. A gaming story success is not judged by how closely it stuck to the GM's plan. That is not your job. Your job is to set up a narrative that your characters, the PCs have autonomy in, can impact things in that story and they feel like they are
00:39:50
Speaker
making things happen and leaving an impact, even when that impact is disastrous. I am more of a fan of Dimension 20 versus Critical Role. That's just apples and oranges. But I've really enjoyed the cliffhanger endings. I am a sucker.
00:40:08
Speaker
for a cliffhanger have been ever since classic serialized Doctor Who, like even on a happy ending, you still could get bumped into your next adventure with absolutely no idea what's going on.
00:40:22
Speaker
I think Dimension 20 and a couple others do that really well. I think they've optimized for that. Brennan Lee Mulligan is an amazing DM, and I would not be at all surprised. Honestly, I'm hoping to pick his brain at some point. We'll see if it happens, if I get enough followers. I don't know. He's a nice guy. Maybe he's out of the kindness of his heart. But I think he tries to script for that as much as he can, given that his players are
00:40:50
Speaker
comedians and clowns and full of tricks and shenanigans. I think that critical role is not always, they definitely get those moments. They really can have, but it's not every single episode. And I really, I do, I agree. I think Dimension 20 and a couple of their shows are like, no, every episode we should have a real cliffhanger where something dramatic is about to happen at the beginning of the next session, whether it is emotional,
00:41:16
Speaker
physical threats of violence or like the big bad coming or like whatever it is. Yeah, I think those are like really they aim for them and they hit that target more often than not. Anticipation is the sweetest aperitif after a lovely feast at a gaming table. Very much.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's just so much fun. You can kill off an NPC to show that the bad guys mean business. You can kick off an earthquake triggered by an explosion that the PCs themselves have set off.
00:41:48
Speaker
Winning the like achieving the goal the purported goal of any story Need not even be the deciding factor. We have had in our first season of anywhere but now two Separate occasions where the planet they were on was destroyed And like
00:42:12
Speaker
The character, the main character, has gotten demerits grade-wise of like, please, if you can help it, just cut down on the destroying of planets. Maybe less of that. You know, 2-0, not a great record, really. Yeah. One is unfortunate, two feels like carelessness. It's like, three is gonna be a pattern unless, like, really not get there. Yeah, I feel like...
00:42:36
Speaker
You have to give your players some consequences. Otherwise, there is none. Nothing maybe matters. Part of the joy of the RPG sphere is consequence-free consequences, if we can call it that. There are not consequences in real life except your feelings, perhaps, and like your attachment to the fictional world or character that might have just been destroyed or killed.
00:43:00
Speaker
but your character can experience those consequences. And, you know, to call it another one, like, I think NAD Pod framed this really well, not another D&D podcast, by their first campaign being the campaign after the campaign. The adventuring party already saved the world, and now you three idiots are picking up the pieces because they've actually made some things very much worse. And, I mean, spoilers-ish, like, that first party led to the creation of the Big Bad of
00:43:28
Speaker
campaign one of Natpod. I don't think that's actually spoilering anything and you should go listen to it if you haven't because it's years old and it's really funny. Marvelous. But that and in the home game that I'm creating right now my housemate and I are running it together and we spent four years doing a level one to ten game with less consequences and we're like we want to do level ten to twenty and one of the things we're planning on doing is essentially
00:43:52
Speaker
almost no matter what the players do, they can affect this in a number of ways, there's going to be some large cataclysm. And when you're level 19, 20 in D&D, what do you do when your world has experienced a massive tragedy, a massive ecological catastrophe? Do you have an obligation to fix it? Do you want to fix it? You certainly have the magical and other means to do so, or at least greatly affect the reconstruction of the world. Should you?
00:44:22
Speaker
And so we are hoping that over the course of our campaign, that's the choice we want to give. Our players' choices are going to directly affect what is happening in the world, and then we want to confront them with those decisions and what happened. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And it doesn't have to go the way they expect. It is more important that the player see that their actions and roles and choices and weapons have
00:44:50
Speaker
impact then that is more important than oh good it did exactly what I hoped it would like I have seen characters succeed at stuff at a table that they had very little impact on and be like
00:45:06
Speaker
versus someone who did not quite pull off what they were trying to do, but their impact had a major result. And they were like, oh my God, what a gut punch. I did not see that coming. Like they were more satisfied by the dissatisfaction of not getting everything that the character wanted because they were part of it, you know?
00:45:31
Speaker
and and their actions had a had a big piece of like what was going to happen next and affected the story yeah yeah yeah no i mean nothing worse than like the wasted nat 20 on like a persuasion roll that means for like can i get a loaf of bread from this person for five copper instead of a silver piece you know
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah. Or otherwise, when you're just like, wow, my choice, my attack, my spell, my attempt to be nice just didn't actually matter in almost any way. It's like, well, okay, I guess that was nice.
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah.
Voice Acting and NPC Development
00:46:11
Speaker
You also mentioned that you are a voice actor. Go voice actors. How has your voice acting impacted your storytelling? I would say D&D was like the entry point for me to do more of that and to really try to experiment more with
00:46:29
Speaker
You know, I cannot claim to have had any like dialect coaching, but I can fake it like I know some amount of accents like and I for myself try to stick to like mostly European ones because I have feelings about, you know, trying to do an accent that would be, you know, a stereotypical someone from the Indian subcontinent speaking English or from Africa like
00:46:51
Speaker
I'm not going to judge people necessarily if they want to do that. I don't. But I felt like the option of continually creating a new voice and now in the campaign going, man, I'm bringing in NPC after NPC after NPC, and I really want them to be different. And so it has really, I think, allowed me to freedom to experiment in a way that is
00:47:12
Speaker
you know I'm not getting I'm not strictly speaking getting paid for it so no one's gonna like give me notes on it but I can I can experiment I can play I can see what works I can lean harder into like how bad of a French accent can I do can I really go like full Monty Python like John Cleese standing on top of the wall of castle perilous or whichever one in
00:47:52
Speaker
Some people, I think, love doing really silly voices when you're in gaming spheres and you have the opportunity. And some people, I played with people that are like, nope, it's always my voice. I'm gonna just make it sound a little bit different by what I'm after and what I want, what I'm interested in. But yeah, I found it to be sort of an invaluable training tool.
00:47:54
Speaker
That's your auntie!
00:48:11
Speaker
to really expand my own idea of what is possible. And even without the accents, just how do I take my normal voice? Can I change the frequency with which
00:48:26
Speaker
I have words to create a different character versus someone who's always going to be very excited and talk like this even if they don't know what they're saying and you just have to keep talking and the whole point is to keep your mouth moving and words coming out. Tempo is a big thing one can use. Absolutely. Definitely. And these are things I think also for people that are like, well, I want to do a voice at my table, but I'm not comfortable doing an accent. Don't do an accent.
00:48:50
Speaker
You know, have a couple catch phrases like lean hard into, you know, lean hard into like saying, well, then God's told me to do it. You know, maybe you're maybe you're a cleric and really everything is like, no, my deity has to tell me. And so that's, you know, you can always create a shtick. I would say a vocal shtick in this case.
00:49:11
Speaker
whether or not you want to create the full accent of like how hard you go into character creation there's always room to like to play and to bring out a little bit something different from I the player Colin versus well now Jim jab the goblin maybe just sounds a little more like this and it's basically my voice but I'm just trying to do something
00:49:32
Speaker
weird. Exactly, exactly. Accents are a wonderful place to play with NPCs and they're a lovely device to just differentiate your own voice so that as the French guard sounds nothing like the German Major Dormel who is trying to observe that the English villain that is running the show can steeple their fingers and accordingly
00:49:59
Speaker
Accents are great but like you said yourself, not everybody can do accents. For our GMs that are starting out, for our GMs that don't feel like they have a necessarily wide repertoire of voices to pull from, there are a number of things you can do.
00:50:19
Speaker
And along with the look of the NPC that you're building, let's not try to go for more than like say four or five in a given session. Sure. Start with one detail, just one detail.
00:50:34
Speaker
That elf is balding. That gnome has missing a leg. That dwarf has shaved their beard for undermass and refuses to grow it out until they've slain the dragon that ate their dad. You know, just one detail.
00:50:50
Speaker
to get the ball rolling that will be memorable, that hook that you can hang so much on. And when it comes to the verbal performance of it, you demonstrated one yourself where if you slow down what you're saying, the character
00:51:09
Speaker
is different than the guy that's talking a mile a minute in a motor mouth and we've got to get over this thing, we've got to unload those packages, we've got to get those boxes loaded up, we've got to get the centrifuge spinning up again for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and like the ticker tape talk of the other end of the spectrum. But yeah. I think there's also, the one detail is great. Like one thing I want to add, like those details are awesome if you're, if you find yourself in a combat situation, you're like, okay, party, there's five orcs over there.
00:51:35
Speaker
And you can just be like, all right, from left to right, A, B, C, D, E, F. A, B, C, whichever. Or like, that one, that one's, you know, E has an eye patch. F has extremely, like, one extremely large tusk in the center of their mouth for some reason. Like, you give them the one detail and it makes it a little bit easier for you because you're like, oh, that, the one with one tusk might talk a little more like this because it's an extreme underbite. Extreme underbite. You know, and your players can go,
00:52:03
Speaker
Which one is closest to me again? I don't know. They're A, B, C, D, whatever. They can go up. The one with the tusk. No, no, no. Actually, I'm really close to the one with the eye patch. I'm gonna go for the one with the eye patch. I'm gonna try to give them a second eye patch. No, me eye! Me only eye! Yeah. And as a GM, I think...
00:52:23
Speaker
you know, tropes exist for a reason. I'll say I'm going to start there. If you are creating some NPCs, lean into some tropes, you know, do your best Yosemite Sam. Why not do your best Bugs Bunny? I realize also people like younger than us by some significant amount, like Looney Tunes isn't a thing anymore. If you don't know what I'm talking, I don't know. Do your best Steven Universe.
00:52:46
Speaker
Oh, my cartilage, it's turning to powder just listening to you. Oh, man. When I used to teach kids in the before times, I taught circus many things, and one of my horrifying discoveries was that my kids did not know who Elmo was. Or no, Grover, excuse me, Grover. Because Grover was replaced by Elmo, and I was like, we have a blue fuzzy gymnastics mat floor, and I'm like, that's Grover, go stand on the Grover, and they're all like, who is Grover?
00:53:11
Speaker
But yeah, so, you know, as a GM, like, lean into the things you know if you don't feel confident trying to put on sort of a posh British accent for some way and really staying with it and knowing how to do your vowels and consonants and so forth. Like, do a character you know if your favorite cartoon character is Hey Arnold. Do your best Hey Arnold.
00:53:34
Speaker
I see nothing wrong in trying to do that. Like, character voices are a ton of fun. My proviso is that they be at least a little appropriate to the genre you're working on. I do not expect Bugs Bunny to tunnel into Barovia anytime soon to say, what's up, Strad? You know, that's not going to happen. I mean,
00:54:00
Speaker
he'd be dinner in a second but you know you can you can always have that in there just to demonstrate how terrible Strahd is a bunny tunnels up on the floor and they're doing the the dinner confrontation Strahd picks it up by the neck sinks his fangs in and throws it away and now back to what we're saying you're all going to die slowly and terribly but not right now i just wanted to feed you first
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah, but I think that those, like drawing from those sources, like there's no reason not to, especially if it's going to give you the confidence to then go for an accent a little bit later down the line. Absolutely. I am a big believer in teaching voice actors that your whole body from basically the diaphragm up is an instrument. It has evolved to produce sound. And because you have a brain and a working jaw,
00:54:51
Speaker
and the ability to draw a graph in.
00:54:55
Speaker
you have the ability to influence that sound and affect how it comes out. In the seminar that we give a couple of times a month over on StartPlaying.Games, link in the doobly-doo, we talk about a number of ways that beginners can change their voice up from one to the other with a number of things that have nothing to do with who your favorite cartoon character was as a kid or how good your Patrick Warburton is.
00:55:23
Speaker
Very good and have more to do with well is the character young are they old are they healthy are they sick are they fat are they skinny are they strong are they weak are they tall are they short one detail
00:55:37
Speaker
one detail just to start with and from there your inner monologue can decide how you want them to sound like I will spend an hour or less in my apartment puttering around with a magic wand just trying out different nuances on a voice for an NPC that's gonna stick around for a while like it took me a while to find Strahd
00:56:02
Speaker
versus finding a recurring bad guy for my Doctor Who series. Because if it is, for instance, going to be a recurring character, then you want something that you can come back to with some ease. And another trick we'll share
00:56:21
Speaker
is the sentence that you can use to lock in. Like, if there's one sentence that you know in your heart always sounds the same from this bad guy or this good guy, then if you say that out loud, it's like, it's practically a gear shift. Yes. Our most arrogant villain, the victor, had a line halfway through season one of, don't you have papers to grade? As this demeanor will insult to a teacher's aid,
00:56:50
Speaker
and it just stuck the arrogance, the upper-lipidness of him, and the absolute deliberation. Don't you have papers to grade? And there they are. There he is.
00:57:05
Speaker
I was gonna say that to me immediately like that is so visually suggestive of this character and also suggestive of kind of their mental state. They're going to choose each word very carefully. That I would argue is not an NPC that you almost ever surprise into saying something unexpected. They'll still have everything very carefully planned out.
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah. And then just watch him get madder and madder when the plan goes off the rails. It's lovely. He has lost his temper twice when they've shown up in person and completely flabbergasted by just, no, we're not doing things your way. We're just not doing them. Yeah.
00:57:42
Speaker
I love it. To go back something you were saying a little bit a moment ago about body language and posture, I think that's also a very important thing. And it's something we think about in full theater and as an actor, right? We talk a lot, I think, about where does your character lead from? You're walking down a street. Do you lead from your chest? Do you lead from your heart? Do you lead from your chin, your nose, your hips? Your ego. Do you lead from your junk? Your ego.
00:58:12
Speaker
And or it doesn't start going sideways, you start leading from your shoulder. And as a voice actor, yeah, you're limited. You don't have the walk, but you can still find like, well, I feel like a young character and shy is actually gonna be a little bit shrunken in and I can change my shoulders and my posture. And that does immediately affect my voice without really trying to do anything.
00:58:36
Speaker
So if you're like, I'm playing a, you know, eight foot Goliath, you can just be like, all right, let me try to sit up straight, expand my chest and just have the posture of an eight foot tall Goliath. And it's going to change how I embody this character, even if I'm sitting down at a table the entire time. But yeah, you're like your posture and more than just the muscles of your vocal cords.
00:58:59
Speaker
can change how you present those voices a lot. Oh, yeah. And give you a lot to play off of, a lot to work with. Even the shape of your face, like, because this is not video for our friends at home, right now, my face is relaxed and I am talking normally. But if I push my jaw over to one side and I start to just do a little bit of a lisp, and I turn my voice up just a bit more like here, then we've got Granny all over the place and, ooh, she's a lot of funny parties.
00:59:28
Speaker
And one of my favorites is just give yourself a little underbite or an overbite. And what does it do? You're almost immediately into some posh British sort of thing, but the degree that you do it, you can do just a tiny little bit of an underbite. So my teeth are like my lower teeth just passed and it kind of immediately makes my voice a little bit higher.
00:59:52
Speaker
You know, and if I try to pull my chin back, like really, it kind of sends it more nasally right away. You guys made it to AV Club. Great to see you.
01:00:02
Speaker
But just the smallest physical change, if you try it and you play with it, your voice is going to change and you're going to unlock some really cool new voices for NPCs or for your character as it may be. Absolutely. One of the things I love, so let's build out our cast of NPCs for our next game.
NPC Motivations and Storytelling Depth
01:00:22
Speaker
Starting with the detail, you've got a party of, let's say, five orcs. You've got Squinty, the guy missing an eye. Pegleg, the guy missing a leg.
01:00:31
Speaker
the one with only one hand, you've got Tuskur, the one with one Tuskur, the one with one Tusk, and then there's just Biggin, the one who's headed to the top because he's eight feet tall and technically a larger humanoid.
01:00:50
Speaker
just like your PCs hopefully your NPCs want something and they will do what is what is on their character sheet as it has their capabilities to make that happen are they hunting for your NPCs are they tracking a bounty are they guarding the tunnel entrance to an abandoned
01:01:11
Speaker
to a hidden dungeon? Are they digging underground because they're getting paid to by the actual big bad? And this just goes to acting as well, but having what the character wants
01:01:25
Speaker
in mind is a wonderful compass to use for reference of, well, they wouldn't do that because they want to do so-and-so, or they wouldn't let him get away with blah, blah. I'm like, really? Tell me more. You know, like resistance and friction are the kindling of good storytelling. And I think as a GM, you can choose how much of that to engage with any given moment because your five random orcs that your low level party encounters on the road to town
01:01:56
Speaker
They might be there, you're like as a GM going, they're just there to be an obstacle. I just wanted them to have a fight or have to make a choice if they fight or try to persuade these orcs to get out of the way in this session. And that can be fine. They don't need to have more motivation than that. But if they have a leader, if there's someone in charge,
01:02:13
Speaker
that you're going to give that voice to then yeah maybe spend a couple minutes going like well what does that person want okay they've been they've been paid by a nearby group of you know a mad scientist a mad mage has paid them to waylay
01:02:28
Speaker
trespassers on the road and bring him bodies for experimentation. And so there you know that orc is probably not going to be amenable to being persuaded to get out of the way or you can set your DC that much higher. Your party's got a roll of 20 to get out of this with and like and convince these orcs that they should leave alone versus
01:02:46
Speaker
Hopefully your big bad whatever version of it that is like whoever whether that's the level 20 god that they have to take down at their fighting Vecna, Strahd or if it's just like the random thing that you made up you know sometimes we're lucky enough like Strahd has an extensive backstory and list of motivations of why he's doing what he's doing
01:03:07
Speaker
You know, some of it kind of questionable and sexist to kind of depending on how you look at it. And I really I am so I want someone to run. She is the ancient the gender swap version because it looks amazing. And I am being a forever GM right now. And I want to play. But like, I'm thinking a lot about the we should talk later. Yes, into it. Super into it.
01:03:26
Speaker
I've been thinking a lot about the big bad for the World Report. And there's been, if you listen to the podcast, there's been some teases in there of what's coming and who's there. And at the same time, I'm going, what is this person's motivation? Why are they doing the thing that's happening now versus what will happen at the end of the campaign in the back half?
01:03:48
Speaker
And I'm spending a lot more time on it because I would like them to not just be one note. They are evil. We need to defeat them. That is the end of the story. Well, they're a bad guy. That's not good enough. Yes. Whether or not you agree with your big bad's motivation, whether or not your party agrees with it. It should still exist. It should exist. And a good GM, I think, is going to give your players at least a moment of like, oh, but I kind of agree with them. And maybe I don't actually want to fight
01:04:18
Speaker
Oh, but we have to. You know, I think our goal, my goal, not our necessarily, GM's gonna have whatever goal they want. My goal is like, you know, essentially to create Killmonger from the first Black Panther movie. I wanna create a villain my audience will sympathize with, my party will sympathize with.
01:04:39
Speaker
and go, man, they've got a really great point. Like we don't agree, we don't disagree ideologically, we just maybe disagree with like how you are doing, how you are achieving this goal. And so all that by way of saying, I think GM's like, we can put as much time as we want into our NPCs motivations, but ultimately it will help your story that you're trying to tell with your players if your NPC is good or bad or neutral.
01:05:05
Speaker
have you taken that time to give them a motivation, a little bit more character than the orc with one eye. Although, hey, I think we could have a long backstory about how he plucked his own eye out and offered it as a gift to his love long ago in a misguided attempt to give them something valuable because they heard that's what you're supposed to do. I'm keeping my eye on you.
01:05:30
Speaker
That's not what we wanted! I don't want you to look at me! I think it's also useful to give your PCs the opportunity to see the bad guy's plan affect the terrain. Like, it's not enough for our heroes to materialize in the old west and just be told, well, the bad guy
01:05:58
Speaker
is an evil genius, and he's digging underground for X. And he's going to leave the minute he has X. Mwahahahaha. That's blah. Where it actually matters is where the PCs start to meet the miners who are going underground and risking their lives for this, and not all of them come back up again. And even in spite of this, they jealously defend the work because it pays so well. It's work, and it's needed. Yeah. Yeah.
01:06:26
Speaker
Give them a chance to walk around, meet the locals, see how this affects them so that instead of, well they're the bad guy, we gotta stop the bad guy. Like they can have the aha moment of, wait a minute, this isn't right! You know? And how can that change their choices from like, let's go fight the industrialist in his mansion to like, let's go talk to him and try to figure out if we can be like, hey,
01:06:48
Speaker
maybe you could like dispose of your mine waste properly instead of dumping it into that river that's affecting the people downstream from you because your workers really depend on you and Also, we could just kill you but we don't want to we were like we're really trying to work with you here rather than just like regime replacement and like hand over the means of production to the labor
01:07:11
Speaker
Oh, those means of production, those pesky means of production. Yeah. But I agree, like, let your players let them give them information from unexpected sources. They don't need to, like, sometimes it's absolutely in your interest to, you know, you receive a paper bird, you receive a letter that has detailed instructions of go to this place, acquire this object from this person who is evil because of these reasons.
01:07:38
Speaker
And they might not interrogate that, and that might be just totally fine. That is the mission of the week. That's what they gotta do. But when they can go there, and as if they're casing, you know, the location of the item, and someone's like, oh yeah, that's the house of our, you know, beloved widowed Lady X, who was previously married to our liege lord, who treated us very well. Dear old Lady X. Dear old Lady X, we love her. She's, oh, she's just a sweet little old woman. Why do you ask?
01:08:06
Speaker
Why, yes, I do have this yarn tied around my wrists. How did you know? Oh, am I marching to the drum of some... from some mastermind you don't see? What are you talking about? Yup. And still, they might have no option but to, like, go get the thing and complete the mission. But maybe that will inspire them to leave an object of value in its place or do it less murderhobo-y than they might have, you know?
01:08:33
Speaker
This is where we get into the real collaboration though of storytelling because the biggest difference, the biggest difference between screenwriting or writing a novel and telling a collaborative game, sharing the reins
01:08:51
Speaker
is you are not in complete control. Your players are going to generate ideas and come up with things that you in a million years would never have anticipated. I can count over our first season, at least I want to say three, if not four or five times where I have like laid out a number of ways that they can
01:09:16
Speaker
hoist the bad guy by their own petard because nothing is more satisfying than watching them hoist themselves by their own petard. And they're like, oh, no, we didn't do that. We did this other thing that you never planned for. Oh, no, no, we just burned the town down. Yeah.
01:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, it got to a point, one of my home games was like, I'm just, I can only plan the barest bone outline of what we're gonna do because I know you guys are gonna do something different. I've gotten a little bit better. There's a thing called kind of forcing a choice, right? Which is essentially, you want your players to get to point B, but you're gonna give them pathway A, pathway B, and pathway C to get there. You know, they're starting at point A, they gotta get to the,
01:10:02
Speaker
And you maybe know what those pathways are, and it's essentially the idea that you can shepherd your players, you can railroad them if you really want them to be on path A, but there are ways to get them to play with you and achieve your desired outcome while still giving them agency to do it however they want to. It is tricky. It definitely takes some mental gymnastics and quick on your feet thinking and also preparation.
01:10:28
Speaker
But I I'm for myself have been trying to find the balance between I want my especially my three clowns on the roll report I want them to do whatever they want that does not break the game or completely screw my plans but also I have I feel an obligation to guide that story a little bit since
01:10:45
Speaker
I am the GM, and there's something that I am kind of trying to do. And what you were saying kind of early on about GMs that improvise their entire games, and it's amazing. I am in awe of people that can do that. I cannot. I've got a lot of good improv skills, but especially if I'm telling a long story. I take obsessive notes at before and after every session. I write pretty detailed scripts of at least stuff that I want to say when it comes to descriptions and settings and NPCs.
01:11:15
Speaker
and even then I'm like, oh wait, I wrote a whole section that we did not even use this week because you guys wanted to do something else. Well, I'm gonna save that for next week or six months from now. But yeah, people that can improvise the whole thing, that's incredible.
01:11:31
Speaker
I couldn't keep an entire landscape in my head. I would be making things up. I would be grabbing at names as we go-go. I'm pretty content with my current mix of like enough scaffolding to get them there.
01:11:49
Speaker
and imply what will happen if they do nothing and then give them the rest of the sandbox to play in. Oh, you found some building blocks over in that pile of sand I didn't realize was gonna be there. Okay, let's see where that goes. Let's see what impact that has so that you're still honoring their decisions and their ability to impact things. But yeah, they are going to zig when you expect them to zag. That's just going to happen at some point, if not more than once.
01:12:19
Speaker
and we hope that we can zig along with them and we hope that we can bring those zigs back. Exactly. The story that I thought I was telling has been modified a little bit every single episode and anytime my players start adding, because I always encourage, well, I can't even say always, the couple homebrew games that are not set in a set in Faerun or set in an established context, I love it when my players make up some history.
01:12:47
Speaker
We now have a made up social media network on the World Report called Bubble because that's how that happened. Like someone who's just like, I, this is what I want. Like, yes, absolutely. And the end goal of the story has like the goalposts that I'm setting up are shifting left and right a little bit forward and backwards as new elements come out and where they just, the connections my players are forging to each other, to NPCs and the choices they're making and the random bits of backstory they're dropping. I'm like, I want that. I want that. I want that.
01:13:17
Speaker
And it's both, I think it makes them, it makes your players feel really good that they're contributing in this way to the story that you are telling together. And also it's nice, like it goes back to what we were saying about giving each character moments to shine. I'm a big believer in over the course of a game, there should probably be a mini arc or full arc focused on each character's backstory and how it is relevant to the main plot and moving it forward. I think,
01:13:46
Speaker
I think a number of podcasts. I think Critical Role does this very well. I think NAD Pod does. I think Dimension 20 does. Worlds Beyond Number to mention the other kind of big bear in the room. All of them do this very well that I'm seeing each character is getting 10 plus episodes and sometimes several chunks that are really tied to their backstory, who they are as a person and their lineage maybe and their magic and the source of their magic, whatever it is.
01:14:13
Speaker
And I think that's beautiful. I love doing that. And it also, it takes some stress off the storytelling and world building as a GM. If I'm going, all right, I know in two arcs, we're gonna, for sure, the podcast, we're in this big city right now, like two, three arcs from now, we're gonna leave the city and there's gonna be a whole arc about our
01:14:34
Speaker
undersea princess, the seventh daughter of the king of the underwater realm, and there's going to be a thing happening there, and it is definitely based on what she has shared about her character and her backstory in the game. But I didn't think I was gonna do that necessarily. I was like, I don't know, question mark, they leave the city and go X. But now, I'm like, ah no, that whole section has been filled in with bits that that player has been offering me.
01:15:01
Speaker
and it gives the players a chance to bring back things that you as the GM established in the flashback and that when it is done quote unquote right or done quote unquote well
01:15:18
Speaker
There is nothing like it. Spoilers for Rift Apart, one of our mid-season adventures, but it opens. We have exposition to deliver. Sure. It's sci-fi babble talk, basically, that set up the rules that they're going to be playing with for the next hour. My go-to way to deliver exposition is to turn it into a complaint.
01:15:41
Speaker
So it justifies why people are talking about things everybody already knows. But in this case, we were like, but what if it was a lecture? What if it was Chekhov's lecture? So the dry dusty professor is going on and on about this sort of sciency bullshit. And the main character who's in the flashback has to roll awareness checks to tune out the snoring of the person next to him.
01:16:10
Speaker
I love that. That is so good. Please feel free to steal it. Thank you. Yeah, that's amazing. But to add just a little extra powdered sugar onto it, the character that is snoring next to him in the present is the character he's trying to save.
01:16:28
Speaker
because they ignored those lessons, because they did not pay attention to the check engine light on their time machine. And when I got to give credit to Brand, Brandesorio, who plays our fixer, our first generation Time Lord, I have to give him such credit because the story did not end the way anyone was expecting or hoping it would. But the last thing he mentioned was like, you know, it began all the way back in class.
01:16:56
Speaker
And I felt just bolts just hit me right between the ribs of like, oh, button, there it is, credits. And just bookends, organic happening bookends of like, okay, here's this nice thing up front. Is he going to do anything with it at the back end? Oh my God, I wasn't expecting him to, but there it is. And of course now I expect it retroactively.
01:17:19
Speaker
this is the this is the magic of these collaborative storytelling right any any game any given session something like that can happen unexpectedly yes and and again to say like it's hard to shoot for those moments yes it's difficult it's practically disingenuous too because you want it to be organic but like but they happen and and there is
01:17:39
Speaker
you know, there is some really powerful magic in collective storytelling. Like this has been, if we want to be like a little more woo about it, like this has been a human activity since the dawn of humanity.
Storytelling as Life Lessons and Therapy
01:17:50
Speaker
We tell stories to each other as tribes, as groups, as people, and it just became more and more formalized as we went along. And now we have these like, you know, a plethora of different rules and dice-based systems to help you tell a story with your friends.
01:18:06
Speaker
And it's just, it's so special. I think it really does connect to these truths and these things that we've been telling each other for generation after generation after generation. Storytelling is a lifesaver because it is the mechanism that allows you to learn stuff, possibly dangerous, impactful lessons about life without suffering through them yourself.
01:18:31
Speaker
You do not need to go through all the trials and travails of the plucky protagonist who's been unemployed for eight months and makes all these mistakes about so-and-so. But you can learn from those mistakes yourself and apply them to your own job applications, et cetera. This is going back to the consequence-free consequences. Your real-world emotions and feelings might have some effect or have some changes and shifts.
01:19:01
Speaker
your character might have a real serious in-world consequence, but you get to experience it vicariously. You know, I think this is also where there's a pretty large body of research I am passingly familiar with of RPGs as forms of therapy. Yes, I lectured on that. Kids, adults, one-on-one. So you know better than I do, but like,
01:19:23
Speaker
Yeah, that that it gives my understanding one of the best tools is that exact thing where you're like, you can experiment you your character can go through this thing that you have a fear of or that is, you know, maybe paralyzes you in decision making in your real life. But your character can do that. And you can live out those consequences without them affecting your real life in it in such a tangible way. Yeah, I think that is so important and so special.
01:19:50
Speaker
For the record, I am not a therapist, a psychiatrist, or a psychologist. None of this is medical advice. But...
01:19:59
Speaker
using roleplay to get one step removed from uncomfortable or possibly dangerous feelings, from approaching fears that we wish to overcome, there is catharsis to be had. It might be easier for you to embody a character that stands up to a wicked stepmother than actually getting on the phone with your own stepmother, for instance.
01:20:26
Speaker
Yes, things like that. And usually these are situations that will be presented to you with consent and with the ability to opt in and out. In our real life, you might not be able to avoid a conversation with your stepmother. I mean, maybe you can for only so long if they live in a different state and you can like block the number on your phone or whatever. But at some point you're going to have that and you may not be prepared for it. And you may not have been given the chance to say, I am ready for this. I want this.
01:20:51
Speaker
But in a game, you know, your GM can say, you know, hopefully at the beginning of the session, they'll be like, hey, player, we're touching on some of these things that you and I have maybe talked about as being like a little bit potentially triggering or like, you know, you have some history with. So I want to make sure that this is okay with you because otherwise we can take this totally other track. Yeah. But you are given the opportunity to explore those things that might be triggering or traumatic.
01:21:15
Speaker
safely in a supportive environment, you know, presumably with some friends who are there to hold you and uplift you and not just like you on your own with your evil stepmother. Listen to her talk about how you were a shitty child growing up or like whatever it might be. I hope I feel like stepmothers are not like that anymore. Just classically speaking and fairy tales.
01:21:37
Speaker
What I was going to talk about was lines and veils, for instance, as a safety tool. One of the most useful, important, crucial tools in your toolbox is a simple one-page form that can benignly check in with your players before session zero and say, okay, well, I'm fine with creepy crawlies, but not so much with harm to children or animals.
01:22:02
Speaker
Or I'm fine with the monsters scaling the walls, I just don't want them, you know, dripping hair in my face. Or third thing. And it is your responsibility as the GM to make sure that they don't run up against a hard line.
01:22:18
Speaker
anymore than they, you know, you confront them with something that could be triggering. Yes. There is no game of any RPG that is so important that it cannot be paused to say, hey, I noticed you're having an emotional reaction here. Are you okay?
01:22:37
Speaker
Have we gone too far with something? I need to check in. Are you doing okay? And thankfully, thankfully, it was like, no, no, those are tears of joy. This is, this is a thing I'm happening. I'm like, okay, go for it. Yeah. But the word aftercare comes to mind because in these emotionally heartfelt experiences where you may get a little choked up while you slam the sword through the dragon's heart, I'll avenge you, dad.
01:23:03
Speaker
You know, like aftercare, checking in with your players post-game is important because we want them to be okay on the inside and the outside, you know? Yeah, very much so. Yeah, my sense is also that this is a thing that is becoming more prevalent.
01:23:23
Speaker
in which I love to see that. For my knowledge, the idea of the consent checklist and the lines and veils and even the X card, just the big red X button thing in the middle of the table, just be like, nope, everything needs to stop. I am very activated in this moment for whatever reason. I feel like that is maybe a creation of the last 20 or so years and increasingly being adopted because
01:23:47
Speaker
I don't know we talk about consent a lot more now than we used to which is great and we should keep talking about it more in all of these contexts and certainly within an RPG space like I think nothing would be worse than getting to the end of a session and and then getting a message a text from your player like a day later going like hey last night's session was actually really fucking hard for me and I got really triggered by this thing and I don't want to play anymore
01:24:09
Speaker
And it is absolutely any player's right to say, I don't want to play anymore if you have been triggered, if you're feeling whatever. But also, hopefully, we're all trying to cultivate those practices of checking in with each other after care, after a particularly tough or emotional session and whatever. And just the ability to communicate feelings effectively without assigning blame or the you statements, the you did this thing. And so now I feel that, you know,
01:24:39
Speaker
Yeah, I love seeing it. My first experiences with getting those checklists was about four years ago as I started playing a little bit more and playing with people that I didn't know as well. My first couple games, I played a little bit in my younger years and as I came back in my 30s,
01:24:57
Speaker
I was playing with people I knew very well. And so we just kind of jumped in. And I don't regret that. Nothing ever happened that made me wish we'd had a session zero and like a real conversation about the checklists and lines and veils. But I appreciated it a lot when the people that I started playing with I didn't know so well. That was their immediate, hey guys, glad we're all interested. I'm messaging the five group of players. I'm going to send you all a checklist. Please fill it out and get it back to me before our session zero next week. And I'm going, what? Oh, oh, that's great.
01:25:26
Speaker
And a session zero probably means we're going to talk about this stuff before we actually start playing. Yes. Yes, I'm so here for this. Games should be fun. Games should also be safe. Safe for your feelings. And I'm not suggesting people use these words or these phrases to jab at others like, well, you're not respecting my feelings, you know, when they clearly are.
01:25:49
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, you can weaponize those statements easily. That is a tactic of like passive-aggressive communicators everywhere. But also, it's, you know, I think it's a lot of, consent I think is tied into all of these things in all areas of your life and hopefully should be.
01:26:07
Speaker
your gaming spheres, whether you are running a game or playing a game, you want to be communicating with your scene partners, I would say, your gaming partners, your romantic partners, your friends, your family, your workplace. These practices all, I think, feed into each other. And the RPG space is a great way and a great sphere to be practicing those, to be using your eye statements, to be going, hey,
01:26:42
Speaker
You know, when you mentioned, you know, the high priced courtesan, I got kind of upset because one of my close friends is a sex worker and like, can we talk about this a little bit and work it out? You know, I know we had our checklist and we talked about how I really didn't want any like insectoid things coming up, but we're like really kind of on the edge of some insect things and actually maybe I'm kind of okay with it if you don't talk too much about their glistening mandibles and like what they're actually like skittering along.
01:27:03
Speaker
When we did this in the session, I felt kind of upset because
01:27:11
Speaker
I'm fine with horror, I don't want detailed descriptions of gore. And you're like, okay, we can make that adjustment. Have no fear. And it's an ongoing conversation. And again, you practice it with your gaming people because it's an imaginary world and the consequences are much lower, but then that gives you some tools to go to your workplace maybe if you are experiencing microaggressions of whatever nature, or just your boss is kind of like weird about
01:27:39
Speaker
Emails and sends too many emails instead of going you send too many goddamn emails. Stop it It's like hey, I've noticed you send me four emails about one topic Can we maybe think about doing one email or whatever it might be? But how do you how are you not feeling heard right now? Yeah
01:27:55
Speaker
Yeah. Can I do anything better to make sure you are feeling hurt? There you go. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. But it's a practice. I think that was, you know, one of the big things, like, again, I'll plug Kitty Stryker is an amazing, like, voice in the consent sphere, does talks on consent in gaming. She did a talk at BigBadCon. I had a really lovely time talking to her. And one of the things we came back to a lot is it's always a practice.
01:28:20
Speaker
Consent is not, like, it doesn't stop. It evolves, it changes, it's ongoing and is therefore in everyone's best interest to kind of keep circling back and checking in and doing the aftercare after a game session as it might be. Like, one of the best comparisons I've ever gotten was Imagine a Cup of Tea.
01:28:40
Speaker
Like just because you offered someone a cup of tea three weeks ago doesn't mean that they're in the mood for tea now. Just because someone wanted sugar in their tea yesterday does not mean they want sugar in their tea today. Just because someone ordered piping hot tea doesn't mean you don't accidentally spill piping hot tea and now have to apologize even if it was an accident and make sure that they weren't hurt by your actions. Yes.
01:29:05
Speaker
And wrapping our brain around that hopefully isn't too troublesome. But by checking in, we can make sure that the people that come to our table are given the beverages that they actually want to drink. Yes. At the temperatures they request. Exactly. And then that leads to better roleplay, better collaborative storytelling, a successful game as it might be.
01:29:28
Speaker
to bring it back around. Lovely. Sometimes I do that.
Homebrewing and Learning from Mistakes
01:29:32
Speaker
Colin, do you have any other tips and tricks to GMing or world building or homebrew you'd like to share with our listeners? I mean, I'm going to pass on the one that Connie Chong told me, which is, you know, balance, hardly newer. It was it was really the encouragement to just go for it, especially when you're talking about homebrewing a new monster, a new magic item.
01:29:52
Speaker
even a new character class or subclass, you can always make a course correct as you go. I think that is my biggest thing is don't be afraid of making a mistake along the way. You know, if you're in a podcast or a public facing game, like people might notice your mistake and you might have to deal with some social media of like people poking at you and calling it out, but then you acknowledge it and you move on. And in your own games, like really go for it.
01:30:20
Speaker
I also think for me, I've found a lot, I'm a large reader. Reading has always been a big part of my life and sci-fi and fantasy have always been a big part of my life. And like historical fiction, I'm less in the dramatic fiction or non-fiction. And I think there is nothing wrong with taking the sandboxes that you're interested in playing in and playing in them.
01:30:48
Speaker
One other thing, like I was super excited to see that I have to remember who it is. People are making a fifth season RPG based on N.K. Jemisin's fifth season books, which is this sort of post-apocalyptic, semi-earth, and the magic users can essentially cause and stop earthquakes. Oh wow. Really exciting, weird, cool world, kind of depressing, but like I'm so happy to see people are making a game in that space. It's really cool.
01:31:12
Speaker
I have been very inspired by a lot of the weird fantasy that I've read, and I'm trying to bring that into my games. The home game that I'm starting, we're really inspired by Westerns, and we want to do Westerns without doing kind of colonialist, anti-Indigenous, industrial capitalist Western. But, you know, some of that exists, and the players have to wrestle with the consequences.
01:31:35
Speaker
But yeah, I think my biggest thing that I'm still wrestling with, honestly, is just, is don't be afraid to make the mistakes. Like, reach big, you wanna home brew a thing, home brew a thing. If it doesn't work, you're gonna find out. Oh, yeah. Yeah, very much. From a very young age, and most of this from schooling, not necessarily at home, but like, I was conditioned, if not taught, that mistakes were bad. And, you know, they would make you feel like an idiot. And,
01:32:14
Speaker
Uh-huh.
01:32:20
Speaker
And I have watched people make mistakes observed based on whether or not they were able to glean anything from the mistake to alter their behavior in the future. Yeah. And you want to watch out for the folks that do not learn from their mistakes because they are showing you exactly how they think. They really, and if they really keep repeating them, that's that's a thing. I'm thinking of one other thing, which is also that, like,
01:32:46
Speaker
I started out, maybe like many of us, 2020 came around and I was going, I am stuck at home with nothing to do and what do I do? I started running seven games. I started running seven different D&D games in 2020. Only one of them is still actually active, one of them we wrapped last year and the others kind of fell off as life sort of restarted. But a big thing for me was like, well, I don't know exactly what I'm doing.
01:33:10
Speaker
So why don't I start with a pre-existing module that looks like fun, but I can always add my own spin on it. And I think that is, you know, some people that I've talked to in my community, in my friend group that are saying I want a DM, but I've never done it before. And the barrier to entry there is like they think that they have to create a whole world for everyone to play. You don't.
01:33:31
Speaker
And no, like there's a lot of really good modules and you can always add your own NPCs. You can add your own flavor, like to try to do the quickest summation of this campaign. So one campaign, we started with Waterdeep Dragon Heist. That takes the characters from level one to five. They're in Waterdeep.
01:33:49
Speaker
They're doing weird stuff, and I am already going like, okay, you are the monk from the Shadow Monastery who's full of assassins, and there's gonna be some assassins looking for you. And I'm gonna throw them in a couple places over the campaign. You, the dwarf who is basically the dwarven equivalent of Thor, you are after you're reclaiming your kingdom and your hammer. We're gonna throw a little bit of that in.
01:34:09
Speaker
And as it went on, we finished Dragon Heist. They successfully negotiated to get a take of the gold and like return to the city, happened to murder a noble family, which ended up coming back to bite them a little bit. As it does. And as we went on, it did. I started going, okay, I don't want to completely homebrew this. What can I do? And I found Storm King's Thunder, which is a big thing about the Giants and the war between the different types of Giants in Faerun in the setting we were already in.
01:34:36
Speaker
But I was like, okay, you've given me the backdrop. Now I can tell the story about Thorodin Ordrin's son reclaiming the kingdom of Asgardur and the hammer of thunderbolts. I had this beautiful skeleton and I just was able to do the thing that I wanted to do with it while still using mostly what had been written. So I was not feeling like I had to come up with everything.
01:34:57
Speaker
Yeah. And all that to say, use a prefab module that like a lot of them are really good. I highly recommend Waterdeep Dragon Heist for low level campaigns. It is super fun. The way it's built, you have four different bad guy possibilities, and you can bring all them in at different points to asthma guffins, red herrings, yellow herrings, colored herrings. Campaign settings are a wonderful thing to sink your teeth into. Exactly.
01:35:22
Speaker
turn over some rocks, see what's down there. I am a huge horror fan, have been since I was old enough to sneak downstairs for our rated scary movies. Yes. But gothic horror is such a huge piece of Curse of Strahd and Barovia in general. But I'm also a fan of folk horror, you know, the farmyard that's out in the middle of the woods that ain't seen anybody come by and
01:35:52
Speaker
lord knows how many generations you know those little tucked away places along the road yeah that can belong in a fog filled forest land has not seen the sun in ages your own tastes listener your own likes and dislikes will affect what ingredients you decide to add or withhold from the story you start telling and the players
01:36:19
Speaker
that not only come to your table, but also decide to stick around because they like, they are picking up what you are putting down. Those are the players to treasure. Those are the ones to really start to take their decisions into consideration because the more you engage them, the more you involve them, the bigger the reaction you're gonna get from them when they feel truly involved. Very much. And I think
01:36:47
Speaker
And and leaning into your own interest is going to make you as a GM excited about the game. Like I'm really excited about the about the role report about my new home game. Like I am so I am on minimal amounts of sleep. I just had a show open. I was in tech week and like performing all weekend and I am so excited that work. Thank you.
01:37:06
Speaker
I am so excited that I'm playing with my players and recording tonight, although I am underprepared, but I don't care. Like, I love this world that we're making together, and it's given me a big energy boost, even when I'm like, I would rather just go to bed and not get out for like the next three days, please. I definitely can relate to that.
01:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I also think as you continue GMing, and maybe, you know, as someone with even more experiences about this than I am, like, you start with what you know and love, and you do that, and then that gives you, I think, the freedom to be like, you know what? I actually, I don't like aquatic fantasy, whatever, but I want to do a whole arc of my game set in an underwater kingdom
01:37:51
Speaker
as a bit of a challenge to myself because, you know, one of my players is a marine biologist, I don't know, loves starfish, whatever it might be. Like, you start with what you know and love, and especially, you know, for myself, like, I've started with what I have extensive reading in. Like, a lot of the stuff that I'm trying to do with campaigns I am building from scratch is lean into the tropes and the stories and the characters that I have absorbed in 35 years of reading fantasy and sci-fi.
01:38:21
Speaker
Absolutely. But also, I want to do the things that I, you know, I am not a huge horror fan. I have an active imagination and I still, like, if I see a horror movie or if I, like, you know, read a deeply, like, horrible old Stephen King, like, that sort of thing, I can have a nightmare about it for a couple days, like, it can really affect me. And yet,
01:38:43
Speaker
I do want to try to bring that into some games because it's a good story. It's good material. My players might like it. I want to challenge myself now that I feel a little more comfortable as a GM in the arenas that I love when we see what it's like in the arena that I am less familiar with and spend less time in.
Transforming Dislikes into Story Elements
01:39:03
Speaker
Exactly.
01:39:05
Speaker
can demonstrate to yourself that you can play with the right toys, so to speak, the things that you want to bring into a game. You can start challenging yourself. I like to use the example of Brandable Smocket. Okay.
01:39:20
Speaker
I have never really enjoyed stupid characters. The idiot, the dunce, the fat slob, who slows down the story, who gets in the way, who does not necessarily add a great deal of positivity to anything that they're doing. They're just there to make things worse. I don't really care for that. And so I challenged myself, well, what would an idiot that I could tolerate look like?
01:39:47
Speaker
And the answer was Brandable Smocket. He's a complete dunce. He is not helpful in the slightest, but he tries. He means well. He has information that you can find useful if you find a way to get it out of him. Yes.
01:40:04
Speaker
And he can also, even through his actions or inactions, push the story in a positive direction. Because if he's just talking here, it'd be really annoying. Oh, I can't wait. Would you like some creme brulee? It's down that way, in the canteen. They can annoy the captain to say, don't you have someplace to be? Don't you have something you're supposed to be doing? Like, oh, right, the tour, the tour. Let's get the tour started. It'd be really nice. Watch your toes.
01:40:32
Speaker
And then suddenly I've got this character who is still a complete idiot. He is an imbecile, but he can grasp what's going on around him and add to the fun of, we go to get out of here and have a lot of fun with that. So yeah, challenge yourself, investigate what it is you don't like about so-and-so so that you can tweak it so that you can have fun with so-and-so. Absolutely.
01:40:58
Speaker
To bring it back to Doctor Who, the writers of the Season 1 Christopher Eccleston 9th Doctor story, Dalek. The writer of that episode had a long conversation with his girlfriend about the Dalek, this armored tank carrying a mutated gob of hate and saying, well what don't you like about it? It's like, well they're just so dumb.
01:41:20
Speaker
They don't go upstairs. They can't turn their heads. They can't do this. They can't do that. And over the course of the single episode, while staying 100% true and genuine to the essence of the Dalek, they came up with an armored tank that could levitate up the stairs and turn its turret back and forth and shoot over its shoulder and present a modern, genuine threat.
01:41:48
Speaker
Yes. And that one Dalek, that one model has been the tank they have come back to again and again and again over God knows how, well not God knows how many, like what, 14 seasons? Something like that, yeah. So far, and our 14th, 15th doctors. Like, if you can explore what you dislike about a thing, you can work with that instead of letting it work against you.
01:42:12
Speaker
well and and that you know if take that example that took what i would argue was like a pretty unthreatening thing it's a big robot trash can and suddenly when you're like oh the things that were like non-threatening but because it was limited what if we just remove those limitations
01:42:30
Speaker
Suddenly you have a completely new iconic thing that will last for 20 plus years and continue to be referred to and continue to be in that Doctor Who's universe, one of if not the biggest threats to the entire multiverse.
01:42:46
Speaker
Absolutely. Over and over again. And I love what you're saying about your stupid character. Same thing, right? If you hate being an ex-character, you hate seeing that trope on whatever show, TV, story, tropes exist for a reason. We love them. And if you hate them, what is it about that trope, about that character that you hate? And can you make it something that you can have fun with? Yeah.
01:43:11
Speaker
Honestly, I love a good dumb character. A good dumb character is like great for like breaking the tension when it was like a perfectly timed stupid comment. Oh sure, absolutely. You know, the approach to any locked door is can I knock it down? Nothing wrong with trying to be a blunt hammer, you know, in a world of nails. And that's great.
01:43:31
Speaker
Completely fair. Point, well made.
Conclusion and Contact Information
01:43:34
Speaker
Colin, thank you so, so much for joining us today. I have truly enjoyed our conversation. Very safe. It has been a real delight talking with you. Likewise, Casey, thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me on. Thank you for what you're doing. I think having more knowledge like this out in the world is super important. And yeah, thank you. It's been utterly delightful and I am so happy to be here.
01:44:00
Speaker
Hooray! Colin, how can our listeners get in touch with you? And where can they support you and your fine works? Well, they can follow The Roll Report. We are on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google's soon-to-be YouTube podcast, as that switch happens. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok. We are at The Roll Report Cast. You can reach me at those social medias or send us an email directly at The Roll Report, R-O-L-L.
01:44:30
Speaker
at gmail.com. And yeah, I'm around. I'm trying to be more active in this sphere and I am always open to talking to people and sharing knowledge and information. I would love to be playing more games and running more games. So I'm all the things. Please find us and say hello. I would love that.
01:44:52
Speaker
and finally to our listeners another great big thank you for sharing your precious time with us if you feel it's been well spent please share the joy of GMing with your friends who are looking to enjoy themselves
01:45:07
Speaker
Our listeners can email questions for me and our future guests and send that lovely fan art to anywherebutnowpodcastatgmail.com. And if you'd like me to run a game for you or take my class on finding your own character voices, reach out on startplaying.games. Leave a review, rate the show. Follow us on Blue Sky, Twitter, and YouTube at anywherebutnow and wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to join our Discord. Links to everything in the doobly-doo.
01:45:37
Speaker
From all of us, I'm Casey Jones. There are exciting things to come, my friends. I'm glad you're along for the ride. Thanks so much and have a great day.