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Episode 23: Interview with Aphi and Artemis of The Vaktare
27 Plays6 months ago
The first-ever episode with two guest stars! Aphi and Artemis are two creators of content for the twitch channel The Valktare. Check out their thoughts on puzzles and see why it is so important to provide visuals for puzzles.
Find them on twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/thevaktare
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello,
Introduction and Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
my friends, and welcome to yet another episode of the Dungeon Problems podcast. I'm EarthosCreations, your host that you've been hearing my annoying voice for the last, what, four months, five months. So thank you for putting up with that and not sending me hate mail today. Oh, it just didn't arrive yet.
00:00:20
Speaker
No, I don't actually check my videos. It also surprised me. I'm not going to say the next part that I was going to say. Today, my friends, I have a very special thing, something I've never done before in all 22 episodes of my podcast. I have two guests tonight.
00:00:48
Speaker
That's going to be chaotic and it's going to be fun. It's some might even say a puzzle to see how we see what you did there. Thank you. I thought you liked word word things. I don't like puns. Get out here with your puns. OK, that is 1000 percent. Not true. I don't like Maggie's puns. That's also not true. Usually.
00:01:16
Speaker
Well, you can already see that they love each other dearly and they call each other out today.
Guest Introductions and Campaigns
00:01:21
Speaker
I'm joined by Affy and Artemis.
00:01:25
Speaker
Where can they find you? Where can my 12 listeners find you? Thank you, my 12 listeners, for being here. Thanks, 12 listeners. You can find us over on VACTERT TV on all the socials or the VACTER on Twitch. We also simulcast on YouTube when we play, usually, like 99% of the time. Yeah, you can find us there. That's where we are. So come say hi, but just stay out of our houses. Okay, bye.
00:01:56
Speaker
Random, but okay. I mean we did just talk about it, you know how easy it is.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah. What do you guys do on your Twitch channel? What do you play? Well, Artemis and I both run a campaign. I run mine Monday nights. It's, uh, domains of dread, Ravenloft, semi-home brew, semi pulling from modules, uh, horror campaign. Uh, we just hit 90 episodes a couple of weeks ago. So it's ongoing. Um, Artemis, what do you do?
00:02:29
Speaker
I don't want to. Yeah. I run Fixies Five on Friday nights. It's an all ladies or NBS crew. And it's all homebrew in a world I made. And we just I think we're at 77 this week, I think, for sessions. Yep. We're almost done. We're getting down to the end of it. I think we're going to end like around 80. So campaign two.
00:02:57
Speaker
You'll also do a talk show with our friend Emily.
The Love for Puzzles in D&D
00:03:01
Speaker
Yes, I do. Talking about TTRPGs, just...
00:03:07
Speaker
You know, going through the player's handbook has been one of the staples so far, but you've also taken time to talk about world creation, and you did a Gary Khan decompression episode. Pasta is helping. Pasta is Artemis' cat. Pasta loves Effie so much, and anytime she hears her, she comes running from wherever she is in the house. She hasn't seen her in like a week, so... Yeah, is that your favorite person?
00:03:35
Speaker
Oh, she knows where to look like she knows to look at the screen like it's crazy. She's too smart for her own good, but also so stupid. So dumb. Well, listeners, you now know that they have a very.
00:03:51
Speaker
big backlog of episodes that you can go binge. And if you binge Artemis's work quickly, you might make it in time for the finale. So go listen as fast as humanly possible. You can also do podcasts if you don't want to watch us be stupid. So we make funny expressions. Yeah, go watch. Go watch. It's worth the watch, definitely.
00:04:18
Speaker
So, all right. Well, let's ask this first question that everyone knows and loves and hates all at the same time. Do you like puzzles? Do you hate puzzles? Or are you blase about puzzles? I love puzzles, whether they're word puzzles, riddles, solve the door puzzle, whatever it is. I love that sort of stuff. But don't come at me with math. I don't do math.
00:04:49
Speaker
I realize we play clickety-clackety math games, but nope, don't like math. I like puzzles for the most part. I like to give them to my players more than receive them from my DM, but that's just because Affy's mean. Why do you say that? Why do you think Affy's puzzles are so hard?
00:05:14
Speaker
Oh, it's not that they're hard, but it's that she'll use the stuff that's on the back of a kid's menu and you overthink those things when you're an adult. And then you just are like, this is dumb. And it should be this, but I'm not sure. And then you don't want to say anything because you don't want to look stupid. And then you sit there and then you realize, yeah, that was probably right the first time.
00:05:38
Speaker
Listeners, I should say also, uh, these two wonderful guests are friends with old men rolling guys who I interviewed last episode. I don't know how they're going to come out. Uh, so you just heard the same thing of the children's menus right there. And that seems to be a common thread in your games. You guys must all go to the same restaurants or something like that. We spend a lot of time together.
00:06:02
Speaker
Sometimes it is back of the menu, kids menu sometimes. Honestly, I will put a puzzle in front of my players with no solution. But if they come to a solution that I actually like and think it vibes with the story, that ends up being what the solution is. Okay, let me ask you a question right now after you about that. When did you start playing D&D?
00:06:30
Speaker
I played a little bit of 3.5 many, many years ago, but I've been playing 5e for, oh god, I don't even know, like eight, nine-ish years? I'm not sure. Some time, some around there. And then, you know, all the other sort of TTRPGs and when it really started getting popular, I played like many, many different systems now, so.
00:06:56
Speaker
It's been a long time. I played 3.5 a lot growing up, and I've realized that the older editions were very much that with their puzzles. They were like, hey, here's the concept of a puzzle. Good luck. Yeah, essentially. What do you kind of look for when your players give you their quote unquote solutions? How do you decide that it's the right solution?
00:07:25
Speaker
Uh, the creativity of it, uh, like sort of thinking outside the box of what it could be and going like sometimes for the most difficult solution. Uh, sometimes it's the most thematic or dramatic vibe. Uh, my story, my tabletop games that I run are generally less crawl like dungeon crawly. They're more storytelling. So if they come up with a solution, that's like, I sacrifice my arm and it's like, okay, that's
DMing Experience and Growth
00:07:53
Speaker
a fucking vibe. Let's go.
00:07:56
Speaker
But if it's, it's also like over the table. So if I see that they're really, really, really getting frustrated and it's not fun anymore, then we kind of like pull the plug, pull it back. Okay. Yeah. No, you know what? That's exactly what you did. Good job. You've solved the puzzle. Let's move on. So it's part, it's part character vibe. It's part player vibe.
00:08:19
Speaker
So if your players just pretend like they're getting really, really frustrated, just be like, oh, I have the answer now. I can read my players pretty well as a general rule, like not so much with one shots if I haven't played with people before, but we're, like I said, 90 episodes in on Mistwalkers and pretty much the entire crew that's been there the whole time. It's like, okay, yeah, you're just yanking my leg.
00:08:47
Speaker
But then I can tell when they're actually getting frustrated. So it doesn't. What's your kind of how do you look at puzzles as a DM? Pretty similar, I would say. Like I usually have it. Most of the time I have an answer for my puzzles, but the few occasions that I don't, I wait until they do something cool and then let them go.
00:09:15
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I, I always have answers for my puzzles. I, for the most part, uh, it depends on where I get my inspiration for it from. Uh, you know, with, when I get an inspiration from an older module where they're just like, Nope, no answer. They figured out then I'll probably stay true to that. Uh, now as players, what do you think the hardest thing about a puzzle is for you guys?
00:09:43
Speaker
if there's no visual, but it's supposed to be a visual puzzle. Yeah. So if you're just giving me kind of like the words of what it looks like and like I can't imagine it, but actually putting it together and being able to like see it are two different things. So I could like vaguely visualize it, but I would need to actually see something if it's like a visual puzzle, like move the square into the square hole, but you have to do it a certain way. Like I'd have to actually see it.
00:10:13
Speaker
What about the circle in the square hole? Fuck you. We don't talk about that.
Virtual TTRPG Challenges
00:10:20
Speaker
The triangle. I just rage and smack it in. Yep, exactly. What about you, Artemis? Is it kind of similar for you or is there something else that kind of frustrates you with puzzles?
00:10:35
Speaker
I I need to have the like, so if it's a word puzzle, I have to have the words in front of me because I have to be able to read them. Otherwise, I won't comprehend it. But for the most part, yeah, like I'm very visual. So. If it's if it's like a word riddle, I need the I need the the blurb in front of me so that I can read it. And then then it's usually OK.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's, I'm, I'm getting that real sense with pretty much everyone that I interviewed that they have to have it in front of them. I don't know if that's kind of our. It's the narrow spicy. The narrow spicy. Yeah. Pretty much everybody that plays with us or plays at our tables, some form of narrow spicy, including the damps. Now you guys, you guys play mostly virtually, right? You don't really, I mean, y'all live so far apart from one another.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, we are very far spread. I think the closest person to me is Jeremy. And he's only like a 15 minute drive from me, Jeremy from old men are laying dice. But we play with people all over the States, all over Canada. We've played with people that are in Central and South America over in Europe. Yeah, I was not expecting the Central Marist and South America one. Yeah, I won't lie. Like,
00:11:58
Speaker
for some reason when I picture TTRPGs, I don't picture them down there. I don't know why, but... You know, we actually, when we went to Garycon just recently, I went and sat in on a seminar that was for accessibility and it wasn't just like making sure somebody in a wheelchair can roll up to the table. It was, you know, do you have anything in place for the DeafBlind community? Do you have anything in place for
00:12:26
Speaker
you know learning disabilities or the neurospicy uh but then somebody else at the table like on the the panel was like you know there's not a lot of spanish or portuguese you know tabletop because it's not accessible and it's like i i wish i spoke those languages because how would 100 do that but i don't
00:12:48
Speaker
So if you speak Spanish or Portuguese or another language and want to run something I got I got a place you can run it. Just let me know We actually have a couple of followers in Buenos Aires I just found out recently that have been like like listening to us like religiously for the last like six months so
00:13:12
Speaker
That's pretty awesome right there. Part of me is just so dumbfounded that someone hundreds of thousands of miles away is hanging on to your every word that sounds so wild. Wild, unnatural kind of. It's a small world after all.
00:13:38
Speaker
greatest puzzle. How is that still in existence right there? It's a classic and you shut your mouth. I won't make any more common sense. I'm really just aiming for my Disney season desist letter. That's all I want. Yeah. And then my life will be complete. It's not that hard to just go give interviews in Disney World. I should do that.
00:14:06
Speaker
Now, since you guys play virtually, obviously, you know, there are some pros and cons to it, especially because you were saying, hey, you like to see the words in front of you, stuff like that. How would you kind of spice it up a little bit more instead of just putting the words in chat? Is there any kind of tools you've tried to make it a little bit more engaging or anything that you use for that? Or is it just, hey, here's the text you just read?
00:14:36
Speaker
not so much really with Fixius because I was kind of learning how to DM as we were going because I had only DM'd like once before that and I just sort of jumped in the deep end when we started.
00:14:54
Speaker
I've only really kind of recently been more confident with it. So I haven't done anything like that. But assuming that we do a campaign to I'm planning on doing it a little bit more with that where I have visual aids that have like if there's like a puzzle or something, it's on the visual aid.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, we use usually some sort of virtual tabletop for the most part for our games, like our main campaign games, we use Fantasy Grounds, but we use Roll20, we use D&D Beyond. Sometimes we just use Discord chat and send the picture that way. So there is visual aids for me in particular. If I have something like a letter that came in from somebody,
00:15:37
Speaker
To one of the players to one of the characters. I'll usually like make that in in like Photoshop or something with you know fancy fonts and like a wax seal and make it just a little bit more than just words on a screen it has like
00:15:54
Speaker
life to it, if that makes sense. I know it's a piece of paper, it's a piece of parchment and some ink and some wax, but I kind of, that's where I go with. Same with the riddles, like if it's something that's inscribed on like a stone wall, I will Photoshop something like a stone wall with the words written in it.
00:16:15
Speaker
just to make it more appealing. And it's also for Twitch as well to give it more than just our stupid faces. There's something else to look at. So that's, you know, my sort of methodology to it. I use Adobe Express for all the graphics and stuff like that. And I think there can be some really cool stuff that you can do with that, especially if you're doing like
00:16:45
Speaker
if you're doing like letters and stuff like that. Yeah. And Photoshop is also very useful.
00:16:52
Speaker
I haven't used it in a while, but I actually had a puzzle with some pictures with words hidden inside the pictures. Cool. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to figure that out in Photoshop. I'm going to butcher this word, so please do not come at me, listeners.
00:17:16
Speaker
Opacity. Opacity, yeah. Opacity. You know, trying to like make that the right thing so it wasn't too hard, but wasn't too easy. Yeah. So there's a lot of great tools out there and free tools too, probably. So it's really just about finding out what works for you and how you can really
00:17:38
Speaker
make it easy while not being, you know, stressing yourself out. That is the other thing. Sometimes it does take a lot of time to get that stuff together. So there absolutely have been instances where it's like, I didn't have time to prep this, so here it is.
00:17:52
Speaker
I find that's one of the biggest things that new and old DMs, one of the reasons they don't really like to use puzzles so much, because when you're designing a dungeon, a monster or something like that, it can be quite easy. I could, I made a monster in half an hour today, you know, but puzzles sometimes can take an entire day to try and figure out, will this work? Will this not work? And it's really just about practice.
00:18:19
Speaker
And also how you want to present it. Exactly how you want to present it. Artemis, you said that you're relatively new to DMA. I would say after 90 episodes, 80, 77 episodes, you're a veteran now. Yeah, I guess I don't count as new anymore. But when I started, when we started fixes, I was still very new. What's one of the kind of things that you think
00:18:43
Speaker
would help you as you continue on your DM journey to do with puzzles. What do you think really challenges you sometimes or just DMing in general? Hmm.
00:19:00
Speaker
I feel like you really need to know your players so that you know who's more likely to get the puzzle versus like, because you obviously don't think the same way that your players do. So you need to know how your players are going to like look at a puzzle and if they're going to get to the same solution that you did, or if there's multiple outcomes to it, be willing to take one of those other outcomes.
00:19:29
Speaker
Cool, yeah. That's definitely something that has been touched upon a lot, like getting to know your players. One of the things I like to do when I have a first kind of group is I do a very basic dungeon of here's some basic combat, here's some basic role-playing, and here's some basic back of the menu puzzles right there. The amount of times that we've run Phandelver as our training module.
00:19:58
Speaker
We can't look at Fandelver anymore because it just makes all of us insane. But there's a whole new one now, guys. No, they said. No, I refuse. I don't know. No. Continue the journey. No. My session one, I let my players crash an airship. So I mean, that was like you do. Sure, it wasn't.
00:20:26
Speaker
Okay, now I need to know the story. How, why, how, what happened? They were traveling to like where the campaign was going to start and they were all in an airship and there was some harpies and they didn't kill the harpies fast enough and the harpies knocked the airship out of the sky. So it wasn't their fault. It was the harpies fault. See? See?
00:20:54
Speaker
Now ask her, ask them about the fucking frogs. So what about the fucking frogs? Hypnotoad is cool. Okay, so I don't know if you've ever seen, um, there is a creature from, oh god, it's from Kewood Publishing, and it's basically Hypnotoad. It's a sleep toad or something, a sleep frog, and
00:21:22
Speaker
I put a bunch of them outside of the entrance to this cave where there was a bunch of music coming out of it, and they didn't bother to stop to talk to any of the frogs. They just attacked them. Because you said role initiative! Yeah, Afia will die on this hill. It's great. You said role initiative. It's been 35 sessions since this happened, and she's still mad about it. I'm barbarian. I hit things. I don't talk to people. Exactly.
00:21:52
Speaker
So they were there as security for the Witchlight Carnival. And the players killed them all. Didn't bother to talk to him and find anything out until afterwards. And then they were like, well, I guess we can't go to the carnival now. Bye. So yeah. Roll initiative. That doesn't mean that you can't talk to people during combat. Again, Barbarian, hello. Again, you weren't the only person in the party.
00:22:23
Speaker
Don't roll initiative for a bunch of murder hobos. Yes, I realize you are all a bunch of murder hobos. One of my favorite things about being a DM is that even though we're not playing, we still have puzzles presented to us. And you just essentially mentioned one. Your party just killed the Toads. How are you going to get them to still?
00:22:50
Speaker
Now this sounds very railroady, but how are you going to get them to still get to the carnival? Or how are you still going to have that be a viable option? Did they end up finding the carnival or was it? No, they avoided it, which is fine. It was supposed to be there as a sort of
00:23:10
Speaker
It was our beach break episode. Yeah, it was a beach episode that they ended up not doing because they kill all these frogs and they're like, well, we're just going to go. So then they just left and went on to like where they were headed originally. So it worked out. But that's another thing about DMing is that you have to be willing to like, OK, so you've got this area that your players need to go to.
00:23:36
Speaker
or this event that needs to happen, but your players are like, no, we're going to go over there because that looks shiny. So you have to take that and put it over there at where they're going. Yeah. It's 100% that whatever you plan for, the player is going to fuck off from that and not do the thing. So part of it is railroading.
Sandbox Storytelling in D&D
00:24:00
Speaker
My campaign in particular, it's very
00:24:04
Speaker
sandbox-y, they can pretty much go wherever they want in the domains that they're aware of, that they have a token to get to, they can do whatever they want once they get there. I will present them with storylines that they can follow, with threads they can follow, whatever they end up doing is what they end up doing. If it's something that I feel is critical to the advancement of the overall plot, I will force it in front of them and shove it up their faces.
00:24:28
Speaker
They're going to do it whether they like it or not. It's just where does it end up happening? Mm-hmm, and it's sort of that You know you come to a fork in the road one goes this way one goes this way Ultimately at the end of the day most of the time it goes to the same damn place You didn't actually prep two different places. And if you did, I'm so sorry Yeah, but It's probably gonna go to the same place
00:24:58
Speaker
Normally, I would say yes, I did prep two different places, but I literally just have, I run biweekly games on Friday, one for Descent Into Avernus and one for my Homebrew world. I'm sorry. Different groups. Sorry about Descent Into Avernus. Yes, I have opinions about Descent Into Avernus.
00:25:18
Speaker
I want to hear those opinions in a second. But they both threw me for a loop and did completely opposite of what I thought they were going to do. One group is still I had plans for that happening. And then the other group I'm just like, oh, crap.
00:25:34
Speaker
They're taking a boat. And I was like, you don't need to take it. It's a walk. You walk to the place. Just walk down there. Nope. They're taking a boat now. What could go wrong? In a furnace? Yes. Yes. In a furnace. Surely nothing bad will happen in a furnace on a boat. Yeah, no. In a furnace, yeah.
00:25:57
Speaker
Oh, they're not in it? Oh, OK. No. Are they still outside Baldur's Gate? They're going down to Candlekeep right now. And I was all ready for them to go by land. You know, simple, cute little ride down. I had some fun little things that they were going to interact with along the way. Nope. Nope. Boat time. Obviously, you just turn those into merthings and they have to interact with them anyway. Baldur's Gate does have merthings in their water, I think.
00:26:27
Speaker
Or you just throw a giant kraken at them. That's true. I've done that. Start over. I have too. Artemis, what are your thoughts on Avernus? I'm so curious. It's literally one giant fetch quest and I didn't like it.
00:26:44
Speaker
Because you have to, you go and you get the thing. But in order to get that thing, you have to go and get another thing to get that thing. So then you in order to get that thing, you have to go get another thing. And then you have to go get another thing to get that thing. And it's like that the entire time. And then you get that one thing and then you basically just cascade your way back. And it's the I just know. Well put, very eloquent. I know.
00:27:11
Speaker
hey everyone has those feelings about fetch quests they are like it's as bad as escort quests oh no i hate escort quests so much more it's just like why are you okay we're i'm escorting you down there for
00:27:27
Speaker
Great. Here comes a whole bunch of monsters. Stand right there. Great idea, NPC. Or it doesn't go fast enough that your walk can keep up. Or you can't run because then you'll be way too far ahead.
00:27:48
Speaker
Sorry, I know that's video games, but same thing. Video games. One of my guests blew my mind with the concept that Pokemon games are just giant puzzle games. And I never thought of that before. And my brain was just absolutely blown. And maybe that's why I love puzzles, because I love spinning on the little mats trying to get to Giovanni and taking forever.
00:28:17
Speaker
Have you played any of the Pokemon games? Like a teenager. OK. Because there's a couple of them where you have to like you have to find your way around the bases by like zipping on these little platforms and they just send you flying all over the place and you have to do it in the correct order. Otherwise, you end up back at the beginning or a lot of the Pokemon gyms are like that, too. Yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker
Many times. Yeah, they're all just giant puzzles. Or the mountain where you have to like drop the boulders in the right place. Yeah. Yeah. Or blow the right one up or, you know, any number of things. Yeah. It starts off with a puzzle. Which starting Pokรฉmon do you get to choose? Grass type every time. Fire type every time.
00:29:11
Speaker
dark or spicy type every time. And not starting Pokemon. Or Pikachu. Well, Pikachu then obviously. The only one I basically know off the top of my head. Oh, and Psyduck. So back to puzzles. Back to puzzles. Back to what we actually came here for. Listeners, please let us know what your starting Pokemon was. But back to puzzles.
00:29:40
Speaker
What do you think you would do if your players, I mean, you mentioned, you know, like if they come up with any solution, they're just getting frustrated. You would just be like, okay, great. That's the solution. But let's say they can't even come up with a solution like that. How would you help your players to a solution? What's kind of your methodology for that? Rocks fall, everybody dies.
00:30:10
Speaker
No, I'm just kidding. Kill everybody. Sorry. They won't need to solve the puzzle if they're dead. At that point, skill checks are really good, like perception checks, insight checks, survival checks, anything like that. Anything physical like that is good for
00:30:32
Speaker
depending on what they roll, you can give them hints about like, okay, so like the higher the role is, the more information that you can give them. And even if they roll low, you still give them a little bit of information to kind of like, nudge them in the right direction. Like, oh, you see this panel that like, maybe it's just a little bit tilted compared to all of the others.
00:30:57
Speaker
If it gets really, really bad after all that, usually just a straight intelligence or wisdom check or even the person with the highest intelligence or wisdom modifier, I'll be like, look, you're pretty intelligent. You're pretty wise to the ways of the world. You think that if you do X, Y will happen.
00:31:22
Speaker
That's usually like last ditches, they really just are not getting it. It's like they really can't get it.
00:31:32
Speaker
I think one of the things I try to do is, and I've learned this from my job, of asking leading questions very much. Where if they're like, oh, we've checked out this statue a whole bunch. Have you? The amount of times that I say, are you sure? Have you? Did you actually do that?
00:31:57
Speaker
you know or be like oh yeah no you checked out that statue but what else have you done you know get some thinking like is there more to do because we've got I've talked about you know do you give them everything for the puzzle right off the bat or do you hold stuff in reserve do you let them explore and that's kind of an interesting
00:32:19
Speaker
duality every, as we've said, every group is a little different and get to know your group. Is your group the type of group that will actually explore, or are they the type of group that just wants everything right then and there, and then we'll solve the puzzle? Or are they just going to smash it? Or are they just going to smash it? I wonder who does that? Uh, not me, actually. I like solving the puzzles. It's my characters that want to smash.
00:32:50
Speaker
Now we've mentioned, Affy, that you are great at word puzzles or you're very good at them at least. So I've been told. Why do you think you're so good at them? Do you think it's just that's the way your brain works? Magic? A wizard did it. A wizard did it. Yeah. No, I think it's just how my brain works, how I
00:33:17
Speaker
can see puzzles or like, again, like Artemis said earlier, I have to actually have it usually right in front of me and I'm like reading it. If you're just verbally telling me, the ADHD will not. For the most part, it's going to say no, you got like three quarters of that maybe. But if I'm actually reading it, it's just how my brain works. I think it's not a, there's no trick to it. I think it's just how I function.
00:33:48
Speaker
Well, if you were hoping that she would give you an answer on how to be better at word puzzles, it's just the way you function. Practice, I think. Have you been exposed to a lot of word puzzles in your life? I
Puzzle Affinity and Custom Challenges
00:34:02
Speaker
wouldn't say a lot, but I've
00:34:07
Speaker
I've always been a reader. I was reading at a university level in grade five because, yeah, gifted child burnout adult syndrome. Undiagnosed ADHD because it wasn't a thing when I was a kid.
00:34:27
Speaker
So I've always been exposed to words and the way things are formulated. I've always wanted to make it a writer. And that I think just sort of falls into word puzzles. I admit I'm not so good with the ones that are like, if I'm this and this and this, what am I not? And it's like a letter.
00:34:53
Speaker
I'm not so good with those, but if it's something that actually has a solution, what was the moon one? Completely forget. But the answer was the moon, because it did one thing, it did another thing, and it did this. And I was able to figure out it was the moon. I think it was in White Plume Mountain. It's in that module. It's one of the questions the Sphinx asks. Yeah. Those are the kind of word puzzles I'm good at.
00:35:23
Speaker
Now, Artemis, here's a trick question for you. I don't know if we're going to have an answer for this. But if you were DMing for Affy, how would you stump them with a word puzzle? Besides not just giving them the writing or anything like that, that's a little cheating. But can you think of a way right now that you might stump them? Double entendres?
00:35:52
Speaker
No, she's too smart for that. No, I just, I just ask her, I like, I would just ask her, what are the three things that all wise men fear? Because nobody ever knows the answer to that. Nicholas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and half of the population of America.
00:36:22
Speaker
No, I think it would be saying thank you, apologizing and meaning it.
00:36:30
Speaker
Also good answers, but not the right ones. That hypothetically would be a question that would have multiple answers for me if I were to pose that to somebody because there's a lot of things that wise people should fear. If it's three things that are concise within the same neighborhood, that would be something that I would accept multiple answers on.
00:36:56
Speaker
As long as they made sense. Like obviously you're not going to say like bubblegum, dice, and ants. Like that has no correlation to what's going on, generally speaking. Well, you should fear ants. Oh, absolutely. They outnumber us like billions to one. Oh, yeah. That's true if they ever get sentience. Yeah.
00:37:16
Speaker
Interesting now, would you say that would make you if there are so many possible answers that you would maybe? Doubt some of the answers you're giving or would you think you'd be very confident when you give your answer?
00:37:30
Speaker
I think it would be a question like that that has multiple answers, that has multiple avenues of thinking depending on who's answering it. I think it would depend on the environs that we're in, the situation, who's asking. There are too many variables to just go succinctly, this is what I would answer and I would be confident in that. It would be more the
00:37:56
Speaker
you know who's asking why are they asking what is the point of this what has recently happened like it a question like that that seems more like
00:38:09
Speaker
I'm trying to think of the word. That's the other thing, like I always forget. Open-ended probably. Open-ended or based on opinion rather than an actual permanent in stone answer, I wouldn't be able to give you a confident answer. But in the situation, actually role-playing, actually trying to figure it out, I would in character probably give a pretty confident answer.
00:38:36
Speaker
Well, there was a reason why I had that little exercise right there to warm you guys up for a puzzle. Yay! It's that time of day to see if you can solve my dungeon problems.
00:39:04
Speaker
I have two puzzles for you guys, an official content one, and then one I created myself today in about half an hour, because I practice making puzzles. So I'm actually pretty good at it nowadays, maybe. We'll see if you can solve this. Which would you guys like to tackle first? Let's do yours first. OK. OK.
00:39:32
Speaker
Now, I actually have Instagram open just in case I need to send you guys. Oh, I was going to write it down. I had notepad open. I don't think you'll really need to write this down, but maybe. So you guys have come to a chamber in search of a legendary pair of rings, the rings of dual minds.
00:39:58
Speaker
After traveling through this dungeon facing dangerous foes, you're surprised to find the last chamber is a relatively bare room. The only thing you can see inside this chamber are three window panes in the center of the room in a row from one another.
00:40:19
Speaker
And as you guys enter this chamber, you see that they're about 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide. And they're just standing a perfect line with one another. These kind of wooden boxes, but they're open on all their sides. Wait, what? Sorry. So you look through them like windows.
00:40:45
Speaker
essentially yes they yeah they seem to be windows in the center of this chamber all perfectly in a row okay so they're not actually in a wall they're just hanging out yep they're just they're like in the ground okay think of it as like archways archways kind of gotcha wooden archways okay so there's one on the left one in the
00:41:14
Speaker
You guys have entered this chamber and you don't see this pair of wonderful rings that you've come to look for. And does it look like you can walk all the way around the windows? It does look like you can, yes.
00:41:35
Speaker
Well, my first thought would be to stand on opposite sides first and look at each other through the windows. Play the mirror game. Yeah, that or you walk through one of them, turn around and look back. I feel like I'm missing information here. Which is wholly possible.
00:42:04
Speaker
As you mentioned you're gonna do you want to you want to walk around see if you can walk around? Give me a perception check Just roll with dice. Oh shit watch you guys you might need some dice I forgot Hold on I really do need to start warning my interviewees about that the 13 on the dice 13 on the dice. Yeah
00:42:33
Speaker
You're at least, what, 25 to 35 years old, so. More than that. All right. We're going to go with level like 10, so proficiency. So you rolled really well. You're walking around. Do you want to go right or left? I would go right.
00:42:53
Speaker
All right, you walk around to the right and as you pass by this pain on the right side, you notice within that you're walking past it. So it seems as if you can see your reflection as you pass by have rings on. Right. You your character has the normal rings your character would have. OK, OK, so.
00:43:25
Speaker
And so as I walk past them, am I doing in them what I'm doing in person? Like, is my reflection accurate? Yep. So are you making a full loop around? As you make a full loop around, you do see your reflection is accurate. You pass by the right one, and it passes the same way. And then you pass along the left one, and you find yourself back with Afti. And you have seen the reflections are correct.
00:43:55
Speaker
Did you flip off your reflection to see if it got angry at you? Obviously. I did not get angry with you. It just looked rough back. Probably fake. Yeah, I mean, I would be looking for differences in them for sure. Yeah. As I walked. And nothing showed up in the center? In the center window?
00:44:24
Speaker
So imagine that the windows are very close to one another. Right. So like you can't quite walk past the center because it's always blocked by the right and left. This is one reason why a map would be very helpful. Yeah. You can tell Effie and I are both visual people.
00:44:50
Speaker
I'm going to have to start doing maps when I do this puzzle that demands it. I'm sorry, there is glass in them or no? Give me an investigation check. Didn't have a D20 within reach, so I rolled a 15 on the digital dice.
00:45:08
Speaker
All right, you, which one are you investigating? I'll go with the left. The left? So you're kind of investigating the pain and with a 15
00:45:23
Speaker
You're looking on the left side, you're looking through it, and you see your reflection as you look towards the other windows. But then as you kind of look around and investigate a little bit closer, you're looking through the opposite side. So the windows are, you're not looking through the other two windows, you're looking just through the left now. And you notice that you don't see your reflection. It appears to just be a pane of glass.
00:45:55
Speaker
OK, so it's it's a mirror when you see more than one window, but it's just a window when you see one pane of glass. Right. That's what you kind of are surmising from the left one. Can we move them at all?
00:46:16
Speaker
uh yeah you could you could kind of like do you see like a little slit where you could slide them out potentially uh you could break them if you so desired no i don't want to break them but i want to point them at each other yeah but like so they're like a triangle and it's just like an infinity three ways
00:46:38
Speaker
You know, like now, unfortunately, that the windows don't move just you could slide the glass out. Oh, you can slide the glass out. OK, sorry. Understood that. Slide the glass out, I guess. I don't know. I'm lost. I can't figure this out. This one's a relief. You said we're looking for a pair. They're called the dual mines.
00:47:06
Speaker
Yep, the ring of dual minds, rings of dual minds. So what if we stand on opposite sides of one window from each other? Okay. So I will say it is very tight in between. So like if you're standing at the left window and then the middle window, it's very tight here.
00:47:28
Speaker
Oh, they're this way, not this way. Yes. Okay. Oh, I was thinking they were this. Yeah, me too. They were side by side. The narrow edges together, not the wide edges together. Okay, that's different. Okay. The puzzle's completely changed if you don't have visual representations. So it's like if you've ever had two mirrors facing each other, you get that infinity
00:47:59
Speaker
mirror. If you've ever done that, it's like that. Yeah. So if we if we're standing on opposite sides, so like Artemis is on the left, like looking into the left one, I'm looking into the right one. And the center one is in the middle. Yeah. With the left and the right. And we can we see each other. You cannot see each other. You just see your own reflections.
00:48:26
Speaker
Are we able to move the middle mirror at all, or the middle window out? You could potentially move it out. Yep, it would take a strength check. I don't know. I'm pretty strong.
00:48:44
Speaker
Stop. 17. Okay. So you're taking this middle section out and removing it. And as you pull it out, you notice that it is a mirror. Okay. That makes sense.
00:49:03
Speaker
And now it's just glass, can we see now between like on the insides of the left and the right side that it's just glass like clear glass looking back out. yep if you guys if you guys look through you can see each other across the way. I don't know. What do you think already.
00:49:26
Speaker
I need like, I need a visual. I don't know what I'm struggling man. I'm struggling. So like, we have these two mirrors or these two windows and we move to the middle mirror. And there's a mirror in between. Okay. We move that out now. So now it's just two windows.
00:49:46
Speaker
Is this gonna be like some construction bullshit? It's actually dual-paned glass and you have to go in between the dual panes and get all that argon out. Oh, I wonder if this is gonna work. That or if you could read the description again. Well, here let's uh...
00:50:14
Speaker
So now you guys are standing like this and you can see each other. Right. Before when you had that middle part in mirror part, you could only see your reflections. But now you can see each other and you are no longer mirrored.
00:50:43
Speaker
I feel dumb. Now you guys are looking for the rings of dual minds. Before you had the mirror, but before you had the mirror, and now you guys are just looking at each other. So we tried to do the... Just again, just to make sure that's not what we needed to do. Give me performance checks to see how you do on this.
00:51:13
Speaker
I mean, my charisma is pretty damn high. Let's be real. 13. Mine is a... I've rolled a 14 on die, so. All right. Yeah, you guys have been traveling with each other for a very long time.
00:51:32
Speaker
each other's mannerisms and stuff so you kind of do the whole mimicking one another in the mirror and get it synced up relatively well as in the center between these two glass panes you see a pedestal begin to arise with two rings uh with little brains etched on the end of them. And now we duel for them.
00:51:58
Speaker
and how you duel for them. But you saw, as I called it, the, what did I even call this? You become even more of the blob. The twin mirror puzzle. Go us. Was that actually what you wrote down as a possibility, or did we just suck so much? No, that was the solution. Oh, sweet. I was fully ready for, like,
00:52:23
Speaker
So it was a two part one. Figuring out that the middle one is a mirror itself and not the other two. And so when you were like, oh, I want to investigate it to make sure it is fully mirrored, that was good. Because then I could be like, yeah, no, you see, you don't see your reflection. And then once you figure out it's a mirror and remove it, you have to mirror your mind. Yes.
00:52:53
Speaker
Now I'm thinking about how do I make this next one be, how do I get some visual representation? Sorry.
00:53:07
Speaker
You guys come upon a sinister metal box with an iron lock built into each of its four sides. So each four side has a lock on it. Each lock sports a keyhole with a sculpted image above it. Four iron keys hang from hooks on a nearby wall and each key has a different number of teeth.
00:53:36
Speaker
Above the keys, the following verse has been etched into the wall. The spells on these locks are all the same, though each possesses a unique name. Count on your answer to unlock the way, but use the wrong key to your dismay.
00:54:04
Speaker
Sorry, count on your answer. I am a huge fan of if you guys ever listen to NPR, wait, wait, don't tell me where they do the listener limerick challenge. I want to make a puzzle with that. Sorry, count on your answer. On your answer to unlock the way, but use the wrong key to your dismay. Dismay.
00:54:34
Speaker
So four iron keys hanging from the nearby wall. Each each side of the box has a lock on it with a sculpted image on it. What are the images? Yeah, I was going to ask if they're all different or. So one has a bat, one has a snake, one has a spider and one has a wolf.
00:55:06
Speaker
bat a snake, a spider, and a wolf. And how many teeth are on the keys? One key has three teeth, one key has five teeth, one key has four teeth, and one key has six teeth. So it's a counting puzzle.
00:55:32
Speaker
Snake has no feet. And then you need the one that has two. And so you're counting as you go, right? That's what I would think.
00:55:44
Speaker
Because it says you count as your way, or you count your answer as your way. Snake has no feet. Bat has two. The wolf has four. And the spider's got eight, right? That's two, four, eight. But it's three, five, four, six. Mm-hmm. Those are the numbers that are in between. Right? Oh, I see what you're saying.
00:56:15
Speaker
I got you. But it's missing seven, if that's the case. If it's the case, yeah. Visualize this. Here's the box. And it has a bat and a spider. Hmm. Doesn't help much. No, no.
00:56:50
Speaker
spells on the locks are all the same though each possesses a unique name okay half of reading these puzzles and these limbics are uh making sure you don't uh like sometimes you want to really be like oh here's the word that's important and sometimes you want to monotone it completely
00:57:22
Speaker
And one of the things I've always found at my work that's very helpful is just repeating for the players as they think about it because it can really help them just hearing it. Four locks with one with a bat, one with a snake, one with a spider, and then one with a wolf. And then four keys. One that has three teeth, one that has five teeth,
00:57:52
Speaker
one that has four teeth, and then one that has six teeth. Each key, one key is gonna go in one block. I wouldn't mind a hit.
00:58:13
Speaker
Now I was reading over the hints. They're kind of garbage. Oh, okay. Well, nevermind. It's okay. What are some of the hints? They really are. Oh God, they're so.
00:58:30
Speaker
With a wisdom perception DC-10, the characters realize that the skulls, the key skull shaped heads are all the same and probably have no bearing on the puzzle. So I didn't even tell you there were skulls on me. Oh, yeah, no. Intelligence nature DC-10, the character knows that natural knowledge about bats, snakes, spiders, and wolves in general won't help here.
00:58:58
Speaker
So it's not so much about what they look like or stuff like that or how many teeth they have as a creature because bats have two teeth. They each have a unique name. Now you're gearing into something right there. You realize that's important.
00:59:31
Speaker
Okay, can you read the read the poem one more time? The spells on these locks are all the same, though each possesses a unique name. Count on your answers to unlock the way, but use the wrong key to your
00:59:55
Speaker
dismay Is there an actual pause in the rhyme? Okay, so the four keys Is there anything okay you said that they have skulls on them, but that doesn't matter they have different number of teeth Yeah, also doesn't matter
01:00:25
Speaker
No, because the spell is the same. Oh, sorry. What was the other thing you said didn't matter? Having natural knowledge. Oh, natural knowledge. Sorry. Now, that first one. So what key do you think could go into the back walk? Is it?
01:00:54
Speaker
Is the bat at the front of the box? Yeah. Three, four, five, six. Around the outside. That's what you want to do? Yeah. Affy, do you agree with that?
01:01:15
Speaker
I am Maffie. That's right. Artemis, do you agree? I knew I was going to do that one time during this. It happened all the time. People get us screwed up all the time. I have two employees called Hailey and Cailey and they're best friends with each other and it... Oh, shout out to them. The number of times that we've been told that we look like sisters is ridiculous.
01:01:45
Speaker
Now I have that SNL song, so sisters. So the bat to the front and then the spider is on the right side. The picture makes it look weird, but I will say it's in the order that I kind of listed off. Bat, snake,
01:02:13
Speaker
where's my piece of paper okay no i've got it like the bat's at the front then there's the snake on the right side the spider's on the back the wolf's on the left side that snake spider wolf yes okay god my handwriting is there anything of anything else is visually distinctive about the keys or just the number of teeth
01:02:43
Speaker
just the number of teeth. They look completely identical besides that. Same length, same width. I think it's... So, Asi wants to put the three where the bat is, the four where the snake is, the five where the spider is, and the six where the wolf is.
01:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's the sides of the box. So top is one, bottom is two, front is three, four, five, six. That's my thinking anyway. I have no idea if I'm on base or not. Unless you have another idea. Don't really. Something something about the name, though, like that's bothering me.
01:03:44
Speaker
the way that it's worded. I mean, if we're going from fivey spells, like. I suppose on these locks are all the same. So I'll start off with the first one, you put the
01:04:12
Speaker
three teeth to key inside the bat lock. You click it and it's spring and that lock springs open. Okay. Now you go to the snake, snake lock with the four teeth key. Would you like to put it in?
01:04:39
Speaker
yes i know yes if i die it's only wow it clicks and suddenly
01:04:55
Speaker
person one before giant poisonous snakes emerge from the box. Okay. And unfortunately, Afi is now dead leaving Artemis alone in the chamber. God, that's not good. He pops out.
01:05:13
Speaker
and the lock is not locked. It is locked again. The bat one is so open, the three teeth key is stuck in it. Affy's unfortunately been eaten alive by 1d4 giant posted snakes. That's how I wanted to go. Now you know the snake lock and the four teeth key do not work together. You got one.
01:05:43
Speaker
I believe in you. Great. I don't get a full party. You could just try. Just do Revivify at the end. It's fine. We better solve this in a minute, then. And OK, so. I would put. I think I would put the four teeth. He in with the wolf.
01:06:15
Speaker
All right, you're going to do that. You do that and the lock clicks open. And now you have the six teeth key and the fifth and the fifth teeth key and the spider lock remaining and the snake lock remaining. Oh, I get it now. Fuck. Tell me because I don't.
01:06:42
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That has three letters. Wolf has four letters. Yep. Yeah. Fuck. You just hear from the corpse of Athy. Fuck. Yeah, exactly. See, those are the types of puzzles I'm not good at. Like, those are the ones I have to see. If I can see them, then I would make that connection. But
01:07:07
Speaker
Now, do you think, are you saying if you saw the actual keys? No, if I saw the words. Okay. Because then I can count letters. Yeah, I never think to count letters or if it's one of those like everything that you are, there's no letter E in it. I never get those. That is not how my brain works. Yep.
01:07:34
Speaker
Well, Artemis, you solved the lock puzzle. Yay. You technically did too, but it was, I was dead. It's okay. You were a ghost. It's fine. Just screaming from the game. Good thing I made clerics. Resurrection. Resurrection. See, I play druids with reincarnation. That's more fun.
01:08:01
Speaker
So the hardest thing for those puzzles was essentially because you couldn't see how they were. Which is ironic for me because, you know, after you were taking some notes, but like I do a pretty good job for me hearing, well, hearing I'm not so good at, cause I'm a deaf son of a bitch. But, you know, it's very,
01:08:31
Speaker
like I'm the opposite. If I saw them the way that you see them, I would probably be thrown off because my ADHD would be like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, that he has a squiggle in it. That must mean nothing. So it's really interesting to see. I think the biggest thing is to make sure you have different ways of presenting it for everyone at your table.
01:08:58
Speaker
and then just be fucking prepared to do it. I should have just typed it all out, but. It's okay. I mean, everybody learns and consumes information in a different way. And, you know, I think that's part of being an accessible DM as well as just making sure that you have that stuff available for people to see or hear or, you know, whatever the case may be. Well,
01:09:25
Speaker
Now do you think if you were faced with puzzles like that again, you'd know what to do? No, I will absolutely forget that this conversation ever happened and stop thinking of counting letters and looking for those sorts of patterns because I never learned. I will never remember to do that when I'm trying to solve a riddle. Yeah. It's 50-50 for me.
01:09:54
Speaker
If I, if I'll remember the information or not, I retain information very strangely. So I'm, I'm full of useless information. I am a sieve. Besides actually having stuff for the players to like look at and interact with, how do you guys think you would have presented those puzzles to, uh,
Puzzle Strategies and Conclusion
01:10:19
Speaker
I think a lot of the problem was just like the very first one if you had like if I'd done a better job presenting that you probably yeah that puzzle definitely needs a visual of some sort yeah or it doesn't even have to work
01:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, maybe a little change in the wording to indicate like it's not, you know, pain, window panes that are side by side by side, but actually like facing one another. I'm all over what word I would use for that. I was like, do I make it like horror, like horizontal? Like, I mean, that I would say that's a broadside. Broadside against broadside. Yeah, that would work. I never thought of that word broadside.
01:11:06
Speaker
What about the second one? What do you think you would do a little bit differently if you were presenting that to a party? Make sure they can see the words. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure they can see like the actual written riddle. Like the one that was written on the box or under the box, wherever it was.
01:11:31
Speaker
Now I did throw a little loop in that in the book as you read it in the book, you know, we'll say bat, snake, spider. Are they capitalized?
01:11:44
Speaker
They're not capitalized, no. But then when you read the order of the keys, it goes three, six, five, four. I switched it when I did the keys a little bit. I did three, six, four, five, just to make it a little bit harder. Because if you were writing it down, you might have been like, oh, oh. Yeah, there's the correlation there. That's definitely something I would have avoided. I don't think it needs a visual representation of the box.
01:12:12
Speaker
having like I think providing that information would be helpful just so it's not something that they have to really think on if that makes sense because that's where I got kind of stuck like
01:12:28
Speaker
the what the box looks like and what that relation would be. And that's where I got stuck on the numbers, even though it says names. Next time I'll craft a box. Craft a box and send it to us and then we'll solve it real time.
01:12:46
Speaker
Yeah. That's exactly what I talked about with Jeremy. I brought up like, you could for virtual games, mail the tactile puzzles to your party and be like only open this during the game. Yeah. I have mailed my party things in character. So.
01:13:05
Speaker
That's always fun. I love doing that. I haven't done it often, but I've done it before. It's a health potion. Ooh, I like that. I like that. It's got little tiny dice inside of it. You've now solved two puzzles with only one character, Kat. So here's 1.5 out of two. Done.
01:13:39
Speaker
Now time for that final question. What have your favorite puzzles been in anything? Life, movies, video games, trying to figure out what someone's name is when you've met them one time at a party. I swear it starts with an A, but you're like, is it Affy? Is it Artemis? Oh my goodness.
01:14:06
Speaker
My favorite one was in a, it was a short mini campaign based off of the books from Sarah J Maas. And the GM had, yes, that Sarah J Maas. The Court of Thorn and Roses, yes, it was a very sexy campaign.
01:14:29
Speaker
I read it because I thought it was more fantasy than it was a romance. I am now 100% trashy romance. I love it. It's so good. Yes. Anyway. I read a lot of Duke ones.
01:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, same. That's why I have Kindle Unlimited. Anyway, the puzzle was there were six doors, and they all had a shape on them. And the shape actually corresponded to our character classes.
01:15:05
Speaker
And she had had all that stuff set up, like so we had all of our pictures and there was like a little image in the corner of our our picture, like our character picture of our character class. It was very like runic instead of the actual like this is a barbarian, it's a big axe, blah, blah, blah. So like my door was essentially like a square on a stick. And that was the door that I had to open. But if somebody else tried to open it, they got zapped.
01:15:36
Speaker
So, and like on top of that, we all had to open them at the same time. So not only did we have to find the one that didn't zap us, we had to open it at the same time. And that was just a lot of like coordination in character, which was a lot of fun. I like that. I like that. Did you wield a battle axe or something like that? Yeah, I had a battle axe. That makes out of curiosity. What we're saw, do you remember the other runic shapes?
01:16:05
Speaker
uh there was a wizard who was essentially like
01:16:10
Speaker
It was a fireball, but it was like just a crown is what we thought it was because it was like bottom was flat and then it had three spikes at the top. So it was essentially fire, but we thought it was a crown. So we weren't sure about that one. There was a ranger and hers was like like a bow. So it was flat again with just the like a rounded top.
01:16:38
Speaker
Um, we had a bard and I don't remember what that one is. And my brain just says it was a circle with the whole poking through because I'm a perv. And I forget what the last one was. This was a couple of years ago, but yeah, we figured it out eventually. And Artemis, what about you? What's your favorite puzzle been in anything? Um, the timer puzzle.
01:17:09
Speaker
Oh, those are so good. I love those. You walk in and like, there's a door on the far side of the room that's closed and you there's like a pedestal with like a lever or a button or something on it.
01:17:24
Speaker
And basically, you just pull the lever and let the timer start and you have to let the timer run out and then the door will open. But the problem is, is that when it gets down to the last little bit, people start to panic because they can't figure it out. So then they'll pull the lever again and start the timer all over again. Yeah, those ones are good.
01:17:45
Speaker
My brain, but I've heard of that type of puzzle before I'd never heard of it before, besides this, which is hilarious because I love puzzles and I've never heard that. You can make it even more devastating by having it be a room that's like filling with water or sand.
01:18:00
Speaker
so that there is a little bit more of like a oh my god we have to figure out what the fuck we're doing but literally they just have to wait for the room to fill up with whatever is filling it up and go to the top of it and that's going to let them out of the room the other door is just a red herring or it's a mimic or it's a mimic
01:18:24
Speaker
What about those puzzles do you enjoy? Like, is it that tense moment? Is it the... Yeah, anytime you can give your players a little bit of adrenaline is good. I'm not very good at that. I feel like in my campaigns, I'm not super great at that. I'm not super great at the feel of desperation. As much as I try to portray it, it doesn't always come across that way.
01:18:48
Speaker
So I like using actual real timers to that. Yeah, those are good. I will. Yeah, especially if you have ADHD table. You did that to me once because I cast. Oh, what is that divination spell? It's not gay, is it? No, it's the cleric. It's a lower level cleric spell. It's
01:19:20
Speaker
Agree. Yeah, Agree. Because that has a 30 minute time limit on it. You have to take action in 30 minutes or the the omen is no good. So. She basically I cast the spell, she turned the timer on and everybody panicked.
01:19:39
Speaker
It does help too to, like when you actually use a real life timer or hourglass or whatever, when you have a table of ADHD years, like minor, minus, it keeps them from going into choice paralysis. Executive dysfunction, yeah. Executive dysfunction, like it prevents that because now they have a deadline that they need to meet and that completely negates the ADHD, usually. Hopefully.
01:20:08
Speaker
That's the hope. Or they all die. It's fine. Wraps of all everybody dies. Well, my friends, that is the final question. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in today to yet another episode of the Dungeon Problems podcast. I've been Earth Rescrations, and I've been joined by two amazing guests. Tell them where they can find you. What do you have going on?
01:20:34
Speaker
Uh, well, like we said, uh, I'm Affy, that's Artemis. And you can find us at The Vactair on Twitch or VactairTTV on all the other socials, including YouTube. You can also get our podcast wherever you cast your pods from. And, uh, we're running currently two campaigns, uh, weekly with a biweekly TTRPG talk show on Saturday. Thanks. With other stuff coming. It's just in the works right now.
01:21:03
Speaker
Yeah. Summer stuff coming up and I'm running something over on Jeremy's channel in a couple of weeks. So. And we always do fundraisers too. Like our next fundraiser is going to be something for, uh, Asian American and Pacific Islander month. Hopefully once we get it sorted.
01:21:24
Speaker
should be should be good so definitely go tune in on at least the fundraisers if not everything else because it's always good to if you have it share it
01:21:37
Speaker
The theme song that you all heard at the very beginning is done by the dungeon maestro on Instagram and tick tock I should do an outro with him. That'd be fun. I'm Arthur's creations You can find me everywhere. But if you already listened to this podcast, you should already follow me If not, that's fine to do what you want to do. I'm not your mother But thank you all so much for listening. Have fun do your best and remember I believe in you