Ones To Twenties - Episode 1 - DM Travis

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, Travis, thank you for joining the Ones to Twenties podcast. I'm excited to get. Hey, Ryan. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:08] Speaker A: Talk about our experiences as our game masters and dungeon masters and all the stories we've had and the ways we've grown from our past and the stories that have helped shape us into who we are as GM's today. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. There's many of them. [00:00:26] Speaker A: There are many lessons learned along the way and many more to be had, I'm sure. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:32] Speaker A: But let's talk about some of, just kind of how we started, though, because I know you've been running games for quite a while now. You have a couple hundred under your belt as well, and. Yeah, what were some of this? Almost a couple hundred. [00:00:47] Speaker B: I think I hit 200 on Friday. This coming Friday? [00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, just hit 600 on the side recently, so definitely a lot learned. But there's people with the shiny 1000 under their belt, and I know the coveted number. [00:01:01] Speaker B: It seems someday I hear you get a letter jacket if you get to a thousand. [00:01:07] Speaker A: I would hope so. But in terms of kind of humble beginnings, what was kind of like your first adventure, like, or your first one or two? You know, what were some of those early days, like when you had first started DM and you're like, all right, I gotta pick a book or I gotta do a little homebrew thing, something to kind of get off the ground. What was kind of that first one for you and how did you kind of disappear? [00:01:34] Speaker B: I think I got exposed to the game in middle school. Had a buddy that, whose uncle played, you know, all the way through since the beginning, and had just introduced his nephew, my friend, to third edition Dungeons and Dragons. And so he was telling me about these cool creatures called drow at the lunch room. And we were talking about what this game is. And we had, I mean, really no good idea about what it was. So we started just, like, talking about what kind of cool characters we could cook up in our brainstor. And I think that exercise led to, okay, let's actually try this. Like, let's. Let's all meet at somebody's house. We'll try this out. And total shenanigans. Total chaos. But, I mean, they're like, older brother knew how to do it, and so he kind of helped us out, and it kind of took off from there as far as, like a first adventure that I ran, man, I don't even. I don't remember it. I'm sure there were a few little one shots or little adventures that we did, but I don't remember them. It was all on grid paper and pencils and moving around like funyun crumbs as monsters and stuff. But the first, I think the first one that I can recall was probably the longest form campaign that my high school group and I engaged in, which took us to, like, level 24. Who knows if it was legit experience points or not, but we ended up playing all the way through level one through 24. And the kind of strategy there was that when one DM would get burnt out or sick of dming and kind of wanted to switch gears into the player seat that we would switch. And so the story took lots of different forms and shapes over the course of 24 levels because we had, like, six, seven different DM's trying it out. But I think my portion was in a place called the howling chapter, little Homebrew, enchanted forest that was kind of closed off from the rest of the world and darker, a little bit more dangerous. That was a good time. [00:03:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Rotating GM seed is an interesting way to learn. You got to have that player and DM experience kind of concurrently. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Right? [00:04:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:00] Speaker B: You get to see what other people are doing and what you didn't like about it, and then what you did like about it, and you're like, okay, I'm going to one up that I'm going to. Yeah, I'm gonna try something here. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But fun at the end of the day was just having fun with your friends, you know? [00:04:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. That's super important for your own. You said it was called, like, the howling or something, your own little part of the adventure. If you were to maybe go back and, you know, do it again today, use that same setting or use kind of the same kind of story, whatever. What do you think? Something that you would have done different because of maybe how. How much things have changed since then, or maybe something that, you know, you kind of regret the way it did back then because you were new and you're like, oh, I could have done that part better or something. [00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I actually did recently revisit it in a homebrew campaign. It was probably four or five months ago. And I was like, okay, I get to. I get to revisit this concept, and how would I do it differently? And so, like, the first time around, it was kind of just a conglomeration of, like, horror scenes in my head about, like, what the. What the party was gonna find, and none of it really connected to the next set piece. And so this time around, it was like, okay, if this is the vibe I'm going for here. How can I make it a story? Like, how can I take them from start to finish through an ark and have, like, a culture of people, like, multiple peoples that are trying to interact with each other? And so I ended up having one of the cultures be, like, tribe of survivors, basically, criminals that had been sent into this howling chapter that you can't escape from. Nobody's ever escaped from the forest. The neighboring city, that was their way of getting rid of criminals was they sent him through this gauntlet to get into the howling chapter. And then once they've got all these archers lined up on the battlements, and they basically send prisoners running through this gauntlet, and if they stop and they don't enter the forest, then they get shot down. So the only way they're really going to survive is to head into the forest and take their chances. And so my idea was, over the years, they've kind of all survived in this forest and created a culture. And there's another kind of more of a native culture. And to me, these were darklings in D and D, fifth edition. And so those two cultures kind of interacting with each other and having problems to solve. And it ended up working out better than the first time, for sure. [00:06:42] Speaker A: Instead of just a series of ideas, you wanted to try finding a way to make it actually coherent and kind of a living area. Not to mention that the actual style with that second time around almost reminded me of, like, the maze runner sort of deal. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:04] Speaker A: It's kind of stuck trying to get up, but since they're kind of in that place, they just kind of set up shop, and now they live there until. That's kind of cool. I remember when I graduated college and one of my buddies messaged me about being their DM for the group of guys. Some of them were former roommates, some of them are just other classmates and stuff. And they sound like a fun group of guys. And, yeah, I had dabbled in dming in other systems a little bit up until then, but nothing fis edition specific, not fantasy specific, either. I had dumped, like, some Sci-Fi stuff, but obviously I was familiar with everything, d and d and stuff, just from culture and stuff. But I was like, yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna make something to run with, so dive right in, learn as I go. I was like, I don't know what kind of adventures they're. [00:07:58] Speaker B: I don't know what I'm doing. [00:07:59] Speaker A: That was probably a good, you know, seven, eight years ago. So not all the adventure books were out yet either. Fistician only been out a handful of years at that point. So I was like, okay, I'll just pick something. I'll do something. And so I made this own little setting. And the overarching story for it was basically this, you know, setting agnostic area but that this hobgoblin kind of goblin army came in and took over this main city. And the characters were to take up the roles of, like, the underdogs of like, a resistance group. And they would start taking out enemy generals and eventually overthrow the goblin empire. And that's kind of the whole gist of it, but. And so I kind of had them start in a smaller village outside of the city limits just to kind of get to know them a little bit. And the end of the first session ended with an entire Pvp style fight. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:09:01] Speaker A: They loved making a bunch of chaos doing whatever they wanted right there. Yeah, total chaotic little bunch of dudes. And something led to another. And like, two of them got into a fight. The other three were like, oh, we're fighting now. And they just started all fighting each other and jump right in. I'm like, racking my head, like, what have I done? My first D and D session, they fought each other, which then was quickly retconned the next session by saying that someone got hit in the head real hard and that all that fight happened in their head. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Nice. Nice. [00:09:35] Speaker A: But that's something I've always looked back on when I'm making a new adventure, whether it's a book that's already out or making a new one myself and I something, always try to think of it, all right, I got to make sure that they all have a reason to work together, right? They got to have a similar goal. They've got to have something in common, putting them in the right direction because that early game, like, they were just all there. Like, they all knew they were bad guy goblins or whatever, but they themselves didn't have anything holding them together. So when one of them got angry at the other character, he was like, I'm going to hit him on the back of the head now. And he's like, I'm going to hit him back. He just hit me. And then it devolved from there. [00:10:12] Speaker B: And that's so important to establish a tone. And that session Zero is of so much importance. Kind of like letting everybody know, like, this is going to be fun and we can all have our fun, but there are a set of guardrails that I'm encouraging us all to stay within in order to have a sort of standard that we can all interact with in order to have the most fun that we can have. Because if one person's not on that page, it's just going to divulge, like, it's going to go in all sorts of different directions and it's not going to work. Yeah. [00:10:51] Speaker A: Just having that session zero, because back then, the first couple adventures I ran or whatever, I didn't really understand what session Zero was. It was just like, cool. Thanks for joining me. Here's your character. [00:11:02] Speaker B: Right. Well, I think, like, back then, and when you're young, it's like everybody, you just assume everybody plays the game the same way. It's like everybody thinks about this thing the same way I do, or like, everybody likes this movie because I liked that movie. That's not the case. And we learned that as we grow up and as we experience more of the game. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of experiencing more over time, was there maybe a moment earlier in your gming where you remember kind of struggling with a certain situation that came up? And how do you think you would handle that kind of situation if it came up in one of your games today, whether it was, like, with a player or just something in your own mind of something you couldn't quite get right back then? [00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's your classic railroading of a story. Like, if you're somebody that's been playing dungeons and dragons and you are sitting in the game master seat, you probably have a story to tell, or you're excited about your story that you want to tell. That's not wrong. That's normal to be excited about the story you want to tell and make sure you allow yourself to have fun with adaptations to that story. And I think that's probably the biggest thing when I was younger, realizing that this game is not about me telling my story as a game master, it's about facilitating the telling of a story amidst a group of people and trusting them to also tell a good story with me. And that has created much better stories over the years than anything that I could tell by myself. So that's probably when I think I probably had some, some frustrating experiences where my players just weren't interested in my story or didn't want to engage with it, or they try to do one thing and I kind of railroad them back in the to where I wanted them to go and just, I think everybody realized that wasn't fun. And so, yeah, you learn from it. [00:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's an important shift in our mentalities that, yeah, we have a story that we would like to tell, but it's more important that we tell that story together, not just me and not trying to make players go a certain direction or do specific things. You gotta be able to adapt. Like you said, I think being adaptable is a great feature of any successful GM. I remember one thing that. That I've learned from that first adventure that I was mentioning with my buddies back then was that there was this one player who had his entire side quest developing in the background, and it had nothing to do with the main storyline, and it even was derailing a bit from everyone else because of how hard he was trying to lean into it every chance he got. He was trying to. For him, he was trying to create his own organized religion, was a deity. He created followers, and he abandoned the cleric he was following in order to become a clerk of his own deity. That didn't exist yet. And as. As fun as it was to kind of, like, wrestle with it, it did not help tell the story at all. And so when. That. Whenever I have players like that nowadays who come in, maybe after a session or two, you start to pick up on, hey, I don't think they want to tell our story. I think they just want to tell their story, and you gotta jump on that before it gets out ahead and say, hey, are you here to tell the story together? Love to have your character, but I want them to be a part of the story we're all telling, not just your own. And it's like, if you just came here with your own agenda, then you're going to need another table. [00:14:53] Speaker B: And the funny thing about that, too, is I don't think new players know any better. If you're new to the game, you see these fun stories being told, and you're like, I've got a story. I want to tell a story, too. And so let's get into this player seat and see if I can tell my story in this person's world. And the idea that it could be maybe the wrong way to play the game, trying to tell your story somewhere else is strange. And so being able to meet that person where they are and saying, hey, I think this is a really cool story to tell. Can we work together to try to tie it in in a way that fits in the story, too? Like, the bigger story, the etiquette of a collaboration, storytelling experience, is that we're not always the main character, and you figure out what to add in your session zeros to get everybody on the same page. I really like something that Matt said in a pretty recent video about character creation where you should always make your character after you learn about the setting, you learn about the DM setting, you learn about the story that the group is trying to tell, and then you make a character that fits that setting rather than cooking up a character idea and trying to shoehorn it into like, who cares what story they're telling? This is the character I want to play. I'm going to plug it in and you can do that respectfully, but I think it's generally a better idea and largely more successful to know what story is being told first and then making a specific character for that. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I find that often it's fine to come with the mechanical side of your character beforehand, like, hey, I might want to play a rogue and you have that. That's fine. But the actual personality of the, and like, their backstory motivation for the story that I totally agree with would be so much easier for both the player and diem if they learn about the setting first about the story, like, okay, so I'm a rogue from here and I'm going there. You know, you can actually fill in those holes a lot easier than just trying to do your own story, which you also made a good point on. Newer players, they come in, they're like, oh, we're the main characters. Awesome, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the main character. We have to help correct that mentality of, yes, you are a main character. You're not the main character. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:38] Speaker A: You're definitely going to get your spotlight, you're going to have time to shine, but it's going to be shared. Yeah, both of those are tell people. [00:17:47] Speaker B: As often as you can look for opportunities to tee up somebody else for a spotlight. And the more often that happens as a group, the more it's going to come back around to you eventually. I just think that's a good mentality as a player to approach it. [00:18:01] Speaker A: I like over your time as a DM, have you come up, have you found yourself favoring any particular parts of the D and D or RPG world as a whole? There's typically four pillars that we talk about as GM's being that of role playing and combat the exploration and the kind of puzzles side of it. Have you found yourself leaning more towards one of those as you've dmed more over time? [00:18:35] Speaker B: Yes, I think I have moved away from puzzles more as time has gone on. I've stuck more closely to role play and combat, with roleplay being a more prominent piece, because I think you can put role play in any of those pillars. You can have roleplay heavy combat and should. It's fantastic. You can have roleplay heavy puzzles. If your puzzles are there for a reason, that serves the narrative and makes sense in the context in which you discover them. Yeah. So I think roleplay is, to me, the driving factor in all of those pillars. But combat is a pretty close second. And combat, that's dynamic combat that has enemies in it, that make sense, that has elevation change, that has things in the environment you can interact with. Um, you know, has. Is sometimes super challenging and sometimes just a cake walk. So you can just feel like heroes. Yeah. Like, that's. That's. Those are kind of the two that I have gravitated toward over time. [00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:59] Speaker B: What about you? I'm curious about where you are on the four pillars. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:20:04] Speaker B: I've yet to join one of your games. I really need to. [00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we gotta get you in one of these days. [00:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:09] Speaker A: But I would say it's pretty similar for me. Uh, the exploration side of things can be really fun, but when you're running D and D, unless you're actually going to environments that are naturally going to be more challenging for your characters, I find that it drops off after, like, level five ish. If you're going to be traveling through the forest or over the road to the next town or something, you're not going to be really challenging your players too much. Once they start gaining the abilities to teleport and transform and fly and all these cool abilities that they can use to overcome obstacles, exploration becomes less of a experience and just a resource hog of, oh, there's a chasm. Well, I'm gonna fly and I'm just gonna ferry everybody across instead of, oh, how am I gonna get across? Can you turn your ropes off? [00:21:06] Speaker B: Or that's why everybody's always like, can we start at level three? And that's a pretty common thing, is to start at level three because level one and two are so dangerous. But I, like, you get so much more time to, like, there's like a special window, like you said, where you can really, like, do things without Leomann's tiny hut. It's like, cherish those times and figure out ways to. To really make the inventory tracking and let your rangers shine out in the wilderness during those first few levels. And then after that, you're right, it starts to go away. I think you can find ways to still mess around with that exploration. I've also. I don't know. You've learned. Yes. But started to employ is not necessarily always about combat, either being able to explore and find a treasure cache. Maybe there's some clues in there about why this is here or who it belongs to. Or maybe there is a group of monks doing a little chant in solemnity, just quiet and melancholy as they're passing you on the road. What does that mean? That's interesting. Maybe we should explore that a little further. Or maybe you stumble upon a band of entertainers that need some help with something that could be fun, but there's all sorts of things that can happen that don't need to be combat when it comes to exploration, and that's. [00:22:50] Speaker A: I. [00:22:50] Speaker B: Guess, what you probably lean more into after those first five levels or so. [00:22:55] Speaker A: That's true, yeah. Making your higher levels, if not in a different environment, like I can throw higher level characters in, like the underdark, or I can put them in one of the layers of the nine hills or something different that will be completely different and can challenge them in more than one way. But I'd say for the other four, that was just kind of my off the cuff exploration thought, because I really, that's one of the few parts that I actually really do enjoy. Lower levels is being able to just immerse in the exploration. They have plenty of challenges and plenty of things to do and don't have all the tools yet to just overcome them all. But then it's also fun later. You gotta figure it out, challenge that. But that's a unique time in their career, I think. [00:23:39] Speaker B: But, yeah, I like puzzles. [00:23:41] Speaker A: I don't like doing them as a player at all, but as a DM, I find that they're useful in many ways. One, it helps break up the monotony of the other three. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:56] Speaker A: Whether you've just had a few combats or, hey, you've been exploring the city for a while or something, you just want to kind of break it up a little bit and have them work on something different. Like, oh, they're exploring the library. Here's. Here's some sort of puzzle or like riddle with the books just to kind of get them engaged again before they continue role playing or something. That's something I tend to do fairly often, is put in just like one every now and then, just when they haven't had one for a while, just to kind of give them a different obstacle. [00:24:29] Speaker B: I like that. [00:24:30] Speaker A: One of my players who are in multiple tables of mine, very good support. They're in a very interactive they proclaim they hate puzzles, but despite their hatred for that, doesn't mean they don't interact with them. They still try, but usually they check out if other people start getting involved. But not everyone likes puzzles. That's one of those things that most people either like or don't like. Don't quite think that way. So it's a little bit harder to say, yeah, let's put in more puzzles. And then you're like, I don't want to alienate one or two of my brains just because they don't like puzzles. [00:25:09] Speaker B: But at the same time, feel out your party, too. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Yeah, but I'm definitely living more towards, like you said, over time, I've leaned into cultivating more exciting and challenging combats for D and D in particular. That's what I primarily run and say. Role playing can fit into all of it. And one of my recent bigger fights, that's gone for two sessions now. Not that it's all combat, but the reason why it's gone on for more than one session is because they're role playing with each other during the fight, and I'm giving them that space to talk to each other a little bit and to kind of interact with each other because there's some drama going on, there's some role play going on, which means the turns take longer, yet at the same time, they're still fighting, they're still dealing with a threat, but they're also dealing with each other. And it's made for a really good combination of both. Set that roleplay because we've seen some really good moments of role play during this fight that we haven't really seen elsewhere. And the fight isn't super challenging itself, but it's giving them a different side to their roleplay this time, which has been really cool to watch, but I've always gone off and read third party books and other supplements to get ideas for those combats, for those creatures. What are some other abilities we can use? What are some ways we can change it up or ramp things up a bit to give them another challenge? And I think those are areas that I typically lean towards more. [00:26:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard, man. Combat's tough. There's. There's so many ways to. There's so many ways to do it in a way that's like a slog, and there's so many factors to think about to try to bring it back around to fun. Yeah. [00:26:57] Speaker A: What do you think's been one of your biggest learning experiences in running combat? [00:27:02] Speaker B: Oh, man. Doing it online on a virtual tabletop. [00:27:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:27:10] Speaker B: I feel like when you're running combat in person, you've got your paper sheet. It's like you roll a dice, you add the modifiers. It's like, I don't know, it just tends to go pretty quick. When you're dealing with a virtual tabletop, you've got lots of clicks, there's lots of click and drag this token over here, control click to figure out the distancing. If you need to. Somebody does a spell that casts a spell that has a certain condition, and so you right click, you got to do the condition and then you added the wrong one because you've got some mod that adds a second one somewhere. And so you got to figure that out. And it's like there's just a lot that is connected to each to itself and you can go down the rabbit hole and make combat really, really hard on yourself. And I have, and I'm currently there in some ways trying to simplify it a little bit, but I still hold on to this idea that if I could just get it all to work, it would be so clean. [00:28:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:08] Speaker B: But, yeah, that's probably the biggest thing I'm trying to work on, is making combats go a little quicker on a VTT. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it can be a challenge. It's kind of like a puzzle in itself for us, is making sure if we're using a, a virtual tabletop that has multiple features because there's some really simple ones out there where you don't have to do a lot, but if you start getting into some of the fancier ones, it's like a puzzle trying to make sure things are working in a way that pleases the players, pleases you, and can be enjoyable, but still have some of those things. I've leaned heavily into it myself, but in the past I've used simpler virtual tabletops too, that didn't require as much. And I. I think just kind of depends on the mercy of the technical side of things. On sometimes it makes it faster and smoother and more immersive, and other times it might actually slow it down and might get a little frustrating sometimes because it's technology and you don't know why it's not working or something, and it might be hit or miss. With the virtual tabletop side, I would say, yeah, something that I've kind of learned in just running the combat in general is being able to improvise some of the numbers. I think that's a lot in my past is, you know, when you pull up the monster sheets and stuff like that. They have their average HP, which is average for a reason, but we never really fluctuate from that, unless that's something that you have built in somewhere. Someone might do a day ahead and leave the monster with like five GP or whatever, and maybe it's due to the timing of the fight, maybe it's been going on for a couple of rounds, or. Or maybe you want them to be going through these monsters a little easier, but they're just getting poor numbers, and it doesn't quite fit the narrative you had in mind that would help tell the story. It's. It's okay to just be like, yeah, that kills it and drop the rest of that HP or. Or increase it somewhere, whatever you might need to do to kind of change it on the fly. You don't have to stick to the numbers strictly to make it work. I think that's helped a lot with timing of things, with keeping things. Keeping these moving interesting. Because back in the early, even sometimes I'll find DM's as a player when I go to join a game or something. And they might leave a creature. Oh, they got two gp left. Oh, man, someone's got to finish it off. And you're like, I just did 20 damage. Are you sure I can't just let me kill it? [00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm definitely guilty of that. [00:30:42] Speaker A: I mean, I've done it too, but it's something I've been trying not to do this much. It's just. It's close enough, you know, let them have the kid or. Or at least have them do something cool on the way out. Sometimes if you have this monster supposed to be, like, a threat, or maybe its attacks are indicative of something in the future, and you're like, oh, if they roll low on initiative, they're probably going to get bodied. I've also had just have them do something when they drop to zero HP, just like a death reflex kind of thing. It's like, I want them to at least see something here because it would help them know what's going on. Or like these creatures are, or like, that can do. It's like, oh, yeah, get a turn. I guess. I can't use them to tell the story. It's like, at least something. I gotta give them something. So I've done that sometimes I like. [00:31:29] Speaker B: That there's like, this line between the authenticity of dice rolls and what that does to tell a story and manufacturing results in order to guide the story, because I think you can do too much one way or the other. And I probably tend to sit too far on the legitimate dice rolls side of the line because, I don't know, I like. I guess internally I like there to be, I don't know. People call them the dice gods, but, like, when the dice is rolled, like, that's what, that's the rule. Like, that is law. And if you survive an encounter, I think there is nice legitimacy there for my players when they know they survive because I didn't fudge anything. They know that I'm always going with the dice rolls. And so if they survive, they earned it. And if they don't, it's not because I killed them, you know, it's because the dice rolls didn't go in their favor. And there can be like, when a close call happens in those, in that circumstance, it feels so much better to me because it happened in a legit way versus adjusting results and roles and stuff to kind of give somebody, like throw somebody a bone or whatever. I say all that as that's how it feels in my brain. But in practice, fudging something or giving somebody the kill when they didn't actually get it by the numbers doesn't actually feel like that to players like that. It's just as fun, you know? So I need to. I need to relax my standards a little bit. Not standards, habits, I guess. [00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah, because you're totally right. A lot of people go in, and that's part of the fun of these robes, is rolling and seeing what happens, and that's what tells the story. But that doesn't mean you're your dungeon master. Your game master can't help tell the story with stealth, the powers that they have to help tell the story. Like, yeah, yeah. Like killing, uh, like, if there's a enemy, the important enemy that's important to a character's backstory or something, and they don't get up, kill it because they got it close to death. Someone else gets to kill, and then. [00:34:13] Speaker B: I know, right? [00:34:13] Speaker A: Feels bad. [00:34:14] Speaker B: And you're like, what kind of DM would do that? What kind of DM would do that? [00:34:18] Speaker A: Geez, every DM does that. Come on. [00:34:23] Speaker B: When that happened, I felt so bad. It's like I instantly realized it. I was like, no, what did I do? Ryan's talking about a time in our game we've got this barbarian, and his whole backstory is built on this. I mean, not the whole thing. He's got a pretty comprehensive backstory, but there's a kraken in his backstory that is responsible for the death of his mother. Who was this captain on ship and that kind of thing. And we finally found this Kraken, like, at the end of the campaign, and I was just caught up in, like, running through combat, the numbers, whatever, and he comes in and does all this damage, this crack, and it was like so close to dead, but it wasn't. And I was like, it's so close, you know, whatever. And then somebody else came in, like, next turn and killed it. And he was like, no. Instantly I'm like, what did I do? He should have just killed the thing. But I just, I'm never thinking like that. I'm always just dice rolls. Dice rolls sometimes to work on, for sure. [00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah. It's hard to, to get out of that headspace sometimes of just following the numbers, following the dice and be like, cool, this is what's happening. But it's like, no, we can. There's more than one way to tell the story and. [00:35:40] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:35:40] Speaker A: We all make mistakes, like, for sure. [00:35:43] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:46] Speaker A: When it comes to the roleplay part of things, though, have you found anything in your time that has helped made it easier to cultivate this kind of role play at a table with your players over time? Because I know for me, like, in that, those first couple campaigns, it was a lot more about what I was crafting and kind of the story they were a part of. And they were just kind of along for the ride, which some people love to do, that they like to have a character that's nice and simple and I doesn't have a lot to do with the setting, don't open it up or encourage that to happen. You miss out on being able to tell a more personal story. [00:36:30] Speaker B: Right. [00:36:31] Speaker A: Has there been anything in your time that you've kind of picked up on that has helped your players have a connection to the stories you're telling? [00:36:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think you. I think you nailed it. And that stories are better when they're more personal. When the players have agency to tell their story, their character story, it leads to more investment. They are active in the game. They're searching for lore items and little bits of nuggets to pick up because it's part of their story. They want to tell it. They brought it to you. If you're a DM and somebody brings you a story, take that. Take that and run with it. And there's a couple different ways to do that. I kind of like homebrew stories have been easier to do that for me because I can make up whatever I want. I could do whatever I want and weave those character backstories in however I want to do them. And published adventure modules felt a little out of reach with that. I was kind of like, yeah, you can have a backstory and that's maybe going to be something to reference here and there as you make role play decisions and stuff, but it's probably not going to play too much into the story. But last year or so, I've kind of been really diving more into that where I've been, you know, before we even start, to start the game, players will send their stories and I have already read the module and so I'm reading through their backstories and I'll notice a character or a place or an item or a concept or a faction or something that strikes true to something that already exists in the adventure module. And so if they don't have a name that they've given me, or if they haven't detailed that thing out yet, I might just keep the adventure modules entity the way it was and tie it directly with the character. Or if they give me a name or a picture or whatever, I'll change that NPC. So it's like, okay, this is an established NPC. It doesn't mean their name couldn't be this and they couldn't look like this. And so kind of pulling people in and not even changing the story, it's just, this is not the NPC or it's not the name of this NPC anymore. This is the name. And now this character is much more engaged with the story because that character shows up and is now a bigger part of the story than they thought that character might be. That's been fun for me, is to try to connect like that and have the freedom to change some published adventures a little bit to support that. [00:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons that I've leaned more towards published adventures in general, is that's the tactic I've been using recently, is not being concerned about substituting or even just adding things that these characters are bringing to the table. These players are bringing to the table with their characters. Like, hey, this is my family was struck down, bye, so and so. And then you look at the module, you're like, who could have done that in the story? Like, who fits that Bill or group that could have somebody like that? And we throw it in there and run with it. And it helps make that module more of a unique experience for that table, too and for that player, because since these are, you know, published, they could find another DM who's running this sometime and they might have a very similar experience. And it's not quite as exciting to have a similar experience. You want to have fresh new experiences to a table, but knowing that your character is what made that one more special, I think is a big factor. Even if that character dies in the story, which can sometimes be a big thing, they can still remember how much that character made and how much their next one might also have involvement and the rest of the adventure too. And I think that's an important thing that I've learned is when I'm running these modules, it's not just, oh, you have someone that killed your parents, ooh, bummer. That'll help you roleplay your character. Here's our adventure. It's, oh, let's put that person in the story. You know, maybe you'll get revenge, maybe you'll find compromise. Maybe they will lead you to a bigger bad guy. You know, something I'll lend to a story and that's helped a lot, I think. [00:41:20] Speaker B: Definitely, definitely. [00:41:22] Speaker A: One of the things that roleplay wise, I have noticed when you start interacting these characters in and you start making them more personal to the story and encouraging that roleplay with each other, of course, you know, helping the party get connected to each other. I think a lot of times in earlier gming we try to avoid character deaths as much as we can. And that's usually a good thing to do because they're there to help tell the story with that character and they're usually an important piece to it. But I found that seldomly when it does occur at my table, not that I avoid it, but when it does happen on those unfortunate occasions, most of the time, if you've done your job decently as a GM and people care about that character and that player's character, then, then it will actually help influence telling the story forward to absolutely remember that death and they'll remember how or why they died and that'll influence future choices they make too. [00:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:31] Speaker A: And you can still program the main story, but now they have something else keeping them forward. [00:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:39] Speaker A: Instead of, oh, they died and just be sad for a session or two and then move on like that happens. And some, sometimes that's just the way to deal with it. But if it can actually mean something to the bullet of the story, spur. [00:42:54] Speaker B: Him on to victory. [00:42:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:42:57] Speaker B: I've got a player that, well, he's a DM too, but he embraces that idea and he's always like, he multiple times he'd be like, hey, if my character dies, it's okay, but this is what I'm going to do, you know, like, I'm okay with this end result, and I want you to reassure UDM that I'm okay with it because, and he's told me about this offline, too, just that, like, most people want their characters to live to, like, level 20 and beyond, and that's great. And it's boring. Like, eventually you're gonna stop playing that character. There will be a time when you never play that character again, whether that's just because scheduling is the highest Cr monster in the D and D universe, or you finish the campaign and character kind of, like, just goes away into nothingness or because your character had a heroic death, and it's like, which one, if all of these scenarios are true, where I'm going to be done with my character at some point, what's the last session I want to play with him? Do I want him to just fizzle out into nothing or her? Or do I want it to be like this epic confrontation where I saved my party members lives and have a cool story to tell and my death inspired them toward victory or something? I don't know. There's so much to it. And you watch shows like Game of Thrones, and there's so much excitement there because you know that anybody can go. Nobody's safe. [00:44:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:34] Speaker B: And when there's plot armor, it can feel a little sterile. Like a little, meh. A little flat. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:41] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:44:42] Speaker A: A lack of a threat, I guess. On the subject of character death, though, I think something I've done in the last couple games that I've finished is allowed for room in game to have an epilogue for those characters, too. It's awesome when they get to live till then, but like you say, you don't want them to just fizzle and be like, end of adventure, you know, great characters, and they're probably thinking to themselves, I wonder what that character is gonna do. You know, like, if they were still in the adventure or if we still played this, the end of the event. [00:45:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:15] Speaker A: It's nice to have that moment of closure for some of them and to kind of give that, what if they kept getting stronger and what would the rest of their journey look like? And it's always fun to kind of see that side of things, and it helps with, you know, resolution for those characters, and that helps with the roleplay, too. And that might help their next decision making for, like, their next character is, hey, I want to play this character. They might not make it to the end, but I should have something in mind in case they do, you know, something to share in case they do make it to the end, you know, what does that look like for them too? If their goal is to, you know, find this item that they'd lost as family heirloom or maybe get revenge on their family skiller or whatever it may be like, all right, what about after that? That might be something towards the end of the adventure when it happens, but then, like, what about after that? You open up a tavern? Are you gonna go be a high rank mercenary for hire or. Yeah, I found that. [00:46:18] Speaker B: Never know. Yeah, that, the campaign recap sessions, I've had a couple of those now, and we've done those epilogues for those. I've never really done them before, but like you said, it's kind of nice for players to be able to tell you what my story did after this campaign. This is what my character went and did. I think they have a lot of fun with that. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Yeah, they seem to have fun with that kind of thing. It's been good. What's something that you think you are currently working on improving despite the experience you have, despite the time you've invested into being a great GM? What's something right now that you're still working on? Because we always have areas that we're working on. We're always improving. [00:47:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. We're always our own worst critics. [00:47:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:12] Speaker B: So I feel like every area is an area I'm always working on and never quite satisfied that I'm, that I'm nailing. But if there was a biggest one right now, I think it's probably learning lore and really becoming a master of the lore for the worlds that I'm running because I know, like, I've read the modules and I know them, but, like, really getting in there and, like, learning, or, like reading an audio or listening to an audiobook or reading a novel set in that world and kind of knowing the context and how, like, you can read something on paper in a and a published adventure, but until you see it interact with other characters or play out in some sort of story, it's hard to always know what it looks like in your brain. So I'm trying to dive into that a little bit and make my worlds a little bit more canon. I guess most of my dming has been homebrew, like, all the way up until two years ago, like 23 years of homebrew, didn't know what a forgotten realm was. And then a couple of years ago, I started running published adventures. And I'm like, this is cool, you know, like, this is a lot different than running homebrew, and I like it. And so I'm doing a little bit of both, but there's definitely a lot of work to be done in running published adventures for me. Learning the lore. [00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think investing into lore and kind of the surrounding history helps it feel not as flat, maybe not as one directional, where it's like, hey, here's your quest. This is what you're going on. Even though you're in a setting where there's a lot of history, you may not interact with a lot of it, being able to have it involved and being able to have it referenced, and it helps to feel more like a lived world for the players, for the characters. [00:49:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:49:13] Speaker A: Usually when I do custom adventures who brew adventures, I tend to isolate them on purpose for that reason, is that it's not very low, heavy, there's not a lot of history. It's kind of just you in this thing that's happening and let's see what happens. But when we're running stuff that has established head and it's nice to be able to help them feel like, oh, I'm actually in this world. These are things that have happened. These are things that could happen. [00:49:40] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of fun that can be had for players that like being in a world that feels real and we can wing it, we can make stuff up on the fly. I think most of us are pretty good at doing that in a way that doesn't take away from the experience. But I feel like you can add more to the experience by having the option to be canonical instead of needing to improv as you go. Probably biggest example of that is with the curse of Strahd groups that I'm running right now. Having listened to the I Strahd book or the audiobook and kind of like stories there and when characters from those stories, I want to be careful about spoilers when I the story calls for some sort of connection to lore material that's outside of the adventure module. I have found that all of the worry that comes with improving something, having to be quick on your feet and come up with lore on the spot, or make up a name or describe the facial features of somebody that you're making up in your head as you go. All of that drops when you know the lore and you've been able to live in it with an audiobook or a novel, and you can just truly just engage back and forth as that character because you know him. Or you can see that village in your mind because you traveled through it while you were reading this novel. You know it inside and out. You know where all the doors are, and this one creaks. And at least that's what you were imagining. And so when you're improving through that scenario, it's just like you don't have to think about all the extraneous things. You just kind of go, it unlocks you, I guess so. That's the piece that I'm enjoying, is being unlocked by having consumed content that makes the worlds feel real. [00:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And you're still improving at that point, but you're improving with greater inventory to pull out of. Right? Yeah, I know how to. [00:51:59] Speaker B: Instead of a guess, it's an educated guess. Yeah, it's an educated improv. [00:52:03] Speaker A: Yeah, the best kind. Because then they feel like they can feel the difference sometimes if they're like, oh, really? Why is a guy like that here? That's kind of interesting. And you're like, I thought it was normal. I guess it's not. [00:52:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:16] Speaker A: But then if you actually know the place, like Ravenloft, like, you would know the kind of people that are there, the kind of jobs they do. They're kind of things that they do in their day to day or, like, things they worry about. And you're like, yeah, this guy's really been struggling because he's been doing this, and you can tell that he's bad. And they're like, yeah, that makes sense. And you're like, I made that up. But I know what the area like, so I can actually educate that guest. Yeah, that's cool. [00:52:43] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. What about you working on right now? What's your biggest thing you're working on? Mister 600 games. No, you got it all unlocked. You got it all unlocked. [00:52:55] Speaker A: Not at all. I'd say something that I'm working on with my games other than a new rule set coming out, because that's kind of gonna be a thing. But for the actually inside of the stories, inside of the games, I found that really, those session zeros we have, it's been important to have connections sometimes with each other's characters or the setting itself has been really important. I've been doing that for a while, but I think some of the more recent adventures I've gotten started recently or just kind of revisiting some of these characters, sometimes I'll look at the older ones I have. Like, I've been going for some time and I don't have as many notes on what this character may have ties to and maybe they won that way, but I'll kind of think, well, what if I want to put them in the story more, or what if they want to be in the story more and they don't have a lot of resource there? Kind of makes me regret not having an emphasis importance of having them connected to the story when we started or when they joined. So I think that's kind of been one of the things I've been paying attention to recently is how can I make sure that they're connected? How can I find ways to make them more connected if they want to be further down the line? Yeah, that's been something. I've been kind of watching some of my ongoing ones and just kind of the newer ones that have been starting recently. I've made sure to set aside time and sessions. You're like, all right, let's talk about our character. Someone will give their idea and then another person will be like, does anyone see any connections we can make between these? Kind of collaborate on that? And that's been really good idea. I think that helps. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Got a lot of players that really like to keep their backstories close to the chest, so that could be tough there, but sometimes they just want to. [00:54:58] Speaker A: Be involved a lot, and that's totally fine. Yeah, sometimes it's fun to just kind of play someone who's there along for the ride, but. [00:55:04] Speaker B: Yep. Jeanne Dee had a video not too long ago where she started talking about requiring characters to have at least one connection to another member of the party. I think she actually said two. She required each character to be connected to at least two other members of the party. And she claimed that this led to much better role play situations and are fewer situations where you've got the loner rogue, you know, just not wanting to talk to anybody or, like this party member going off and doing their own thing because they don't care about the main quest. Um, when you've got, like, people that you're connected to in the same party all going through the same thing, more. More likely to have outcome. I haven't tried that, but that's a good idea. [00:55:54] Speaker A: I've been, could be, could be something. It hasn't been a requirement, but it's something I've been actually, sometimes even in recent tables, I've been requested now, some of them will be like, well, like, bring it up and, like, ask if there's other connections that they can have. And I think a lot of people are wanting that kind of thing, too. I think a lot of players have been having experiences where they're just kind of that loner in the background, not on purpose, and they might realize us because that did the more just the other players never had a connection for them and then they didn't feel any tie to the part. [00:56:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:32] Speaker A: And I think sometimes that experience has been creeping up more. So hopefully we, as GM's can find ways to make sure they feel like, hey, this is our story. Kind of circling back to what we talked right earlier on is, hey, it's our story. Let's tell it together. You can be a sign if you really want to be, but I'd love for you to be a part of the story together. [00:56:56] Speaker B: I think that is similar to a concept when we, I used to lead backpacking trips in college and we would take blister breaks every now and then, even if nobody had blisters. And the idea was that if, like, if I stop and I treat my own foot for blisters, even if I don't have a blister, I let everybody else know that it's okay to have a blister. And so if you've got characters that really want to be engaged in the story, but they're concerned about being main characters or they don't want to give you extra work to try to weave their story into your story, or they're shy and they don't want to speak up and somebody that might otherwise be very engaged may not engage. So if we, as DM's take the time to say, hey, I'd really like for there to be some connections. This is our connections. And then just kind of like each person, what do you think about this connection? Or, you know, there's an NPC that I think could really work. Based on your backstory, what do you think? I think it opens up permission for people to try to have those connections. I think that, yeah, I don't know. I think it's a good idea. Like prompting connections at session zero, I think that's a good call. [00:58:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Well, lastly, what advice would you give to a newer GM or kind of, even if rhetorical, you know, back to your younger self? Either or. What do you think you would want to share? [00:58:40] Speaker B: Boy. [00:58:45] Speaker A: I think for me, one of the things I would want to share would probably be kind of where we started a little earlier in the conversation with just reminding them that, hey, you've got a story you want to tell and you've got a very creative brain, but this is a collaborative game. This is a game where we want to tell our stories together. Make sure you are open to your story being changed because a player might make a decision you weren't expecting or they might bring a character that doesn't quite fit your narrative. It's like, that's okay, work with it. Tell that story together. It's okay to change your story. You're not gonna, you're not gonna, you know, cash them and release them. You're not gonna give them this, this false sense of, hey, the story's gonna be about this, but, oh, now I have to change it because you did that. It's, it's okay, you know, it's good change. It's good to adapt your story. It doesn't have to be exactly the same, even with modules. If I, someone's running a module and they're like, I'm gonna go run dragon of ice by our peak. And you know, halfway down the line there maybe something huge changes in the players goals and maybe they don't want to kill the dragon or maybe they want to relocate it or, or something like that. And you're like, you can't relocate that dragon. You've got to kill it. That's the point of the adventure. And it's like, nah, not if this is the kind of story you want to tell. Figure out how you're going to move that dragon. That's, that's your new story. Don't worry about the killing it anymore. Yep. [01:00:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think similar, very similar. Just in different words. You know, not to drill in so deep with details all the time because it will encourage you to railroad your players and that's not what you want to do. You know, have, have more loose outlining and setup. Your prep should be mostly if you are in a set piece and you know, you need to build out that battle map, then yeah, do that. But past that improv, it's all about loose outlines and improv. Having some content prepared that you can drop in kind of anywhere and quickly adjust them to fit where the narrative is going. And then I think the other piece would be to give myself permission to cap tables at six players. Yeah, because we had one game where we had like eleven players at the table and it's like nobody was having fun. That's just not a good time. But you don't want to say no to people because they'll feel bad and you'll feel bad for having to say no, but just like separating it. This isn't, yeah, like we can, we can go like play video games with a bunch of people. Or we can go, you know, to an escape room or paintball or, like, whatever we want to do. You do that with a ton of people, and that's great. But when we're doing this thing, this is a limited. This is a limited capacity thing, and it's not personal. [01:01:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not personal. [01:01:57] Speaker B: That's okay. [01:01:58] Speaker A: And that's definitely great advice on that one, especially for newer dreams who might just be really excited. Or they get another table going and they start getting lots of interest, like, yeah, big party. Let's go. [01:02:09] Speaker B: Exactly. My girlfriend. Hey, I brought this friend, and that friend and my brother wants to tag along, and pretty soon you got twelve people and nothing happened the whole session. [01:02:19] Speaker A: It's okay to say no. Yeah, that's. That's totally valid advice. And on the notes, I'm a bullet point guy. I learned that pretty quickly in my jamming is when I'm prepping and making notes for things that I think should or could happen in the next session, instead of, like, you know, writing it all out and be like, this is gonna happen because of this and that. I'm like, I got bullet Points. I'll work with bullet Points. Like, hey, this NPC is pretty important. Let's throw them in there. Hey, this person mentioned they have a Family Member in this City. All right, let's throw them in. I don't know where they're gonna be, but I'm gonna keep them in mind. They're gonna be on my bullet point list, definitely. So instead of just, hey, they're gonna go to this tavern. They're gonna meet their friend there because they're doing this, like, nah, just put their name in there, find a place for them. It'll work. [01:03:11] Speaker B: Awesome. Love it. [01:03:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thanks for having a conversation with me about our past and kind of our fun stories and ways we've learned as GM's. I hope that this kind of talk will be helpful to other GM's who listen in and maybe introspective people who want to give it a try, or even some players are curious about, hey, what's really going on behind the minds of some of our GM's? What's really influencing some of their decision making, I think will also be good for them to listen in on and enjoy that, so. [01:03:44] Speaker B: Yep. [01:03:44] Speaker A: Well, thank you. [01:03:45] Speaker B: Or they can learn from the things that we've done a horrible job on and not make those mistakes. [01:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, not having your first session end in PvP, like me. Yeah. You know, you don't want to be a good storytelling device. [01:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, hey, for having me on. [01:04:02] Speaker A: Appreciate. [01:04:03] Speaker B: Love this podcast idea. Looking forward to seeing you take off. [01:04:07] Speaker A: Awesome. I appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day. [01:04:10] Speaker B: Yes, you too. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Bye.