Ones To Twenties Episode 2 - GM Sphinx

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everyone. Welcome to the ones to 20s podcast. My name is Ryan Adams, I'm your host. I'm a full time professional game master and I am thankful that you would check it out and give it a listen here at ones to twenties. The goal is to create a space for game masters to discuss our past, whether that be our struggles and obstacles or challenges that we have faced, how we've learned and grown as game masters from them, ideally in a beneficial and entertaining space. During our talks, we will be using the terms game Master and Dungeon Master interchangeably DM and GM just for clarification. And today I am excited to share our conversation with GM Sphinx. Thank you for joining us. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Hi, it's good to be here. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Welcome. I know that you've also been very active as a GM the last few years. You want to introduce yourself a little bit to people who maybe don't know what you do or what you're up to, kind of how you got started. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So my name is Sphinx. That's what I'm known as professionally on start playing games. My name is also Ryan, so there's sometimes a little bit of a confusion there. I got started running dungeons and dragons during the critical role boom when it was still airing on geek and sundry. I helped a local community build up games and game masters to run those games within bars, Internet cafes and other sort of social gathering spaces. From there, I've been running d and D for ten years. I've participated in a couple of local comic cons helping facilitate their dungeons and dragons events. And for the past two and a half years, I've been running games on start playing games full time for quite a while now. I'm about to hit my 800 game tomorrow morning. Very exciting. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah, that's awesome. You're getting close to the big 1000 mark. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that will be next year probably by the time that I reach that, depending on how much time I take off during Christmas. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Fair enough. That's awesome to hear that you were really helping out local communities when it was really booming from critical role. I mean, that was kind of the first big pop culture thing that got people interested. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's what got me interested in it. And it was from there. We were running D and d out of the cafe I worked at as a manager at the time we were doing every other Tuesday night and there was such a drive for people to be able to play there that we had to move on to bars and Internet cafes as well while those cafe games were still going on. I did that for, I don't know, about two, three years, just helping build up that community. I moved to a different city, so I let other people sort of become admin of the Facebook page and take over the running of it. But I check in on them every now and then, just see how it's going. [00:03:27] Speaker A: That's great. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. Sounds a lot like how start playing games got started. Devin, the founder, often has talked about how it was around the same time, you know, 2019, 2020, around the pandemic where he was running games for people because it was getting super popular and he started to just out resource himself, too. And people were like, hey, can you run games for us? Can you run games for this place and that place? And he just had to pick up a website and try to organize it through that and look where it's gone from there. But, yeah, it's crazy. [00:04:02] Speaker B: I never thought I would be here ten years ago, if you told me this is what I'd be doing full time, I would have laughed in your face. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Right. It's a blessing. It's a fortunate situation. We get to be in the. [00:04:16] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:16] Speaker A: Speaking of those humble beginnings, what was kind of like one of your first adventures, like, when you first started? Like, long term, not necessarily just a one shot. Is there anything. [00:04:29] Speaker B: So the first adventure I played in, or the first campaign that I ran as a DM, more? [00:04:34] Speaker A: So what? You ran as a DM? Yeah. [00:04:37] Speaker B: Right. Okay. So I dove into the deep end and I completely made a custom setting and custom adventure within a world that I was making for a video game at the time that evidently fell through at the very beginning of its process. But I used the setting information that I developed there to then run a D and D campaign. And I've been running games within that setting for the past ten years now. That first adventure, that very first campaign, there are a fair number of hurdles there. I had a very excitable, forever DM within that game. So he put me through my paces quite quickly, adapting into all the crazy stuff, because everybody else within that campaign was brand new, too, and he was the veteran, so he really helped me sort of, like, learn the ins and outs and be ready for improv. But, you know, with, as with any skill as you're developing it, you're always going to have a little bit of a hurdle. They're going to be sticking points. And I think mine initially was just learning to let go of the narrative at points. Sometimes as a DM, you need to steer it in certain directions, make sure people are still on track and they know what they're doing, you know, kind of correct their true north so they know what their heading is. But you also need to learn to let go of what you've developed, what you've had prepared. And initially, as a DM, I was reluctant to do so. That's part of doing this for multiple years and multiple games with various tables. You learn to develop that part of your brain and be ready to adapt to any crazy plan that the players want to enact. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think that's a lot of the same issues most gyms have starting out. They either take a module or they take something that they create and they try to just stick close to it. It's like they're, you know, their baby or their guardrail. It's something they want to hold on to because they think they need to in order for the players to succeed or do what they want them to. Yeah, but it's hard. Yeah. Like you said, it's. It's hard to learn to say, no, this, this might be what I had in mind for this particular situation or this part of the story, but the players just are not running into the situation the way you thought they would or the way you had it planned. And then you have to, like you said, let go and be like, okay, I guess we're gonna do this a little bit different. And that can be hard sometimes. [00:07:44] Speaker B: Part of the reason now that I just build a framework of sort of the scenes that I want players to encounter, and I don't necessarily put a sort of stringent aspect to them. Where I say it has to happen here, it has to happen with these people involved. You kind of just have your loose framework, and then you're able to draw in the players within that scene and as and when you need to and be able to develop it on the fly as a session goal. A lot of being able to adapt on the fly is also listening to your players about, obviously, what is getting them excited within that session and then how you can lean into that to leverage what you need to or want to tell them within that adventure. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's also something that I learned to. I quickly learned that I can write out what I think might happen and kind of write out the narrative or the dialogue and things like that. But oftentimes I want to go in that direction. And so what I've done in my time as growing in what we do is I just mainly use bullet points nowadays. I'll make my prep, but I'll just do it in bullet point form, keep it a summary, keep it a concise couple things like certain NPC's or a certain item or a certain plot point. And I won't necessarily tie it to one very specific scene. Like they have to go to this room, they have to talk to this person so they can tell them about this. If it's a piece of info, it could come from anywhere. Right. It could come from a bad guy, a good guy. It could come from dialogue. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:34] Speaker A: Could come from exploring your surroundings. That's what has helped me let go of, you know, that control of the narrative, like you said, is keeping it in bullet point form for me. Works for me. [00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I. Onenote is my savior. I use onenote for all of my campaign tracking. So there are individual pages for. For a particular session. Then I have separate categories for like play information to do with their backstory and then all of the NPC's sees and doing a reaction to the players they keep note of also. [00:10:15] Speaker A: That's dynamic. I like that with some of those earlier games. Was there maybe a moment in one of those early adventures that you remember running into a bit inexperienced and struggling to come up, like how to fix a certain situation or how to move the story forward or deal with it early situation that you didn't really know how to handle then? [00:10:39] Speaker B: Um, I think one of those would be, uh. There was a scene in the adventure that the players were currently going on at the time where they were hunting down a priestess of some form of spider goddess. She was using these weird gemstones to turn people into essentially driders and etiquettes to create a grander influence of spiders within the realm so that her God would have a stronger tie to the world. So as they were investigating this around, they found a large hunk of the gemstone that the priestess was using to create her little like, enchantment pieces of jewelry. And the players wanted to knock it over and destroy it. And bear in mind they were level four or five at the time and none of them was a barbarian or anyone, particularly with a decently high strength to be able to knock it over. And I was unsure what would happen when they knocked it over as well and destroyed all the gemstones. So what I had them do is I kind of stumbled through this scenario and I would probably be quicker now in devising what would happen if they tried to knock her over and destroy it. But I think in the. In that specific instance, I had got them to make successive checks. So as they were making checks and I was asking for them. I was able to get the ball rolling within my own mind so that I would be at least a couple of steps ahead of them by the time that they had succeeded all of their checks. Nowadays, I'd probably be a lot quicker on the uptake about their plan and how to implement it and what the repercussions would be. Moment. I definitely made them make way too many checks and I should have. I should have just told them, and you can do this as a DM, and a lot of people think that you can't, but sometimes you can just outright tell players that I don't know what's going to happen. Give me a couple of minutes while I just, you know, take a moment and really focus about what's going to happen based on your actions. And it gives a lot of trust to your players because then they know that you're really thinking about it and that you're involved and that their actions matter and that you care about them rather than completely and utterly disregarding them because you don't know what's going to happen. Sometimes it's prudent also to say that certain things aren't possible. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:32] Speaker B: And you're allowed to say that as a DM, there are definitely been times also where I have allowed people to do stuff that really shouldn't have been possible for them to do, especially in my early stages as a DM, because you just. You want to. You want to make people happy, right? Because typically when you're running a game, it's for your friends, it's for your family, or it's for. Or strangers, and then you want everybody to have a good time and nobody likes saying no, but sometimes saying no is required. But when you do say no, you say no. But. So you tell them no to whatever action they want, wanted to take, but they might be able to do this, or there might be sort of like a little bit of a sidestep that gives them their end goal, but they don't take on that action that would have been impossible for them to complete. [00:14:23] Speaker A: Definitely. [00:14:24] Speaker B: And I hope that made sense. It does. [00:14:27] Speaker A: It does make a lot of sense in that it kind of circles back to letting go of the story at times. At least what you're talking about at first as well, was how they might do something unexpected. And instead of just saying no, you can't knock that crystal over. You're like, yeah, you can knock it over. I need to buy myself some time to figure out what to do about this. But you can. But just as consequently, you could, like you said, no, you can't knock that crystal off. It's too big or it's too powerful, or there's this magic protecting it, and either way is perfectly viable. But which way is going to help tell the story and what can still move them in the direction they want, like you said. No, but maybe not that crystal. Maybe a piece of it or something. Yeah, I remember one of my first ones. I was starting out with a dragon of icespire, peak adventure, good old starter adventure. And one of the players, he picked up a ghostwise halflane, which means that he has some limited telepathy that I was not aware of because I was still learning things. I knew what Halflane was, and I was like, oh, he wants to get all those good ones out of the way. Got it. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. First session in van der Linde, he starts like, messing and terrorizing with the already paranoid mayor of the town by, you know, telepathy and trying to pretend like he's like a bad guy or the dragon or, you know, whatever else he could try to pull off. And I remember just thinking, what am I supposed to do about him? Because I can't, you know, make these people not receive telepathic messages because he can just do it. I was like, how are they going to respond to that? Is there going to be any consequence to this? And it was a little difficult at first, but thankfully there were other people in the party who were able to kind of correct maybe not his behavior, but help the other people, like the mayor, they're like, hey, sorry about him. He's just, you know, he's just doing his thing and like, they're mouth, so to say. But at least it was in a way that he wasn't actually causing more mayhem than what he should have been. Even though it was funny and it did lead to some good moments later, he definitely used it for good uses later in the adventure as well. But when he was messing with innocent people, you start thinking, what do I do about this? Such a subtle thing. Like, no one else can hear this. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, in that. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Oh, no, go ahead. No, go ahead. [00:17:08] Speaker A: Good. Throughout your gming, like you said, it's been over ten years, and I'm sure those first couple years, just like in my first couple years, a lot of moments came up, a lot of sessions came up where it's like, hey, I really liked how that happened. I really like running that part of the game. And just with most rpg's, you've got the role playing, the combat, the exploration, the puzzles. Was there a moment in your gming or is there maybe just over time? Have you noticed from those early days that you tended to run more of that type of content in one particular area that has changed over time, or has it kind of been the same kind of focus in one of those areas? [00:17:54] Speaker B: Initially, I would say that I definitely gravitated towards combat a lot more when I was first starting out, and that was mainly because it's a lot easier to run combat because there are a lot less variables in a combat scenario as there are just letting players wander around wherever they wish to go. And, you know, in combat they've maybe got a battle map, they can see everything, everybody's focused a little bit more, so your variables have reduced, but still they're wildly high for a tabletop rpg. So I definitely gravitated more towards combat in the early days, and I think now I try to touch upon certain things consistently through the games that I run and that, you know, you try and get as much of a, an even spread as possible in the best of sense, but it mainly depends on your group as well, which one you end up focusing on. As I've run games where the majority of it was role playing and I loved it, I've run games where the majority of it is combat and sometimes you get a mix. I think the only part of D and D that I don't think is done particularly well, or I'm just not very good at it. I will own up to this, is puzzles. And that's mainly because the majority of puzzles to me, or at least in the instance that I've seen them implemented, is that they get used with player knowledge. They test player knowledge rather than character knowledge. Yeah, at least in the vein of sort of word puzzles and anagrams and acronyms and all these kind of like wordplay things and riddles. Combat puzzles can be good. Exploration puzzles are fine. You know, you can insert a puzzle into another pillar and then it makes it a little bit better. So if it's a combat puzzle where they have to deal a certain amount of damage to an object, then make something else vulnerable, or they need to pull this lever to then make something else happen within that encounter, can really sort of elevate it and then give people that maybe don't normally have a lot of impact within the combat to do something. Especially your social focused characters or players may find themselves at a loss sometimes during a combat because they don't offer as much. So if you're able to insert puzzle esque pieces into that encounter. You can give them something to do and contribute, and then everyone can feel validated still. But yeah, definitely used to run combat, more puzzles I don't particularly like utilizing and then role playing exploration. Now I try to give a decent spread of those three other pillars throughout a game. [00:21:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I like how you explained that the combat can often feel safer, I suppose because it comes with its own, you know, rules. It do certain things. You have your actions, you know, bonus actions or whatever the system has for you, you can stick to those and you can kind of control that to a degree. And then everything else is wide open with. Yeah, like roleplay. You never know what someone's gonna say or do or. Yes, or use a spell or an ability and this different kind of way. So I can understand combat, can feel safer having run a lot of it myself. It's one of my favorites as I tend to lean pretty heavily on combat scenarios myself. But speaking of which, what do you think's been one of your biggest learning experience in running combat? I think you kind of already touched on it a little bit with kind of making things more dynamic and introducing other elements during combat. Probably a big one. [00:22:15] Speaker B: Um, you've, you've played in a couple of my games and you know that, um, I like using environmental effects. I like making players, um, aware that the enemies that they are fighting sometimes are intelligent. It's part of my session zero document that I tell people that, um, enemies that are intelligent will act intelligently. And I think one of my biggest, uh, sort of like learning curves with combat would be realizing that sometimes just let the players trounce the monster, just let them outright demolish it. Let them be filled with confidence so that the next encounter after they've wasted their highest level spell slot, is that much harder. Nothing is better to me. Nothing is better to me as a DM, as the mage using their highest level spell on the first encounter with it in a day because they see an intimidating foe as you have described it, and then they realize that, hang on a moment, it wasn't as strong as I thought it was. And we still have 12 hours to go before I can long rest again. [00:23:41] Speaker A: That really is a great tip, though. Yes. Some encounters are meant to be a little bit easier, some are meant to be a little harder and, or it's okay in a hard encounter and they figure out a way to circumvent the obstacle or the difficult scenario you put them in and it becomes a lot easier in a moment. You just say, okay, sure. You know, they were smart and clever and used their stuff in a way I wasn't expecting and it made it easier. But for those other ones, yeah, it's fine to just throw a handful of orcs at them because they're just gonna, you know, wipe them out or. [00:24:22] Speaker B: As long as it makes sense. [00:24:23] Speaker A: Yeah, as long as it makes sense. Of course. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Don'T throw them an alice. [00:24:29] Speaker A: Yeah, random. [00:24:31] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. You don't need to throw them an owl bear when the plane of air, you know, I just wouldn't make ultimately much sense. Or fry putting in a free tea in front of them while they're in the plane of water. You know, it doesn't, no, it doesn't quite help. [00:24:49] Speaker A: No questions from a Patreon supporter. [00:24:54] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:54] Speaker A: Happens to head into the combat side of things to some degree. They asked, how important do you think multiple combat encounters are per rest? Or maybe why is it important? [00:25:07] Speaker B: Okay, okay. So we, we run these as an entertainment. So it's entertainment first and foremost. So that's always, ever present in my mind. Sometimes my philosophy would be different if it was a home game where I might throw more encounters at them. But ultimately my home game has turned into almost very similar to how I run my professional games and that's because I don't run them as often anymore. So I need to get as much out of them as possible. But for me, combat encounters per rest, they can be important, but it depends on the level of the party. At level one, you can't really have many combat encounters per rest. At levels three to eight, you may be able to pull off a couple and challenge groups, but you don't always need to challenge a group to the very last dregs of their life and their spell slots every day. Once you get to about level nine to probably twelve is where the challenge rating just completely goes out of the window. It goes out of the window by a level eight anyway, but that's a completely different topic. So by that point you could probably throw multiple combat encounters at them in the day if it was a home game. But for a professional game, you have to realize that combat, depending on the level, depending on how quick your group typically is and like what spells they like to use and what the enemy is, you have to realize that the combat encounter might have take the whole session. And if you a campaign that is maybe sort of like 30 sessions or so in and you're only doing, you're actually forcing maybe three encounters per day, they might look back on that time and go. Hang on a moment. We've played 30 sessions, and within the timeframe of this campaign, it's only been ten days. Players are always. Foremost in my mind is making sure that people feel like they're having a good time within the session, and also making sure that they feel like their money is well spent and that they are progressing, and no one wants to be on an endless treadmill. So as long as your group is fast within a combat encounter and they're good at that, then you could probably throw more combat encounters at them. But for say, for instance, I've got a level 21 shot tomorrow. I'm gonna throw some little minions at them that they'll probably decimate in a round or two. But the big fight is probably gonna be the majority of the session. Maybe the three, 3 hours worth of that session is going to be a level 20 combat. Six level 20 characters against a custom made arch devil with lair actions in his own demi plane. And that is going to be the primary aspect of that session. Once you get to those higher levels, you can't really do multiple encounters per day. So you have to make sure they matter within the narrative or make sure your group is well aware that they are progressing. But they may be doing the same day. It might be the same adventuring day for four or five sessions. I don't know how it is with you and sort of like your philosophy on your games and the sort of value proposition that they offer. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a difficult balance for sure. With, like you said, time is really a big thing. In terms of mechanics. I mean, that's kind of a different part of the question. And mechanics wise, you know, it's important to have multiple if you're trying to challenge your party so that your spell casters start to whittle down and your muscle characters can continue to do their, their same thing because they're never going to get tired of hitting things. But in terms of, yeah, us as game masters, especially in the entertainment side of things, I think that's a huge aspect of it, is being wary of the time that your combat is taking and being able to improv things to help fix that. If things are taking too long, you can interject something that might speed it up or give them a helping hand on one side or the other, or you can fudge numbers if you really need to. Yeah, or something that should have been a more impactful moment, like a bigger fight and the dice aren't going your way or something, and it's gonna skew the perspective of that of that moment. You can also try to skew that a little bit as well. Being aware of the time, I think is really important. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:30:07] Speaker A: Want to make sure they're progressing. They want to make sure that they're interacting with more things than just fighting. And I think that's very important point to make. [00:30:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. For me, mostly, I don't really worry too much about whittling down player resources. For me, I would just rather scale the important combat to what their capabilities are at the moment, at that time. And until you place tokens on the map or you put tokens like, you know, on the table or whatever, you use gummy bears, m and Ms, you know, chess pieces, whatever it is, until you place those and then give them a name or describe them, your players don't know what they're about to encounter. So you can always adjust things. And this is typically how I do stuff. It's. Okay, so how many spell slots have they just used before they get to the combat? What are the hell? Okay, how did they use this magic item? Okay, so, and then I will have a framework for. Okay, so if they're within this range, I use these collection of stat box. So I might use, okay, so they've, they've already used one fireball. Okay, great. So rather than 20 goblins, I'm only throwing 15 at the. Okay, they, they use their 9th level wish spell already for the day. It's like, okay, great, so I can use this enemy instead. And having sort of at least a vague idea of player power and then maybe a couple of versions of the encounter is a better way to do it. And that's mostly how I deal with sort of combat encounters per rest. I just scale a truly important encounter to their capability at that time with a loose, like idea of what their abilities are, how many they have left. [00:32:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it. I leaned more on the improv side similarly to that, but I don't necessarily have as much, uh, planning into it. And for, like, different, you know, levels of preparation, like that kind of sounds like mine's a little more just in the moment prepping. But I have found that partially in the interest of time, like you said, I have found that running a couple of higher difficulty, so to say, counters per day, instead of running more medium encounters a day works better in multiple ways. People like to be challenged, and because of the dice and their levels, depending on where they are, sometimes even those harder ones will be easier because of the ways that things end up and if they're harder than they should be, like I said, just improv something to smooth things out. That's what I've come to kind of do more often. My players have really picked up on that over time as I've continued to hold my combat is they don't expect, quote, easy combats anymore. They don't expect if there's going to be a handful of, like, if they're going to chase down a spy in an alleyway in the city, I will not be using the spy stat block. I will probably be using the assassin stat block. So they'll know if it turns around to shoot them, then it's going to actually be really bad. They don't want to have that happen. [00:33:38] Speaker B: But I don't know if you have it. It's the, I think it's either in the monster manual expanded or one of the tome of beasts. You have the shadow fists. Oh, yeah. They are really good to use as your sort of criminal stat blocks. I'm currently using them. So there they have access to monk abilities. So they're able to stunning strike. I don't use stun. I never stun players. I dazed them instead. I use the flee mortals dazed condition. Yes, instead. So any, any time that an ability says stun, I use that dazed condition instead. Because nobody, just like nobody likes getting told that they don't have a turn. [00:34:22] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:34:23] Speaker B: There are some spells that you can't avoid it. You know, there are some abilities you can't avoid just outright negating somebody's turn. But I use the dazed condition when I can. So they were able to stunning strike. They're able to bonus action dash and disengage. They could. Or shadow step is what they have. They can cast silence as well and darkness. You know, they, they are great criminals. They great criminal stat box to use. [00:34:52] Speaker A: Them more players watch out. Getting better rogues. No. [00:34:58] Speaker B: Yes. But I typically never use a stat block as it was initially made, especially if it's meant to be an important encounter. If it's a random encounter, I'll use the base stat block. If it's not meant to be the focus of the session, use a base stat block. But if it's meant to be the crux of an adventure, the crux of the session, it's meant to be the big payoff. Everything is custom layer actions, hazard, environmental effects, legendary actions for the creature. What the creature stat block is completely and utterly changed from their base. [00:35:41] Speaker A: Sometimes I don't do just entirely custom, but a chance to use third party content that most players won't have any recognition of, so will feel very fresh and new. And that can help a lot, too. [00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know if it's the same for you, but for me, it's just like I need to run something that's not a beholder or like, you know, a base. A base dragon. I've been doing it for ten years. I need, you know, I need that new. I need that new thing. There's only so many times I can use a regular goblin stat block before I get bored, you know. [00:36:19] Speaker A: Some good discussions there for combat. Hope that helps. On the topic of role playing, though, one of the questions I had was, what's been something that you've discovered that can help cultivate good role play at a table or encourage good role play at a table or maybe to help, I don't know, roleplay as much or aren't as comfortable, maybe. [00:36:46] Speaker B: Okay, so for that, you can't really force people to do something that they don't want to do. So I like to. For the quieter players, you can just let them engage when they want to, occasionally make sure that they're still interested, they're still happy. You can offer them chances to do certain things where you can give them an option a and option b just so that they have a chance to provide input, and then they maybe expand upon that every so often you can ask them, okay, how does your character feel about this? What would they be thinking about at this time? As this happens, it can be a good way to get them to start thinking within that framework. I don't know if you've read it, but there is a book called the Game Master's handbook of proactive role playing. [00:37:39] Speaker A: I don't think I have. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Okay, so you're not sponsored by them. So it's not sponsored AdHD, but it. It goes through one of the parts. Within it is defining goals for your character. And I devised a PDF where it just devises a list of questions. Where it goes, it asks a player sort of like, about their background within their character, how they got their power, do they have family? All these kind of like, probing questions. And then at the very end, once they formulated their entire backstory from these probing questions, they then asked for their goals going forward within the campaign. I use those goals to help drive role play required of players. So if they've said they want to save their sister from a criminal organization is one of their goals would put an obstacle there, and as you place the obstacle there, you give that player the opportunity to interact with it. You don't have to force people to talk in first person. They can talk in third person if they wish, whatever they are comfortable with. And you have to really test the waters with some individuals because some people just want to roll dice with their friends and might as zombie. And some people want to really get in depth and play a character, embody that character. You have varying players within a group and being able to recognize which player is which really helps you as a DM. And you can also. I've used this tactic a fair number of times as well, is just get the role player at the table to start role playing with and trying to coax out for the others within the group. So I've done this a couple of times with players where it's just like, okay, I've noticed player a is a role player and player b is not. So I have messaged player a and I've been said, hey, I love the roleplay that you're doing within the session. It would be great if you could at least try to coax player b into the roleplay also and try to involve them. I will let you know during the session if you are doing it too much. The players at the table are part of the DM's resource. They can be your greatest allies during a session and can help facilitate what you have planned. If you let players in on plans and sort of let them know what is going on to get them excited for a session and then make everybody else excited and just through their sort of aura that they are projecting through voice chat or at the table, and then they can really help facilitate certain things. And that's typically what I do, generating role play. [00:40:51] Speaker A: Absolutely. That everybody has their own desire, their own degree of how much they want to be role playing or not. I think it's great to involve your players more intentionally because it's different for the player. If they hear you or one of your NPC's being like, yo, are you gonna go over there? And they're like, I don't know, as opposed to their friend who's like, hey, do you think we should go that way? And they'll be like, oh, maybe, you know, they'll be typically more apt to interact with their player because like you said, they feed off of the same energy, your energy as a narrator. It's not the same kind of energy that the other players. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [00:41:36] Speaker A: It's a great resource, for sure. And they love to do it. The ones who are involved and love to roleplay and love exactly. [00:41:43] Speaker B: Yes. [00:41:43] Speaker A: They want to do that, so they'd love helping you. Something a little bit different, though. We were talking beforehand, and I think it would be cool to kind of hear a little bit from you. You're designing your own system. What's that like for you? And maybe what's kind of prompt that for you. [00:42:02] Speaker B: Dear? You might get some down votes on this. And angry comments. So my, the onus for me making this system was the release and bungling of d and D 2024. [00:42:21] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:42:23] Speaker B: It was just, for me, it was sort of a couple of scenarios sort of funneling into one point. For me it was. I was just looking for something new to do. I could see what was happening with indeed 2024. I'm just going to call it five e 24 if I refer to it again just for context. But it was just okay. I didn't like some aspects of what they were doing. Even if they say that it's a printing issue, sort of like a distribution issue, I don't like the fact that all the books aren't coming out at once. So I'm not. I'm not going to get to see the entire DM toolbox until February and play it. Yeah. So just like, okay, I can write my own system by February and I'll have all the information I want in it. And it's something I've wanted to do for a while, and especially seeing stuff like DC 20 come out and Dagger heart and Cosmere flea mortals, it was just like, okay, then maybe I can do it too. And I just wanted to try something new. There are a few things with fifth edition, I don't get me wrong, I love fifth edition as it is. It's a great system for what it does, for getting people into the role playing space, but there are a few problems with it. We've touched on it a little bit. It's the, like the challenge rating player power as well when you get into the higher levels, just becomes ultimately ridiculous for certain characters. So it was a way to still create a system that provides challenge customization options for players and also enables them a lot more functionality within the narrative. For instance, within the system, you can, if you want to, as a barbarian, that may particularly not be great at investigation. You may choose to punch a hole in the wall to see if it's a false one. And with that you could make a strength investigation check some D and D mechanics. Touch on this, where it lets you swap the attribute or the stat that you're using, and then whatever skill proficiency you're using within the system I'm making, that is one of the pillars of it. So you can make whatever kind of check you want with whatever kind of attribute that you want, as long as it makes sense within the scene, which just offers a lot more dynamic roleplay for people. [00:45:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool, I think. Yeah. Coming out of just some necessity from your perspective and also just desire. It's cool to have that external output, and I'm excited to see where that takes you. Is it also going to be a D 20 system? [00:45:23] Speaker B: So it's D 20, roll under. [00:45:25] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:45:26] Speaker B: So you roll equal to or underneath a target number. That's decided by your attribute modifier and then how many points you have within a skill. Every level you get given points that you can then invest within particular skills. And every profession or class is able to invest in whatever skill that they wish. So you can be a magic wielding barbarian or an axe wielding mage, for instance, that wears heavy armor, you can do whatever you want, which just means that character fantasy is a lot easier to facilitate. [00:46:06] Speaker A: Sure. Do you have other people helping write with it right now or any other outside resources, or is it mostly just a solo project at the moment? [00:46:17] Speaker B: So you cut out a little bit there, but I did hear it was, do I have other people helping? [00:46:23] Speaker A: Yes. Is it a solo project entirely or do you have, like, some external help? [00:46:27] Speaker B: So the, the majority of the project is done by yours truly, but I have the people that have playtested it. I have them in a Discord channel within Mike, within my discord server, and they provide suggestions there. I let them know, sort of like what I'm developing and I. Why take screenshots, little video snippets and just getting feedback that way, as well as getting people to play test it whenever I have the opportunity to? Yeah, that's the most part. It's just myself, so good little hard. [00:47:01] Speaker A: Project, but it's good that you're getting it tested and getting it hands on, too. I think a lot of times we have projects that we come up with and that are just in our hand where we put it down on paper, but it doesn't get passed there, so it's always good to get it actually active. [00:47:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I've had trouble with that before, you know, like, oh, this sounds really cool if I do this, but then you never get round to it. So if it's in front of other people, if it's within their mind, then they're more likely to ask about it, which then kind of forces you to do the thing, right? [00:47:31] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Once you kind of get momentum going as easy to keep going. [00:47:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:38] Speaker A: Another question from a Patreon which may also coincide with you designing your own system. It might kind of lean some perspective on it too. But they asked, is there more pressure to run a module close to the book when running one, or is there more pressure on making like a homebrew or like a custom setting, more unique, somebody. Those are some certain pressures we face. And how have you kind of run into those situations? [00:48:09] Speaker B: So, yeah, no, no, I understand the question. I'm just trying to decide how I phrase this. In the meantime, I just want to ask how many modules have you run. [00:48:20] Speaker A: From start to finish or just, just. [00:48:22] Speaker B: Run and then, you know, in general? So like each one, most of what. [00:48:28] Speaker A: I've done the last two years or so have been mostly modules. I've finished a couple. I'm running quite a few right now, some third party. I don't have a lot of custom at the moment, but I ran a lot more when I started. But they usually end up becoming custom by the end of it. [00:48:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's been my experience too. Or at least turning pre made, pre written modules into becoming custom adventures has been my experience and experience. I've only run one module and so I don't know if really I can touch upon this subject much, but my perspective was that by the end of session two I had to completely rewrite the middle act. Right, because of player choice and, yeah, so it's, I don't think I ever felt any pressure to run the module close to the book because I've only run one module for a group. And they understood that they had kind of derailed the campaign, but because they were already pre existing players with me, they knew that I'd be able to adapt and still be able to tell the framework of the story with altering things. And then by the end I was able to get it to almost exactly how the module would have run it. But the very end I let it run as the module says it should run. And then I became disappointed with the ending and added an extra, I think, twelve sessions on to actually close off the narrative properly. And I'm just making it custom again. The adventure I'm talking about is call of the Neverdeep. I'm familiar with the Exandria setting and I thought it would be a good one to run because of, you know, who was behind it, you know, and it ended up being, by the end of session two, completely derailed the end of the campaign, letting it run as the campaign says it should be run. Made a very sour note or left a sour note in everyone's mouths. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:50:52] Speaker B: So had to add extra stuff. But for homebrew, I don't think I've ever felt any pressure running homebrew. I've just, I just had people happy to play, you know, I've never, I don't think I've ever had any comments or sort of critiques about, oh, you're homebrew is exactly like this setting, you know, or like, you know, it takes drives from this episode of supernatural or whatever. It's um. I don't think I've ever felt any pressure to make it unique. I don't know if that's the same for yourself, but I've never really felt that pressure. [00:51:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that comes partially with experience, just knowing that every time you run an adventure, whether it is a module or not, it's gonna be different because of the players and the choices they make. Yeah, it's always gonna be different. But yeah, that's interesting, interesting discussion. One more Patreon question is. [00:51:52] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:51:52] Speaker A: What was one of your more difficult hurdles with a problematic player and how did you solve that? Um, thankfully I haven't had a lot of problematic players, so to give advice. But I do know I have had, I don't know. Usually when there's a bad situation, a player that out of line or is very disruptive, usually they remove themselves or it's just obvious that you just need to kick them. But I did have one particular experience that actually worked out really well where it was an earlier game in my time and it was a custom setting and we had a player join in. Yeah, maybe like a third in or something. It was a little while into it, but he was very excited, very enthusiastic to be a part of it. But he was also suit. He was very, very knowledgeable on just d and D lore and he knew a lot above table and yeah, it kept butting in a lot. He kept having a lot of like corrections and above table comments about certain things, like, we shouldn't mess with that creature because they can do this and that. And for a little while it wasn't too bad. But the players, the other players actually had messaged me a couple times after a specific session and they're like, I don't know about this guy. And I was like, alright, let me talk to him. And so I had to talk with him and I was like, hey, here's kind of how we're feeling, you know, can you tone it down a little bit. If not, then maybe this isn't the right table for you. And he's like, okay, yeah, let me, I'll try. And I'm like, okay, sure, we'll just give it a shot, right? We'll see how it works. And it actually worked out really well. The next session, he was not as intrusive, but his, you know, passion was still evident and he was still involved, but he wasn't so intrusive. And afterwards I messaged some of the players like, hey, what do you think? And they're like, yeah, that was way better. If he just does that, we'll have no problem moving forward. And it was great. He was with us the rest of the adventure, very fortunate. But usually if it's a red flag, it's not something I'm trying to fix. I just get rid of it. [00:54:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I've had a couple of problem players doing this on start playing games. I've had people read ahead of the module, which was cool and everyday because it's the only module I've ever run. So they were just, they were within one aspect that I actually got to run. As the module states, they meant to like go through one of the towns and meet with the NPC's. And as they go through the town, certain things happen, certain things are triggered. He was just running from one location to the next. And then it came about that he mentioned a NPC's name that he shouldn't have mentioned, that you shouldn't have known. Yeah. So then I had a talk with him also at that time, I had seen his character sheet because he was in another game of mine and he had been giving himself Max HP for every level up. [00:55:02] Speaker A: Bummer. [00:55:03] Speaker B: And at the time I was running eleven games a week. So he had kind of sifted through the cracks and it become unnoticed about what he was doing. So I had it. I had a talk with them. They exacerbated, or at least sorry, exhibited another issue where they weren't directly engaging in combat and detracting from the fun of the rest of the group. There was one instance within a table where he was in multiple, uh, they were fighting a. The group was fighting a dragon and the barbarian was just, um, outside of range of the dragon. Just saying that he'll hold his turn, he'll hold his turn, he'll hold his turn. Um, you know, not really directly engaging with anything, being very curt with answers as well during role play. And so those issues coupled together is I just had to let them know that they weren't a good fit for my table and you just. You just let them go. Not everybody's gonna get on with everybody. Not everybody's style of game is going to be the same, and not everybody is going to enjoy the game that you run. And you sometimes have to develop a fixed skin. I'm sure you've had it before where you've had people join and then a session later they've left. Yeah, you know, or a couple of sessions later, they've then left. You can't truly take it personally because sometimes it might not be you, it might be the rest of the group that they don't particularly mesh with, and that's fine. Everybody has different personalities and they clash in interesting ways. What you need to make sure is when you deal with what you consider to be a problem player is you need to think on the enjoyment of the rest of the table. You ultimately need to go with the majority, and sometimes that's not easy. I've had it in my professional career that I had what other people considered to be a problem player and they had to ultimately be removed to save the health of the five other players at the table. [00:57:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it can be a hard call to make. [00:57:25] Speaker B: It can be a hard call to make, but you have to go with the majority. Unless, of course, you utterly believe that everybody is in the wrong and that you'll side with the individual and you could consider it bullying potentially. That's a distinction that everybody has to make within that specific instance. But for the most part, you have to go with sort of the majority at the table. So if you've got five people telling you that one person is a problem, maybe it's a problem. And if you want to keep playing D and D with these other five people, you might have to make a hard choice. And that's never easy, it's never nice. But as long as you're kind and respectful and you offer solutions, I've offered people chances to go into different games at similar time slots, and that's worked out. So sometimes when you've had a little bit of a personality clash, or you can offer, if you know somebody else is running a game, you can maybe touch, get them in contact with one another. Hey, I know you really like combat and that's all you want to do. This DM does just combat. Is there information? Maybe go talk to them about them running a game, but this isn't the table for you, and you can do it in that way, because then you're not ultimately removing their potential to play D and D, you're just moving it somewhere else where it's a better fit for them. There are multiple ways that you can deal with problem players. [00:58:54] Speaker A: Yeah, they're all fantastic ways to do it. And normally I would close up with asking if YoU would have any specific advice you would want to give to new GM's or even your Younger selF. Is there anything extra you would like to share on THat side of things or do you want to leave the advice of problematic players in their hands? Because that was also really good advice you were giving there. That was really solid advice. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Thank you. Sometimes I feel like I'm drawing on a little bit too much. If I'm speaking too much, just cut me off. Advice I would make to new ems. Boom. My younger selF. [00:59:34] Speaker A: Um, get rid of the problem player where the health of the table. [00:59:39] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. Don't be afraid to count a spell. Never vivify. Yep, yep. [00:59:50] Speaker A: Especially if it's towards the end of the adventure for that extra oomph, because. [00:59:56] Speaker B: Yes. [00:59:56] Speaker A: No Iceman Dale adventure. I did that when fighting the frostbite and somebody went down and I counter spell it and I felt bad. But it was such a good dramatic moment. [01:00:09] Speaker B: Yes. Right. Some people will tell you ultimately that it's absolutely terrible and abhorrent and you shouldn't do it as a DM to actually go after and challenge your players. So the way that you want to think on it is what would this character do that would be believable and to up the stakes of the encounter, of the scenario and how can the group still win if this happens? And that's how I run difficult encounters, conniving, intelligent enemies. You know, they. They're going to act with the information that they've been able to gather or they're able to witness during an encounter. So don't be afraid as a DM to punt bad tactical decisions within a combat. Don't be afraid to counter spell a healing word or massacre wounds to put the pressure upon the group. You're not looking to kill the party. You want them to win. Or at least I hope you want them to win. What you want to do is to put them upon that knife edge where, you know, in an action movie when the hero has pulled off the daring maneuver, they have stopped the nuclear warhead at the last moment from detonating or reaching its destination. And you just see all of the adrenaline and I stress leave their body as their soldiers, their shoulders droop and they just able to relax for a moment and relish in their victory. That's what you want players to do during your intense encounters. And to do that, sometimes you have to go after them. [01:01:58] Speaker A: I thought you were going to go ahead. [01:02:02] Speaker B: No, that is the advice. [01:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're going to go with the class. Disables the warhead, takes a breath of fresh air, turns around and someone, their ally, has a gun pointed to them. You're like, oh. [01:02:19] Speaker B: No, we'll just leave it there. Sometimes you need to let people have their victory, you know? Yeah, yeah. I've kind of spelled riverfly during a combat encounter. We're in the middle of the combat and one of the players died. I count the spell. They were vivify. [01:02:35] Speaker A: Sometimes it is for a great moment or a challenge to throw their way. Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. [01:02:41] Speaker B: Exactly. Then you just give the player the opportunity to run some of the, you know, the secondary characters when maybe an NPC or a monster. [01:02:50] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. That helps keep them active. [01:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Sorry. Just one final bit of advice. If you want somebody else to DM will start learning how to DM. If they are ever knocked unconscious, stunned, paralyzed, whatever, which means that their character cannot act. Give them a monster stat sheet within that combat. Get them to start looking at monster stat blocks. Get them to start using them. [01:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:18] Speaker B: Because then they may event they may learn and they may see that it is not as intimidating as it seems. [01:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I've done that a couple of times and it's a great way to keep them engaged or to help feed their interest in dming. That's awesome. Yes, awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Ryan. [01:03:41] Speaker B: Sphinx is fine. Yeah, it's what most people know me by now. [01:03:47] Speaker A: Well, awesome. It was great to have you. Good conversations and I'd love to hear your advice and the discussions we had. I'll go ahead and post a link to your GM profile with the podcast episode and wherever I load it. And if you guys are interested in playing a game with either Ryan. [01:04:08] Speaker B: Feel. [01:04:08] Speaker A: Free to check out the links and I will be attached to the podcast and we'll be more than happy to get you in the game. [01:04:14] Speaker B: All right, thank you for having me. [01:04:16] Speaker A: Thank you for joining and thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye.