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Hello, players who lose real-life sleep over at NPC.
There we go. And DMs who write an entire sourcebook for One Shot and then use a fourth of it.
Share an experience now. More than once. I'm Maddie. I'm Robert.
What are we talking about today, Robert? Oh, welcome to Table Talk.
It is kind of a different session, so you can listen to this one if you want to, but it's much better with context.
So the session and a half before this was a five-episode special where we did an actual play where I was a player and Madison was a DM and the kids on bike system.
So today is kind of like a little feedback slash talkback session where we just kind of shoot the shit about the episode.
Things we liked, things we didn't, things we felt went well, just kind of what the experience was like, because this is her first time.
Well, second time DMing, first time doing it for one person and then sort of in front of an audience.
I'll talk about the small group versus one person.
One of the most jarring experiences and probably what I think was the hardest part about the whole thing.
Sumbling through a story and like a plot and everything, that's bread and butter for me. That's what I do. That's what I love to do.
I love to make up stories and shit, but when it's just one other person, the formatting of it is so odd because previously there were four or five of you.
I think there were five of us. Five of you all. I could be like, cool, y'all talk to each other while I flip through my fucking like little notebook and document and like figure out what I want to do.
There's no time for that when it's one other person and it's just like, I'm bad at math. I can't add numbers together.
That's another thing where it's like, cool, there's other people to kind of like take the pressure off and you can also let players who you know are stronger kind of guide the direction of where you want things to go.
Versus one other person is also an issue of two people with ADHD who love a bit and who once they start riffing do not stop.
And that led to a thing that I had timed out in my head and planned on taking 30 minutes, taking the entire part one.
That was supposed to be 30 minutes of time, like real life time to go over all of the stuff that happened in part one.
And it took two hours because there's no one else to move things along.
It's all on you.
It is just two people in a vacuum and then all the people you've made up in your head.
And it's different when like at the table, there's real life people who are getting antsy and we're like, oh, I want to do something.
Oh, I want to do something. You could see the people who it's like, oh, we got to keep the shit moving because other people have to go.
Like that does not exist when you're playing with one other person, which was very, very jarring.
Yeah, it's definitely it's a different experience. I mean, I've only done it the one time when we did our previous actual play.
And it's, I don't know, I had the benefit of working out of a book.
So like I knew what points we had to hit next.
But it was there were definitely times where we could have mingled a lot longer on certain things and we needed to I think the benefit to of starting in like one shot that is preset or preset.
Or pre written or like a dungeon is that there's a very clear goal to work towards.
Yeah, like we can shoot the shit and talk all day in a high school.
Correct.
Right where you're high school kids versus like you're in a very linear ask dungeon where there's a very clear goal or a quest that's been given to you by a teacher or by a quest giver or whoever.
And it's like, cool, you have one mission and that is to get from point A to point B and then to get item A back to person A.
Yeah.
And that's one of the things looking back because I was going back and I was editing trailers that have absolutely flopped online and I spent how worse on these suckers.
So I've been listening to this episode over and over for editing purposes, which is also very jarring experience to listening back to yourself doing any creative project.
But I think that that's one of the things that went the smoothest and things were the most centered when there was a clear goal.
Yeah.
And that's how it's going to be, right?
Yeah.
Because it's the difference between being able to wander in an open world versus like having a story focused moment.
I mean, that's, you know, just kind of where parties tend to struggle and DMs tend to struggle, at least ones that aren't very goal oriented in their storytelling.
And this is going to be one of the stupid things because I'm going to take it back to acting.
It had a very similar feeling for me looking back and reflecting on it.
It's like sometimes when you're doing an act or you have me.
Act or you have me.
Sometimes when you're doing a scene and you're like, I don't know why the fuck this character is saying this.
I don't know why I'm doing the things I'm doing.
And then you take a step back and you do like the first thing they teach you in any acting class ever is like, what's your character's goal?
You have to know their objective and their goal.
And then you have to like have that influence everything you do.
And then I at least do not do that most of the time.
Yeah.
You just forget and you're like, yeah, that's so obvious.
And then the second you go through and you do it with that goal in mind, you're like, oh, this is so easy.
Everything makes sense. Everything is clicking.
And I think the same is really true in D&D.
And I think that that's one of the things we've talked about a little bit at our table of our characters, our PCs at our table in our campaign, kind of feeling disconnected and like wander.
It just, it felt like, why are we here?
And I think that one of the things that also boils down to is like goal, which that's way off and like broader than this specific.
Yeah.
And certainly the goal setting is very important for characters, especially helping drive the story that your DM is telling forward.
And then I think also being able to be aware of what those goals are as a DM are also really important because that can give you, like if I know that person is absolutely dying to, I don't know, steal a car, right?
Then I can give you 76 different story points.
But as long as every one of those story points gets you a half step closer to stealing that car, we're on track.
We're on track to take that long, but we're still moving forward.
Yeah.
The issue in setting up the one shot is that there was nothing, there was, you have to play long enough to get to the hook.
Exactly.
And then how long do you sit on the hook before you start moving up?
And it's just, you kind of have to find that out.
Like from my experience, I think it's very much either you watch a lot of content and try and base your first couple of runs off of that or you go in cold.
And it's just kind of a practice, feeling out your players, your table, who likes to move things forward, who likes to sit, meander.
Like some people are at a table or very world exploring and like just kind of do normal everyday people shit.
And then other people are like, cool, let's go do stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.
Yeah.
And just cannot help going to the plot every session.
And that's, you know, that's kind of helpful on my end, because it means that I don't, I don't stall, because I'm not giving the option to.
It's difficult for me to stall with some of the players at my table, because they're like, cool, we're not going to sit around and do all the fun happy filler stuff.
We have the things.
We've got things to do.
We're going to do the things.
And that's where I think comparing our, like our table to like what we've played in the one shot.
I'm a very slice of life, because that feels more comfortable to me, because that's where I like my strengths kind of lie in terms of storytelling and stuff as character driven situations,
which is a lot easier for me than, you know, like a hooky adventure thing.
And I also wanted it to be.
Yeah, I think I tend to lean on the other side for sure.
I like to find a hook or a goal or an idea or a premise for a session.
I mean, even the flashpoint session we did, I mean, it was, it was fantastic.
But the idea was, in my opinion, what made it so impactful was the premise that everybody was supposed to try and make it to the end of a single day.
Yeah.
That was the whole premise.
Yeah.
Like there's a solid chance that your character dies and that you all fail this mission terribly.
Correct.
But there's a goal.
And then you only have four hours, like four and a half, six hours to work through to that goal versus like, cool, you're in high school.
Yeah.
You're in high school, you're with your friends and you're shooting the shit and then you eventually get to science class where you're given a hook, but then you have the entire rest of the day.
Yeah.
And then the bus ride.
And then you have to find a secondary hook to start your adventure.
It's just there's a lot more like free roam character stuff in there, which is fun until you have a schedule and then you're like, fuck.
Correct.
And it was one of those things where like, I didn't expect it to be as long as it was because I thought it was just going to be filler like, cool, like.
And I made a post on Patreon where I basically put all of my notes and all of my behind the scenes, everything to an obsessive point because I like wrote a little like sourcebook and mechanics and all of these things for things that did not get touched because of my poor time management skills and also the fact that both of us have severe ADHD and time blindness.
But kind of like going through that and being like, yeah, I just expected it to be kind of like Tony shows up to school.
He asked her comes in late, you know, you meet the cool kids, blah, blah, blah, running it through kind of like that.
And then it's also a thing of like, I realized as a GM, and this was something I also realized I need to be mean.
I need to have a backbone because instead of any of the times I was like, I'm not going to cut you off if you were engaging actively with something.
And that was, I think one of my problems with time management.
And it was also a thing of in terms of like being able to find and set consequences is I.
See, that's right.
King of consequences. You take your time. You lose out on shit.
Pick up the wrong object. You lose out on shit.
That incentivizes people to move.
I was so bad at this because I wrote like, like I made this stuff hard.
Yeah.
You would not know that listening to the session.
Not at all. Tony succeeded at everything he did.
Well, it was because and I am on the team, you know, as a GM or as a DM, you want your players to succeed and you should let your players succeed to an extent.
But failure is a huge part of kids on bikes. And I like, I just, one, I felt mean.
Which is a personal issue.
I think it takes a while for certain people.
The biggest one was also like when I'm going to use the claw machine as an example.
I had written in my notes, this is a DC 15 flight check.
You cannot use adversity tokens.
You cannot use like anything to help you because claw machines are rigged and you shouldn't be able to win claw machines.
What I did not expect for was for this character that I had gone into this being like, yeah, this is going to be an asshole plastic beauty, petty, like shallow.
I knew all of these things about the character.
I did not expect for him to be a really nice person to his friend.
And that fucked me up because it was like in that moment of like, yeah, it's a claw machine.
It's going to be impossible to win.
And then you made the choice to be like, cool, I'm going to try and win something for someone else.
And that was so nice and so, and I felt like
I couldn't be like, no, fuck you actually.
That's where you have to get, I think it's, as you say, it's a skill issue.
I think that's where it comes from.
I just need to get better.
Experience where there's only so much information gathering you can do on an individual's character
versus playing with them at the table and seeing how they actually characterize that person while you're playing with them.
Like, I could have had, for reference, right, like our superhero campaign has been going on for a while
and I am just like at the end of semester two, just now closing where I wanted to be a semester one
because of how many character arcs our characters have already been through within, like in canon, like a month.
Yeah.
Everybody has changed so drastically within a month's time.
I mean, that's cool to think about.
However, comma, a part of it stems from, I had meetings with everybody, I said, okay, who's your character going to be?
And then I got, like, asshole, where I got kind of a luke, really cool, like, into superhero stuff,
where I got, like, a veteran hero who's still trying to make it to the top.
I got very clear, solid character stuff.
And then I was like, cool, I'm going to write a story where these people can come together in a group and then go forward.
And then you get at the table and those people do not exist.
Or they exist, but there are so many other layers to them that you didn't expect to be there,
that you're having to micromanage every story point that doesn't interact or that does interact with a layer that you didn't account for.
Yeah.
I.e. Tony being nice to his only friend.
That, and it threw me so off because I had written all of this to be, like, a very, like,
because I went in with the information of, like, everything we talked about from the character beforehand was, like, yeah, it's like,
oh, he's nice person, but, like, a bit down low.
And see, here's the thing, though.
I took advantage of the down low aspect because if you notice, most of the times he was nice in an over way
was when nobody else was around, which is, you put me in an arcade with one person who I consider my only friend,
I'm not gonna be an asshole.
Correct.
And that was the thing that I just, I did not account for that.
And then I felt bad being, like, actually no, get fucked.
Yeah, you can't win.
Fuck you for trying to be nice.
I did make props for two of the things that were also, you were not supposed to win,
but I knew that I was gonna end up giving them away anyway because I like making props.
Yeah, you like getting up the props.
Fair enough.
So I knew that that was gonna happen, but it was, that was one of the things that, like, I struggled with.
And also, I should preface for this.
This is not, we took the setting from the back of the book.
I said, I took the setting from the back of the book and I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna use this.
And then I gutted it and used the name.
Yeah.
And the fact that SkiBall exists in the name of one of the characters and that is it.
And then I just made up everything else.
And that was also very fun.
And that, the making of the world was not the challenging part for me.
It was, oh god, I knew this world because I, like,
wrote it and made it and everything.
And then I forgot to tell you what any of the stuff was.
And that was also something that I was like, yeah.
And you have to spend a lot of time info dumping.
And that's kind of an issue that I've run into into our other campaign as well is that I gave everybody a very strong,
grounded background into the world and then very quickly realized that despite the fact that I info dumped to everybody individually
and then as a group, there's still so much that nobody knows.
Yeah.
Like there are still so many questions because, and this is the issue, sort of the further you flesh out the world
in the more experience you give your PCs before you play session zero with them,
it becomes an incredibly difficult issue to navigate because now it's, I have like five players,
four players I think is average, right?
I have four players that all are supposed to know a lot about this world.
Like they've lived in it, they go to work in it, they are, it heroes in it, they're an adventuring party in it,
they have jobs, relationships, they have neighborhoods that they like, they have nicknames for groups of people,
there's an accent for every different major segment of the city.
There are parks and statues and buildings and corporations that anybody would be familiar with.
The issue is I don't have time to write all of that information on my own original world and then give that to players
and then go, cool, I need you to memorize everything about this fictional universe.
Now let's play.
Yeah.
Because then it's like, cool, I have a source book for my character and I have no idea what the fucking you have it makes.
Correct.
This part of it is like, I want to let my players explore and feel out the world for themselves and you know,
the other thing is I don't want to, like, I don't know, the idea of starting four people, five people,
knowing nothing about anything ever at all is so fucking stupid and boring to me.
Like, I mean, I've gone on this rant before, there is no reason why you should be starting at level one,
I stand on that, I don't even think you should do level three.
I think level five is base.
It's rough to be able to do that.
I think that's base, but a level five character insinuates or at least comes with the expectation that that person has some experience in the world that they're in.
They've lived, they've been a person.
They've lived.
And how do you drop five people in one city, whether it is, fucking whatever the city we were in or the high school we're in, right?
How do you drop one?
Come on, you got another one.
I don't remember the name of the city, I remember Point Pleasant was the place that we went to.
I don't remember the name of the city.
Point Pleasant was the name of the city, we went to Port Pleasant.
We went to Port Pleasant.
Yeah, because we made a bit of the names because you could never remember.
What was the city we were in?
Point Pleasant.
We were in Point Pleasant, we went to Port Pleasant.
That's fucking annoying.
You, you fucking get the name wrong.
Anyway, we'll make it a bit.
That's the issue, right?
How much do you tell Robert about Tony, about Tony's experience in Port Pleasant or Point Pleasant without just telling him about the whole campaign?
Yeah, and it was one of those things where after-
If he is supposed to have been there for 16 years?
Yeah, and it was one of the things we talked about after the first, because we recorded it in two halves, and as we were going home, you made the comment of like, that felt like an intro, like a session one for a campaign as opposed to a one-shot.
Yeah.
And I think that that would, this is all to say, I'm pretty decently happy with how it went.
I think, I think it went well.
I think we just, I say we.
I think the scope of the amount of content that could be covered very quickly got out of hand.
Correct.
Which part of it is me lingering on story points that I thought were fun and then not having somebody to tell me no.
And then the other part of it was somebody playing with somebody who likes exploring all the story-related things in the universe and then also not wanting to pump the brakes.
Yeah.
It's.
There's a downside to overriding and there's a downside to having too fleshed out of a world because it means that there's so many things that you want your players to explore.
Like, the thing that I'm running to now is that the inspiration for Sapphire City is like a combination of six or seven different sources.
It's infamous one through three, the video game series on PlayStation.
It is My Hero Academia, it's the anime, it is, oh my god, the Heroes Rise series, which is a choice of games book.
There's like fucking six of them.
I mean, it's just like source after source after source because there's so much media out there about superheroes.
And I was like, I want to pick a little bit from all of my favorites.
And then I ended up with a world where I was like, there are so many things in people in story points that I am dying to have you all touch.
But if I'm going to make this campaign end, like end at some point, and this is not a forever campaign, which I don't really want it to be.
I'm cool with revisiting, but this besides the point, I have to pick one storyline or one really key point of inspiration and then follow that through.
Yeah.
And so now I'm like going through in my head as we play sessions and I'm like, cool, I can't do that source.
I can't do that source.
I have to pick this one and I have to pick these three story points.
Yeah.
And then I'm like, I only make sense within the context of the source that I'm basing it off of.
And it's not even with this particular one.
It wasn't even that I felt like I fleshed out the world too much.
It was literally just, I think.
I didn't think that was a, I didn't know that could be a fucking problem until your players decided to be curious about the world they were in, which, you know, who would have thought that that was going to happen.
And then it's like, cool, I don't, you could do anything.
Yeah.
It's, it's always one of those things where it's like, it was the same thing I was running into with some of the NPCs that I like, just throw away names.
And I, like, I named every NPC, I had like a description for all of them.
And I'll immediately went out the window because it's like on the fly thing.
So it's like, I did all this writing and then I ignore the writing once I'm in the moment because I like to be like on my feet.
Yeah.
And like using Stacy and Jason as an example and you were like, what's their deal?
And I'm like, they don't have a deal.
What's up with them?
Robert?
What's going on?
There's no deal there because I did.
But it's like, it's the prettiest, most popular girl in school.
What's going to, what's going to net Tony the most exposure as a human being?
And it was getting with Stacy.
Correct.
And it was one of those things that like things you never account for.
I didn't account for any of that.
I didn't expect the whole beep.
It came out.
So much of the conflict was between fucking Aster, Tony, Stacy and Jason.
Like that was 99% of the content.
See, here's the thing though.
I thought that was very funny and I enjoyed it, but I went into this with like creature feature.
It was like the goal.
And then it ended up coming out being like a Wapat story.
Correct.
And then I wrote down like A03.
Talking about A03 on the podcast is insane.
I'm playing one of those shitty, I'm not going to say the name of that streaming service,
but it's one of, you know what I'm thinking about.
They do all the teen rom-coms and they're all series.
Oh yeah.
Or they're multiple movies and they're all called the same thing with a slightly different,
it's like those.
Yeah, it was.
It played out exactly like those.
He wrote down like a John Hughes, like 1980s vibe is like one of the touchstones.
And then I didn't expect it to be like fully fucking like 16 candles within the first like
20 minutes when you were like, okay, makeover because you cannot go out looking like that.
What do I do with that?
I wrote down that they were like, they were like break into, I was like, maybe they'll
break into an abandoned house or maybe they'll see like a little ghost or maybe they'll like
do like creature feature things.
And then the player made the choice.
You have proper made the choice of being like this, I cannot be seen with you.
First of all, and second of all, if you are ever getting laid, you got to fix this.
So here's where I as a DM, I think would have jumped in just kind of giving my two cents.
I think what I would have done is inserted a hook that my players could not have run around
either on the way to get the clothes or on the way back from the clothes.
Like time gets away from Tony and Astor as they're doing their makeover.
Tony spends too much time looking at himself, whatever, whatever.
You all now have to walk back.
It's like six, the sun is setting.
There's this house that you always pass.
Q and noise or a person or a dorsal.
I'm like, that is where I would have basically thrown something at myself or you and been
like, you can ignore this.
You cannot ignore this.
And if you ignore it, you're a moron.
See, I'm not going to say that because I was about to say something that I was about to
put people at last.
I feel like I did that really well in my first one shot that I ever did.
Yeah.
And I was laughing.
That was baffling.
I was laughing.
Hooks at people.
It was like, I was throwing, it wasn't throwing pebbles.
It was like, you know, when you throw pebbles on somebody's window to get their attention,
I was throwing bricks.
Oh, 100%.
And I was doing my absolute best to pick the bricks up that were being left on the ground
and then hit them again with it.
Correct.
They just weren't going for it.
It was nothing.
And it ended up being fine because I was just like, cool, we're skipping the hook.
I'm just going to tell you directly what is happening because we've gotten to that point.
Yeah.
Because we're on a time crunch.
And it was one of those things where also I didn't go into this with a specific like
creature in mind or a specific hook or mystery because I also wanted it because kids on bikes
is a very like collaborative thing as opposed to like D&D.
I wanted it to be whatever you chose to engage with.
That was my plan going in was, okay, I'm going to give this big open world.
I'm going to let anything happen.
And then whatever is like chosen to be engaged with or like whatever is the point of interest,
then I will build off that and then I will make that the thing.
I just did not expect the point of interest to be people, social politics.
Yeah.
Of a high school setting, which was still super fun.
And I think I would have done it again.
And just in a different setting.
I think that's where the downfall of the planning comes right.
I think that mindset works really well for a campaign or a session zero or a four to
five session one shot.
I think that mindset does not work very well for a predetermined, prewritten one shot,
which is where you have to kind of as a DM go, okay, are my goals too lofty is my setting too open.
Like I think if I were you, I probably would have sat down and gone, okay, here are three monsters.
These are the only three we're playing with.
I'm going to insert them as active or as much as humanly possible, assuming I'm giving my players a choice.
And I'm just going to keep throwing it at them until one sticks.
And then if it doesn't cool, I'm picking one.
Yeah.
But you enjoy exploring the world as much as anyone else does, especially as a player.
And so I think there just, there were zero opportunities for that to happen because I was having a great time being
politicky.
Yeah.
And you was also a thing of you had clear decisions that you as a character wanted to make.
Oh yeah.
But see, here's the thing though, I think if you had been like, as you guys are walking past this house,
Aster runs in, we've established via the one shot, I'm not leaving her by herself.
Yeah.
I would have gone in headfirst.
And that is where you as a DM who is also the player can say, I don't have to make the smart decision as Aster.
I have to make the hook decision as Aster.
And that was another thing after the first half that we talked about.
Which we hit at the very end where it's like, cool, she bolts.
I'm, I'll get that one.
Cool, best night of my life.
Bye.
She's gone.
And it was also one of those things where like, I did, I knew that I was playing Aster and then I was also DMing.
It was hard.
I was fully going into this and I GM brand, GM brand, GM brand and then we got to the session and after the first half,
you were like, yeah, what's Aster's deal?
And I was like, she doesn't have one.
I spent all this time writing.
I spent no time on character development for her.
Figuring out who Aster is.
And it was figuring out who she is in the moment.
And it led to some very fun discoveries, which is she's a low charisma character versus a very high charisma character.
And then realizing throughout this, oh, it's not because she's like awkward.
It's because she doesn't care.
And I think that that was like a very fun way to put that out and also cause-
It's like dragging a landmine through like a field of fucking spikes.
Yeah, it was-
I know how to step around them.
Giant landmine behind me on the other hand.
Fuck you, Stacy.
What's your problem at the fucking camp bonfire?
With everyone drinking.
Yeah.
Dog.
This kind of leads into another point of like that was something I didn't think about playing a character in this world.
I just thought about like GM again.
See, I think that again is kind of where that experience comes from.
I've done it.
Well, I mean, it's not a super common experience.
I think it is for some tables.
I think it isn't for others.
So like I play my villains so actively and so often that they're basically PCs.
They're just opposite you all.
So the experience of having to play multiple PCs, focus on one who is basically a player character,
and then also narrate your story is an experience that I as a DM am very comfortable with.
I think that helped a lot with the one shot I did where I had to play Iba at the same time.
I was like, cool, Iba's got a very clear character stick and it's be strong, big and bad,
and make fun of the little weak person and then beat the shit out of people.
I can do that.
I can do that passively.
I don't have to turn on any switches.
I don't have to write-
Well, you have to do it now at our superhero table.
Yeah, now I am even more of a full-time-a-player
on top of a DM.
Like I am fully doing both.
And it's, I'm not going to say it's not an enjoyable experience because this is a world that I absolutely am so in love with
despite all the trials and tribulations that it continues to go through.
But I told myself that I wanted to play it no matter what, and I'm basically getting that experience.
Yeah, you don't need to buy someone's-
I didn't even fucking ask for it.
But I got it.
Just so funny that we just talked about,
oh, there my phone goes shutting down.
Cool.
I knew it was going to happen.
Yeah, it's all right.
Which is one of the things we talked about, like, oh, like maybe we'll bring in a guest DM to like-
Yeah.
DM something in Sapphire City something.
I don't need that.
And you're like, nah, I'll just do both myself.
Correct.
But kind of speaking broader, and I'm fully modeling this like talk back also kind of after
adventuring party on dimension 20, what were some moments that you really enjoyed or like that jumped out?
I had that written down on my paper too.
Oh, that's so nice.
You were the DM.
What's one thing you enjoyed the most?
Don't put this on me first.
What's one aspect of, from the DMing perspective, what is one thing that you enjoyed the most about the experience?
I liked being-
This is going to sound stupid.
Because I'm insecure in like the whole adventure hook monsters, high thrill, basically the like thrill mystery intrigue.
Being able to do like social politics was very fun for me and I did not expect-
Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Do that and that's something I understand.
So much fun doing that.
And that was a really like enjoyable thing and I didn't expect to be able to do that in a-
I mean our last several sessions at the table have been social politics.
Yeah.
Like to the max with very little combat backdrop, which is very different for our table, which I'm enjoying.
But yeah, I 100% agree.
It was really fun as a player to get to just fully engage in those and then not also have to control them.
Because like, and I'm sure you kind of figure this out through playing Astor, it's hard to make decisions as a player knowing what you know as a DM.
Yes.
It was like there were so many times where I was like-
I as jury know that if I punch this guy in the face, so many consequences, none of them positive are going to come from it.
But I also know that as this character, it makes- I have to commit.
Yeah.
I have to commit.
And there was a moment where it was you breaking into your parents liquor cabinet after not finding the key.
And I was like, cool, as Astor right now, I want to jump in and be like, hey, dipshit, put the fire poker down.
And maybe, just maybe we can try and pick the lock.
I can go to my house and look in my parents' liquor sash because they don't keep it locked up.
They can do all of these other things.
But you as a player, we'll make that decision.
And I was like, I'm technically not like a really a player here, so I don't want to have her step in and ruin the fun here.
So I'm going to let you break the glass.
And I think that's one of those things where if you had known that she was already kind of over it in a sort of blunt in that way,
that maybe you could have stepped in if you had known who she was going to get into it the first session.
You know, where it's like, hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This relationship between us is very clear, you're pretty and stupid, and I'm smart, right?
So like, stop.
Yeah.
Stop.
And I think Tony very much went and went, well, what?
Like, what's the, what's the problem?
Yeah.
And then we would have gone through that whole thing.
And it's also a thing of playing with someone for the first time.
You're also figuring out the relationship and the dynamic between two characters in real time.
And I think that's something that also like, in doing a one shot, that's going to be something that you run into of like, how do these characters interact with each other and what is the vibe, because you can write it on paper.
And then you get to it in real life.
And then it's completely different than what you anticipated.
Tell me about it.
Or you have to workshop the relationships between your PCs.
Yeah.
Like a, like a workshop, like a full, I guess kind of as part of our, or like the calling it a talk back session.
I recently just did a bunch of basically interviewing with my players in the last month or so.
Following our Flashpoint episode where we basically had to hard reset because I was not happy with the world and either it was anybody else.
Just the state that I had let it get in some actions that were made.
Go listen to the other episodes if you want to know more about that.
It was a clusterfuck.
It was a lot of fun on the end, but more trouble than it was worth.
I then basically found a survey, a very detailed survey and sent it to each of my players and then had like a one-on-one interview with them after the fact.
It was like, cool, let's talk about your results.
Some players, like Madison, I got pages.
Other players, I got about two, three sentences.
Some other players, I got about four words.
But basically all of those interviews were, how do you feel about yourself as a character in this aspect of the campaign?
How does this, how does your character feel about this character?
What's one thing that they want to know?
What's one thing, like, what assumption they've made?
What's one opinion they have on, like, how they fight?
And that gave me, somehow it didn't give me clear enough of a picture because then we go into the next two sessions and I'm still like, cool, we had one great session and then it just got fucking bad.
So then I have to send a follow-up text that I'm like, cool, give me an arc.
I thought we set that in our one-on-ones when I was like, what's one thing, the question I think was literally like, what's one thing you want for your character in this campaign?
And everyone set a goal and I was like, cool, that's enough.
And then no one.
Then it wasn't.
Yeah.
So then I texted everybody individually and was like, hey, I need a really specific goal.
What is one thing that you, as a person, want for this character?
Like, this character wants a pair of headphones.
Their goal is to go to the store and get the fucking headphones, like that specific.
I need concrete things, like more than I want to be better than A.
Or I want to, I don't know, be this popular on social media.
Like, that's great, that's great, but that's so fucking general.
I can't give you story points for that, or at least it doesn't zero it in enough for me.
Yeah.
And that's just kind of one of those things where I think talking about, like, just understanding your player dynamics is so huge, whether it's a one-shot or it is a long-standing campaign.
And that's something that you have to figure out in like, through playing, which is tricky.
And it even changes from campaign to campaign, it's not even always the same across players.
Oh yeah.
And it was one of those things of like, we had talked about it, we'd done all the like, relationship dynamic questions and stuff beforehand.
And then it still surprised me in the moment of being like, yeah, I fully expected it to be like, cool, we do not speak or look at each other in school.
And then it was Tony going out of his way to kind of stick his neck out and be like, a play-kater situation or something.
And then he'd throw me off and be like, okay, well, time to rewrite some of my notes.
And that, I think in that moment for me as a player, I was like, I don't want to just make it as stupid or as simple as Tony's is a mean guy who cares about himself deeply and kind of cares about Astor.
Therefore, the situation you expect to happen is Astor eats shit, Tony goes, haha, fucking loser.
And then after the fact goes, hey man, so sorry.
Yeah.
And then I realized that the further more advanced goal for Tony to set in that moment was how do I turn somebody who is undeniably, un-fucking-cool, and turn them into a likeable, cool, noticeable person.
Because if this person is going to be my friend, I don't have a choice, our fucking parents are friends, I rely on this person to pass my classes, we hang out together.
And how do I fix this person fundamentally so that I don't have to constantly cover for them every time I'm in a social situation?
And it's just saving them from sticking their own foot in their mouth every time.
It was a very fun dynamic to play out of just like going along with like, it was very 80s, it felt very John Hughes film.
It felt very like campy 80s teed movie.
But what was one thing that you really enjoyed?
I mean, getting to be a player from what I haven't been a player in a while, but that's just kind of a basic thing.
I think one thing that I really enjoyed was getting to focus on less of the mechanics side of things and more on just the like social politics.
Because I mean, I get to do that a lot as a DM, but I have to for fifth edition specifically, I have to consider a lot more than just, okay, this person doesn't like that person.
Like mechanically, what does that mean for the world, whether that is a reputation system or it is something on social media, or it is a gift package, or it is a political alliance.
There's so many things when you're playing in a more serious, not really uptight, but more consequence focused universe, which is pretty much everything fifth edition.
Because of the kinds of mechanics that are built into the game versus kids on bikes.
I can say whatever I want, do whatever I want, focus on however many fuck off story points I want, and there was basically zero consequence.
Because I control the world.
Yeah.
As opposed to, okay, you spoke to that person and you didn't address them by their title.
This person is incredibly high up there.
You're getting blacklisted from the one event you wanted to attend all year.
I would love to talk about Toadies Beef with Jason for a minute.
What about it, man? What about it?
It spawned so fast.
Well, Jason was the roadblock to Tony's initial largest goal outside of saving Aster from social doom, which was to climb the ladder by bagging Stacy.
Well, the hatred started even before that, and I know only because I've had to go back and listen, which is...
And it's mostly because of the fact that Jason, the way that you sort of roleplayed him was that every time he spoke, somebody laughed.
Yeah.
Any time somebody said something in class, he had an opinion, he was the loudest voice in the room.
Correct.
And for Tony, in my mind, I'm like, no, that's supposed to be me.
Okay.
You are stupid.
You are holding the position in somebody's life that I want, and everyone keeps looking at you and going, haha, you're so funny.
No, the fuck you're not.
So, you know what? We'll play this game, Jason.
Mm-hmm.
And we're just gonna keep subverting everything he tries to do, and he's stupid enough that if I play it right, he's not even gonna know.
And that was one of the things in the moment of, like, all of the NPCs, because it just hits on bike system, I wanted to use the trope,
because we also talked about, like, 80s movies, it was like a touchpoint reference, and I was like, I...
Listen, is it super ethical for Stacy to have been a big of a bitch as she is?
I don't know.
I mean, it's high school, man.
It's high school. I don't... they're not like people.
Not a lot of ethics floating around in high school.
But it's also a thing of, like, I wanted all these characters were tropes.
Stacy was the mean girl, and Jason was the cool jock.
And it just quickly spawned into, like, oh, now we're interacting with these characters more than the surface level trope,
and I'm just committing to this surface level trope thing, and so it's just drawing that heightened,
because definitely, if I was playing this in anything other than a one-shot, you would have gotten your ass kicked several times.
100%.
And then you said to Jason, just with, like, just straight up looking at him and being like, it's hard to count to five.
Is it crazy thing to say to someone who's slice your size?
I wanted to find out just how stupid he was and how far I could push that line,
and I very quickly realized that you were going to commit to the bit that he didn't know a lot about anything.
So I'm like, cool, this is a character that I can fully just dog walk, and it's going to be all to my benefit,
because not only does it look like I'm best friends with one of the more popular people in school,
but I also get my own kicks in when I basically rob him from money.
I'm not going to spend on the thing that he asked me to spend it on.
Yeah.
You know?
That was another thing we're like also me realizing and trying to figure out as a GM when to roll things,
because in hindsight, he definitely should have rolled for like,
you said you have to go buy diagnostic tools to go check my car.
And that's where I think fifth edition makes that a little bit easier to get a handle on,
because that's a system that is built for a lot of checks, and you have 17 different stats you can pull from to do that.
And I think part of it's also, I have no experience, and I think it was more than that.
Like you don't learn when and how to call checks.
I mean that's why even in the one shot, there were times where I was like,
hey, I feel like this is the moment where I would like to make this check.
I would like to roll these dice.
Can I?
Yeah.
And it was one of those things of like, one second, I keep coming off very negative about this.
So at some point, we got to pivot and talk about positives.
I just, I'm also a very overly like critical person of myself in the way I run things.
But that was something I definitely struggled with was like figuring out when and what to do things.
And again, I think that's just an experience thing.
Yeah, and it was also I was going into this shit cold.
Like there was no, I should have just picked a fucking like real.
Even thinking about like the Percy Jackson one shot, like you knew enough about the universe to go,
okay, if this person wants to hop this fence, I know exactly what stat that's going to be.
Yeah.
If I, if this person wants to talk to that person and convince them to do,
I don't know, go and grab that sword.
I know exactly what check that's going to be because I know the source material that well.
Versus this is a world I wrote two nights ago, and I'm still actively coming up with plot points.
And I'm not really sure what it's like, but we're going to find out when we sit down and play.
Yeah.
I don't fucking know what check to give that because I don't know what this person's like.
Correct.
This is my second time playing them.
It was also fun though, in that moment and in that way to flesh out things as I was going.
Because like it was a thing where initially I'm going to use Stacy as an example.
In my mind, I was like, okay, so cool.
She's definitely if she was a character, she would have a 20 in charm for sure.
And then she would probably have very little brains and then going through, I was like, no, brains might be her highest stat.
And see that that was one of my positives I was going to mention was that I absolutely loved to hate Stacy because I very quickly realized that there was more.
Going on than just done pretty blonde.
And it pissed me off so much that I was like, I constantly am having to navigate around this person because it's not as simple as cool.
Dick had ex boyfriend is on the other end of the island.
Yeah.
Let's go to lunch and hang out and hold hands.
No, no, that's not at all what it is.
We're playing games at lunch about who's looking at who.
Yeah.
Stop it.
It was one of those things of Stacy was such a fucking foil for Tony because it was the only she was the only other person in the room.
That was actively competing at Tony's level in terms of social politics.
And it was impossible to throw her off her game.
That is what it's like to be a teenage girl.
And that was a very easy touch point for me of like, as someone who has been a teenage girl, that shit is not it doesn't matter who the dumbest teenage girl that you know is so is it.
And it is okay.
There's a joke in the house that I'm a man hater and I'm a Miss Andrews and maybe it's a little true.
But like you live with that many men and come out not hating men like it's not going to happen anyway.
That's besides the point.
The dumbest teenage girl you know is smarter than the average teenage guy.
And I will argue that point.
Just because of the fucking politics you have to navigate because you can't post fucking photo on Instagram without sending it to a group chat first and getting approval from four different people and knowing like just the amount of like as a teenage girl you have to know the social politics and you have to know how to navigate things.
And I could go I'm not going to go on a whole feminist.
Another reason why Tony was so funny for me to play is that like I've been raised by a single mother and hanging out with primarily like girls and in middle school and high school just because that was the group that I tend to gravitate towards.
I was always kind of on that same wavelength on the social politics.
So being able to hop in is Tony who does not look like he should know what that's like.
Yeah.
But then being able to go I as a person know exactly what that is.
Yeah.
Fuck it Tony we're going on a ride.
Yeah.
Like me and you we know everything there is to know about high school politics and we're playing it.
It was very fun to throughout this be like OK cool because you would think at looking at the lineup of Stacy Jason Tony and Aster that the like the competition and like the beef would boil down to like between Aster and Stacy and then Tony and Jason and it was not that.
And the way that these characters end up foiling each other is very clear of like OK you have two very blunt characters who don't really give a shit about like the social game as much as they do.
They're like no my skills are what put me there.
And that's Jason and Aster.
Yeah.
Jason is like I'm fucking strong.
Yeah.
You can't argue against that and Aster's I'm fucking smart and you can't like argue against.
I don't need to be like I don't have to have charm about me to make it clear that I'm the biggest dick in this locker room when it comes to my specific like skill set.
Yeah.
That's one thing that like I think it's on bikes.
It's really well into right because yeah like describing like how much a role can succeed and like how much a role can fail and like setting a DC based on how of an expert this person is in the role.
I think it makes it very clear when you have a 20 and something like that's your bread and butter.
Oh yeah.
Will not be failing a 20 unless you just get a really high DC or your role of one.
And then you look at the fucking pair up between Stacy and Tony which is cool.
I'm going to play pretty and dumb and I'm so hyper aware.
Everything about my image is so curated and I know exactly what I'm doing and if people are not doing what I want them to fucking do it's going to drive me into Tony and Stacy are two sides of the same coin.
Yeah.
It was somebody who's very comfortable with being a piece of shit and somebody who's going to die on the hill of not being one but also I have a really big public image to curate.
Yeah.
Like there were so many lines that Stacy is a person who's willing to cross because she had the status to.
Yeah because she had status to where Tony's like in this middle ground where he's like cool.
I have to look like I'm friendly with everybody but I absolutely as a person do not agree with any of the decisions being made.
95% of my roles are saving the people in my surroundings from humiliation by the one person I want to date.
Correct.
And it was fucked.
Do I do with that.
What do I do with that.
And it was it was so funny to watch and one of the things I really enjoyed about this was watching in real time the fucking goals devolve into this weird gray area where it's like I'm like.
I'm not sure anyone knew what the goal was.
I mean for me it was it was very clear it started with I'm going to go into this kind of on this like hybrid between pretty pretty plastic and popular kid and just try to climb the food chain.
Yeah.
Stacy and Jason immediately got dinged as the two most popular people in the room so I went cool Jason got to be friends with him.
Stacy got to do something with her whether it's holding hands dating kissing starting a room or I don't care.
And then of course we hop into Astor's lore and Astor goes yeah they're not a thing anymore but they used to be.
That's great because now I have to be friends with Jason and try and hook up with Stacy and then it's very clear that the two of them still have a thing.
Oh yeah it's on again off again.
So how is that couple that is always how do I manage that.
No they're like screen fights on the lawn.
They're always cheating on each other but also at the same time it's like it's in that very like high school way.
I knew several of those relationships.
100 percent.
We all I was in several of those relationships in high school but I think his goal in the beginning was be friends with both hook up with Stacy.
Then it was remove Jason as far as humanly possible while keeping him as a friend hook up with Stacy.
Then it became save Astor from Stacy remove Jason hook up with Stacy.
So it looked like he was going manic because he was because it was cool.
I have two goals.
They're clear.
I have two goals with two sub goals.
I can manage that.
Now each of those sub goals has another two sub goals because nobody is doing what I want them to do.
Now we're in full mania.
And then it's like at some point in his mind for me is Tony I was like cool he's at a breaking point.
Stacy will not get off this fuck Astor horse and I cannot deal with that because he's been the only decent person to him this whole day.
If I have to pick a side fuck it.
Astor is my ride to the top because you know what's what's more crazy than two popular people getting together.
It's the most unpopular unlikeable kid at the school suddenly in a relationship with one of the more popular kids.
And they dicked on the two most popular kids the whole trip.
It was it was such a fun.
It was such a roundabout way for Tony to reach his goal.
And it's not what I wanted for him but it's the only way he could see himself winning.
It was this is something where like me, Maddie the person really enjoyed the aspect of being the.
This is going to sound shitty.
I'm always playing manic characters.
Every character of mine has a little bit of manic energy.
You enjoyed being the manic character.
Yeah.
It was nice to not be that and for also to be like now you know what it's like to be a motherfucker.
100% of like it's the issue of like the people around me.
We all have the same goal guys and none of you are doing anything to achieve that goal.
So I'm going fucking manic trying to get you all there and being able to be the other person who's like oh uh huh.
Even like helping write the story point specifically when we got on the bus.
I knew going on to the bus that there was going to be a sign seats in my mind.
I was like truly maybe Madison forgot maybe she's going to give up on that either way all day yesterday.
Tony's whole thing was cool.
I now know that Jason and Stacy have a little thing going on.
I got to separate them sit by them on the bus and stick Astor with Tony or not Tony with Jason.
Then I get on the bus.
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 dms on instagram at crescent magazine or we'll never get better like these fucking guys.
Then Jason's bag fucks me.
Then Stacy's bag fucks me.
I'll be honest I expected you I did that.
Then Jason was aggressive as fuck and I didn't his ex-girlfriend who I have to impress while also not stepping all over Jason is sitting three feet away from me.
Now Astor's coming down the aisle.
What the fuck do I do with her because she doesn't know what's happening.
Cool I've now disengaged Stacy and Jason.
I've gotten Astor to sit next to Jason.
I'm sitting next to Stacy and then miss fucker self comes on the bus and goes actually fuck you Tony.
I signed seats and then it's a ride in silence the whole way there.
Yeah this is a full confession.
Robert helped me come up with like I like wrote an outline for what I like an idea for a story for this to follow.
And then I gave it to Robert and was like hey can you help me like workshop this a little bit.
So he had an idea of like a possible a possible outline and story beats that this could theoretically follow.
All the ones I didn't want it to hit the ones that got hit.
And the one that he suggested he was like oh you should do a sign seating on the bus that'd be funny.
And I was like OK sure.
And then watching you putting all this work in and I was like this was here.
Yeah and I realized that about halfway through all those interactions I'm like I'm throwing myself on this spike and I'm pulling myself down it praying that I will not be ripped off of it for all of the hard work I've put in.
But I know I know what makes sense from a story beat standpoint is to go actually no all of that for not.
And one of the things is that's also so funny to me is like I'm also starting to realize from like the the GM side of you do things and you set things that look like a bigger obstacle than they are just for like I.
When I was like cool they're sitting on two different seats and they've got their bags there in my head that was just to establish that hey they are like they're choosing deliberately not to sit next to each other but near each other.
And they're not making themselves look in Stacey's mind she's like I can't make myself look open for him to sit next to you so this is all like flavor text for me and that's why they put their bags there.
The bags were not there as a literal barrier of you cannot sit here I was expecting you to be like oh anybody sitting here and then for them then they would move their stuff and then you could sit there.
You took that in the moment as the bags are there.
It's the fucking wall.
It's nothing.
It's an obstacle.
These bags.
It's an obstacle.
It's an obstacle because in my mind it's very clear if you have your bag next to you is like oh I'm like no you can't sit next to me but like you know like whatever like it's a very easy to fix thing.
Yeah I'm brooding on the bus and this backpack here means you can't sit next to me.
Yes and then to see how that's interpreted from the players players.
I'm like cool that's an obstacle that means that's something I have to remove.
Yeah.
That is a mechanical barrier between me and my goal.
Yeah so I'm moving it.
I'm going through it.
I'm not asking about it.
I'm just going to pick it up and then drop it.
Well that's what I was expecting you to do and then you took a very convoluted path.
But I enjoyed the mania and I enjoyed watching the twists and turns that everything.
I think the convoluted to it was part of Tony's M.O. because so much of it like so much of like high school politics is achieving very simple stupid shallow goals but doing it in the most convoluted way humanly possible.
Yeah.
Nobody is aware that that's what you're doing.
You have to look like you are putting zero effort into anything.
I'm just grabbing a pencil so that I can pick it up so that I can make eye contact with the person at the decks next to me and then make a joke and then sit down instead of just saying hey what's up.
Yeah.
Cool.
So in order to sit next to Stacy and Jason I need to be really nice and show Jason in front of Stacy that I like Jason and then I'm a nice guy.
So I'm going to pick his bag up and I'm going to put it up and I'm going to go hey I asked to look there's a seat right there.
Jason here's the talk buddy.
And then turn around and go hey Stacy now that Jason is giving you zero attention.
Oh can I pick that bag up for you.
Yeah.
To play the ultimate nice guy to just get a few extra fucking friend points in there.
And then he failed both times.
And he looked like an absolute dunce doing the one thing he wanted to do which is look competent and like friendly.
Yeah.
And then neither one of those things happened.
Yeah.
It was.
I said it was me necking Jason and Jesse Jason going I can't respond to this on the bus.
Whatever dude.
That was also Jason was probably the hardest character to play because I don't I don't pay attention to men.
I don't like knowing when to swing with Jason I think was looking at that was very interesting because like everything in my being is telling me Jason swings.
Jason cannot swing.
I think Jason coasts on he looks like he could swing right.
It canonically he's the sheriff's son.
That doesn't matter what trouble he gets into he's going to get out of it.
So it's this idea of like even if I did choose to swing I'm winning.
And he's a big physically intimidating guy.
He's like a football player.
Tony's not.
He's got a knife now though and try me bitch.
When you at the towards the end were like I kind of want to just pull a knife on Jason and be like what's up dog.
And then like in my mind when he didn't come back for a while I was like so that's going to be the hook we have to go find Jason and then he came back and he was like no he's just being a fucking sleazeball.
Yeah no but the second thought for that was cool Jason's going to wait until Tony gets picked and then he's going to jump me because he's been wanting to fight me the whole night.
I know I can't win this fight so I'm going to pull the fucking knife I was just giving out and be like hey dude I don't want any of this.
Neither do you go back to the campfire.
That was a moment where I from the team perspective was like please don't do that because that's those were not the vibes that I was trying to put out there.
Jason's goal in that game wasn't even about like Jason was so overly prepared in that moment Tony.
And it was one of those moments that I think is so real from a player's perspective versus a GM perspective which is I have so much this character's entire goal is my downfall and that's their focus.
And I'm like no.
That was the teacher.
Let's be clear.
That was the science teacher who foiled every one of Tony's like highest roles consistently.
I would play a perfect fucking political game of chess and then the science teacher would come in and go actually fuck you.
Sign partners.
And it was a sign seating.
And it was one of those things of like this is a joke that there's a character who I always joke is like nightlights nemesis is because they've got very similar vibes.
And it's like no that character doesn't give a fuck about you.
It's the same energy because Cartwright is just doing her fucking curriculum and Jason's goal in that game.
Let's see.
Just to make out with girls.
You threw enough in there with Cartwright though that every time I was like looking around for something.
Cartwright making dead eye contact with me basically like licking her lips.
She's scary.
How am I not going to read into that though.
No correct.
And it's one of the things that I think is like a fun line to toe of like yeah you can read into this because I like keeping things clear.
And then going off of like what the players are.
The players interest.
I totally get that.
Yeah.
Or some kind of the opposite.
I build in a lot of the background to things before players get to it just that way I don't have to like.
And then people don't touch it and I'm like oh that's just a story point you all are never going to see.
Well yeah now I'm like cool.
I'm choosing who the bad guys are.
And apparently Jason has to have a little bit higher brains because now Tony is taking everything Jason does is personal beef and Jason's just trying to fuck like he's just trying to go off in the woods with some girls.
And you're like he's plotting.
He's plotting.
He's he fucking knows he's trying to jump me and like I'm going to take that energy and be like cool.
Jason's going to jump you now.
Jason's been removed from the arch nemesis.
It is now.
And that's another really fun thing.
The only object between me and maximum popularity because she has enough pull with the right people that if I don't play at the perfect way I'm fucked when I get back to school.
And it's so funny because now that opens up so many and this is why I'm glad that like being able to keep things vague and open is because I now I mean I still obviously we have the second half of this one shot but then I'm like I have such a good idea for like a spin off.
Like another one after this with a perfect fucking hook and that wouldn't have been a thing if this was not the the the route and the dynamic that was chosen for these characters because it's like now cool.
You have now a sub like goal and like objective at all times which is now you have the fucking biggest loser in the world who doesn't give a fuck about social shit and doesn't quite like catch it all.
And now she's been placed in a position where she suddenly has to follow these rules and she doesn't know those rules.
And so there's that whole thing side going on on top of like all of this other like cool.
Now Stacy's going on a fucking Regina George arc.
Yeah she hit that shit real quick at the end.
How could she not.
Yeah when Tony and Stacy were basically face to face and Tony was like actually your garbage persons.
Nobody likes you.
Your boyfriend doesn't want to fuck you but I'm here and I'm getting all the intention Stacy what you're going to do about it.
And Stacy goes OK bet bet it's just it's beef and it's like cool.
These are two characters who cannot run she took a lap.
I took so much pride in that we were like cool.
Stacy takes a lap.
I was like yes.
Taking a lap is one of the is such a high school thing to me also because it's like take a lap.
I can't stay.
She can't fucking fight Tony.
I'm going to look if either of them swing on each other.
It's not going to.
She knows it's going to a look really bad.
B. I'm not trying to think for Tony but I'm sure that Tony has enough sense in him to know it's going to look.
He can't fucking swing on Stacy.
I'm playing that shit up to be like oh is she assaulted me.
I thought we were good friends.
She's she's crazy.
I don't know what so we just been hanging out all day and we had lunch together and now she's hitting me.
And so it's like cool.
Now I'm now she's that villain.
I need to walk things off because I can't fucking do this.
I'm going to scream or stab something and it's not setting to do so.
Another individual moment because I'm just I want to highlight like random little fun moments.
When we were in the arcade and you were like cool day drinking time.
That was another thing that I like threw me for a fucking loop of like cool.
OK.
Well here's here's here's the deal.
I knew Astor was going to have such an advantage on me and the majority of the games because that's her stick.
So I was like how do I throw that off to give me as a player and as a character a chance to win these games.
And it's by getting her a little drunk in the arcade in the middle of the because I know she doesn't drink like that.
And I know there are going to be some negative side effects for her.
So fuck it.
Shots in the photo booth.
That was an unhinged decision.
I just I don't think I've like laid off how unhinged that was.
Oh yeah.
Two slick 16 year olds taking shots in a photo booth of Jack Daniels.
Yeah.
Like cap falls.
Jeff Daniels.
Cap falls of Jeff Daniels in the photo booth in the back of the arcade.
Yeah.
Disgusting.
No chaser.
Great Jeff Daniels.
Disgusting.
Yeah.
It was that was rough.
Are there any other moments that like popped out to you as like things that were fun or.
I think I've pretty much hit the majority of my moments.
I think kind of shifting it to some more talk backy stuff.
If you could do anything about the one shot itself at least the first half of it right is presumably there's going to be a second half where we actually do the scary stuff.
Yeah.
What would you do different specifically in regards to like prepared materials would you under prepare would you write more specific stuff just kind of getting in the headspace of somebody who's doing it for the first or second time.
What's like a tip you would either give yourself or somebody else of like hey don't do this do that.
I don't think you have to write as much as I do.
However at the same time if I were to do this again I would still write the same amount that I did.
I would stick to my guns and actually use what I wrote instead of just deviating entirely in the moment.
Yeah.
And mostly when it came to like character things and like mechanics and like also kind of prep yourself if you're someone who's not good at telling people know if you're a people pleaser prep yourself ahead of time to be able to be a bitch.
And just set consequences and and being able to like be a little bit firmer with those.
Depending on what type of game you want to run.
I'm great at that.
I'm also consequences.
People are you with me every session.
Oh my I'm not getting on a tangent.
I'll hop into a small tangent just in the.
I'm very similar in one aspect and that is that when there are smaller plot hooks that players throw I can't help but jump straight on those motherfuckers point in case the fight between the recent or our most recent session we had like a PVP session between a character who is supporting
a character who is supposed to be a really great foil to another character who has zero interest in harming that person but that's why it makes sense for them to one be one ahead of training.
They start fighting I'm realizing very quickly he's losing this fight what is the only asshole that I can think of that is going to give him the advantage and that is that he's literally living with a second being that is going to do everything it physically can to win this fight.
Yeah.
Because it wants to eat you.
Yeah.
And beyond oh I'm just playing to keep him alive now I'm playing so that he literally kills her and then gets to eat her.
Yeah.
So I'm like throwing shit out in the moment and that's part of me is like that was a really cool fight the other part of me is how the fuck do I reconcile what happened.
How do you do that.
And that fight between what happens next Saturday where we then have to go cool.
We're all friends now team training.
You're looking at me for answers.
And it's not going to do.
I'm just like that's another issue where I struggle kind of as well as that when players express an interest or when there's a hook that I think is interesting I cannot help but go head over for it.
Yeah.
And that for a moment for me was like cool.
Gilhousen has been talking about I don't give a shit has been talking about it with names wanting to play like wanting to learn more about his little parasite buddy and what the powers can do.
And what the powers can be because there's been a huge power differential between nightlight and shadow and that is at nightlight is a very capable person with 76.
I play for reference and shadow who is the character that the other person plays.
You can kind of guess why they're sort of opposites is very unhappy with the fact or is this it's made very apparent for his 35 year old character that he is not nearly as talented as this 21 year old person.
How do we scale that difference in this moment and then it very quickly got much darker than I intended it to be because you didn't back down as a player and I was like the thing that's in him isn't backing down either.
Yeah.
Somebody has to step in.
Then I'm like cool my backup for this situation is Jerry.
And then I roll for Jerry and he gets a natural 20 on wisdom and in my mind he's it isn't I know this is going to get out of hand it's I know if she can beat him in this moment.
She's going to walk away feeling significantly more confident because time and time again the thing that she fails to express his confidence in her ability so I let this go and she wins which she should.
Word we're great we're all better for it and then we get to have a little moment with big brother where we go hey man.
We've learned right we've learned let's grow we've learned.
You got your ass.
The thing that zero that nobody could account for was none of like nobody including myself had expressed up to that point what the thing inside of him was capable of.
Because he hasn't been in any life and death situations until that moment.
Yeah.
You know but it's like cool the second you pull out a stick of kryptonite in a room of Superman things suddenly get a lot more serious whether you intend to kill him with it or not.
Yeah.
Why do you have kryptonite with the fuck is up with that dog.
Yeah it's.
I'm doing everything in my power to take you down at least for a little while but then you remove the fact you remove sort of the I don't kill people from Superman and then it's cool I'm putting my fist through your chest before you can raise the crystal.
Injustice.
Yeah.
Yeah basically right.
You know.
And that's those are moments to where I struggle where it's I underwrite.
So when there's a fun little story point I'm like I got to touch it because I didn't write anything and this is a new thing for us to explore.
Nuke it.
And then I realized the next session we have something else to tackle that is completely unrelated and is going to have to require me to scrub all this motherfucking conflict out of the way.
So what I'm saying is find a balance between what myself and Madison do please.
Please.
Please don't be us.
Have goals have story points but do not write so much into them that you don't know where else to go.
Yeah I think I would also talk to my player a little bit more to figure out what their play style is.
I mean I know yours pretty well I did not expect the amount that you were going to go with him on the fucking social stuff.
And it was like I in my mind I'm like trying to tee up like little adventure hooks and you were like nah fuck those what's Stacy up to.
And I'm like OK.
And this is again this is where I was at the end when I got cool Stacy goes to the Mirror House.
Yeah.
And it was one of those things where I was like it was a Mirror House.
Cool.
I now have to figure out like how I'm going to get these people that I did not anticipate being anywhere near any sort of adventure hook or any creep crawlies.
And be like how do I how do I make the most popular girl in school who is so careful about her image.
How do I put her next to fucking moth man and make it not bad for everyone involved.
And it's one of those things where like in hindsight I just I wish I had my like.
Is it.
Should I say I wish I wasn't recorded because I feel like I would have.
I get that.
Yeah more willing to kind of like break mold and go cool.
This is what we're doing.
Yeah.
Yeah 100%.
And I think that again just we're coming from such a different approaches for me thinking like every time you're like cool this is what happened and we got totally off track.
The first thing that comes to my mind is this is I would have brought us back to the pod hook.
Whereas my issue is I have zero idea where we're trying to go except way off in the distance which means every little thing we hit is a story point that I very conveniently wrote.
Yeah.
And now we're stopping at every single fucking stop sign along the way.
Well it's because it's also a thing of like learning when to time management.
If you if you have a sheet take your meds for sure.
Yeah.
I think that's I think that's what my biggest issue was overall because I don't have a problem with the beats and things that we hit.
I don't even have a problem with the the plot hooks not being introduced until like later.
And I don't even want to say plot hooks.
I want to say adventure hooks because I feel like enough of the plot was still very valid and relevant.
I think it just didn't fit the setup.
Like I think all the plot hooks in the kinds of adventure that we had was just very different than like the world that we had imagined we were going to be playing around in.
Like if we had just said cool this is a high school teenage drama.
Yeah.
Starring we achieved that for sure.
The occasional cryptid line thrown in there the little hook.
You know.
Again this would have been a great first session where Tony and Astor get stuck in a world of make believe in fucking Gravity Falls.
Yeah.
And then they're full time trying to survive all the crazy shit that happens.
Yeah.
That's not what we're doing.
This is a one shot.
We now have to introduce.
I say we you know how to introduce a monster or a horror or a cryptid.
And now we have to go through a whole bunch of bullshit shenanigans with them while also not ignoring the full basically four and a half hours worth of plot hooks that we've already established with characters that have zero interest in being around those things.
Yeah.
Or reason to be around those things.
Yeah.
And the next thing is truly bringing it down to type management of maybe I need to set little timers for myself or something.
And you know when to say OK I love that you're doing this instead of actually going through what is going to happen in the scenario.
I'm going to say you all had a nice lunch and we're going to move on to the next thing.
Yeah.
And I try to do that as much as I can in our campaign to work like you in particular love to explore the conversations in the social dynamics between people whereas other people are very goal and task oriented.
And so I have to find a really clear balance between how do I insert social interaction with somebody who's task oriented versus how do I cut somebody off in a social interaction and say and the rest of the night was great.
Here's what happens.
Do you do this.
Do you not do this.
And it sucks every time I have to cut you off because I too am just as interested in seeing those relationships play out.
But I know in the back of my head I have three things that I have to accomplish.
I'm done with one.
I'm barely through the second one.
We have an hour and a half left.
So sorry we cannot explore this conversation further.
Do you go back to his place.
Yeah.
Pretty much.
You arrive in the morning together.
Yeah.
Your name.
Yeah.
Cool.
Team meeting.
Yeah.
And that's it.
Yeah.
That's that's all the social politics that you get because you have other shit to do.
Yeah.
And it's also one of those things of balancing one person versus multiple people because when there is only other one other person to explore that a lot more.
You get to pick every get to explore every single plot point that person hits.
Yeah.
It's just them.
Yeah.
And it's like OK we we have to be conscious of like other people's time.
And it's also a thing of like not everyone at the table wants to see that or is interested in that or cares about that or sometimes some people players get weird about that.
Yeah.
Some people just aren't 100 percent comfortable sort of exploring those.
Yeah.
Sort of more intimate social dynamics is which person who's in the story point which for clarification we are no one at our table is being put in situations where their characters are having to explore that.
Some people get weird about seeing other players at our table doing something that is fully pre established.
Like we're like being intimate or exploring a romantic relationship or a sexual relationship.
And I think that is also kind of a difficult aspect.
And again I keep saying you have to have experience or you need to get experience like without having played with you all in a campaign before this.
I would have not known that I could have answered a jury the way that I did.
Yeah.
I would have known that I could do the things role play wise with you and your character that I have with jury.
But I know based on playing with you that you're willing to go to those lines because that's interesting for you versus somebody else who's playing a more intimate hero and a younger hero.
I gave him a very clear romantic interest.
His character is very awkward.
He shied away.
He is a person who's a little bit more awkward.
I understand that that's going to have to be a slow burn in the penultimate outcome of that is going to be holding hands and getting a phone number.
Yeah.
Like that's what that's going to be.
Yeah.
Because that's what that players comfortable role playing versus a damn near one night stand immediately.
Yeah.
And then versus another player who has zero interest in that and in fact is playing a character that I cannot think of giving a romantic interest to.
Yeah.
How do I what.
Yeah.
And then it's also a thing of sometimes you're playing at a table full of men who are like why are we doing it.
Why are you doing this with your character.
Why isn't your character doing fighting things.
Yeah.
It's like why is your character going to dinner.
Fast forward.
Yeah.
It's like no this is what I like in the game.
This is what is interesting to me.
And that's where you have to.
And I think that's something that we started there.
You started to pick up with Astor the more that we were going through was making Tony's story points related to Astor's in some way or tying the two together.
Like I feel like because in the first session you weren't 100 percent sure who Astor was.
It was a lot of just Tony focused things with Astor being present.
Yeah.
And then the second one it was OK they're going to the odds and end shop where she has a pre established background.
We're going to the arcade where she is great at everything that she's going to do there.
We're going to the bonfire knowing that she's going to be very very obstinate and blunt personality.
Yeah.
That makes it a little bit easier when you have certain people that aren't very interested in those different aspects.
It's like yeah I can talk about jury and night like going on a date and talking about date things and then sort of bullshit or whatever exploring their relationship.
But where I can begin to interest other people is when another player goes hey can I be in the vents because his characters are fucking he's shadow.
And I'm like you know what if it means that you're going to be engaged in this story moment 100 percent.
And because he's here I'm going to have jury say some really private information and I'm going to have to shadow here all of it.
Yeah.
And that is where I keep them engaged.
Everybody showed up to the same dinner.
None of them should have been there because this place was arguably way too nice for anybody else to be there.
Yeah.
There was only one person who wasn't there because he's a fucking Android.
Yeah.
That was.
We have one person there who was who had dinner.
Explain the situation.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I'll do it very quick.
Tangent.
Again this is where it's like convenient plot points but also helping other people tying in story points together.
Jury who's from like upper basically I didn't say upper middle mostly upper class family has a lot of really wealthy connections in what's basically like downtown L.A.
He goes cool.
I want to take this girl on a date.
I want to wow or I want to impress her.
I'm going to take this girl who's basically from Bucking Chicago to downtown L.A.
Parts of Chicago.
Yeah specific parts of Chicago to downtown L.A. to the night to basically no boo.
And that's going to be the thing that we do.
I'm going to show up in a nice fancy costume.
No interruptions humanly possible.
Yeah.
They get there and then one player goes hey could I have tailed them and then hopped in the vents just to like keep an eye on them because I don't have anything else to do at this moment.
Character is the.
The shadow person who's yeah.
Jury's older brother who's also kind of like a more shadowy espionage character.
So I was like sure why not if you want to be engaged in this moment.
I'm not going to tell you no give me a stealth check.
But go for it.
I'm going to tell you that.
So now he's there.
Then another player goes hey could I have been there too.
Just like you know to join.
And I said well you did have that dinner with that one character that we talked about and you have some connections in the city.
So we'll say between you and Jenny you managed to reserve a table a few weeks out and managed to get there at the same night that Jerry basically walked in and goes give me a table.
Yeah.
So now you're there.
And then the other player who's playing an android was like oh what if I was like the robot butler and then that he just wasn't very interested in that idea.
It was more of a throwaway joke.
So I'm like cool I only have to deal with two extra players being at a dinner that neither one of them were supposed to attend.
Yeah.
And that turns into a full bathroom almost fist fight between Jerry and our random dinner guy who's also a member of the team.
They end up in the bathroom.
They had a previous confrontation guy walking into Jerry's house.
Jerry was like get out pull the gun on him and then he left.
He Jerry immediately picks up on the fact that this is the same guy when he says hey how are you and then goes to leave and Jerry goes wait a minute wait a minute.
I told you to leave me the fuck alone and now you're in the bathroom at the place that I'm having dinner with the person who I'm actively like going on dates with.
Naji picks him up puts him against the wall then another characters there who is the son of the second most powerful hero in the city.
Because again that's the thing that he can do right he can go wherever he wants to because that's what he does and they're having dinner as civilians.
So no one knows that that's who this is.
So then this person goes to the bathroom and he's like dad the door's locked.
Please don't do anything crazy.
And he goes I got this and then goes to the door and basically bangs on it and is like open up and I roll for insight on both of their behalf.
So they both immediately pick up.
This is the second most powerful hero in the city.
And he is currently banging at the door telling us to open it.
I'm against the wall.
He's holding me up by my collar.
Shadows in the vents above watching ready to fucking slow the second most powerful hero in the city in public.
Yeah.
So then they he teleports out of his grasp immediately opens the door he's like so sorry walks out but jury is still in full costume and Jerry knows that he knows who he is.
And they have a very tense conversation and then Jerry walks back to the table with his head down and goes cool relieving.
Yeah it was.
It was supposed to be a one on one dinner where I did a little bit of info dump to sort of reveal some information about the world and Jerry.
They very quickly turn into like a four car pile up on the highway.
Yeah.
Where everybody is stepping knee deep into shit.
It was.
Again everybody at the table was engaged except for one person and that was a hell of a lot of fun.
Yeah.
It's one of those things of like seeing how many like how many eggs you can fit in one basket almost of like how many.
Yeah how many story points can I shove into one dinner.
There was supposed to turns out for supposed to be like a fucking one off like oh wouldn't this be funny.
It was supposed to be like a hey we didn't get to talk about this before the end of last session.
So here's 15 minutes with your dinner with Jerry and then it was actually no here's a story point for every individual person on the team except for her.
Except for her.
It was on the date.
Yep.
Funny how things happen like that.
Yeah.
What were we talking about.
Can I like how difficult it is to start out when you have multiple people to manage multiple story lines but also how that makes it a little bit easier because you don't have to hit every single bump like you do in a one on one.
And it's it's also fun when we're talking about and this is another example because this is more of like a comparison between our current table and like the one shot at this point.
Yeah.
One of the things I really like being able to do in the one shot is play out individual character foils and like dynamics and relationships a lot easier than you can at a table with other people because a that's part like a conversation that Robert and I often have of like that's
something that we like to explore with different characters and then that versus like a lot of other it's harder to manage at our table.
And when you have so many people and that's not always their focus.
It was really cool to see how Tony and Astor also ended up being like complete opposites of each other like going into this we knew that they were like very different.
But to see in specific ways of like cool someone who's playing social chess versus someone who then knocks that chess board over and goes what's up dog.
It's a very fun dynamic to play.
And then that also everybody was like that except for fucking Stacy.
Correct.
Because you're dealing with two people who don't need to play.
Yeah.
But that was another really I'm stuck playing the game.
So I think they're going to end it with this kind of a super simple scale right if you had to like rate your two DM experiences so far between your first one and your second one on like a scale out of 10 one being I wanted to kill myself.
I'll never do it ever again.
Versus like I am absolutely in love with the ending I love this universe I'll do it 100 times over.
My first one I'd probably put it like a six point five.
It was fun.
Point five.
It was fun.
I really enjoyed it.
I liked it a lot.
I don't see myself DMing for a long time in that world.
I think that's just kind of like a little thing.
Hard world to touch.
Yeah.
Incredibly hard world to touch.
And it's just I don't know if I'm comfortable with that as much this one on a personal scale.
I really enjoyed it and I had fun on a scale of something in terms of this is going to sound a little shitty but making content that other people enjoy and that isn't just for the two people playing right.
I think I would rank it a little like I probably like a six for other people's enjoyment for personal enjoyment.
I think that it would be like an eight in terms of like I think I could definitely have a lot of room to grow.
But it's a setting that I really like and I had a lot of fun doing it once I kind of got my my feet on the ground if that makes sense.
100%
Now I would like to hear from your perspective where you would rank those.
Yeah I think as a player for the first one Percy Jackson one shot I would probably give it like a like a five or a six only because there was a lot of work on my end trying to
Corral people in the correct direction. Corral people in the correct direction and I know that's something that you've helped me with a lot too.
I was just hoping that they would not need corraling but there's always at least one person at the table I feel like that it helps you corral the regardless of what story point you're on or somebody that's driving it.
And I kind of had to do that for the majority of it just because there were two into the spectrum.
We had one person or one group of people that was like I know this world inside and out.
I'm going to fuck off in Gallivan and do everything in this world that I can possibly do and focus on zero of the story points.
And then we had other people that were like cool so when am I going to figure out who's a child I am.
Yeah immediately just out the gate.
Yeah.
They were like no I don't care about anything else.
I'm trying to be the person that kind of like stabilizes that just because I think helping you as a DM stay on your feet while also trying to enjoy the experience as a player somewhere between a five and a six.
Yeah.
I think I would like to play it again with the other players having a more clear goal and an idea of who they are as a person but I mean other than that I really enjoyed it.
And then I think for this last one probably like a seven if not an eight just because I didn't have to do any of the footwork on that there was zero workload placed on my shoulders.
You got to fucking kick your feet up do literally whatever the fuck you wanted.
Uh huh.
I got to just be a PC and nothing else.
Yeah.
And I think just the world itself is fun.
I think being able to play social politics which is something that I as a person am good at.
And then being able to translate that into a 16 year old boy who cares only about a handful of things one of them being the prettiest person in the room.
Cool.
I can play that game all day long and I'm going to go out of my way manically to die on that hill and that shit was fun.
Yeah.
So probably like a seven or eight.
I'll take that.
I hope that you all enjoyed listening to it if you have listened to it if you haven't listened to it you should totally listen to it.
I would love that.
I was about to say no worries if not like no it is fully like.
That's okay if you don't listen to it.
Fuck me I guess.
Listen to it.
This is once again being like the people pleaser of like I can't let these people.
It's okay.
Man that's it.
I mean I would appreciate if you listen to it.
You are the.
You don't have to.
Polar opposite of you are.
Listen to the episodes.
It is homework.
It's assigned mandated.
Assigned reading.
For a podcast.
You might be listening to.
A lot of different unkind words that I'm not going to say on the podcast.
Thank you.
You don't listen to the other episodes.
I don't want to end it on that note.
Thank you all for tuning in to another episode of Table Talk.
We will see you next Thursday.
Bye bye.