Hello, players who actively try to sabotage their DM at every opportunity.
And DMs who planned an entire campaign just to have one rogue fuck it all up.
Welcome back to Table Talk.
What's today's theme, Robert?
That's Madison Conway.
Oh my god-
She did it again!
Today's theme is world building.
It sounds like a bit, it's not a bit,
It's genuinely not.
It's just forgetting to introduce us.
I forgot to take my meds this morning.
Ooh, fun.
All about world building.
Starting a game.
So today's going to be a little bit me heavy.
Madison might take a couple of rakes and eat a sandwich.
So if she dips out for a second while I go on a tangent, please don't hate me.
Yeah, there's kind of a lot of different places to start.
I think for one, getting the people together is kind of something that we talked about
last time and how difficult that can be.
So let's say that you've gotten, you've made it to step one.
You found a group of people that are actually willing, committed and have the time to play.
Which is already a significance.
Like don't underestimate that.
That's impressive.
Yeah, no, it truly is.
And then we were going to do character creation initially because usually that's kind of
where it starts, but we're waiting for video equipment that hopefully somebody will eventually
get or will bring our own.
But we're going to go to the next step then and talk about the world building.
So the DM side of things.
Just starting from point blank is a DM for one.
Talk to your players is kind of where I would start.
So when I started my, started deeming my first campaign, it was literally just a conversation
with everybody that I knew was interested.
And I did like polls to figure out, okay, are we interested in steampunk?
Are we interested in high fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk?
We ended up going with kind of like none of the above.
Yeah.
And then a little bit of it all, which I guess was kind of on my end.
It was fun.
Yeah.
I think first campaign is somebody who had ADHD and wanted to hit every place, but not
be locked down to one.
I just made a campaign where you could literally go wherever you wanted and I could switch
it up forcibly if I needed to.
But yeah, like talk to your players, figure out what you want to do.
Also don't be afraid to come in with ideas.
Like if you've been writing this setting and this story and this world for years, and this
is your first chance to like DM, pitch it to your players.
See if they want to do it.
Try and convince them to your best.
But if they don't want to do the story or if they don't want to participate in your
world, don't force them to because they're not going to like it.
That was the point Madison brought up.
Not just, not too long ago when we were writing out points for this is like, talk to your
DM about what you're interested in doing and what story you're interested in playing.
Because if you're not invested in, you're not in the world, it's going to be boring
for you and everybody else there.
Yeah.
It'll start feeling like a chore and it'll be one of those things where like, there's
moments at the table, if you've ever played at a table where like someone is going through
their own like story beat and stuff and you could see everyone else is like kind of checked
out.
I think if you make a more engaging world that like people are, people want to be in
and people like to be involved in, you're going to have more involvement from people
around the table the whole time.
Because it's a story that they want to tell and it's a story they feel involved in.
And like if there's something from a player's perspective that you really want to play or
like you've been like dying to play in like a film noir setting.
Because I've been watching Mentopolis.
Yeah, so it's not Mentopolis.
On the forefront of my brain.
If you really want to play in that setting, tell your DM.
Because you're never going to get to do the things if you don't like verbalize that you
want to do them.
And it's such a struggle too because you have DMs that come in with like, I've been writing
this setting forever, I have my own source book, I've made maps, I have NPCs, stat blocks,
places like Dune levels of backstory with random shit.
And then your players have zero fucking interest in a setting like that.
And you just kind of have to accept that like, it's just not what you're going to do.
But I like the points you made about like, and I see it happen almost every session because
there are some people that just get more checked out than others.
It's not their fault.
They have disorders.
We played it.
We have, it's a table full of people with ADHD and then one normal guy.
Yeah.
Two people with autism.
Three people with ADHD.
One person who's neurotypical but still has OCD.
Yeah.
So like, we all get checked out at different points.
People will pull out their phones, they'll browse, whatever.
And it's really difficult to do.
But like, I guess my pro tip, right as a DM that's done it a few times now.
Whenever you're doing individual story points with a particular character, try and make
sure that their story points also overlap or overline or provide information for somebody
else's too.
You can't just write a story or a world where your four to five players each have their
own individual story points.
And then they're just supposed to naturally, because magic, work their way into each other.
Yeah.
No.
Right, if you have one character motivation who's like, they really care about kids or
they really care about, I don't know, books or their appearance raised them in this laboratory
and they have a special thing in their heart for labs and science.
Then when you're info dumping, because it's what you have to do to get people introduced
to the world for another player, drop some shit in there about how their parents run
the best laboratory or the laboratory, or the one you want to call it, in the high fantasy
city and you have the keys to the da-da-da-da-da.
Or just mix and match it so that everyone is actively engaged in watching whenever you're
just info dumping.
Because session one, for a lot of players, is really boring when it's not their turn,
because you very much have to tee them up for them to then continue the rest of the
session.
But if you do it in a way where everybody is interested and engaged and everyone's story
points over lapsed and everyone's ears turned up a little bit just so that they can hear
what you're talking about.
And I'm someone who, I love session one.
Session one is always one of my favorites to play because I love world building.
My intro today was almost players who are constantly pestering their DMs for world building
information.
That's me.
100%.
I'm sure it is a bothersome point at times.
But I think that as a player and someone who's interested in world building, and I think
that knowing a bit of the world building and the world you're playing in is so helpful
for a player, I cannot overemphasize that enough.
In session one, because you're hearing these tidbits and these worlds from these other
characters, you get to learn more about the world that you're living in.
100%.
And that makes your character feel more grounded.
If you know, okay, maybe I'm not rich and I'm hearing the intro of a character.
But then I get to know what the rich people are like and I know how to be like, oh, these
motherfuckers with their goddamn flying cars.
I didn't know they were flying cars until 20 seconds ago.
And that's so important when you're playing in a setting where everybody's supposed to
be from the same place and they're supposed to have been there for years.
I feel like the traditional fantasy stereotype is that they're all lone adventurers that
manage to find themselves cobbled together because of a fetch quest or a destiny.
Which can be fun, found family is great.
But when you have characters that are all supposed to be from the same place and all
from the same world, they need to know what they're talking about or at least be able
to bullshit their way through it enough that you're like, okay, that's Lorena.
That's fine with me.
And that's kind of something that I've started doing more now specifically with this new
campaign mostly because of Madison, like it really just pays off for your players to know
at least a little bit about your world going into it.
So that way they can talk to each other like they've actually lived there for a long time.
Like every character in this new setting that I've made has lived there for at least a few
years.
Either has grown up there or has moved there or was raised there.
And so everyone has to know a little bit about the city and like the part of the city that
they're from.
And we have two characters that for instance that share like kind of residency in the same
neighborhood, but their perspectives are very different.
And so the information that I'm giving one character who lives on like the more like
family business, like really knows like the criminal underbelly, but still is trying to
like stay out of trouble.
The information I've given him about his neighborhood and the world he lives in is very different
from the information I've given to Madison, where she's like a college student staying
in an apartment because it's the cheaper she can find and she's trying to work through
college.
Like yes, they know the same neighborhood.
They know what my name, but their views on the heroes that live in that neighborhood
and the people and the crime, they're very different.
But they knew that going into session one.
And you get to know also like where do they're, where do those characters paths cross?
You know, like there was, there was an NPC who was like, he's kind of like a con man
and he's like everybody in town knows him.
I didn't know that before going into this and then I can listen during another character's
introduction to be like, oh yeah, I'm going to make up that he sold her like a fake
Rolex or something.
Yeah, 100%.
Because like it's fun to have those little crossovers.
It's fun for your characters to find little ways that they, that they connect and that
they cross over.
Yeah.
And that's another, I guess another point to that.
Don't please don't please, please, please don't.
If you're an experienced like character creator, right?
You're an experienced player.
I'm all for you making your character like months in advance.
Like say, I have just all you know is the setting.
And like maybe the power system, whether it's 5E, 3 kids on bikes, whatever, if you come
to me with a full character, she'd already done, that's okay.
Do not world build in a world that you haven't written or even talk to me about and then
like start inserting lore into the universe.
If you want to talk to me about your backstory and it's like, okay, I'm from like a rich family.
This is their last name.
Maybe they're involved in politics.
Maybe this person is here.
Maybe like my family is related to this or there was this big fight.
If you pitch it like that, I'm all for stamping that in place.
Like yes, 100%.
I love that idea.
I love that like you as a character could be connected to like the upper part of society
and then another player at the table is connected to lower because it makes a fun dynamic.
But don't just tell me that's what's going to happen because I promise you it's not going
to happen.
Yeah.
I'm someone who like character creation and like making characters is my like strength.
That is like what I do pretty much full time.
I have lists and lists of like characters that I've made into PCs that I don't think
I'm ever going to play in campaigns simply because I've written so much of their backstory
and I'm so attached to them now.
But it would be, I don't think it would be fair to come to a demon and be like, hey,
here's my really detailed backstory of things that you need to then write into the world.
You have to roll them in.
It's required.
Like because my character doesn't work otherwise.
Why don't you just be the fucking DM then?
Right?
Why don't you just be the DM?
Why don't you make your own NPC that you role play that like at that point you're not
a player.
You're asking to be like a co-DM.
Yeah.
Or you're like trying to create a world that is solely for you.
And I think that you can still-
Yeah, don't be selfish.
Tantra, don't be selfish at the table.
You're not the main character.
And if you can-
Which we're going to talk about that more in other like episodes and stuff, but you're
not the main character.
Yeah, don't be that guy.
And see that's really the struggle I think as a DM and as a player is that as a player
you want to feel like the main character.
I like the whole idea is that your role playing this character that you've spent potentially
hours maybe days, some people spend weeks.
Years.
Months, years creating these characters, growing attached to them.
And so when you finally get to sit down with them at a table you're like you're itching
for some interaction, right?
Like you want that character to have the spotlight the whole session.
But if you're playing with more than just yourself and the DM, which I would hope you
are, that's not the case.
Like your attention, the attention at the table has to be split between multiple different
people.
But as a DM I think too it's really difficult.
Like I know I've gravitated more towards certain characters as a DM in terms of giving them
story points more than others.
Not because I didn't like the players or not because I didn't like the concept of the PCs.
Just because those players put themselves out there more and grabbed more of the story
and really like role played and try to bring it in.
And then there are other players that are just kind of like there and they're enjoying
being at the table and that's fine too.
But don't play favorites.
Please please please as a DM try and stretch your attention out among multiple characters
to give them all their main character moment.
I'll say you're not the main character because everyone is the main character.
It's like a movie.
It's very much like a movie with multiple protagonists.
So like you could from your perspective when you're like telling your friends or like trying
to ramble on to someone who doesn't play D&D about your D&D campaign you're like no no
wait listen.
The story is actually so easy to understand and it's actually about this and we've all
had that conversation.
And then you like start telling from your perspective and like as someone who I note
take obsessively almost all of my notes follow my character and like follow my thing just
because that is my personal perspective and I also like to take notes on what my character
knows versus doesn't know because I don't actually know the name of someone such as
grandmother.
And you see those moments happen on real plays all the time where it's like two people two
characters two PCs will be in like a completely different conversation removed from another
PC and like they're talking to the DM right to ask questions or they're asking an NPC
and then like that third PC would just be like yeah so like I say this and then everyone
stops and goes you're there.
Yeah.
Or you know that you know like the taking notes thing is for everybody but also try
and pay attention to what your character should and should not know.
It makes for a lot more intriguing role play.
If you can and it's really hard to not push for that to like if because everyone's in
the same room right like if two players share this like really big secret between characters
or they know something like super consequential to the world as a whole and you're not one
of those players.
You're a median instinct as a person who's curious and as a player who's invested is
to start like doing an investigation checks or inside checks or and it's like but you
wouldn't do that.
You wouldn't do that if you have no reason to suspect that these PCs who in game you
trust like wholeheartedly are harboring this like campaign ending secret.
Don't start asking your DM for checks out of fucking nowhere unless they provide you with
an opportunity to do so.
Also this is kind of an example from that from our last campaign there was a character
who was a vampire and never said that he was a vampire and introduced himself by breaking
into a church and dressing up as a priest and lying and saying he was a priest.
And all of our characters were immediately suspicious because they're dealing with like
shape shifters and people like chasing them and stuff like that.
And my character in particular was very like untrusting of everyone.
Traumatized.
Deeply.
Prominently.
And was just like who the fuck are you what the fuck are you blah blah blah blah blah
and all the other players were like we all knew that he was a vampire but none of our
players did and everyone else was like oh that's just like a guy.
He's just a priest who's like offering to harbor us you know like safety.
And it got to a point where he was doing things and he was like saying he was a human and
then doing things that no human should do like walk underwater for multiple hours.
And my character was like and no one's gonna fucking question that.
Nope.
We're not gonna like confront him about that and everyone was like I mean nah.
Listen in a party of people that can all do extraordinary things who's to say that a
human in air quotes can't walk underwater for multiple hours.
Yeah and then you have sometimes where players just like completely will not touch your plot
hooks.
They just leave them the fuck alone.
Sometimes it truly feels like you're fishing which is a really shitty analogy.
They're talking about hooks right like you're just you're dangling it for hours.
You're like okay they're not taking the bait.
I'm gonna put a worm on you drop it.
Two days later nothing you're like all right fuck it I'm just gonna start throwing food
into the water.
Every single piece of food has a hook attached to it all going to the same place just shotgun
blasting hooks and nobody touches it.
They got their own hooks they're following they got their own story points that they made
and you just sometimes you gotta drop some shit man.
There was something really interesting you did in the last campaign where you were giving
other players hooks for other characters.
So you were giving other players like or trying to give other players hooks for like very big
information that would answer like some of the questions that the other players really
wanted to know and I think that that's a really cool thing to do from a DM because it requires
your characters to talk to each other and it also like engages everyone into this story
and like characters individual like plots and stuff like that.
But then there were some times that I was sitting there as a player when you were trying
to give one of these characters.
It was that throwing food into the water it was every possible sign and I'm sitting across
the table knowing that this is like the these are the answers to the questions that I have
been rolling shit for for a year at this point and the information was right it was literally
like papers sitting on a desk.
No one touched them.
There was only one player in the room and he just he had no interest in it and I'm sitting
there across the table like yeah fucking check the papers.
But like I'm not there.
I can't say that.
And oh that was one of the most like internally frustrating experiences of my life.
Yeah.
I guess to back it up a little bit.
So when like really really really back it up.
So talking about writing your world specifically as a DM.
If you want to take a bite of your sandwich that would be the time.
So it's it's OK to play your favorite movie.
It's OK to play your favorite video game.
It is OK to like really getting grossed in a fandom or a universe and then bring it to
the table.
Not hook for hook or like character for character unless you want to do that like if you want
to do a My Hero Academia campaign where all the characters are the same.
Go for it.
I'm not in my business but if you like really really really like an arc or story choice or
some words that were said do not be afraid to straight rip that shit and put it in your
own campaign.
Like I think I said it last time like you're not you're not a Tarantino you're not Christopher
Nolan you're not like James Gunn you're not any of these like amazing phenomenal.
Yeah like you're not.
Yeah shout out to credit growing in the Barbie movie.
We did barb and Hymer.
That was an experience.
I made them wear Barbie T shirts me and me and L his fiance I decided we were going to
wear Barbie shirts and so we had these really cute ones I designed and we were like OK let's
get the boys one so we made them dress up it was very fun.
I think we certainly had the proper experience going with two guys and two girls though because
like the guys me and like the other guy walked away like Oppenheimer.
That was a good fucking movie and then they walked away from Barbie being like that was
a great fucking movie and then we're like cross talking and it's like Oppenheimer was
OK.
Yeah Barbie wasn't really for me.
My favorite was after Barbie.
They were just sitting there like I remember looking over at you in the theater and you
were just fucking booze old you had no idea what was going on.
It's like having somebody throw like a straight like like a pint of pink paint just on your
fucking brain.
Yeah that's fucking amazing.
And I'm that was what I'm going to say it's a really cool experience and as somebody that
was never as a guy typically right we're not very involved with Barbies or even Ken which
Jesus Christ shout out to Ken he was great but we're just not involved in that and so
that actually I'm going to tie it back to the episode.
That was a story that was not written for men exclusively.
We were not the main characters in the story.
We were a side character through Ken and we got a lot of really great messaging and hooks
and points and and I mean he was involved right like he was almost I want to say maybe
order a third called Barbie and Ken only because of how much he was I would have a show and
he played a huge part in like the whole second half of the movie.
Yeah but it wasn't a movie written for us.
It was very much a movie written for women and girls that had grown up with Barbie and
suffered from all these harmful stereotypes and like the idea of Barbie being the perfect
woman and then like coming to the real world and realize wow actually really fucking sucks.
Yeah.
As a DM I feel I would feel not this is no no criticism on on Greta but like as a DM I
think if I'd walked away having written that story where I had a guy and a girl at the
table I would be upset with myself because I didn't give enough story points for the
guy.
However she she does it she does the story points for Ken in a really great way through
Barbie and Ken still ends up with his own story.
Yeah.
Like I think that's a great example of what you said earlier like giving other characters
information through a different character.
Yeah.
Like you can very much world build and info dump and give hooks through the storytelling
of another character that still gives them the spotlight and then also tease up another
hook or another arc for a different character.
And this is kind of a little bit of a stretch but when you were saying about like giving
characters information through other characters one of the fastest ways that I've seen at
the table and this kind of goes into world building of like uniting characters is through
hatred it is through mutual hatred and like if you have one motherfucker that everyone
in the party hates individually before they know each other.
It's such a great job at making a hateful fucking character.
Like even session zero of our of our recent campaign my character who's like a very happy
go lucky very great at playing the asshole character.
There's an asshole character in every campaign.
I expect it.
And it exists in every culture on in every city in every town in every village in every
multiverse you can't get away from the people that think they're self important and grandizing
and some of them make for great villains and some of them just make for like dickish NPCs.
I love playing with those characters because it's very cathartic for me to get to like
yell at them at the table and it also makes for very fun like banter it's fun to go back
and forth and just exchange insult that everyone loves to hate everyone loves to hate it was
no one like and this was one of those things of like it misses no hate to anyone at our
table but sometimes they do get a little like tuned out but that's yeah because I also know
that a lot of my individual parts of like my introductions are very like our info dumpy
are very like lore some characters naturally have more information that you need to give
them on session one than others.
And my character was one of those characters but then she ends up talking to this this
guy and everyone at the time that was like the most engaged.
Everyone was like punch him hit him right now immediately everyone went fucking hit
him punch him kill him oh my god he's an asshole oh my god he's such a creep kill him kill
him he hadn't even done anything like that bad at that point he was literally just like
douchebag like he's just a college frat guy that's a superhero and that's like that's
what makes him so hateable.
Yeah and it's so fun to hate him and it's so fun to role play with that character but
the immediate like connect of everyone at the table being like we have a common enemy
right now and it's not even the moment that happens that's supposed to be the enemy.
Yeah and then like the secondary moment too everyone also loves like I don't want to say
everyone loves to love but everyone loves to care about the same stuff like when it was
in session zero it hasn't happened in session one we'll see if it does but our session zero
everyone really came together at the end because there was a kid that like snuck into this big
fight and then there's this like reveal it aw shit there's a kid here and everyone in
the building was there for a different reason but they're all heroes and so like to immediately
see like this child in danger everyone immediately switched focus and immediately just started
going for the kid like going for the kid.
Everyone started fighting to make sure the kid got out and that was a really fun moment.
Except for one PC who was trying to actively kill the child.
Except for one player who almost blew the child up with rockets.
Like not accidentally it was intentional.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Don't kill kids in your campaign by the way.
Like as I'm not a DM but as a DM.
Don't be afraid to do fucked up things.
But don't do that.
Don't do that.
Don't kill the dog.
Don't do that.
Shout out Britain.
Don't kill the fucking dog.
Yeah don't don't kill the dog.
At least in session one.
You can do that later.
You can do it way later.
Especially if the dog has had a lot of really cool story moments and it's been building
up like they're a really key character.
I don't like hearing you go on this tangent as someone who plays at your table.
But I mean really though if you're going to kill a fucking NPC of any kind whether it
is an animal or a companion.
Make it important and also make it count.
Make it count.
Give your characters a chance to help.
Game of Thrones is a great show and so is Crown of Candy as an actual play.
However, comma.
And I'm not saying Crown of Candy didn't did this.
They didn't.
But the game of Thrones I think is more responsible here.
Don't just kill characters for the sake of killing them.
You know if it's like this is a harsh world where nobody survives.
There's an NPC made last session is like dead like cool.
What does that mean for me?
Yeah.
If you want a more impactful death and this is also coming from like someone who like
does a lot of like storytelling and like story analysis and blah blah blah.
You have to let your audience which are your players.
Become attached.
Get attached to things.
Make them important.
You kill them.
Even to the world.
Characters aren't going to want to save a world that they have no attachment to which
is something we kind of like dealt with in the last campaign is we were like okay you
guys need to save the world.
We were like.
Yeah no one cared about the world.
And I was like I don't we don't really.
Like they fully just like left a world to die because there were like none of our fucking
business more than once.
We tried.
We failed.
I'm not risking my life for that.
Yeah.
Like I don't know him.
See you fucking later.
I don't know Tia man.
I'm not getting in her business.
Like it was very.
Very near who has an invested interest said peace.
So we said peace.
Like yeah.
Like you have to let people get involved because not every character is going to be good for
the sake of being good which also side note for players and I'll probably talk about this
more in character creation.
Yeah we'll talk a lot about more.
A lot more about it.
Don't make an endlessly edgy character for no reason.
You've got to care about something and if you're an edgy character.
You have a sexual interrelation.
Give yourself a soft spot.
Don't be Batman that we'll talk about later.
Give yourself a soft spot.
Like the kid thing.
And like which we're dealing with like we've got a lot of heroes in the group and we've
got some people who fall a little bit more anti hero.
But like at the end of the day.
Which is unappreciable.
There's going to be at least one person at the table that wants to play an anti hero.
You know.
Yeah there's always going to be someone who's like.
It's an attractive grab.
Like it's somebody that does the right thing for the wrong reason.
Red hood.
Or the wrong thing for the right reason I guess.
But like give your character a spot to feel soft and something that they want to protect
and it's eventually.
Yeah really lean on what you know about their like their morals and their values to get
them engaged.
And so yeah you can kill the dog.
But wait until everyone loves the dog.
And the dog means a lot to them.
And then when you kill it.
Yeah.
Give them a chance to save it first.
See what I.
Then they'll all come together to avenge the death of the dog.
And then it just turns into John Wick.
Right.
What I will say about not killing characters too quickly or often or without reason.
Yeah.
I don't want to say this because it might give somebody like the wrong the wrong idea.
But you can very much kill a character very quickly or soon after they've been introduced
if the the PCs morals or backstory is really going to be negatively affected by that.
Like there was a moment in my first campaign ever played where I was playing a warlock
and I wasn't I wasn't edgy.
I very much like somehow I've managed to do it several times but this like good to bad
or like hopeful to hopeless kind of character transition.
And I had like a deal with the devil as warlocks do.
And my my things I had worked out to a point where like if I had killed if I killed any
innocent people like truly innocent people that I knew were innocent I would get like
a massive power boost in terms of gameplay and I did I ended up incredibly broken by
the end of that campaign.
And there was this character where I had to make like a really key decision.
I had never really met them before they were like or we had never really talked to them
as like NPC.
It was a mayor of like the starting town.
We didn't really give a shit about it.
We didn't care about it.
We didn't really like them all that much.
But I was told that like before I had gotten to this town like if I had killed somebody
that was really truly innocent or that I felt was truly innocent or like important that
I would like I have that would be the first step to like gaining like more power in the
NPC didn't have a lot of backstory but I still did it.
And it was it like sucked for me as a person to follow what I felt like was the logical
decision of the character I was playing.
Like I legitimately walked away from that session and I was talking to my DM who's now
a player at the time and I was like that I think was one of the worst decisions I've
made both in real life and in like in a game because it hurt.
And it the character that I killed was important to an extent but did not have any extensive
background or meaning.
So my character's backstory and morals is what gave that death meaning.
And so I think even if you don't have a lot writing or a lot of hooks attached to something
that you want to write off or kill or like do something negative to as long as it's
impactful to the players you can still do it if it pushes the platform.
Like if Batman kills a random person that's going to be a big deal of Batman because he's
got no killing rule.
The random person doesn't matter.
Like that random person could have been introduced for the first time on that panel and dies
at the end of that panel.
It doesn't matter it's still going to be really important because like you said Batman doesn't
kill people.
Yeah.
So kill with caution.
That's the kill with caution.
Kill with caution.
But yeah like and we've kind of gone off tangent but I think when you're creating your world
we've already talked about working with your players.
Figure out what setting they want with settings they don't like.
Figure out what time period to like the sword coast because it's been a setting that's
been around for so long.
Has so much history and things that have happened to it like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, like
all of these locations that have been like destroyed and rebuilt.
There are time periods on the sword coast where some of those cities didn't exist where
they did exist where they were like in their height when they were like at their low when
they had been erased.
So also figure out what time because time is just as important as setting and sometimes
I think people get they're not specific enough and then it leads to kind of some plot issues
because it's like if I'm just on the sword coast like we just started campaign and we're
just there and I'm like cool so like what's around us like what's going on what's the
history.
If you don't have that premade or preset half fun coming up with it on the spot like because
depending on the setting you're playing in whether it's if it's homebrewed you can make
some shit up and canonize it.
If it's sword coast if it's stuff that's already there you might then have to walk away from
that session and do a lot of googling before the next one to figure out exactly what time
period you want the setting to be in.
Or do a fun little okay so we're going to retcon some of the stuff I said last time.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Retconning is okay.
Retconning is totally okay.
From a player to a DM.
I retconned the whole session one.
I tried to do a session zero because I didn't like the way I role played characters.
And that's okay and as a DM don't stress about being like well fuck I said it now I've got
to keep it.
You can retcon shit.
We retcon so many things.
You're not like.
If you forget that something happened last session as like the DM and you say oh well
this person does this or uses this magical item.
And then all your players look at you like didn't they die?
Didn't we like break the item or like didn't we travel to a different location?
You're like oh yeah we did.
Surprise.
We first started playing one of our campaigns.
We were just using the term grease because we weren't like we were just like whatever
we're just going to talk about like ancient grease.
It was a setting that I hadn't fully fleshed out and so I was like I wanted it to be grease
like and this is before I knew that Theros was a setting which for those that don't know
a whole lot about it Theros is like another I think Wizard of the Coast property.
It's Wizard of the Coast ancient grease.
It's a spin off directly of the Magic the Gathering Theros set which I play Magic the
Gathering Wizard of the Coast owns both and so they ended up turning it into like a full
setting with a book and I used the source book and I gave it a name because Theros was
a lot more interesting and fun than just saying grease.
That also gave me access to stat blocks to maps to locations to backgrounds to history.
It was also fun because at that point we both had Theros as a place and then we also still
had Apollo as a character even though there was an Apollo equivalent in Theros but we
had already like spoken directly to Apollo on multiple occasions from like way way way
back.
I just had Apollo and straight up ancient grease and there was also a character who
was basically from like ancient magical Japan.
For reference two of the people in that particular campaign were archaeologists or archaeology
majors.
And so they were history nuts and so their back stories in to this day still happens
with one of them that still plays at my table.
They like to insert real like real world earth as it is today history and background
correcting us on how many rowers our ship would have.
I was infuriating by the way as a player I swear to God I'll kill you.
I'll kill you so fast.
You will drown.
I don't care if you know how to swim.
Yeah.
I was like oh shit we need to make a boat can we make a boat.
I was like great.
Actually this is how many rowers it would take to row a boat of this size.
What the fuck up.
It's like I didn't ask you.
We just made a boat out of magic.
Do you want to do you want to get to the next place or not.
Like those are your options do or don't.
We're not paying attention to how many fucking rows.
Playing with archaeologists is a very interesting experience.
Playing with anybody that has a vested interest in any like cultural or social aspect that
you have inserted into your campaign can be exhausting because they constantly feel the
need to tell you or correct you or insert and that can be fun like with comic books.
Me and Madison both know a lot about comic books.
Her character in the current campaign is very comic book forward and I don't it doesn't
bother me when she's like yeah these heroes would have comic book stories and like what
if the villains were like this and what if the heroes were like that and they were portrayed
in this way in the comic books.
I don't give a shit.
That's cool.
But when I try to give you a cool moment and you shit on it because it's not realistic
enough for you.
You fucked.
Yeah.
Don't don't shoot your DM down when they're trying like that.
And that's also I think goes both ways.
If your players try to do something really cool rule of cool you know a little bit like
that.
Shout out to Matt Mercer.
He says that all the time on critical role rule of cool.
Like there are so many moments that have happened in their real plays where like someone will
try to do six actions in one sentence which realistically with the way action economy
works in fifth edition.
You can do they're like I want to do this I want to jump there I want to grab that I
want to say goodbye and I want to jump out of the window.
That's like four actions.
Everybody gets the same table as you literally in the fantasy world is setting at the same
table as you.
They all have now five actions to interact with you and say no you don't.
Yeah.
But rule of cool right like if it if it's just a cool thing that can happen maybe get
me and like have them roll a dexterity check and then ask all the other players like are
you guys too in shock to do anything in this moment like realistically would you would
you act would you say anything.
And then if they do give them the appropriate checks but let those six actions play out as
a few really cool like role of the dice moments and then let it go and I'll say as a player
you cherish those moments those make you feel like a fucking superhero at the table.
I remember there was like one where I was like trying to like shoot something but it was
way up high so I was like can I like my character was like kind of like had a background in
like performing so I was like can I throw my daggers and like climb up my daggers and
then like try and shoot from the top.
He was like yeah go for it give me a can roll for it check and then like see if it works
which is a very popular phrase you'll hear at a table or you'll say damn yeah you can
dry or you may try or you can roll for it or if you get a natural 20 the phrase if you
get a natural 20 that's I won't say it fighting where I refuse to say that because that's
just opening myself up to so many possibilities that I I've said it a couple times but I try
not to because it's always when you tempt fate and the dice moments where people have
rolled that it'll happen that you're like upset about yeah and not to say that like
I don't encourage those moments or that I don't like them they make really they can
be exhausting but that's why I think the statement you can roll for it is a lot better than give
me a natural 20 because if they do get a natural 20 you don't have anything attached to the
statement you just said they can roll for it you didn't say they can roll for it and
get it you said they can roll for it like because sometimes there are moments where
it's like oh that sounds so sick you can roll for it and it's like oh your DC is five I
would you physically could not do this you're like five nothing you weigh a hundred pounds
soaking wet you have no athletic ability but this sounds cool yeah all the dice DC five
if you want to see you do it sick like enjoy the story that you're telling and let it be
fun like it make those main character moments man yeah right now you're not the fucking main
character but you can have those moments and you have your turn to be the main character
but you're not the main character and as a player don't be afraid to ask your DM to insert
one of those moments as well not like hey man I'd really like next session if I had to
make a character you can mean you could always come to your DM and DM's I encourage you all
to be open if a player comes to you and says hey like I really feel like my character hasn't
really gotten a lot of spotlight or I'm just getting kind of boarded table could we like
interact with me a little bit more next session I've is it is a DM cool like you get a whole
art for the next the next four hour session we do all about you buddy yeah take it wrong
with it but like as a player also please don't be afraid to approach a DM and ask them to
do cool things even in the moment like players rule rules both ways yeah yeah bother your
DM's I bother Robert constantly about D&D to the point where he's now co-hosting a podcast
with me because we have multiple hour-long conversations about it and I'm like I personally
might as well attempt to get them monetized at some point yeah yeah I mean if we're gonna
talk about this in the basement might as well talk about it in the studio yeah yeah yeah
um and like you you never like what's the worst that can happen if you ask about something
they say no they're not gonna be like no that was a bad idea now I'm gonna kill you with
the table yeah that's not gonna happen like if you got a 60 foot gap to cross and Jesus
Christ trying to figure out what your what your jump height jump distances there are
literally calculators that are only made for calculating jump height and jump distance
but if like your character who has 30 movement speed wants to jump a gap of 100 feet on their
own no respectfully no they I mean your player could always be like hey man rule of cool
like what if I just got a really big running start and then like lift it off of my staff
and try to do like a helicopter thing with it and it's like if you want to risk your
life for this cool moment I'll let you roll for it I've done that when I'm here I know
it's not gonna happen and then sometimes it does fucking happen and everybody at the
tables mouths are like slack John because holy shit he did it yeah it's like you need to
roll like three dice you know 3d20 is every one of them every roll needs to be above a
20 and it's like 25 26 29 okay you don't even have a plus in those stats I don't know how
you did that and it's like everybody at the tables like here take my party
inspiration take my chaos guy take my time and it's like what what the fuck man I love
it when that happens at the table is when the DM sets a really high DC for something
because it's something stupid and so everyone at the table goes I'm gonna drop everything
I'm doing and give so many boosts to this character and it's always something stupid
it's always like yeah like this character wants to like try to flirt with a fish or some shit
like that all for a milfs yeah like that shit and then everyone just piles on as many dice
and up to make it happen because that's a cool moment to watch the life slowly drain
out of your DM's eyes and it's so it's so satisfying it is incredibly satisfying hey
this shit sucks do you have something you want to send in to make it better criticisms
topics you'd like to see discussed or an advertisement you'd like to run maybe you even want to sponsor
an episode if so shoot us a message at mc460 at evansville.edu or DM us on instagram at
crescent magazine or we'll never get better like these fucking guys okay couple of things
I do want to talk about before this gets wrapped up in about 20 or so minutes that I just haven't
thought to talk about yet we mentioned it briefly as it as a DM oftentimes like you have those
that will do voices and you have those that will not do voices and then you have those
that have like really nailed one one voice and will do it the whole time like I'm one
of these people I'm really good at like the the Jersey accent and the Italian accent I
don't know where it came from my fiance when I was talking to my fiance it's just like an
app and how I normally talk she was like if you pushed it a little more like I would
think you were from New Jersey and I'm like okay that's a new voice for me oh and it's
turning to one of my favorite things at the table all of the characters from this like
one part of town I'll have the same I'll have the same accent which wasn't an intentional
thing it just it ended up being that way but now that's a really cool like world building
thing and everyone from this part of town sounds that way yeah yeah yeah but don't I
would encourage you I'm bleeding Jesus it's fine I would encourage you as a DM to try
a voice but on the flip side I would also tell you that it is okay if you do not feel
comfortable doing a voice if you just cannot for the life of you figure out what a particular
NPC is going to sound like because this is the first time you've ever had to roleplay
as them or you just had to make them on the spot just use your normal voice pitch it up
pitch it down and then call it a day there's so many other ways it actor here so many different
ways you can change your voice without doing a voice you can change the length of the way
you're talking yeah okay it's and you can talk really fast yeah like works like if they
say a particular word a whole bunch or like a lot like there were one of the first times
I role played for the players as like the the main I get a term out of the way right
BB EG like the big bad guy right one of the first times I role played him and they got
to like really see what his character was like I didn't do a particular voice but I did it
like he was this is gonna sound bad almost like he was getting a friend anchor he was
having like a mental lapse and so like my role playing for him wasn't doing a voice
it was stuttering and it was switching cadence and it was doing like facial things and like
weird things just with his voice in general but not the accent that works just as well
to is like in that moment everybody understood okay this guy is fucking nuts yeah he was
really glitching yeah he was like rolling his glitching his faces are switching and
I didn't have to do an accent I just had to stutter my voice and drag my words out yeah
and that was enough so figure out what works for you if you're more like the cadence and
speed and the pitch and the tone do that if you're accents all the way find a few that
really work for you and throw them in there if you're neither that's okay too you can
also describe the way someone talks you can say that he has like a really he has a higher
pitched voice than you would expect and blah blah blah and then a little bit more theater
of the mind for sure but like I mean that's what the whole thing is though right like
it's all theater of the mind unless you're playing with like state of the art shit you're
never gonna have an NPC unless you like pre-made them pre-printed them whatever that you can
like picture perfectly and is on the screen now and is mouthing and talking exactly like
you like that's just you you want to play a video game if that's the world you're interested
in yeah as is someone that's playing Dungeons and Dragons or anything that's like tabletop
RPG it's a tall theater of the mind and the more creative that you can be when you're
picturing that shit in your head like that the cooler your experience will be yeah yeah
it's just the voices I think are an interesting topic when you're talking about like being
a DM because some people just aren't good at it some people are better than others some
people have like that social anxiety like it still takes me a good like 20 30 minutes
to really get into a session before I can start getting into the voices and the characters
just because as a non-actor as somebody that's not engaged in role-playing except for the
two times I do it a week I just is not something I have a lot of practice doing I have a lot
of practice being myself and that's where some of my best character role-playing has
come from like with my my asshole characters I used to why they're ever that's really
though that's why they're as good as they are because I know how to play that character
like my personality is very asshole adjacent and there was a time in my life is adjacent
at certain time that's fair but like I have I have I'd like to think I have pretty good
control on like when I'm really overdoing it and what I'm not but I like the very like
funny and crude humor like sarcasm like just the full asshole effect and so my two likes
some of my favorite role-playing moments specifically with my with my big villain of my first campaign
it was me but like pushed to the extreme with a lot of external motivation yeah like taunting
the players making fun of the players like specifically bringing up things that like
he would know to say to set them off balance or to get them overly engaged in a combat
cool villain it was such a fun character to like role play with and this was a character
that we accidentally killed yeah like me and then brought back to like kill and I was like
I had my character still had questions for this character and it was also yeah really
fucking fun bad guy to play with and Robert had put in so much work like into creating
this bad guy and then it was very likely that I don't even have a kill him I don't have
a stat block for him until one of the final encounters like I never had a full stat block
for him until the final encounter and that's another topic I guess to hop to stat blocks
if you're world building if you're DMing well it doesn't matter what system you're in you're
gonna have to come up with one eventually and this is kind of where you have to choose
between okay how much homebrew am I doing how much content I'm pulling from the internet
am I buying books like what how am I doing it making a stat block is a first time DM truly
personally I do not recommend it is it is hell if you don't know what like if this is
your first time behind the scenes it's so different than making a character like my
first instinct when I was trying to come up with MPCs specifically villains I thought
that like the way to do it would be to go to my character creator and just make the characters
but then I would get to the combat session and realize this is organized for a player
I have not played as this MPC until this combat encounter I have no idea what any of this
shit means yeah and so I'm just like picking things on like scrolling through the character
the character app that we have and just like trying to pick random things to do so truly
don't just be afraid to find a stat block for a creature or an MPC or a character that
like has already been made that you really like and then give it a new face and a new
name yeah like one of the I just I bought a source book for this new campaign just because
it's helping a lot in terms of the world building of the power system and like reading the stat
block for the current villain that I'm playing in the session it is insane people it looks
like whoever wrote the book just took like abilities and AC and scores from some crazy
fucking critters from 5e but like it's good stuff and it all works with his character
like all the abilities and the spells and the AC it all fits his character in the personality
and who he's supposed to be in the world but I can like just reading the spell descriptions
there clearly rips from things that came from like the monster manual yeah and that's okay
pull a stat block look you can literally Google stat blocks for 5e creatures and you will
have a list on like a wiki dot 5e you can also just go like this straight up like D&D
beyond with the monster manual and Xanathar's guide to everything like every book you look
at is going to have a stat block find one you like give it a new name give it a new face
maybe even mix and match and then call it there
uh... do not try and make a stat block for every creature character pc whatever the fuck
don't do that it's too much time it's not worth it
it's really not like that's just and i think i can have a hard stance on that maybe it's
just because i'm not fucking good at it there too many choices
uh...
the yeah like well too many choices to be parallelizing sometimes and i think that's
something that like
and obviously i've never deemed i've that's one of the shit things about 5e though
like there's so much content content
and that's gotta be exhausting
because i know it's already daunting to like i consider like i know a lot about
dnb
but i am also scared to
say that i know a lot about the dnb because there's
no so much information and content always more to learn
as a new a new spell that you haven't seen before with a new effect you haven't
used
like i've got severe imposter syndrome saying that like
i'm in the vehicle because i'm like i feel like we've used one vehicle yeah
and i didn't even have them use it the way it was supposed to be used now we
just made that shit up
and i feel like am i like fake
and maybe that's also like
being a woman in nerd spaces i feel like i constantly have to prove myself
because i like literally had
in real life be like oh well what do you know about this we know about this
know about dnb like i don't know about the game stores do you
yeah i don't see a next year like
like i don't go to game stores without one of
the guys that i live with with me
because i just i feel very intimidated i've had very negative experiences of
like being asked
well do you even uh... oh you like harley quinn
of course you do and it's like yeah motherfucker
because i have like a very deep attachment to that character for a
litany of other reasons
and that's okay
that's a side note
but like
how do you deal with sifting through that content or because like that's why i've
yeah it's looking at it it's difficult like i would take towards homebrew for
that reason
so
i started off very very homebrew because there wasn't a setting
that which starting homebrew
can be a lot more difficult than starting out of a book like every
the the two people that have been a dm for me both started out of a book and
then turned into homebrew because it's easier to to leap from something than
into nothing
um...
so it really just kind of depends like
it depends on the campaign depends on the information i'm looking for
uh...
sometimes that's what makes it difficult playing in a setting that's real
like playing in there was was
somehow more stressful for me than it was playing in any of the other settings
that i had put you all in
because i had full control of the lore of that place
yeah
uh... but in there is and yet i can just make shit up in there is
but if i want to have you fight a minotaur i know there's a stat block out
there for a minute are in there is like i just know in the source book it's
there somewhere
uh... and so it really just i try and play it by the moment i don't try and
prepare a lot of like hard material ahead of time
uh... because i'm just gonna stress myself the fuck out you know
and so i think when it comes to that sifting
if you're in homebrew
you have a bit of an easier time because you can make it up on the fly you can
google a stat block and give it a name
if you're playing out of a setting or source book sometimes you feel a little
bit more contained
uh... and like you have to stick to the source material and uh...
i guess kinda that the blurbs
in the blocks in the bits that they give you about that the creatures and the
mythos and the world building and the powers
uh...
and yeah i don't know it kind of areas it's a hard question to answer truly
like for this particular campaign just buying a source book
uh... really helped it was only fifteen dollars to love content in the what i
was looking for in that source book were stat blocks anything about a map
uh... which i'll talk about maps after this i forgot to mention it does
usually play a pretty big uh... kind of to do with the table depending on where
you're at in your in your world building in your session
uh... and i just i wanted a lot of that work to be done for me but not to the
extent that sometimes it is in like a thorough source book or is in the first
guy day
uh... or any of the other
ten thousand fucking source books that was as a the coast is put out not to see
anything negative about them but there's so many
and there's a lot of money to be put into that space
there's just also a lot more freedom when you're using something that's not
something that's not official something that's a little more often than that
this to you and that's unless you accidentally said them the whole pdf
yeah
and it's
i don't know it's just it's a little bit of really playing it by ear like that
that would be my i guess my my only really solid piece of advice going into
a session zero or session one or even just a new campaign
only be as prepared as you need to be to answer questions do not
or if for whatever you really need for the next session like
yes intense sessions you might want your players to be at the top of this tower
that's gonna have its own map in its own room with very specific combatants
with super specific stat blocks and a villain you haven't made a style block
four
that's ten sessions
you have depending on how short and longer sessions are how frequently you
meet
don't worry about that don't come up with that yet
because you might end up in a completely different place in three sessions and
you did
are then you thought you were going to only come up with what you need for the
next
uh... for the first in
i think for a session zero recession one truly the only thing you need to know
is enough information about your world answer the questions that your players
are gonna naturally come up with
like i know somebody at the table is going to ask me
what i know this hero
what do i know about this hero
what do i know about this part of town what is how am i perceived
uh... our heroes and a negative or a positive thing
what's the criminal justice system like here is is vigilante a lot like
uh... are there any big companies that like produce heroes like all of those
things are questions that
uh... i i had answers to i can't prepare enough in knowing the world but not
enough to restrict my players from making their own decisions
in in session one or zero
uh... like you don't want to know so much and have so much prepared that they
don't have autonomy at the table that's that's the fun part of role playing as a
player right you get to make your own decisions create your own story
uh... and as a as a dm truly i think it's just your job to have all of those
things ready to let them jump into
you know like if you're hooked is doesn't work for a player may fully
divulge into something different or take it in it in a direction you weren't
expecting
have enough on hand that you can just make it up as you go yeah
and then if it's something where you're like oh shit no i like really need
several hard stat blocks for these characters and i just didn't have them
that's fine like write them out for a second or say okay i know i'm doing a
combat session
uh... and i wasn't prepared for today but we'll do it next time and then just
like pivot to something else you know only prepare as much as you need for
the session you're going into
not for the one after it and not for the one after that you never know what's
gonna change yeah and things will change players will defux it as players do
and even you as a dm or your opinions of the campaign that you wrote before
coming into this will change you will want story points to be different
say you play a u role play a character and you really had this idea in your
mind that they were going to be like this really key important in pc that was
gonna come back in a big way
and then you finally get them at the table in the players and iraq with them
uh... say your players are interested are you're just not fan of the character
even the way that you made it don't be afraid to just ditch that fucking
character or write them off or write that story point off even if you wrote
it like
pivot it's okay yeah i mean your players don't know what you already have written
it's in the same way and this is kind of similar to like
something that like
another actor thing of like you're watching a play
no an actor definitely fucked up line and like fucked it up bad
i guarantee it but you don't know that because you don't know the play
and that's one of the things they teach us a lot it's the i think acting and
dming are so similar to me i mean acting in dnd in general yeah are so fucking
similar and i could do an entire episode by myself about that but
no and that's that's what's kind of fun about having these conversations with
like between somebody that's been a player longer in a dm like longer even
just talking to your players
or your dm like post session or post campaign you're like hey like in this
moment like did you really have that together was that really the plan
and you just you get some really cool insights by doing that it's like no i
didn't have that plan i didn't know that that mechanic was going to become a key
thing
uh... i did like i didn't really plan for that story point becoming big for you
to have that moment but like holy shit wasn't it cool that it happened that way
i can't hide up enough having like little talk backs i mean we do very
informal talk back yeah we just talk about it like right after the session
of the day or two after like going upstairs and it's kind of like holy shit
man that moment was really cool i really liked what you did there
you know
and like me as a dm
cornering a player when they're alone so no one else around here and being like
hey i really like that point that you laid on last time landed harder
yeah like do it more
and it's also fun as a player to have those conversations with other players
like i was talking to one of our other players and
we have something like kind of like cute and funny that we're going to do next
session and there was another uh... moment last campaign
where well me and another player tried to play it out this really really
fucking cool thing and it would have been so
yeah sick and then it didn't happen in game we were so upset we told uh...
robert about it later
and i'm still so upset that i never have because it would have been such a cool
with the ring
that i don't know god damn cool
and sometimes things are going to land
yeah and that's okay
uh... some materials to have i think is a dm
a map is sometimes pretty useful you can buy uh...
like uh... universe specific maps like there are plenty of really like
high quality really really nice sword coast maps like uh... my coat
dm
uh...
this campaign and right now one of our friends he has a really nice like sword
coast map and
it's got all bunch of fancy information on it's not dry erase but like
it's really cool to have it out on the table and uh...
like as a party he's like okay well you guys have some downtime or like you have
a couple locations you gotta travel to and then rolls out the map on the table
and we get to like literally like point charter journey in it
feels like it's it's a lot too much more immersive role playing moment i think
to actually like have the map of the scroll or the
the location in front of you and i like i love my props paper props
and so i think dm
this is just include those do it it's so fine this is just for a this is just a
table general thing in terms of materials to have uh...
a dry erase map it's really all you need anything that's dry erase or any kind
of paper that you can write on for combat sessions for drawing out like
the five by five gridded
bullshit that a building looks like if they're trying to do like a heist or
whatever
uh...
and then if you don't have like a specific map for your location that's
fine like i don't have a map for mine right now i'm still trying to figure
out what i want to do for that because it's such a
i can picture it almost perfectly in my head however
it's a full fucking metropolitan city inside of a dome like and there are a
lot of maps out there like that that i can just rip because it's a very home
brewed idea
uh... and so like i don't i'm not gonna have a map for them probably for at
least a few more sessions but i know the locations well enough in my head to be
like yes so this is where you wanna go
like this is what you want to do is really go
this is the neighborhood you know the neighborhoods like in there before
uh...
and so maps are required right power of your imagination but it always helps
having seen there are a notebook or laptop just remember things to write down
your story points
i'll be watching a movie i i'd literally wrote this on a little google doc
do not be afraid to play through your favorite media or watch it and take
fucking notes
absolutely i like i'll walk away from watching a movie or an episode of an
anime or playing a little bit more video game and i'll go to my little dm
notebook and write down a story point that i want to copy like point four
point
mm-hmm
i wish if anybody knows what i'm doing
it be cool as fuck
it's fun and i'll say it your notes
it's also something of as a player if you know something is like
has inspiration from something it's so tempting to just go to that like
source material and like
and i'll have to be scour it
but don't
yeah now any minutes mostly message to like myself and other things like me
out there yeah yeah
that's totally fair but like it but also most the time your players won't notice
mm-hmm
and if they do it'll be like a cool not the bad guy in the campaign that we had
that went on for like almost two years now
the name was anagram and we were given the name i literally looked at year one
i put that name into like a randomizer for anagram specifically that should
piss me off so much
the name was low key because i played very heavily on several different
oligies uh... greek in norse in particular
and so it was like this different version of variant of low key and like my
own kind of i guess imagining of like the the the norse mythology universe that
ended up playing a really big point
but his name that he would give everybody
because it was kind of like a fun inside thing to him
you sounds different enough that you're like okay this like you would make the
connection it was keloid
spelled k i l l
i also was writing it k e y
hello as a player a year ask your dm for a spelling
do that wasn't even a time that's important it wasn't even something that
we fucking figured out at the goddamn table this was a like we were in the
living room talking and i was redoing my session notes
i asked him for like specific spelling and he told me and i looked at my
computer and i looked at him and i got so
pissed and then a grand baby
that so yeah don't ever like it's it's the whole joke of like you're never
gonna give a puzzle that's too easy to your players
and your players can all be very intelligent people we play at a table
with some very intelligent people myself excluded
at the same time
puzzle like as i say to that point though find kids puzzles and shit like
you are you can over the other days years ago over thing yet and some people
are good at different things like
some players might really really really really love
like ciphers and puzzles and like lock mechanisms and like
the ultimate vault which is in like every campaign ever because there's
always gonna be a heist episode for something and there's always gonna be
some bullshit locking mechanism
uh... in some players eat that shit up and then there are other people that are
like
barbarian class in real life
and are just like i wanna hit it
i don't care that there's a special key or lock needed for it
i don't even care that it's magically protected
i say we hit it till it opens and sometimes you'll be surprised at what
players do that
i love you'll be surprised how that works in real life
my first instinct in game constantly whenever i come across like a puzzle or
a locker anything is like we can just blast this shit and it'll open
eventually
uh... be a take uh... take notes on movies on media on video games on
universes you like
say i think we're we're almost a time here but i think one thing that did pop
in my head that i i do wanna say
when it comes to
really building your world
uh... there are often times gonna be a lot of story points that come very
naturally for you
like you could be you can say okay like this is the mayor of this city and this
is this government official and maybe this guy has this power and these people
don't know about it
okay these this hero is like the most important and like the most powerful
but like maybe there's this feeling that has like the ultimate way to stop and
you're like
oh my god what if my players like literally fit the key for this puzzle
and like played it
perfectly
you can do that you can try to do that
just don't like it's not it's gonna fuck it up in your not it's not gonna
follow along it's not gonna be executed the way you want it to
uh... right story points big and large as as lord and what what i mean by that
is
instead of
writing the literal connections between things say okay this character has this
really intense motivation to do this really fucked up thing
in this character has this really intense motivation
to to i don't know let this really fucked up thing happen in all it would take
is a conversation or a player or a choice
don't write it in as it's going to happen
just essentially you want to make your whole story all your big story points
like little powder kegs
in your players of the matches but they very much choose what to light and what
not to light
and when you have the like your powder written out in this very specific way
we're like one story points can light up and the rest of the red and explode
it's gonna be this
you got a shit inception moment and
no
make them all individual points because then when somebody ignore something
that was attached to something that you really wanted them to follow
know it wasn't
it was a standalone thing it was a piece of the lore it was in the world and i
you can just throw it at the end of another plot point that they're gonna
hit later
be like you be very flexible with your big story points
uh... you can say that like i want this right to happen i want this war to happen
i want this this person to make this decision i want this character to die
i want this reveal to happen in this way
all of that is great do not write how it's gonna happen you will be
disappointed
yeah and also as a dm don't be afraid to like
talk to your players if you
want them to do a specific thing
or if you want them to go a specific direction for a specific reason
you don't have to like micro manage but you can also just kind of push them in
that way
yeah like uh...
if i want to play or to pick up a really specific set of papers that are like
buried underneath all these folders on this table and like
i want to make it hard but i want them to be the character to find it you can
like say the paper on the very top is something important to them or has a
picture on it that they would recognize
uh... or like something falls and they look in just that direction and it
catches their eye because of this point that you mentioned earlier this little
fun corky character trait
uh... you can do things like that where it's just you're not necessarily
forcing them to do it but they're gonna play the character the way the character
has been played
and i'm gonna naturally find it is going to go cool i found that because my
character is like
really good at seeing things are hearing things are smelling things are
they really know the laboratory equipment in this is very much off like
off-place off-kilter and i think that's also something of a benefit of like
knowing your players is a dm and knowing your dm as a player which like
you're not always going to
know them super well and that's fine but we are a group of people who know
each other very well
so there's moments where
conversation i'm like hey
maddie to robert
yeah i have a lot of myself if i do this
just as moments we just got a pop out and be like this is completely outside
of
the what's happening right now if i make this decision
am i going to regret it
yes you will cool thank you i'm gonna like make an informed decision out or
even outside of the table
uh... dm to player being like hey
you know this one thing that you keep doing again
fucking stop it you're getting a good day it's pissing me off
and i'm gonna kill your character if you don't stop which is a conversation i've
had with him
and i think you like respectfully i'm gonna wipe the god damn party or i'm
gonna kill you forcibly like
but another and i'm gonna let you struggle i'm not even gonna do it
now right i'm not gonna like hand of god smite you
i'm gonna let you make some really fucked up decisions and you're gonna deal
with the fucked up consequences
it's also thing of like knowing your players is you know
you know exactly what they're going to do because i don't know what they're
going to do is playing the character
it doesn't matter if they're playing a character they're gonna make certain
decisions that you know that that person is going to make there are certain
decisions from
i think all of the players that are table that you know
as a dm and like
who you are
what this person is gonna
do
and there's that's who they are some people are like really like they have a
really big sauce for people are the really nice and really but they really
want to play an edgy character they want to be like ruthless and cutthroat
and they get to like a decision where they have to choose whether not to save a
character in pc and it's like
you know that they know that you know that their character should say
see you later mother fucker and let them die or kill them
and because as a person there to nice for that
they end up putting their character
in a really difficult spot in trying to save that person now that leads to some
really cool character moments at the table though because it's like
maybe there's actually like a little a tiny nugget
of a soul somewhere buried in that batman as character yeah and it's finally
coming to the surface
uh... yeah knowing your players and knowing the characters are playing is
definitely important for sure like a conversation i was trying to play an edgy
character and who like did it give a shit about people blah blah blah but
anytime it like actually came to like
letting someone die or letting someone get hurt
me as a person felt so shitty it was one of those things of like i know what i
should do
and i know the decisions that i should make
yeah but i don't really want to make it
but i feel really bad it hurts too bad
hurt
yeah there have been several times the dm
where somebody had to make a decision like that and i was like
at the table listen you know what your character should do
i understand you as a person don't want to do it
but you've committed to this character
i've written this character into my world
make the fucking decision yeah especially when it's having that's been
leading up to it choose the hard one
commit role play
yeah i can't wait for our episode about role playing
i'm i'm so excited about that it's like my favorite thing to like
trying make everyone at our table do little improv games before we start
improv games are in there they heard sometimes sometimes useful to
sometimes listening to our group is very painful yeah yeah
awesome i do think it is about that time i think this is our longest episode
we've done so far some i think read an hour and ten
oh god mm-hmm i'm sorry
yep so it is about that time um thank you all for joining and listening to
mostly me talk about trying to be prepared and writing a world which i
know we had a lot of different points and it wasn't all together but
like madison said like her question earlier um like how do you
how do you filter through the information you just you learn as you go
yeah you figure out what you need it'll be okay watch
watch critical role watch um what is it is it daddies and dungeons or what are
the what are the fun is it dungeons and daddies is said the other way
uh dungeons and daddies you should be like up daddies and dungeons you're gonna
get a very different result yeah like watch dimension 20 and sometimes
even like watch like vox mokina on amazon like watch just the animated show
uh really pay attention to some of the the choices that are made in like the
animators of the movies you watch and really try and get into the head of
like the person that made so many ideas out there that just read like d d the
newest kind of into the galaxy movie that reads so much like a and once you
once you get that knack for seeing those those choices and writing those
stories it'll get a lot easier for you to pick those points up and then roll
them into your own campaign but in a world full of media we can't get away
from it we can't escape it we're all participating in it just yeah pay
attention look a little further into it don't just be like an audience member
try and get into the head of the person that wrote it be like holy shit that
was such a cool fucking story point yeah that was such a cool choice like
anime manga oh my god they wrote that character so well and then this character
out of nowhere was the perfect foil like holy fuck never saw it coming rip that
shit rip it it's so fun to steal it we're all learning
it's okay it's your first time we're gonna get there together
yeah it's like when you're learning how to draw sometimes you trace pictures
before you draw on your own yep doesn't make you less of an artist sometimes you
do both yeah you trace and then you draw something yeah you know i really like
the outline of that dog i'm gonna draw some shit on it you know i'm gonna change
the color of it and i'm gonna add a color yep well that's art in it right
creativity yeah what's it's the whole it's also a little bit of stealing which is
tried to end we tried to end this for almost two minutes now but it's something
else that it's funny though mentioning the creativity thing right it's like the
that you could in music either you could never write a melody there is no melody
you could write today that has not been written by somebody at some point there's
no story that you can tell that has not already been told nope and that's okay
there are too many people on this planet for you to think that your choices and
your story there are no original ideas no and so the fuck being original yeah
take it your own way that's what i'm sure like looking up the other day there's
several other podcasts called table talk that talk about d&d
yeah they're like table talk and this i think we're the only one that's straight
up table talk yeah and we have a pretty cool emblem
pretty cool logo shout out to madison thank you just all the back and work
it myself okay we're gonna try and say goodbye again thank you all
again for the second time for coming in and listening talking about world
building um DMing etc we're gonna do hopefully character creation next time
i think at this point we'll just bring in our own video stuff yeah we'll see you
next thursday we don't know what it'll be about yet
no but maybe maybe it'll be character creation maybe it'll be something
different it'll be for a treat maybe we just go
a wall and do something completely new that's scary
see you next thursday goodbye bye