I recently gathered a wonderful group of gamers in Fayetteville. They’re all friends, and they all organize gaming in our community. I’d like the episode to mostly speak for itself. If you’re new to role-playing games, it can be an opportunity to hear some gamers introduce how such games are organized in our community. If you’re a long-time player, it’s a chance to listen in to a diverse group of DMs geek out.
I’ve included the transcript of the conversation and have linked to many of the games and resources we mention in the podcast.
Thanks to JL Wright, Emily Presley, and Evan McDonald for joining me for this unique conversation.
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The Lego minifig trade day.
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I can totally see that going on.
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Back in the day, when they were in the bags, I used to feel them.
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Absolutely.
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Those are the only ones I collect anymore.
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Or the minifigs.
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I can't afford the regular Lego stuff.
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I never find myself, like we would do the Lego kid experiences, that kind of mall thing.
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That's like, they call it Legoland, but it's a lot smaller.
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And they'd always have some stuff there.
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And that's how, yeah, I was determined to find the banana suit
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many a years ago and was like this is gonna be easy like there it was you know like
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got that one pretty fast but i think it'd be tough can i haven't seen the packaging
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they're in boxes yeah so my son's claim to fame is we got a hold of the dnd legos
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for him with the special little yeah because you know
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they came out with the whole,
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the whole big set and it had a little bonus content,
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but you can only get the bonus content in the store.
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Right.
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And that was before this store opened.
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Yeah.
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So I called a friend in Tulsa and it was like,
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Hey,
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just on the spot,
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would you be willing to go to the Lego store and buy this?
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And I'll like Apple pay you some money, whatever.
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And she actually did.
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And so we got, it came with, you know, like little side things that you couldn't get to the store.
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Super cool.
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yeah do you do you plan on incorporating it into gameplay or is it just like for
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lego's sake well you can he's just got it set up in his room but it you know it
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comes with an adventure yeah i saw that which he hasn't done but i don't know we're
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not usually very much users of the tabletop stuff we're much more theater of the
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mind same um and he doesn't dm so i don't know whether he would ever use it or not
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but
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I still want Natasha's, or the Tasha, because it's amazing.
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It's got some cool accessories, too.
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Well, thanks, guys, for sitting down.
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I thought it would be fun to...
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This is a cool group of people,
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so I thought,
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let's talk about gaming a little bit.
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And I wanted to start with introductions.
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So every person at this table...
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uh hosts gaming in a variety of ways and it's pretty broad so i thought we could
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just like go around and tell us a little bit of your story so i don't know who
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wants to jump in first but i'm fine to start if it needs to be yeah um mine was um
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very much out of necessity uh i had been and you're introduce yourself oh i'm sorry
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i'm evan mcdonald uh from ozark dice and destiny um
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I had been a late introduction was given a starter kit by a former city councilman, Matthew Petty.
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And that kicked it all off for me.
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Got into fifth edition from that.
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So then was running some stuff for adults.
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Some of the folks like colleagues and things like that.
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And then lockdown happens and it's,
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my wife who is very patient about Dungeons and Dragons and will participate as,
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as the story necessitates.
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But it really was my two kids who at the time were three and seven.
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So I had to simplify everything really fast and get it in a way that they could
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comprehend and participate.
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And we were off to the races.
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My daughter ran her first campaign at three and,
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And like,
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you know,
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like it's one that we're still probably going to pull a like a one day thing of its
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Operation Santa rescue.
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It's amazing.
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And the core, the whole core of the thing, the basic premise, the twist, all of it was hers at three.
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And so then when things opened back up,
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I had done a lot of after school programs at Washington University.
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elementary.
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So I was like, man, what about a D&D one?
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And it became this huge deal, way bigger than we'd anticipated.
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We're in our third year of that.
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And then I started doing the same kids from club were like, what are you doing this summer?
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And so I started doing a D&D camp at the Ozark Smokehouse.
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And this will be our third year coming up for it.
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Did two weeks last year.
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The second week,
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60% ladies,
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60% female participants,
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which was awesome,
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had some club kids that had been from years before.
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But that's a long-winded way to say I've found that my midlife crisis is teaching
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kids and adults how to play D&D,
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and it's cheaper than a motorcycle.
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Yeah.
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And safer.
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Totally.
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Totally.
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More sedentary.
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Yeah.
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Cool.
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Who else wants to go?
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I'll go.
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My name is Emily Presley, and I admin Northwest Arkansas Roleplaying Gamers.
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We used to be called the Dreamweavers Guild back in 2004.
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One of my major first contributions when I finally started talking to people and
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not just sitting there and staring at them was to say,
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why don't we change the name to what it is?
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So.
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Huh.
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because I like things to be clear.
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We run a game day once a month on the third Saturday of the month where we feature
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a bunch of RPGs that people volunteer to run.
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It's just whatever people are excited about.
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We also do board games now.
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And I started out role-playing with Vampire LARP.
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And then I did Rifts and was recruited into a D&D second edition game.
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D&D is not my favorite game.
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I like a lot of weird side games.
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Powered by the Apocalypse games are great.
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Fate is amazing.
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Exalted is my guilty pleasure RPG.
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I would add that a big part of what you do is the social media space of hosting.
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Yeah, which is so weird.
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Conversation around gaming that helps people network.
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It's weird for me because I'm very not social.
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My mom used to describe me as asocial to people with me in her presence.
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Always helps.
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Always great for your social.
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And really,
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when I first started showing up,
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they used to do meetings every week where everybody would show up and talk about games.
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And I would show up and I would not say anything.
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But then those people quit and left.
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And so someone had to step up.
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Uh-huh.
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So the games would keep happening.
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And I've met all my buddies through in WARBG.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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It's been time.
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And, uh, when you, sometimes when you're quiet and create space, it, yeah, that's what I hope for.
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Yeah.
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It lets people show up.
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So that's cool.
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Hi, I'm JL Wright.
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They, them, um,
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I guess D&D for me was OG advanced D&D back in the day.
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Back when you played with the only other four or five people you could find at school that played D&D.
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I spent about a year in junior high trying to get the PTA to stop the PTA from banning D&D.
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Uh, so I came up in very much of the satanic panic.
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Yeah.
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D and D era.
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Um, and so, which I think, you know, kind of fed into my approaches later in life.
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Cause,
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uh,
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I mean,
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I stuck with all sorts of role playing games,
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but,
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uh,
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like you were mentioning before,
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when the pandemic came around,
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um,
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we had to take everything online.
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And for me, that really opened up some doors, um,
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And at one point we had a group going that was 200 plus people that were all just
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looking for a group based on inclusivity.
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And so we had a lot of queer intersection, a lot of disability intersection.
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And from that, I realized, well, you know, this isn't just a niche thing like, you know,
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There's a lot of us out there that are into this stuff.
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And we all kind of come from these similar communities.
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So after the pandemic, I helped NWA Equality start what's called Queer Game Night.
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And we do that on the second Tuesday of every month.
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And then I have also worked with Queer Camp, where we ran D&D and queers and stuff like that for a week.
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Mm-hmm.
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I've just worked tangentially to several different queer-adjacent organizations,
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and gaming's become a big part of that,
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especially seeing as how popular it is these days,
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but also that the age range has changed a lot,
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too.
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It's not just kids playing D&D anymore.
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As a DM,
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I find that a little strange,
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sometimes having to tag back and forth between adult games and kid-friendly games
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or family-friendly games,
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but
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Um,
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yeah,
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I think,
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uh,
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in the last couple of years,
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I've probably seen the entire gambit of like tabletop RPGs that can be played and
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different dynamics with different age groups.
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Yeah.
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That's something that went on as growing up.
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It was, uh, very few women, uh, mostly the guys.
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And again,
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just the four or five guys,
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nerdy guys at school that you saw carrying around a player's handbook and,
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uh,
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That was also how some of my best friendships were made back then, too.
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Well, you were lucky to actually have other people who played.
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Because when I bought the player's handbook and stuff when I was a kid,
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I was in rural Iowa,
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and I was the only one.
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So all I ever got to do, I never actually played D&D when I was a kid.
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I only studied the rules and had one friend who was willing to let me special
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interest info dump on the telephone with him.
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Wherever he is now, I thank, bless his heart because he was very patient with me.
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And then I only played a little bit in college, just a couple sessions of Shadowrun.
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Yeah.
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And then kind of stopped just busy college life.
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And I picked it back up as a dad when my kids were in like elementary school,
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a little bit older than yours.
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And we played, we went to gear and did Pathfinder.
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for a bit, the club version of that.
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I used to be the vice president of that.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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And my kids really got into it, especially when we transitioned into 5e and that's their favorite.
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So they,
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They'll study the 5E stuff just kind of incessantly.
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So my standard since then has been there's always kind of a 5E thing happening with
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our family on some level.
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It might be my older child or my youngest child.
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And then I've got some friend groups who play,
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but then I intersect with all of you guys in different ways.
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So like, I love to do one shots at the game day.
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Yeah.
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It's a lot of fun.
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And JL and I do the queer camp stuff together.
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And that has what started to alert me to how spread this is within kind of the
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culture now,
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because it's like at camp this summer,
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cause we got the registrations and our,
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I'm the,
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I'm the pastor here at,
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at the church where queer camp takes place.
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And so I get to direct and kind of see how all this stuff comes in and half,
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like half the kids wanted to be in the D and D track this summer.
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We actually had to distribute some of them out to the other tracks.
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So it was kind of equitable.
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And I was like, wow, that's really, uh, wild.
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And then you've got, like, the stuff you saw, the growth of the summer camp stuff.
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And this year,
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especially with the after school program,
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it's the most kids we've ever had sign up,
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the fastest it's ever filled up.
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I'm very grateful that I've got now three additional adult DMs so we can really make some groups.
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Because we have, it's an after school program, we have, like, 60 minutes at max.
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So,
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like,
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it's a tight,
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you know,
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you get a little bit of action,
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you get a little bit of,
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you know,
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whatever else you want to have.
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But the thing that's been different this year is that every single kid,
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we always do like a hands up if you've played,
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hands up if you've heard of the game.
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Sometimes they hadn't.
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They had just been signed up by their parents or that,
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you know,
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they just needed a place on Tuesday afternoons.
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But this year, everybody's hands up.
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And then half the kids had already played.
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And so we're already on to character sheets.
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which is like a month or two faster than the past couple of years.
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Like we have to like ease in.
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I designed a whole simplified one just to kind of reading comprehension and all that.
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But these kids,
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literally one of the kids who was also one of my campers this summer that we always,
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you know,
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you got to let them get out on the playground for a little bit just to run some
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energy off because it's the end of the day.
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He is sprinting around the playground playing with his friends with his fist
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white-knuckling his character sheet that he has already done.
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And just absolutely, and not letting go of that.
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But in no way does it have anything to do with what they're doing on the playground.
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He is just ready.
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And it's wild how exponential it's been.
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Mm-hmm.
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yeah yeah or like we have i just we've been doing a weekly wednesday night thing uh
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that's a lot of the kids who come are from camp and last week one kid walked in
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with a bag of dice and held it up and waved it and i was like are you saying that
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you want to play dnd tonight and they were like yes and so then i was
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scan the group, how many of you guys would want to join in a game of D&D just on the spot tonight?
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And we got seven.
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Over half the group wanted to play, three of whom had never played before.
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And then...
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the technology is so funny.
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So one of the kids who'd never played before found a little tool right away online.
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I was like, we need to roll up third level characters.
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I want you guys to play with third level characters.
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And within minutes he had found a little like generator to create.
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And he's got, he's hooked up to our printer and he's printed out seven characters.
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He's even special ordering characters, you know, like I want to be a dragon born warlock or whatever.
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And he's got that rolled up and
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within 10 minutes while I'm making grilled cheese sandwiches he has all the
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character sheets up and ready to go this is a kid who hasn't even ever played
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before and then we I've really leaned in on the whole idea of you don't teach the
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rules you just start playing and then you catch up on the rules and so that's what
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we did and one kid at one point was like wait a second what are we doing you know
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so then we paused you're just gonna choose your actions and we'll tell you if you
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have to roll a die and
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But just wild.
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That would not have happened, I don't think, five or ten years ago in quite the same way.
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Certainly with kids you can explain because you can think of a dozen different
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video game franchises that are pulling mechanics straight from D&D.
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So if they've played this,
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that,
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or the other game,
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or even something like Baldur's Gate,
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which is just D&D the game.
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Like tons of these kids have already had experience through video games and they're
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just like,
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oh,
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it's like the turn based.
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I got Final Fantasy.
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Yep.
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Got it.
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And they're in,
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you know,
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or like I had a kid that was it was first year at camp or first year club was like,
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I want to be linked.
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We were like, absolutely.
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I think you'd be a ranger.
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And like,
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we're just off to the races because he just wants to be linked because it's his
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favorite thing in the world.
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Right.
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So you just make it happen.
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You know,
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it just as much as the kid that's like,
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I want to be a half tiger,
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half fallen angel with broken wings.
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And like, you just, it's the best part of it because you can be like, absolutely.
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We're going to make that happen.
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Like fallen angel, half cat.
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No problem.
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Got it.
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Yeah.
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You know?
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Yeah.
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Cause like these kids spend their entire days being told no.
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And we have an opportunity to be like, yeah, absolutely, let's try it.
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Yeah,
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Jeremy Crawford in the little introduction to the new D&D rules,
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first thing he says is like,
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adapt the rules how you want so that you guys have fun at the table.
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Rule zero.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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Have fun.
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Yeah.
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What else do you think is like making the expansion happen where suddenly it's like
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kind of in the water almost?
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Yeah.
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Is it the movie or?
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The movie didn't hurt.
(00:17:32):
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Certainly.
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Actually, I think Critical Role hurt DMs.
(00:17:39):
Oh, really?
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I get way too many players that come and it's like, well, what is good as Critical Role?
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I'm like, well, I'm not a professional actor.
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Yeah, the Mercer effect.
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I've heard that for sure.
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Yeah, the Mercer effect is a great explanation.
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Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, I remember during the pandemic, it really...
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A lot of people were like, I've never played, but I've watched Critical Role.
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And I'm like,
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okay,
(00:18:04):
well,
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this is not going to be quite as good as that,
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but it's going to be a lot of fun.
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Because, you know, we're not a bunch of professional actors.
(00:18:14):
It's Frank Face.
(00:18:14):
It probably rehearsed.
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I'm not saying anything.
(00:18:18):
But I do see that it brought a lot of people in.
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And the movie, I think, was almost like legitimized D&D.
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Because I think everybody thought that was going to be the biggest flop.
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And just so, you know, hokey.
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And it was just hugely popular with people that had never even thought about playing D&D.
(00:18:39):
Oh, yeah.
(00:18:40):
I think it kind of raised the cool factor quite a bit.
(00:18:44):
I could talk about the movie for just an hour.
(00:18:48):
Yeah.
(00:18:49):
Just Michelle Rodriguez for an hour.
(00:18:50):
Yeah.
(00:18:52):
Yeah.
(00:18:52):
I think, I think critical role.
(00:18:55):
I think the adventure zone,
(00:18:56):
certainly,
(00:18:57):
especially like kind of the inroads in the queer community,
(00:18:59):
I feel like that the adventure zone,
(00:19:01):
but also like this next generation and the ones that are starting to have
(00:19:09):
buying power or at least like getting to make their own independent decisions are very much experience.
(00:19:15):
It's about experiences as much as it is about a product.
(00:19:19):
And so if you can, it's that we're crafting something unique, we're crafting something.
(00:19:25):
It literally will only exist in this moment.
(00:19:27):
When the books close, it's gone.
(00:19:30):
I think that the younger Snapchat, right?
(00:19:33):
I think the younger generations are appreciating that more than,
(00:19:37):
um,
(00:19:37):
than say like a more,
(00:19:39):
a more pro we have,
(00:19:40):
we have done something and it has resulted in this in the same way that like,
(00:19:45):
if you,
(00:19:45):
it,
(00:19:46):
it is difficult.
(00:19:48):
It was more difficult,
(00:19:49):
but it's difficult to explain to people who think it's a board game that like the,
(00:19:53):
you know,
(00:19:53):
the monopoly board comes out and there's a big stack of money and the little houses
(00:19:56):
go here.
(00:19:56):
And like, that's a game to everybody.
(00:19:59):
And then you tell them like, no, really, it's just, we're going to sit around and
(00:20:02):
make up a story together that also involves goblins,
(00:20:05):
you know,
(00:20:06):
it's,
(00:20:06):
um,
(00:20:07):
it,
(00:20:07):
it can be,
(00:20:08):
it can be a challenge for people.
(00:20:09):
Cause they're like, there's not the, you get the goblin thing.
(00:20:11):
And I'm like,
(00:20:12):
you can actually literally get the little goblin figures and you can spend all the,
(00:20:15):
Ooh,
(00:20:16):
the things you can do with the goblin figures,
(00:20:18):
but like,
(00:20:18):
you don't have to,
(00:20:19):
you know,
(00:20:20):
and it's,
(00:20:21):
it's freeing.
(00:20:22):
I think,
(00:20:23):
especially for online communities,
(00:20:25):
um,
(00:20:26):
especially for like,
(00:20:28):
um,
(00:20:28):
like jail,
(00:20:29):
like you were saying that the disabled community to have like such
(00:20:32):
an outlet for a game that lets you be whatever you want to be was waiting for its moment, I think.
(00:20:43):
And there are also parents who are passing it on to their kids.
(00:20:46):
Totally.
(00:20:47):
So that's what I hear from a lot of kids when they check out our D&D books is,
(00:20:51):
oh yeah,
(00:20:52):
my dad is going to start a game soon,
(00:20:54):
and so I want to read up on this.
(00:20:57):
I'm trying to make my character stop playing.
(00:20:59):
There's also some really great official D&D comics right now.
(00:21:04):
Dungeon Club and Table Titans Club is coming out now, too.
(00:21:08):
And those are very popular and give them kind of an in.
(00:21:12):
Yeah.
(00:21:14):
The Adventure Zone was one, too, right?
(00:21:17):
Yeah.
(00:21:17):
Actual plays in general.
(00:21:19):
Totally.
(00:21:20):
Yeah.
(00:21:20):
Cause I think the adventure zone, like it has never been called like an accurate play podcast.
(00:21:25):
You know,
(00:21:25):
I think that the whole point has been the story and the relationship and just the,
(00:21:31):
the mechanics of the fun they're clearly having.
(00:21:33):
That's what's selling it.
(00:21:35):
Cause like you certainly have kids,
(00:21:37):
younger players and older players who are like,
(00:21:39):
want to focus on the mechanics and want to focus on the math and the rules.
(00:21:44):
But also there needs to be that balance.
(00:21:46):
Yeah.
(00:21:47):
Like you were saying, let rule zero.
(00:21:49):
Man, we've got to have fun.
(00:21:52):
Yeah.
(00:21:53):
I have just found it remarkable.
(00:21:55):
I always think I'm so lucky that in my 40s and 50s, I've had the chance with...
(00:22:04):
With kids,
(00:22:05):
and it's because of my own kids and their interest in it,
(00:22:09):
but at least in our makeup,
(00:22:13):
they want to play.
(00:22:14):
None of them have wanted to DM.
(00:22:16):
So I've ended up in this fun role of getting to be a DM for different age groups of kids.
(00:22:21):
And it's always just been remarkable to me that kids actually want to show up.
(00:22:25):
Like we just played last night.
(00:22:27):
They want to show up and for three hours sit at a table and just do this imaginative thing.
(00:22:33):
Because...
(00:22:35):
I just, it boggles my mind.
(00:22:37):
Because a lot of times the kids aren't getting together outside of that,
(00:22:41):
you know,
(00:22:41):
like,
(00:22:41):
especially with the pandemic and kind of the whole intensive parenting thing,
(00:22:46):
the idea of like free time and hanging out together.
(00:22:49):
But it's really fun.
(00:22:52):
I study a lot of game theory in my professional life.
(00:22:56):
And one of the things we like to look at is
(00:22:59):
You know,
(00:23:00):
games seem like this very liberating,
(00:23:02):
you know,
(00:23:02):
freedom sort of break from reality kind of thing,
(00:23:05):
but most games have very rigid rules,
(00:23:08):
especially board games in particular.
(00:23:12):
And one of the things that,
(00:23:13):
even with video games,
(00:23:15):
we still run into,
(00:23:15):
like,
(00:23:16):
there are just these hard and fast rules.
(00:23:18):
No matter what you do,
(00:23:19):
you can't jump beyond this point,
(00:23:21):
or you can't access this level until you do these things.
(00:23:25):
I mean...
(00:23:26):
And then when you sit a bunch of kids down at a table with a tabletop RPG,
(00:23:31):
and especially if you go with this rule zero,
(00:23:34):
we're just going to have fun with this and see what happens.
(00:23:38):
All of a sudden, all those rules go out the window.
(00:23:40):
There's no barriers.
(00:23:41):
There's nothing corralling their imagination anymore.
(00:23:45):
And that's something we saw at camp this summer.
(00:23:48):
It was like kids during the D&D games were throwing some stuff at me that I was just like,
(00:23:54):
Okay, always say yes, always say yes, always say yes.
(00:23:57):
Can I say yes to that?
(00:23:58):
Okay, how are we going to make this work?
(00:24:00):
Because I want this to work for this kid.
(00:24:04):
And so I think in a lot of ways,
(00:24:07):
you know,
(00:24:08):
RPGs,
(00:24:08):
tabletop RPGs take the reins off and really let their imagination run wild for a while,
(00:24:14):
whereas most games actually...
(00:24:16):
are kind of designed to actually put you in a very rigid way of thinking,
(00:24:19):
you know,
(00:24:20):
these are the rules and they're actually so finite that we can put it in a two or
(00:24:24):
three page book and give you a board and say,
(00:24:26):
play it this way every time.
(00:24:28):
But with D and D,
(00:24:29):
I mean,
(00:24:30):
you were talking about fathers a minute ago and yeah,
(00:24:34):
I remember being like probably about eight and getting a hold of a basic box set of
(00:24:41):
D and D at a garage sale and
(00:24:43):
And like getting my dad, like, I want to play this, you know, you help me figure this out.
(00:24:49):
And like an hour later, he just came back and was like, this is a game that doesn't have any ending.
(00:24:53):
I'm not messing with this.
(00:24:58):
And from that point on, I was just kind of like, yeah, this is a lot different.
(00:25:03):
This is not Monopoly.
(00:25:04):
Yeah.
(00:25:05):
It's a game with no end conditions.
(00:25:07):
You can't win it.
(00:25:08):
Yeah.
(00:25:09):
Yeah.
(00:25:10):
And for, you know, and nothing against my father, I mean, but.
(00:25:13):
for his generation had never really messed with anything like that.
(00:25:16):
I mean, they're, they're used to like card games.
(00:25:19):
Yeah.
(00:25:20):
Um, that was something that was just mind boggling to them.
(00:25:24):
And as I've gotten older and really studied a lot of this stuff,
(00:25:28):
I realized that,
(00:25:29):
you know,
(00:25:30):
if you really want to foster like creativity and kids and things like that,
(00:25:34):
I mean,
(00:25:35):
the best thing you can do is just give them a blank sheet of paper and some crayons.
(00:25:37):
Um,
(00:25:39):
And I think D&D is just kind of the game version of the blank sheet of paper and crayons for most kids.
(00:25:45):
So I have a little bit of a counter to that,
(00:25:47):
which is just that for someone with social issues or someone who wants to explore things,
(00:25:55):
having some constraints,
(00:25:56):
having the rules also provides like a scaffold.
(00:26:00):
So like, I am not myself doing this.
(00:26:04):
I am my character and trying to,
(00:26:08):
use that as a social outlet instead of just, Hey, uh, how are you?
(00:26:14):
Who are you?
(00:26:15):
What do you like?
(00:26:16):
Um, it creates a kind of shield almost.
(00:26:20):
Well,
(00:26:21):
and it really helps,
(00:26:22):
uh,
(00:26:22):
with reading fundamentals as well,
(00:26:24):
especially,
(00:26:24):
um,
(00:26:24):
I knew I grew up with a couple of people that had,
(00:26:29):
you know,
(00:26:30):
issues with that.
(00:26:31):
And,
(00:26:32):
basically any time they would see their light up about something,
(00:26:35):
they would put that in front of them again and again.
(00:26:37):
So I had a friend that
(00:26:40):
I was so jealous because he was getting all the D&D handbooks from his mom.
(00:26:43):
We'd just go out and buy them.
(00:26:45):
But it was getting him to read and helping establish some fundamentals that...
(00:26:50):
I mean,
(00:26:51):
I think the other thing about D&D is it is kind of scaffolded in a way where
(00:26:56):
there's no way you can play it with all the rules the first time.
(00:27:00):
Oh, no.
(00:27:00):
You know,
(00:27:01):
it's going to take you a good year before you're to the point where you're using,
(00:27:04):
like,
(00:27:05):
all the rules.
(00:27:05):
But...
(00:27:07):
it's, it's enough there that gets you started.
(00:27:09):
And like you were saying,
(00:27:10):
you can,
(00:27:12):
you can have the constraints that you need and you can build on that from there.
(00:27:15):
I mean, if you don't, if you get tired of the lawyer's handbook, there's 30 other books.
(00:27:19):
And there's a lot of fun creativity with looking at the constraints and figuring
(00:27:23):
out how far you can stretch them.
(00:27:25):
Precisely.
(00:27:26):
Yeah.
(00:27:28):
I,
(00:27:28):
one of the things that I've been trying to get the district district to pay more
(00:27:32):
attention to is one of the new,
(00:27:35):
or like the,
(00:27:35):
you know,
(00:27:36):
it's a,
(00:27:36):
it's a,
(00:27:37):
It's a buzzword in education right now is SEL, social emotional learning.
(00:27:42):
And that's all the game is.
(00:27:44):
And the thing that I've been pitching to the district is when the game is over, so are the consequences.
(00:27:50):
So you learn how to win.
(00:27:54):
You learn how to lose.
(00:27:55):
You learn about recognizing skill sets for the problem.
(00:28:00):
You recognize negotiation tactics, what goes wrong, what goes right.
(00:28:05):
And I like the,
(00:28:06):
the example I give is like,
(00:28:07):
you might not have been able to negotiate with the goblin King,
(00:28:10):
but you're going to be able to negotiate with Susan the next day,
(00:28:14):
you know,
(00:28:15):
with no consequences.
(00:28:16):
You know, if, if things go badly in D and D it rarely has real world repercussions.
(00:28:23):
And so it's, it's exactly what y'all were talking about.
(00:28:26):
Not only do you get to say yes and let's figure it out, but I think it's just as important to,
(00:28:32):
To say, like, sometimes the dice are going to say no.
(00:28:34):
Sometimes I'm going to say no.
(00:28:37):
And you've got to figure that out.
(00:28:39):
Yeah.
(00:28:40):
And the kids also... Well, frankly, they just have such a limited income, too.
(00:28:45):
One of the other things I've noticed is they are so much better at just coming up
(00:28:51):
with stuff on their own and not going out and buying 5E campaigns that are going to
(00:28:57):
cost $30 or $40 that they don't have.
(00:29:01):
And one of the things...
(00:29:03):
At camp this year,
(00:29:04):
I had several conversations with several kids about D&D because it was just the
(00:29:09):
biggest subject,
(00:29:10):
but so many of them have just created their own campaigns,
(00:29:16):
just encyclopedias of races and all that stuff that I used to do the same thing
(00:29:22):
when I was a kid out in necessity.
(00:29:24):
I was like, I don't have 40 bucks for this book, so we're just going to make our own.
(00:29:28):
It's a game.
(00:29:28):
We've got the core rules.
(00:29:29):
That's all we need.
(00:29:31):
When we start the club every year,
(00:29:33):
I make sure to send out the PDF that Wizards of the Coast keeps on the site.
(00:29:38):
That's the basic rules, and it's 200 pages.
(00:29:42):
It's a ton for a third grader.
(00:29:43):
That's a lot.
(00:29:45):
Also, even just the OGL is just everything without the pictures.
(00:29:49):
There's like 400 pages of the OGL.
(00:29:54):
There's a lot of resources that are legal.
(00:29:58):
You can put whatever you want into Google, and most...
(00:30:01):
5e stuff is available but i mean they are doing the diligence to put out quite a
(00:30:06):
lot more than any certainly third or fourth grader can comprehend and well and one
(00:30:11):
of the things like you were saying that you you wouldn't be able to run the full
(00:30:16):
the full rule set initially i think also you can think about that and and i teach
(00:30:21):
the kids that it's kind of like a video game that like we can play this on easy
(00:30:25):
medium and hard like
(00:30:27):
I'm never going to make you worried about encumbrance.
(00:30:31):
Or if you packed rations.
(00:30:33):
That's not something we can deal with in 60 minutes on a Tuesday.
(00:30:37):
In the same way that I tell him,
(00:30:40):
like Legend of Zelda,
(00:30:42):
Link can't really hold 999 apples,
(00:30:46):
but he can just keep what he needs.
(00:30:49):
And that's how you can also play D&D.
(00:30:52):
Spell components is a thing too with kids.
(00:30:54):
We're like, that's tough for adults.
(00:30:57):
You know, so you can you have to negotiate it in your own way to the situation.
(00:31:01):
I'm curious to see there's a lot of dialogue right now with the kind of the
(00:31:09):
specifically the D&D talking heads.
(00:31:14):
about this transition to the new edition,
(00:31:16):
because they're worried that what the goal is,
(00:31:18):
is to have it go all online.
(00:31:21):
Cause you know,
(00:31:21):
they want people to go to an online tabletop and they want people to go to,
(00:31:24):
uh,
(00:31:25):
using D and D beyond for their character creation.
(00:31:28):
And I do think that that's fun on one level because any kid can just get a D and D beyond account.
(00:31:35):
They can plug in a few things and it will do all the stuff that's in the manual for them,
(00:31:39):
just like on the spot.
(00:31:40):
And that's handy.
(00:31:43):
We used to do that with core rules back in second edition.
(00:31:46):
Get on the little program and I had GMs who would say,
(00:31:50):
you have 60 seconds to roll as many times as you want.
(00:31:52):
At the end of 60 seconds, whatever you have is what you have.
(00:31:56):
That's a fun way to do it.
(00:31:57):
Oh, wow.
(00:31:57):
So there was like an online creation thing.
(00:31:59):
It wasn't online.
(00:32:00):
It was on disk.
(00:32:02):
Okay.
(00:32:02):
And it was called core rules.
(00:32:04):
And you could check off which splats you wanted to use and make a character.
(00:32:09):
That's cool.
(00:32:10):
Yeah.
(00:32:10):
Uh-huh.
(00:32:12):
Yeah, so I mean, I think that that's fine.
(00:32:15):
But what I have noticed back to the literacy thing is like my own kids, they love these books and they
(00:32:23):
They don't necessarily read a lot of other books,
(00:32:25):
but they've literally memorized multiple volumes of the player's handbook and then
(00:32:29):
the little extra sidecar stuff.
(00:32:31):
Oh, and earmark them, bookmark them.
(00:32:33):
I've seen copies of your books.
(00:32:36):
They have been tabbed, tabbed, everything.
(00:32:39):
Yeah.
(00:32:40):
And that's kind of cool.
(00:32:41):
They'll just have them up in their...
(00:32:44):
room and just be like,
(00:32:46):
they know how to use the index and they know how to go back and forth between volumes.
(00:32:49):
And that's, that's valuable.
(00:32:51):
It is valuable.
(00:32:52):
Now the one, the college group.
(00:32:54):
So my oldest is now at the university and he's like the D and D club at the
(00:33:00):
university is too big for them.
(00:33:02):
They're just like,
(00:33:02):
Oh,
(00:33:02):
it's way too many people,
(00:33:04):
but they've got their little group and they're going to play,
(00:33:07):
um,
(00:33:07):
here now.
(00:33:08):
And they actually decided, they said they're going old school.
(00:33:12):
And by going old school, what they meant was everybody has to make a character on paper.
(00:33:17):
Because he always probably makes it on paper, but a lot of them use this stuff online.
(00:33:23):
So now the whole group had to go print character sheets and actually... Old school, man.
(00:33:28):
That's old school.
(00:33:29):
I think anybody that's had Steam or anything else where there's digital media
(00:33:33):
that's available,
(00:33:34):
I've had games disappear because licensing...
(00:33:38):
Agreements have changed and just general, you know, weird decisions.
(00:33:44):
So that's why I've got to have the book.
(00:33:47):
I can't just rely on it being online because I can't be at the whim of whoever's in
(00:33:52):
charge of Wizards of the Coast right now.
(00:33:54):
Right.
(00:33:55):
Now, really interesting is I don't think that most of the time anyone plays D&D at NWA games.
(00:34:03):
day um and i think part of that is that it's so easy to access dnd otherwise yeah
(00:34:12):
and so a lot of the rgms will be people who are running a dnd game but they've just
(00:34:18):
got in a kickstarter or they heard about this game dread and they want to run it
(00:34:23):
and they want to try it and so that's we're a venue for that
(00:34:26):
Yeah, because it's monthly.
(00:34:28):
It's monthly.
(00:34:28):
It's a one shot.
(00:34:29):
It's no commitment.
(00:34:30):
Yeah.
(00:34:31):
But there's like a whole group around it now,
(00:34:34):
of which I include myself one,
(00:34:37):
who are really into paying attention to all the different kinds of rules that are around.
(00:34:41):
So there's a really wide spectrum of.
(00:34:43):
Oh, yes.
(00:34:44):
So my husband and two other guys on the discord like to post their
(00:34:50):
deliveries.
(00:34:51):
And so anytime they get some new books in,
(00:34:53):
maybe they backed it,
(00:34:55):
maybe they got in on drive-thru,
(00:34:56):
they'll post a picture of their acquisitions because there's kind of a,
(00:35:00):
I don't want to say hoard,
(00:35:03):
a collecting.
(00:35:04):
Collectors, yeah.
(00:35:04):
Yeah.
(00:35:05):
Just people who like to read rules and experience a new system in their brain, even if they never
(00:35:13):
Get it to the table.
(00:35:13):
Get it to the table.
(00:35:14):
And they're good books to have, though, because, you know, unlike a... And you get ideas for other books.
(00:35:20):
Yeah.
(00:35:21):
I mean,
(00:35:21):
unlike,
(00:35:21):
you know,
(00:35:22):
The Great Gatsby or something like that,
(00:35:24):
you're going to read it once,
(00:35:25):
you're going to put it on the shelf,
(00:35:26):
you're never going to touch it again.
(00:35:27):
But, I mean, most of the time these RPG books, for one thing, they're not standard-sized books.
(00:35:33):
They're always huge.
(00:35:35):
Well, we have a lot that are digest-sized.
(00:35:37):
Yeah, they like to... The indies, especially now, are kind of shrinking down just for the publication.
(00:35:43):
costs, I'm sure.
(00:35:44):
But yeah, it was always like we were joking about yours being just indexed to death.
(00:35:51):
You know, this is a book that you're going to pull out.
(00:35:53):
I mean,
(00:35:54):
D&D,
(00:35:54):
Wizards of the Coast must have spent,
(00:35:56):
you know,
(00:35:57):
probably years just deciding which pictures,
(00:36:00):
which artwork was going to go in these because they know people are going to look
(00:36:04):
at that page 50 million times and see that piece of art every time they look at it.
(00:36:09):
So
(00:36:10):
But yeah,
(00:36:11):
they do become like a collector's thing to the point that I do mostly Roll20 stuff
(00:36:16):
as far as what I buy.
(00:36:17):
Because I like the digital format.
(00:36:19):
I like the ease of using it for tabletop.
(00:36:22):
But even I turned around and forked over my $40 or $50 for the new Player's
(00:36:28):
Handbook just because they had the variant cover that I liked so much.
(00:36:33):
But it is also one of those things like...
(00:36:36):
i'm playing this so much now i kind of i feel i almost feel hypocritical if i don't
(00:36:40):
have one as as a gamer and a collector it's just like yeah you can't i can't go
(00:36:47):
into dnd without a player's handbook i haven't got i haven't even gotten to look
(00:36:52):
into any of it what what have y'all found different from the the 5e and with this
(00:36:57):
one
(00:36:58):
Well,
(00:36:58):
the main point of it is they've tried to bring the core stuff that was spread
(00:37:06):
around multiple books into one easily accessible player's handbook.
(00:37:11):
So the big thing is a restructuring.
(00:37:13):
They moved all the main table rules up front rather than putting the character
(00:37:18):
creation up front so that you see how to play right away.
(00:37:23):
And then they consolidated the stuff with the classes that were spread among,
(00:37:28):
you know,
(00:37:28):
because there were those extra books that came out.
(00:37:30):
So if you wanted to create a wizard,
(00:37:33):
but the subclass was in Tasha's and you had to have these two books and go back and forth.
(00:37:38):
Did they do that with the species that we saw in Tasha's and like, like turtles and stuff?
(00:37:43):
Yeah, some of that kind of stuff.
(00:37:45):
But also it's not so thick that they fit everything in.
(00:37:49):
So my son opened it and immediately noticed what they hadn't brought in.
(00:37:53):
So there's still going to have to be stuff around.
(00:37:55):
What was that, if I may ask?
(00:37:57):
Well, you know, like in the new book, there's like the subclasses.
(00:38:02):
So if you look at cleric, a lot of the domains that clerics have are in there.
(00:38:08):
But there's one core domain,
(00:38:09):
I forget which one you mentioned,
(00:38:11):
that was in the original player's handbook,
(00:38:13):
but now is not in this one.
(00:38:14):
Because I just don't think they could have fit all the domains.
(00:38:18):
I heard invocations for warlords, some of them are missing.
(00:38:21):
Yeah.
(00:38:23):
They just couldn't.
(00:38:23):
And I get it because you would have maybe had a thousand page book if you would have tried to fit.
(00:38:29):
Have you seen the Exalted third edition book?
(00:38:31):
It is like in a thousand page book.
(00:38:33):
Is it?
(00:38:33):
Yeah.
(00:38:34):
Because they put everything into one.
(00:38:37):
Yeah.
(00:38:38):
Wow.
(00:38:38):
Oh, no.
(00:38:39):
I mean, everything core into one.
(00:38:41):
They still have a bunch of splats.
(00:38:47):
so what they've said is that they've streamlined character creation I think that's
(00:38:51):
true they've added some stuff that's pretty fun there's some boons when you go post
(00:39:00):
20th level there's some there's a bunch of new stuff around weapons so that weapons
(00:39:07):
have weapon mastery features that you can use
(00:39:14):
there's now feats that come with your origin story so that you have special
(00:39:20):
attributes that come which i think in 5e the background it didn't really give you
(00:39:26):
well yeah i guess it gave you stats yeah but this actually gives you feats yeah and
(00:39:31):
then like proficiency is some flavor stuff like i know that like like urchin has
(00:39:36):
like a pet mouse or something like that which like
(00:39:38):
Sometimes, man, a kid will just glom onto that and will be like, I will die for Gerald or whatever.
(00:39:43):
Me and Gerald are taking on the world.
(00:39:47):
What I'm still confused about,
(00:39:49):
and I just don't know how this is going to go,
(00:39:51):
is we've never had a new rule set that wasn't a new rule set before.
(00:39:56):
So this one is not a new set of rules.
(00:39:59):
It's simply an update on... Does it feel like 3.5?
(00:40:03):
I was going to say if it was 5.5.
(00:40:05):
Yeah.
(00:40:06):
I haven't decided yet.
(00:40:08):
I thought Tasha was 5.5 and this was 5.75.
(00:40:13):
I don't play D&D.
(00:40:14):
That could be.
(00:40:18):
One thing I'm curious about,
(00:40:19):
going back to the kids thing,
(00:40:21):
so we have all these indie games that some of us love.
(00:40:27):
Are they getting picked up by younger players or is this a nerd out on systems
(00:40:35):
thing that those of us that are in...
(00:40:37):
that are dms and older do i that's one thing i wonder well i think to some extent
(00:40:44):
we're as adults we're kind of responsible for some of that um because i know a
(00:40:49):
queer camp we went out of our way to introduce the game queerz right um which the
(00:40:55):
kids just loved and really jumped on if you're unfamiliar with this this was uh
(00:41:03):
Mushi is the author.
(00:41:06):
It was based on a manga by Isa.
(00:41:09):
I'm not sure how you pronounce it.
(00:41:10):
It's basically almost like Queer Power Rangers.
(00:41:17):
It's a Super Sentai game.
(00:41:22):
One of the things that really made me want to push for it so hard to write Queer
(00:41:28):
Camp was it really turns the whole
(00:41:33):
gaming dynamic on its head um because we get so you locked into like dnd or even
(00:41:39):
with vampire and some of this other stuff that's super heavy role playing they're
(00:41:42):
still you know like killing and swords and guns and whatever uh this game is
(00:41:49):
actually geared towards like doing battle and everything like you normally would
(00:41:53):
just to get to someone's inner conscious so you can fight their intolerance and rid
(00:41:58):
them of it and save them
(00:42:01):
that that specific rule is the best thing ever yeah you actually go to a different
(00:42:05):
zone and you have this whole thing that happens in their conscience and then you
(00:42:09):
come back to the real world that's so cool having it's like what it's like
(00:42:15):
persuasion on steroids yeah something uh if you if you know we always make fun of
(00:42:20):
that movie inception but it always reminds me that movie inception is yeah because
(00:42:25):
we're going in there we're going to
(00:42:27):
figure out what is,
(00:42:28):
like,
(00:42:28):
the psychological break that happened here to cause this person all these problems.
(00:42:32):
And,
(00:42:32):
I mean,
(00:42:34):
I,
(00:42:35):
you know,
(00:42:35):
not to,
(00:42:36):
you know,
(00:42:38):
too much information about camp or anything,
(00:42:40):
but we were sitting there playing this and there was somebody in the room watching,
(00:42:44):
an adult,
(00:42:45):
and they started getting really choked up watching us play.
(00:42:49):
And I get why, because...
(00:42:51):
The kids were doing something like showing a level of tolerance and empathy that I
(00:42:56):
think kind of gets drowned out of us as we get older and it becomes a little more jaded.
(00:43:00):
And there was just like this pure goodness happening at a table at an RPG,
(00:43:05):
which we see at D&D and everything else.
(00:43:07):
But that was one I remember in particular,
(00:43:10):
just kind of looking up and like,
(00:43:12):
oh,
(00:43:12):
wow,
(00:43:13):
this game really is different.
(00:43:15):
These kids are...
(00:43:18):
These kids are playing a lot differently than even I was prepared for.
(00:43:21):
And we both,
(00:43:22):
as having to run this,
(00:43:24):
kind of had a hard time wrapping our heads around the game system because it was so
(00:43:29):
new and it's very fake-like.
(00:43:32):
It's very much a storyteller game.
(00:43:34):
But watching the kids just run with this idea of like, well, we don't have to kill this person.
(00:43:39):
We can just...
(00:43:42):
save them like be the heroes that were trying to teach these kids to be in the
(00:43:46):
first place so it was very much a very out of the mouths of babes moment for me I
(00:43:53):
know when I was playing but I do I'll never forget looking over and just seeing
(00:43:57):
that adult standing there just like getting really choked up by you know us playing
(00:44:00):
a game how do you deal with a non-violent player like in that same way
(00:44:11):
It's been a challenge for me with the after-school clubs because I've definitely
(00:44:15):
had some kids who are really uptight about it,
(00:44:18):
take it very seriously,
(00:44:20):
and having to figure out how to.
(00:44:24):
The first time it really happened,
(00:44:25):
we were already in a campaign,
(00:44:27):
and so there was a conflict with the other third and fourth graders who were kind
(00:44:33):
of murder hobos,
(00:44:34):
as kids that day can swing that way for sure.
(00:44:39):
And it was a cause of some real conflict.
(00:44:43):
And then I incorporated that into Session Zero and tried to find different ways,
(00:44:51):
dungeoneering or palace intrigue or something like that.
(00:44:55):
But how have you helped characters that want to be nonviolent?
(00:45:01):
Well, with D&D in particular, I always remind them everything can be non-lethal.
(00:45:07):
And I remember there was one kid in camp that just over and over,
(00:45:11):
he's like,
(00:45:11):
well,
(00:45:12):
apparently fireballs can be non-lethal.
(00:45:15):
And I'm like, well, yeah, if you aim them right.
(00:45:19):
So there is always just bringing that rule out.
(00:45:22):
I mean, it's very much in the rules there, but...
(00:45:25):
Also,
(00:45:26):
just I know we had talked a little bit about some of the things we saw at camp
(00:45:30):
coming up with D&D with kids just,
(00:45:33):
you know,
(00:45:33):
throwing stuff at us that we didn't have rules for and kind of having to roll with that,
(00:45:39):
especially,
(00:45:40):
you know,
(00:45:41):
kids that would just say something like,
(00:45:43):
you know,
(00:45:44):
I want to make them dance.
(00:45:45):
Right.
(00:45:47):
you know, just like in the middle of a battle or something.
(00:45:49):
And it's like, okay, you know, how can we figure out how to do this?
(00:45:52):
And I think there's a lot of fun in that sometimes just,
(00:45:56):
you almost have to be MacGyver sometimes to figure out a way not to kill people in D&D.
(00:46:02):
But when we started playing a game like Queers that really pushes you to get away
(00:46:07):
from the nonviolence,
(00:46:09):
and then there's just other things.
(00:46:11):
I mean, we were talking earlier before the show about the artificer being missing from
(00:46:17):
the new player's handbook.
(00:46:19):
And one of my things immediately was, well, I don't allow guns in my game anyway.
(00:46:24):
So, you know, I'm not going to miss the artificer too much.
(00:46:28):
And that was always kind of one of those things too,
(00:46:31):
where it's like,
(00:46:32):
okay,
(00:46:33):
you know,
(00:46:34):
what are we letting the kids play to some extent too?
(00:46:37):
So like Twilight 2000 has made a comeback and,
(00:46:40):
Which is really odd to me because now it's like this really weird retro game that I
(00:46:46):
very much remember as like this is the not too distant future.
(00:46:51):
And I've seen it's been really popular and I know there's some kids getting into that.
(00:46:55):
And I'm like, this is all military machine guns, tanks, handguns.
(00:47:01):
But then there's stuff like Magical Kitties Save the Day, which is aimed at children.
(00:47:07):
Wander Home is another one.
(00:47:08):
Wander Home is awesome.
(00:47:10):
Um, so I think sometimes D and D doesn't have to be the game.
(00:47:15):
Yep.
(00:47:15):
For sure.
(00:47:16):
Um,
(00:47:16):
because I've definitely run into a bunch of women specifically that when I
(00:47:21):
mentioned that I'm a gamer and that I like RPG is the best,
(00:47:24):
they'll say,
(00:47:25):
Oh,
(00:47:26):
I tried D and D,
(00:47:27):
but I didn't like it.
(00:47:29):
And I have to say that's not the only game out there.
(00:47:32):
Yeah, precisely.
(00:47:33):
Well, and I've, I have heard so many stories of,
(00:47:37):
the overbearing D&D playing partner who is not maybe providing the best table experience for the newbie.
(00:47:49):
To counter what you were saying,
(00:47:51):
I find that I like working within the challenge of putting this in 5th edition.
(00:47:59):
It started as a non-violent campaign and it's now one that I use a lot with...
(00:48:04):
K through second players is you're literally just finding a lost cat in the market.
(00:48:11):
And it's all about who you're talking to and how you talk to people.
(00:48:17):
And so I think you can keep, and you're still rolling for different things.
(00:48:21):
The dice mechanics are still in there, but there's not a single weapon in that whole one shot.
(00:48:27):
You know, there's, there's a ton of like weird dungeoneering stuff.
(00:48:30):
And I had some characters, some,
(00:48:32):
younger players who were really into like the Royal family and like in real life.
(00:48:37):
And so they wanted to like,
(00:48:38):
I want to be in a court and figuring out like palace intrigue for a third grader
(00:48:43):
with no violence has been wild.
(00:48:45):
Some of them were okay with poisonings.
(00:48:48):
I will say that's funny.
(00:48:49):
I will say, I think I picked up the, I started picking up this alternative, uh,
(00:48:55):
when I started running Cypher system stuff,
(00:48:59):
because the Cypher system team,
(00:49:03):
like Monty Cook and Shannon Germain and some of that other group,
(00:49:10):
When they left,
(00:49:12):
because they had all written for 3.5 and whatever,
(00:49:14):
and then left and started doing their own thing,
(00:49:16):
they started building a bunch more of consent in gaming type stuff.
(00:49:20):
Oh, they have that great PDF of consent in gaming.
(00:49:24):
And I don't know if they're the first ones to do this,
(00:49:27):
but it's where I was first exposed to it was the material from Cypher System.
(00:49:32):
And Queers has that at the beginning of the game where you can ask your table...
(00:49:39):
what you're okay with there being and not being in the game.
(00:49:42):
Like lines and veils.
(00:49:43):
Yeah.
(00:49:44):
There's a bunch of systems that do that.
(00:49:46):
And I find that to be really useful because then again, it's about the fun.
(00:49:51):
If you've got a whole table of people who just want to, you know, go on a, um, dungeon rampage.
(00:49:58):
Okay.
(00:49:59):
Then, but if the, if you want to rule those kinds of things out, then you can direct in a different way.
(00:50:04):
And the only part that I found is really hard, um,
(00:50:08):
and I think this is true for most systems I've been in,
(00:50:12):
is what's so nice about combat is how clean it is in terms of rules application.
(00:50:19):
You're like, it's your turn.
(00:50:20):
Do you swing your sword?
(00:50:23):
It's a lot harder, even though you can use the same rules in the court, like the king's court,
(00:50:29):
it's a little bit weirder to say like, okay, you're in initiative order, what do you say to the queen?
(00:50:35):
And then- There are systems for that.
(00:50:37):
Yeah, but there are systems for that that are better or worse.
(00:50:43):
But it's for me as a GM,
(00:50:45):
what I would rather do is get the table into more of simply a pure role play mode
(00:50:51):
than trying to navigate all of that with the same rules.
(00:50:56):
But I can see where people who have,
(00:50:57):
especially the people who are still trying to figure out how to be social,
(00:51:01):
it's kind of nice to have a rule that you can apply for how you convince the queen
(00:51:06):
rather than trying to be this amazing actor who...
(00:51:09):
So a rule that I really liked from the adventure system was that if you are playing
(00:51:16):
a very suave character or a character that has quick wit,
(00:51:21):
but you yourself do not feel confident that way,
(00:51:24):
is that
(00:51:25):
if you have this stat or whatever,
(00:51:27):
you can provide some leading lines to the GM before the game that you know the
(00:51:32):
conclusion to.
(00:51:34):
And so you,
(00:51:34):
you set these things up ahead of time so that you can embody that quick wit,
(00:51:40):
but,
(00:51:40):
but you don't have to do it on the spot.
(00:51:43):
You hit up the Dorothy Parker quotes page on Wikipedia.
(00:51:47):
Yeah.
(00:51:47):
Yeah.
(00:51:48):
That's cool.
(00:51:48):
I like that idea.
(00:51:49):
Yeah.
(00:51:51):
Another one that has helped me a lot for role play,
(00:51:54):
and it's the one I'm waiting next week,
(00:51:56):
is the Cypher System team made a whole setting based on Old Gods of Appalachia,
(00:52:03):
which started as just a wonderful horror podcast.
(00:52:10):
It wasn't a gaming podcast.
(00:52:12):
It's just stories.
(00:52:13):
Yeah.
(00:52:15):
by the time you've listened to 15 or 20 episodes of this podcast, you know the world.
(00:52:23):
And so then you want to play in it, which is, that's of course true with a lot of other things too.
(00:52:27):
A lot of games are based on movies or whatever,
(00:52:29):
but somehow that podcast was especially good for me because maybe because it's
(00:52:35):
non-visual and it's,
(00:52:37):
it's all just listening.
(00:52:38):
And so I created, I was able to populate it with a lot of stuff also.
(00:52:43):
Then you've got the cypher system rules, and you can just apply it in the space.
(00:52:46):
Nice.
(00:52:47):
But I've adapted it, so now it's Old Gods of the Ozarks, and it's going to start in the Crescent Hotel.
(00:52:53):
I am so hyped.
(00:52:54):
Yeah, that's awesome.
(00:52:56):
I have already had some people say they can't make this game day, and do you plan?
(00:53:01):
Well,
(00:53:02):
I'm thinking about trying to,
(00:53:03):
and I've actually,
(00:53:04):
I'm friends with Shannon Germain,
(00:53:06):
who's one of the writers for Old Gods of Appalachia.
(00:53:10):
So I've been kind of like feeding her this,
(00:53:12):
like these books about like Ozark religion and folk magic and the Crescent Hotel,
(00:53:17):
just in case she wants to fit it in.
(00:53:19):
Cause they're doing a Kickstarter for a new, like, you know, like a lore volume.
(00:53:23):
So it'd be kind of cool if they expanded.
(00:53:27):
It's hard to leave Appalachia.
(00:53:28):
Right.
(00:53:29):
In that game, because the magic draws people back.
(00:53:37):
It's kind of interesting, but I think they could make it to the Ozarks.
(00:53:42):
Yeah, it definitely lends itself to it.
(00:53:45):
really any anything you want kind of an eldritch horror setting right yeah it
(00:53:49):
definitely plays on the idea of like the rural south and yeah so i think you could
(00:53:55):
easily take that down to new orleans and still have some fun with it totally i
(00:53:59):
think one of the along that lines coyote and crow yeah has a new kickstarter going
(00:54:05):
for their ahutico expansion and that was one that i was a little apprehensive about
(00:54:13):
um
(00:54:15):
they turned the African-American speculative fiction novels of the season into a game a while back.
(00:54:21):
And that was another one I was like,
(00:54:23):
you know,
(00:54:26):
as a white gamer there,
(00:54:27):
you know,
(00:54:28):
there's been a couple of games that have come along like that,
(00:54:30):
that I've been like,
(00:54:31):
I'm not sure where I fit into this now because the games have,
(00:54:36):
well,
(00:54:37):
there's just such a diversity in gaming now.
(00:54:39):
And the Coyote and Crow really,
(00:54:42):
taught me something just from the simple fact,
(00:54:44):
for those of you who don't know,
(00:54:45):
this game's based on the idea that the Americas were never colonized and the native
(00:54:51):
culture was allowed to just basically prosper into a science fiction era,
(00:54:56):
uh,
(00:54:56):
very futuristic.
(00:54:57):
And it reminds me so much of sort of the African American speculative fiction stuff,
(00:55:03):
futurism stuff that's out there.
(00:55:05):
Um, it's really great.
(00:55:07):
But at the very beginning of this book, um,
(00:55:09):
You know, they just have this just blunt, frank discussion with everybody.
(00:55:14):
And they're just, you know, if you're Native American, you're going to have to forget so much stuff here.
(00:55:22):
Because you cannot bring that into this game.
(00:55:24):
It's,
(00:55:24):
you know,
(00:55:25):
if you have experienced this stuff in your real life,
(00:55:28):
you know,
(00:55:28):
just keep in mind,
(00:55:29):
like,
(00:55:29):
we're playing a game where this thing has not colonized.
(00:55:34):
And then at the same time, to everybody else, it's like, you need to understand...
(00:55:39):
like where the line is yeah they put some boundaries around cultural appropriation
(00:55:44):
and stuff i've been nervous to bring it to table i own it and i've never actually
(00:55:48):
played it because i was worried about that at first and i really wanted to take my
(00:55:52):
time of like reading the whole book and making sure that if i was going to host it
(00:55:56):
as a that that was something that the game designers wanted and they they're pretty
(00:56:01):
up front at the beginning that they're fine with other people playing it
(00:56:05):
But I want to make sure I have my, it's almost like it's another set of rules.
(00:56:09):
So there's like the rules of the game,
(00:56:11):
but these are rules of like,
(00:56:12):
how can you,
(00:56:13):
they're meta rules about how can you represent native culture as a non-native person.
(00:56:18):
And that's what makes it to me such a brilliant game because at first I was really
(00:56:24):
nervous about that stuff.
(00:56:26):
And I had some concerns about it.
(00:56:30):
And then later,
(00:56:30):
you know,
(00:56:31):
upon reflection,
(00:56:31):
I was like,
(00:56:32):
I spent more time thinking about playing that game.
(00:56:36):
than probably any other game.
(00:56:38):
Like, I mean, most of the time, if I want to play something, I go get it, I play it.
(00:56:42):
And that was one of the few times I'm like, should I play this game?
(00:56:45):
Can I play this game?
(00:56:47):
And the fact that it challenged me on such a cultural level like that really got me excited about it.
(00:56:55):
Cause it is one of those things where we have to deal with the same thing when we
(00:56:59):
were talking about queers,
(00:57:00):
you know,
(00:57:00):
we have this intersectionality of
(00:57:02):
like culture coming into our games.
(00:57:04):
And with D&D, it's all fantasy and made up.
(00:57:07):
You know, but what happens when like real world stuff starts coming into our games?
(00:57:11):
And so,
(00:57:12):
you know,
(00:57:13):
that's always kind of the problem when you go outside of a fantasy setting,
(00:57:16):
suddenly you do have real world elements that are coming into your game.
(00:57:19):
So like Old Gods of Appalachia,
(00:57:21):
I mean,
(00:57:22):
it's hard to navigate around the racism that would be,
(00:57:27):
you know,
(00:57:27):
inherent in a lot of that culture.
(00:57:29):
Right.
(00:57:30):
Yet at the same time, we managed to do it every time we played.
(00:57:34):
It's never really been an issue.
(00:57:37):
And I started realizing this can be safe spaces to actually play and challenge your
(00:57:44):
cultural beliefs in a way that is not necessarily going to offend people.
(00:57:49):
We don't have to worry about going into the territory of blackface or
(00:57:55):
misappropriation or anything like that with these games.
(00:57:58):
But yet at the same time,
(00:58:00):
I can go and try to get a little insight into what a Native American culture would
(00:58:06):
do if white people had never come along and colonized the country.
(00:58:11):
I like how Zhong Xi does it.
(00:58:14):
They're like, we want you to experience this Chinese American family, but don't use an accent.
(00:58:23):
yeah yeah and what what game is that it's zhongxi you're playing a chinese american
(00:58:28):
family and you are running a restaurant but you also have to deal with supernatural
(00:58:33):
elements like the hobby vampires okay that's fantastic uh-huh that's that's amazing
(00:58:39):
yeah that's cool
(00:58:42):
Why don't we end with this because I think it would be a fun way to end is go
(00:58:45):
around and say what haven't we mentioned?
(00:58:48):
What's a thing that's really on your horizon for next or what you're excited about in gaming?
(00:58:56):
What are you thinking about trying out or leaning into?
(00:59:05):
Well, I discovered Scurvy Buggers from 9th level games a little while back.
(00:59:13):
Polymorph system.
(00:59:13):
Polymorph system.
(00:59:16):
It's a very rules-like game,
(00:59:18):
and it's also a really good entry-level game because each archetype in the game
(00:59:23):
only uses a single die.
(00:59:25):
So if you're playing this one archetype, you'll only use a D4 the whole game.
(00:59:29):
And they've got this great little chart system they come up with that
(00:59:33):
you know,
(00:59:33):
pretty much everybody can do just about everything,
(00:59:36):
but it's going to be harder depending on which dice you roll.
(00:59:38):
And it's, it's really unique system.
(00:59:42):
It is very queer friendly.
(00:59:43):
It was actually designed after the sort of like founder chosen family concept.
(00:59:51):
And there's a lot of history in it, you know, really sort of denoting some of the more queer factors of,
(00:59:58):
pirate life and things like that.
(01:00:01):
They actually used to have laws about male pirates marrying.
(01:00:04):
They had gay marriage and piracy before we had it in this country.
(01:00:08):
So there's a lot of fun stuff there,
(01:00:10):
but we did Muppet Treasure Island at a game day recently,
(01:00:16):
and apparently it was getting very loud.
(01:00:21):
which is always something that's a good sign when somebody's telling you to quiet down.
(01:00:26):
But it was also one of those things,
(01:00:28):
too,
(01:00:29):
I didn't know how that was going to go over because it was adults.
(01:00:31):
I was like, if these were kids, I know they're going to love this.
(01:00:34):
But these were all like grown adults, like middle-aged adults in a lot of cases.
(01:00:40):
And they went nuts for this game.
(01:00:43):
I think you did have one person who started at the table, decided they could not.
(01:00:48):
It was too much.
(01:00:49):
and stuff oh yeah there was one person that was just like i don't think i'm gonna
(01:00:54):
be able to do this we had another person like sensory overload or something well i
(01:00:58):
think they realized it was going to be a little crazier than you know just like a
(01:01:03):
board game um and then the you know what was really funny too is we had somebody in
(01:01:08):
there that was kind of on the other end of it and was
(01:01:12):
I think, you know, kind of stunned by what was taking place with all these adults in the room.
(01:01:16):
But I mean, the minute I said, hey, you know, what animal are you?
(01:01:21):
Because we're Muppets.
(01:01:23):
And it was like you could see the lights, light bulbs going off over their heads.
(01:01:27):
It's like, oh, my God.
(01:01:28):
And by the end of it, I mean, at game day the other night, somebody actually came into the store and.
(01:01:35):
And just came up and was like, that was the most fun I've ever had at game day.
(01:01:40):
That was like one of the best RPGs ever.
(01:01:42):
And I'm like, wow.
(01:01:43):
And that was one of the few times I just came in there and was like, I've got the game.
(01:01:48):
I don't have any plans.
(01:01:49):
I don't have anything.
(01:01:50):
We're just going to totally improv this and see what happens.
(01:01:53):
Yeah, it was a blast.
(01:01:54):
Scurvy Buggers is definitely one I can recommend.
(01:01:58):
Did you do the Tim Curry voice?
(01:02:01):
We actually had said it immediately after the movie.
(01:02:05):
Kermit and Miss Piggy had sailed off, and we were left with all the bad pirates from the movie.
(01:02:11):
that were now good.
(01:02:12):
They all changed their ways.
(01:02:14):
So the first thing they had to figure out is, like, what's a good thing pirates could do?
(01:02:19):
So they decided to go rob the pirate bank, which was held on the ship called the Laladabuti boat.
(01:02:28):
Sure.
(01:02:29):
And we just pretty much went from there,
(01:02:31):
and I'll just say it kind of went downhill from there,
(01:02:34):
but in a very good way.
(01:02:37):
So, yeah, if you're just looking for a really...
(01:02:40):
Fun,
(01:02:40):
rules light,
(01:02:42):
very inclusive kind of game,
(01:02:44):
and one that's definitely geared towards laughter and comedy.
(01:02:48):
Scurvy Boogers is definitely the one I would recommend the most right now.
(01:02:52):
It's really cool.
(01:03:00):
I want to GM more.
(01:03:02):
I sometimes feel really uncomfortable with it.
(01:03:04):
I actually love improv-ing at the table, but the days leading up to improv-ing at the table, I freak out.
(01:03:11):
So I want to do that more.
(01:03:14):
Not freak out, but actually get to the table with very little and just run something.
(01:03:19):
this for fun.
(01:03:21):
Do you have, are you the, is it the introvert phenomenon?
(01:03:23):
Have you ever seen the graph about going to church where it's like introverts having to share the piece?
(01:03:29):
It's like two hours of preparing to share the piece.
(01:03:32):
And then like they shared the piece in church and then it's like the rest of the
(01:03:35):
day is recovering from sharing the piece.
(01:03:37):
Is that every Sunday after a game day?
(01:03:40):
I'm like, well, I am not doing anything.
(01:03:42):
Yeah.
(01:03:42):
Is that right?
(01:03:43):
I am tired.
(01:03:44):
I definitely am the person who's there going, Oh,
(01:03:47):
Hey, welcome.
(01:03:48):
Are you in a game?
(01:03:49):
It's over here.
(01:03:51):
And what kind of games do you like and stuff?
(01:03:52):
And that is exhausting.
(01:03:54):
Well, what's funny is you also run a Monday night, a regular Monday night game night.
(01:04:00):
And Thursday.
(01:04:00):
Every week.
(01:04:02):
At the end of the week, Monday rolls around and I'm like, I am so tired.
(01:04:06):
There's no way I'm going to game night.
(01:04:07):
And every Monday I end up going because...
(01:04:11):
you know,
(01:04:11):
it's such a break for us and such a great thing,
(01:04:14):
but that is something too that,
(01:04:16):
I mean,
(01:04:17):
we have the space to do this kind of stuff.
(01:04:19):
And so like being able to experiment as a GM,
(01:04:22):
I mean,
(01:04:22):
back in the old days,
(01:04:23):
that could cost you friendships,
(01:04:25):
you know,
(01:04:28):
and now we can go to game day and do one shots.
(01:04:31):
And if it doesn't go over well, you know, there's always next month.
(01:04:34):
But, um,
(01:04:36):
Yeah,
(01:04:36):
I think some of the things that have opened up,
(01:04:39):
but also when we were doing the quarantine stuff,
(01:04:42):
I just started doing workshops all the time about DMing.
(01:04:45):
And I was surprised at how many people would jump in on that.
(01:04:49):
Just like thinking, well, I'll get like five or six DMs out of this.
(01:04:52):
And next thing I know, there'd be like 40 people.
(01:04:55):
Is that something you want to do in person?
(01:04:57):
Oh yeah.
(01:04:58):
There is another group around, um,
(01:05:01):
Who's trying to do stuff like that, but it's not going great for them.
(01:05:05):
So maybe we could roll them into something.
(01:05:08):
We used to do that.
(01:05:09):
Like we used to meet once a week and just hang out and sometimes people would run
(01:05:13):
one shots,
(01:05:14):
but that was when we didn't have regular game days.
(01:05:17):
a game day was something where people would go,
(01:05:20):
I kind of feel like hosting a game day and they would throw it down on our message
(01:05:23):
boards and we would get it together.
(01:05:25):
But yeah, I think we were talking earlier about like, you didn't even have anybody to play D&D with.
(01:05:30):
It was like, where did we learn to DM?
(01:05:33):
Because I think back to like my old DMs, they weren't good DMs.
(01:05:37):
Maybe that's why I'm such a good DM now.
(01:05:39):
Yeah.
(01:05:41):
Yeah, access is just such a huge thing.
(01:05:43):
And I think we're in a city,
(01:05:46):
too,
(01:05:47):
where we're fortunate to have this,
(01:05:49):
I mean,
(01:05:51):
for all of our different communities to be able to form.
(01:05:53):
But yeah,
(01:05:54):
there was a time when I couldn't imagine being able to sit around and talk with
(01:05:57):
four or five people about DMing.
(01:06:00):
like there wasn't that many dms well that's honestly how i thought it'd be cool to
(01:06:03):
have this conversation because i was realizing like wow i i have multiple friends
(01:06:09):
who are leading multiple things that are networks of gaming all in a town of like
(01:06:15):
less than a hundred thousand people like that's wild to me and then i know there's
(01:06:19):
these additional you know like what my kids are involved in at the university or
(01:06:22):
the high school or the junior high or whatever um
(01:06:27):
The answer to my own question of what I'm looking forward to or intrigued to try.
(01:06:31):
I have two.
(01:06:34):
One is I feel some responsibility to get on top of the new rules for Dungeons and
(01:06:40):
Dragons because my kids are going to want to keep playing it and I'm going to need
(01:06:44):
to know how to move into that.
(01:06:46):
But the one that I'm actually kind of excited about for this winter is I got the
(01:06:52):
next volume of The One Ring.
(01:06:55):
It's the Moria.
(01:06:57):
And it's literally a whole book just about basically an empty book.
(01:07:05):
mine dwarven mine I don't even know how they came up with like an entire book about
(01:07:10):
an empty mine but they did and so I'm really excited about this idea of like taking
(01:07:14):
an adventuring party into a space that's like abandoned and old and how weird
(01:07:20):
that's going to be like just that's a really unique system too yeah the system is
(01:07:25):
unique because it has three different components there's the traveling component
(01:07:29):
there's the actual event that you experience and then you like kind of like
(01:07:32):
downtime and you
(01:07:34):
play all that out in one session yeah yeah it actually forces you to do a lot of
(01:07:40):
non-combat stuff which a little a little weird when we tried it the first time i i
(01:07:47):
admit i had a little hard time wrapping my head around everything the first night i
(01:07:51):
played it but i that was the thing that really stuck with me about it was basically
(01:07:56):
two-thirds of that game is set up for no combat
(01:08:01):
I mean, it is really just set up to role play, to deal with this idea of traveling.
(01:08:05):
I mean,
(01:08:05):
you know,
(01:08:06):
if you read the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit,
(01:08:08):
I mean,
(01:08:09):
the journey is like,
(01:08:10):
you know,
(01:08:10):
the big thing.
(01:08:11):
So it never dawned on me how much of that got left out because they've had so many token,
(01:08:18):
you know,
(01:08:19):
variations for everything from D&D to their own Middle Earth systems and stuff over
(01:08:24):
the years.
(01:08:24):
Yeah.
(01:08:26):
Um,
(01:08:26):
it wasn't until we played one ring that I was like,
(01:08:28):
this is like the most Tolkien game I think I've ever played.
(01:08:32):
I think it's a, it's a system that finally matches the setting.
(01:08:36):
Yeah.
(01:08:36):
Yeah.
(01:08:36):
That's right.
(01:08:37):
Cause if you read the books, there's a lot of time that's not combat.
(01:08:41):
Yep.
(01:08:41):
Tons.
(01:08:41):
Tons.
(01:08:42):
Yeah.
(01:08:43):
Yeah.
(01:08:43):
Most of the books are not combat.
(01:08:45):
Well, there's a lot of like, so much of the, especially like the fellowship book is like them just being,
(01:08:52):
boistering each other just being like we can do this right like we've got this and
(01:08:57):
like so much of that is in gameplay as well just being able to like talk each other
(01:09:02):
right into surviving
(01:09:05):
Yeah, there's like 100 pages of just like one meeting.
(01:09:08):
Right.
(01:09:11):
I don't take that many notes in my work meetings.
(01:09:14):
Somehow Tolkien gets 100 pages out of one meeting.
(01:09:17):
And then,
(01:09:18):
of course,
(01:09:20):
the years that those books actually span,
(01:09:23):
which a lot of people don't realize until you stop and think about it later.
(01:09:28):
It's like, oh, yeah, it took them three months just to do this.
(01:09:31):
Yeah.
(01:09:33):
So yeah, the fact that they incorporated that into the game I thought was really unique.
(01:09:38):
And really,
(01:09:38):
I don't know,
(01:09:39):
it just kind of opened up some ideas for me too because I had been all about this
(01:09:45):
delicious in dungeon lately.
(01:09:47):
Yes, that is incredibly popular.
(01:09:49):
Yeah, I didn't know it was a manga until you were explaining it to me.
(01:09:54):
14th volume.
(01:09:54):
Final volume just came out in English.
(01:09:57):
Really?
(01:09:57):
Yeah, I came through it.
(01:09:58):
I'm always interested in how people come to things and
(01:10:02):
So The Witcher, I came to that like through video games, not through the books.
(01:10:07):
And so I came to this through the Netflix streaming series that's on now.
(01:10:13):
Yeah, now all I want to do is like ration management in D&D.
(01:10:19):
Have you seen Torchbearer?
(01:10:20):
Yes, yes.
(01:10:22):
And there's actually, there's even a new like animal mastery game.
(01:10:27):
thing that's uh on kickstarter for dnd as well they're kind of turning it almost
(01:10:32):
into like pokemon or something catch them all uh but yeah i as soon as i started
(01:10:38):
watching delicious and dungeon i kept thinking about one ring and like that's the
(01:10:44):
system for this this setting that would be perfect for this setting and i love how
(01:10:49):
that was such a different source material yeah uh and yeah for those of you who
(01:10:54):
haven't checked it out yet yeah um
(01:10:57):
I'm not a huge anime person, but I was glued to every episode.
(01:11:03):
I'm into the books now.
(01:11:06):
I'm a huge fan.
(01:11:08):
It is a very,
(01:11:09):
really weird kind of take on D&D stuff,
(01:11:14):
fantasy stuff,
(01:11:14):
but it's also so,
(01:11:16):
like,
(01:11:16):
I've never seen anything quite like it before.
(01:11:19):
And I really like the artwork.
(01:11:21):
Totally.
(01:11:22):
Yeah, the artwork's just amazing.
(01:11:23):
Yeah, some of my favorite scenes from the
(01:11:26):
miyazaki movies are the food scenes and that's they've done a whole series now but
(01:11:31):
it's it's amazing like yeah it looks it's luscious i guess that's all that's at
(01:11:37):
barnes and noble now you know they put all the core rule books behind the desk
(01:11:40):
because they get stolen so now it's just the uh recipe books and cookbooks okay
(01:11:46):
every single like somebody they made a cookbook for i think every gaming system oh
(01:11:51):
yeah sure it's hilarious and also like minecraft
(01:11:57):
Yeah, every single one.
(01:12:00):
I've got to ask, what's in a Minecraft cookbook?
(01:12:02):
I don't know, because I love Minecraft, but I hate cooking.
(01:12:09):
There's your Christmas present sorted.
(01:12:11):
Got you taken care of.
(01:12:13):
So how about the school club?
(01:12:17):
What's on the horizon?
(01:12:20):
This is going to be our first year where we can really dig into some campaigns.
(01:12:25):
We had done a ton of Monster of the Week stuff or little one-shots.
(01:12:31):
We were very influenced early on.
(01:12:32):
My son started co-DMing with me when he was at JLC, when he was in fifth grade.
(01:12:38):
Yeah.
(01:12:42):
we got really influenced by the sword and the stone old Disney movie where it was like,
(01:12:49):
okay,
(01:12:49):
well now today everyone's a bird.
(01:12:52):
So let's figure out how to play the game as a bird.
(01:12:54):
And now everybody's a fish.
(01:12:56):
So let's figure out how to play as fish.
(01:12:58):
And just these concise, like, I don't know, let's just figure it out.
(01:13:02):
And like very simple rolling mechanics,
(01:13:06):
just getting the idea around it and letting these kids like really open up with
(01:13:10):
creativity and
(01:13:12):
Um, for it.
(01:13:12):
So some of that,
(01:13:14):
I think,
(01:13:14):
but also these kids are in,
(01:13:18):
so like we can really commit to some full,
(01:13:21):
nice,
(01:13:22):
big arcs of a campaign.
(01:13:25):
You know, it's been, it's been nice to have those kids that can focus on that.
(01:13:28):
And we would in the past,
(01:13:30):
maybe commit to that for the second semester of the year,
(01:13:33):
like come back from winter break.
(01:13:35):
And then we're going to be in a campaign until may, and you can get some really nice arcs with that.
(01:13:39):
But these kids are ready to,
(01:13:41):
yesterday.
(01:13:42):
Um, I also, I have a love for spell jammer.
(01:13:47):
Um, so I've, uh, I run, I also run a weekly thing for both of my kids and their friends.
(01:13:54):
We call it Wednesday friends day and we've been doing it for years now.
(01:13:58):
And this last year I,
(01:14:00):
um,
(01:14:00):
introduced them to spell jammer and this is the,
(01:14:04):
this over the summer I started,
(01:14:05):
um,
(01:14:06):
homebrewing some like locations and kind of,
(01:14:09):
um,
(01:14:11):
different like mechanics and things.
(01:14:13):
And I just find it very silly.
(01:14:16):
And, you know, I, I like the space travel.
(01:14:20):
I like the ships, um, and all of it.
(01:14:23):
And I, I, you can, the flaws are all there too.
(01:14:26):
Like with so many of those kind of,
(01:14:29):
um,
(01:14:30):
peripheral D and D things,
(01:14:32):
but there's so much fun,
(01:14:34):
goofy stuff to it.
(01:14:36):
So I think this is the year that I'm going to maybe if, if,
(01:14:40):
The campaign I'm going to run on my put it in space.
(01:14:43):
We shall see.
(01:14:45):
Spelljammer is what I'm running with my kids group.
(01:14:47):
Awesome.
(01:14:48):
Yeah.
(01:14:49):
And, you know, it has a very strong Guardians of the Galaxy vibe.
(01:14:54):
Sure.
(01:14:54):
Totally.
(01:14:55):
It's very hard to not end up making Guardians of the Galaxy references while you're playing Spelljammer.
(01:15:01):
Because a lot of the... Everything is kind of the same.
(01:15:05):
Like...
(01:15:06):
the size of the ships and the kind of all that kind of stuff.
(01:15:10):
Um, but yeah, it is much more whimsical.
(01:15:13):
Yeah.
(01:15:13):
It's,
(01:15:14):
I really dig,
(01:15:15):
I like those secondary care,
(01:15:17):
like those different species,
(01:15:19):
uh,
(01:15:19):
touching on the,
(01:15:20):
the,
(01:15:20):
the gift having like blunderbuss proficiencies is,
(01:15:24):
is a challenge,
(01:15:26):
but,
(01:15:26):
um,
(01:15:26):
also like the plasmoids that like,
(01:15:28):
you've got like an amoeba person,
(01:15:30):
like you can do so much weird stuff with that.
(01:15:33):
And I also, um, one of the things that I,
(01:15:36):
enjoy about being a DM is the voice work.
(01:15:39):
Um, and so like you can get really goofy with some of these, some of these, um, space species.
(01:15:46):
Well, here's a good question for you.
(01:15:48):
Uh, do you find it easier to do voices with the kids or adults?
(01:15:53):
I,
(01:15:53):
so I have a theater background,
(01:15:55):
um,
(01:15:55):
but I had the attention span of a golden retriever until my thirties.
(01:16:00):
So I missed the,
(01:16:02):
playing at the time.
(01:16:03):
Um,
(01:16:04):
but no part of the reason that I want to be that kind of forever DM is because the,
(01:16:10):
it's the voice work and so much of it's now ingrained that like certain species or
(01:16:16):
certain accents,
(01:16:17):
um,
(01:16:18):
without like getting in anything like offensive,
(01:16:21):
of course.
(01:16:21):
Um,
(01:16:21):
but like,
(01:16:23):
so now I kind of think in that,
(01:16:25):
I also have a personal crusade to incorporate more Southern accents,
(01:16:30):
um,
(01:16:30):
Into into D&D.
(01:16:31):
So a lot of my humans all have southern accents and and not the dumb ones,
(01:16:36):
because also like that's a that's important to me having this accent,
(01:16:40):
you know,
(01:16:41):
and like Trey Crowder,
(01:16:42):
the the the comedian says that it's difficult to be taken seriously when you sound
(01:16:47):
like a cartoon squirrel,
(01:16:49):
you know,
(01:16:49):
a cartoon possum,
(01:16:50):
you know,
(01:16:51):
but I like incorporating that.
(01:16:53):
those accents into leadership positions.
(01:16:56):
Um,
(01:16:56):
so I try to do a wide variety of Southern accents as well,
(01:17:01):
but that's my,
(01:17:01):
that's my personal then not vendetta.
(01:17:04):
That's my personal goal is like more,
(01:17:06):
more Southern accents in D and D.
(01:17:08):
You made me realize one of my goals that I often think about,
(01:17:11):
but I've never been able to move on,
(01:17:13):
which is I would love to
(01:17:16):
be in more sessions where people were role playing the whole time with accents.
(01:17:24):
But the problem is that you typically have a table that will have one person who
(01:17:28):
feels comfortable doing it and they'll do it,
(01:17:30):
which is often the DM,
(01:17:31):
but not always.
(01:17:32):
And then everybody else does the reporting what their character does versus actually role-playing it.
(01:17:38):
And then you feel a little weird or outside of it if you're trying to role-play with somebody.
(01:17:42):
And then they're like, my character says.
(01:17:44):
And it would be fun to get a table.
(01:17:47):
Maybe I should do this for a one-shot sometime and say,
(01:17:51):
everybody at the table this time,
(01:17:52):
we're actually going to role-play the whole time.
(01:17:54):
Because I've rarely gotten to do that.
(01:17:57):
Pick a voice.
(01:17:58):
That's a hard thing to do.
(01:18:02):
Yeah, and like enforced.
(01:18:03):
So I've been thinking about that because sometimes,
(01:18:07):
because it's random GMs running for random players at a game day,
(01:18:13):
that sometimes people don't fit the tone of the game.
(01:18:18):
And so we recently had someone run a game where it was like a cooking competition was part of it and
(01:18:26):
It was a very cozy game.
(01:18:28):
And one of the players went and beat up another,
(01:18:30):
an NPC and the rest of the table is like,
(01:18:33):
Oh no,
(01:18:34):
that's not how we want to play.
(01:18:37):
And so just, I, I want people to feel empowered to enforce tone and stuff.
(01:18:43):
Yeah.
(01:18:43):
And it is part of my reticence with running for random people is,
(01:18:48):
is enforcing tone,
(01:18:49):
but I should just lean on my school experience and break out that.
(01:18:54):
Well, and so like the,
(01:18:55):
Definitely from the GM's perspective, like, no is a complete sentence.
(01:18:59):
Oh, yeah.
(01:19:00):
Yeah.
(01:19:00):
And I know we want to, as GMs, be like, yes.
(01:19:04):
But you don't have to.
(01:19:06):
No, and that's where I think I tend to have more fun GMing for kids because I do.
(01:19:14):
I'm the same way.
(01:19:15):
I've got a theater background.
(01:19:16):
I can do all this stuff.
(01:19:17):
But like you were saying, I mean, we're at tables.
(01:19:20):
I just...
(01:19:23):
I feel like that's just not the vibe of the table a lot of times,
(01:19:25):
whereas with kids,
(01:19:27):
I feel like I can force the vibe,
(01:19:28):
I guess,
(01:19:29):
a little more.
(01:19:32):
You are an authority with kids.
(01:19:33):
Yeah,
(01:19:34):
I can actually say,
(01:19:35):
no,
(01:19:36):
I am going to do these silly voices because at the very least,
(01:19:39):
I don't have to work with this kid tomorrow and they're not going to make fun of me
(01:19:42):
at my job.
(01:19:43):
Well, and if the kid seems up for it, I love adding to vicious mockery that if you do it,
(01:19:51):
like live and it makes the table happy.
(01:19:55):
You get to, you get to do double damage or like that kind of thing.
(01:19:58):
And so like kids and adults both will like,
(01:20:02):
It's interesting to see which ones are going to be cool with that and which aren't.
(01:20:05):
When we were playing queers, I would make them do the Sentai poses that all the Power Rangers do.
(01:20:10):
Absolutely.
(01:20:12):
Yeah, that's one of those things.
(01:20:13):
I think about asking some of my adult gamers that I play with to do something like that,
(01:20:18):
and I'm just realizing that's where the game would end.
(01:20:22):
Like, no, we're not going to do that.
(01:20:25):
But these kids are like, oh, yeah.
(01:20:28):
They all were doing JoJo's...
(01:20:30):
yeah uh whatever jojo is so yeah something they knew about that i didn't but they
(01:20:36):
understood it and every time i said all right send typos you know they were over
(01:20:40):
there doing their they just knew it it was native to them in a way that wasn't true
(01:20:45):
for me but i was figuring it out yeah yeah it was along it was nice to be along
(01:20:49):
with the for the ride with them
(01:20:51):
I was just reading the other day,
(01:20:53):
one of the original writers of the first edition was saying that there used to be
(01:20:58):
actual spells for the spells.
(01:21:02):
And you had to do the whole incantation in order for the spell to go.
(01:21:09):
That would be a way to have a rule that would really kind of enforce the role play.
(01:21:12):
Because if you said,
(01:21:13):
because you know,
(01:21:14):
wizards,
(01:21:14):
the whole thing is they memorize their spells for the day.
(01:21:16):
But imagine if the player actually had to memorize the spells.
(01:21:21):
So I come from a LARP background as well.
(01:21:24):
Not just the vampire LARP.
(01:21:25):
I did Balfour LARP forever.
(01:21:27):
And you had to do your incant.
(01:21:30):
You had to call on the power of fire to, and before you threw your spell packet.
(01:21:34):
And if you messed up your incant, it didn't work.
(01:21:36):
It didn't work.
(01:21:37):
Yeah.
(01:21:37):
But I was also thinking for that sort of role play, because I love mechanics.
(01:21:43):
Exalted has a mechanic called a stunt mechanic where if you role play something out,
(01:21:49):
you get bonuses to it.
(01:21:51):
And so if you go out there and do a little bit of oration, you get bonus dice.
(01:21:56):
You can even get more experience.
(01:21:57):
And if you make the table laugh, you can get those, those bonuses.
(01:22:01):
And I have friends who for fate.
(01:22:03):
give out more fate points if you make the GM laugh or you shock the GM he's like oh
(01:22:09):
yeah I'll whip a point I'll whip an inspiration point at a player for yeah if you
(01:22:14):
make me laugh or you make me be like oh yeah like if my eyes if my eyebrows go up
(01:22:19):
like you're getting an inspiration point for sure we actually started back
(01:22:23):
during the pandemic we actually started writing haikus for every spell that's one
(01:22:29):
that you could easily incorporate and say you have to write a haiku and you have to
(01:22:33):
memorize it because it's simple it's a very simple structure I don't remember what
(01:22:38):
the game is called but there is a game that teaches you Korean because you have to
(01:22:44):
do the magic in Korean to get it to work and you use a device in order to make sure
(01:22:50):
it's correct
(01:22:52):
That's so cool.
(01:22:53):
That is pretty awesome.
(01:22:55):
And people are familiar with this even if they don't play RPGs because everybody
(01:23:01):
knows what Avada Kedavra means.
(01:23:03):
Right.
(01:23:04):
So we've all had the experience of having to learn a spell from culture,
(01:23:09):
but there you would actually be picking up another language.
(01:23:12):
That's kind of cool.
(01:23:13):
Yeah, man.
(01:23:14):
Avada Kedavra.
(01:23:16):
You know, it's all just little special magic words.
(01:23:19):
Yeah.
(01:23:21):
Well, thanks for the conversation.
(01:23:22):
This was really fun.
(01:23:24):
And I am excited to hear what happens at your next table.
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