Sage Advice D&D

hi and welcome to GM tips as always I’m Satine Phoenix co-creator of major arcana and a dungeon master on theories reach today’s theme is a life [Music] I remember back when I first started playing D&D life was more simple then rules were more simple my character was simple and all I had to do was tell my GM what I wanted to do and roll the dice and a modifier would inform me on the outcome of the intention one thing that’s been a consistent part of the role-playing discussion through the last 40 years is alignment good and evil and those shades in between back then you’d pick one of nine alignments to play and that would navigate how you would interact with the world lawful good lawful neutral lawful evil neutral good true neutral neutral evil chaotic good chaotic neutral chaotic evil what these really do is frame out the crossroads between law and chaos and good and evil a lawful person is someone who respects follows and encourages the law and rules of society a chaotic person is someone who follows personal freedom adaptability and flexibility above the law of the land good is someone who has compassion and respect for living things usually someone who believes in helping others evil is someone who acts without consideration or care of the well-being of others even in spite of harming others without effect on one’s conscious even a hurting and killing out of pleasure then there’s true neutral neutral respects a range of law and chaos and good and evil but isn’t beholden to one over the other the other shades of neutral Express sway in that direction outside of their natural neutral state the reality is that no one’s always one or the other playing a character strictly in this way can also be pretty frustrating as a player making choices because it’s what your character alignment chooses rather than what makes the most sense for the character in that situation outright killing something in the name of chaotic evil without consideration of the group you’re playing in might lead to an early character death or the other characters might not want to travel with such an untrustworthy adventurer in our maze Arcana game we don’t use alignments as the entire world exists in shades of grey the way nations relate to one another and the many wars that break out it’s never clear who’s good and who’s evil over the last year of playing each of our characters have changed some more lawful somewhere but seem to constantly change based on their experiences Asia being non-human has found she relates to the monsters of DRO am more than the humans of the five nations what she thought was good now seems destructive and chaotic her wanting to side with the Honorable orcs / the greedy self-righteous humans happened over time although it might seem to the rest of the nation as she’s turning towards the dark side what’s lawful good to one person might seem evil to another you’re generally good adventuring party who goes into a cave full of goblins to find treasure to bring back to supper riches actually the band of murdering robbers from the goblins point of view we live in a world of graves and it’s more true to our natures humans to live within this range over time I stopped worrying about alignment the characters our party come across influences the decisions my character makes like me my character evolves as the story unfolds these alignments outline a person’s moral code the foundation of their attitude towards the world but it’s in their experiences and interactions over time and the relationships to others that these alignment shift and change the most important thing to think about is who your character is to the rest of the party and the world around you do you have evil tendencies when an evil character come across as evil outwardly to others or would they seem friendly at first to lure the other adventurers into doing their bidding over time granted there are plenty of folks who still use alignment in their games just make sure you let your GM know ahead of time what you want to play and figure out how that works for the group there must be a reason for everyone to want to be together and want to work together over the span of time some games don’t allow evil characters or characters that disrupt the collective proofing I could roll on about this but instead let’s discuss this with musician actor and voice of Drizzt Jason Charles Miller yeah it’s so exciting the voice of Drizzt it’s pretty awesome I thought you that’s wicked cool it was pretty incredible when I found out about the audition even I you called yeah yeah I just said what do I have to do to get this part huh and luckily they were I didn’t have to do anything nefarious it’s good we were here to talk about alignment in your back to basics mm-hmm tell us about what you learned I mean because you went back all the way back to the beginning right and it was different than the nine times right now so what we did is we ran on forever verse we ran a three episode arc of basic D&D the rules that came out in 1980 which were even different than the ones that came out in 79 or 81 it was the ones that came out specifically in 1980 which was the first box I ever had that my dad bought for me and in basic D&D there were only three alignments lawful neutral and chaotic so that actually gave us a huge sort of you know a wide berth on what to do kind of freedom though yeah and knowing the players so well already because we had already been playing together for months on forever verse I sort of assigned characters to them based on their personalities and even their names so like Hector was Hector the Magnificent um a chaotic elf who and that’s another thing in basic classes and races were the same so you you’re not a human fighter you’re just a fighter who’s a human elves are magic users and fighters halflings are fighters dwarves or fighters thieves and clerics are always humans it was a very it’s a it literally was a very basic version of the rules but it was a lot of fun because you know you sort of threw the rules aside and just played the adventure do you find that people played the chaotic characters as if they were evil like how do they interpret what chaotic means I feel like they did take it more in an evil slant but maybe they’re playing it a little more like neutral evil or lawful evil but I think like when you see the word chaotic and there’s nothing beyond it your brain automatically goes okay I’m gonna be a mischief maker with this guy yeah I think it’s really good to look up on to Google or Wikipedia what these words actually mean because when I was studying for this episode I was enlightened a bit because I had a misconception of what things were even though I had a basic idea of what they were but yeah go look it up on the internet it’s really fascinating how do you view and use alignment in your games well it’s interesting like I actually see alignment everywhere I think I play like in real world and in the game I think that I played Indy for so long and through so many different versions and interpretations of it that um like I see that alignment chart permanently all the time constantly filling in boxes yes exactly somehow that guys kind of I think he’s pretty you know maybe he’s kind of good or he sort of Wow it might be lawful good I think this guy’s like a real good guy you know what I mean or whatever so I think that alignment is is an important part of the game even though I know that like it’s not being stressed as much anymore I love that part of it because it’s almost a guide for the DM and the player if the player is going too far out of the alignment that he picked you know that’s something that sort of guides your role-playing and also as a GM you can sort of real someone back if are you sure he would make that decision I you know if that’s the alignment that you really are I don’t know if he would do that oh interesting that you would guide your player that way yeah I mean I’m not so much hands-on I like to let people you know play the game let them have fun but at the same time if a character is a lawful good paladin and all of a sudden wants to do something very out of character you know up until recently you could you know even now you’d still will get penalized quite a bit in most campaigns for for doing something that far out of alignment if it’s not in line with your with your characters sort of ethos I think like the the classic paladin is the classic lawful good paladin is sort of a prime example of of how alignment can constrict a character yeah I don’t know I think that it’s a good foundation right but as the characters progress things change or the people that they interact with all of a sudden that that person or monster or whatever brings out something yeah you know so yeah what normally so maybe in town they’re lawful good but outside of town they become more chaotic good or I attic neutral like you know I know because people have that range and I think that characters should have that range another thing that’s really fascinating to me is lawful good and lawful evil because I’ve always been afraid of lawful good because I envisioned this character that’s like so good and so rules-based that you know maybe they love their friends but when it comes down to it they may have to do the honorable thing and rat on them right yeah a lawful good character could be like you know my my party I love the people in my party but you broke the law so I’m going to have to testify against you that’s what I would see a lawful good character doing in a game you know like you know I wish we could complete our quest but I have to turn you in to the authorities now you know so having a lawful good character in any campaign can be challenging if the quest that you’re on doesn’t lock in with with what that person what that character believes because on the opposite end of the spectrum chaotic evil they can do whatever the hell they want I mean it’s in my mind a chaotic evil care there is sort of the ultimate selfish person it’s it’s like you know and any sort of any sort of in modern day like any kind of super selfish character you can think of like on steroids you know they just do whatever they want any time they want to benefit them now they may fall into the constructs of whatever society says they should be and they may follow the law for years until they’ve got the right time to strike so so then so you don’t have to have your character outwardly look like any of those right you it’s mostly internal anyway you could be a chaotic evil character that acts lawful good for years and and I think that Dexter and I think NPCs to like it’s fun as a GM you can have chaotic evil NPCs that might be the mayor of a town or the prince that’s giving you the quest and you go on for quests for them and it’s great and then the fifth quest he totally stabs you in the back you’re like wait a second you’re not as good as I thought I was following your rules but your rules were based out of whatever crazy ideas that you have about the world around you right so if you go really deep with alignment it’s it’s it’s them it’s almost like the more power you have and the less fear you have and that’s when alignment really shows you know it shows that your character of people again I think that is really important to where you know you go about your adventure every day and you know you’re doing your thing you’re camping you go but it’s under those really stressful situations that it comes out I might notice that in my real life like there is a version of Satine who comes out we call her the Dark Phoenix and it’s like oh this is this is a more amplified version of what up I’m capable of so maybe somebody like we said somebody who’s good maybe it’s a little bit different under certain circumstances right stressful stress and throughout a long campaign like maybe one a homebrew campaigner you’re doing for many months you know if a character is consistently making decisions that go against their alignment then the gym may need to take him or her aside and be like look I don’t really think that you’re neutral good I think you’re more neutral evil now and we should talk about you know what penalties or benefits that that will give the character or take away from I wouldn’t even discuss it honestly I would just feel like okay that’s how you’re playing this now and then change the environment around that character so perhaps the character is you know is a divine character mm-hmm well what is the what is there the person made worship how do they think about this change well sure you could be in the middle of combat and find that you don’t have any spells left anymore because you abandoned the the motto of your God or the division of what your God wants you to do so so that’s you do whatever you want play do whatever you want players I’ll remember this next time in the campaign with you ha yeah you better we’re going to jump in to the last three questions that ask everybody and we’re going to make the answers super quick okay pregame house rule I take this actually from my friend Jay Schultz and when he was DMing our game no cell phones no checking your cell phones will have breaks and you can do it then but he wanted your absolute attention and if someone were to like look at their phone or if the phone was ringing the whole game would stop you know and I think that’s actually kind of a cool rule and it makes the game go quicker and flow better agreed what is your favorite GM moment my favorite GM moment was I had created this amazing underground dwelling that I wanted my characters to get to so that we could use that as a base of of operations but of course they needed to clear out the monsters that were there and so the my favorite Jam moment is when they cleared out the cleared out the the underground base and took it over for themselves and then we could run our campaign from there that was like a very satisfying moment nice quick tip to the audience there’s been a lot of great quick tips on the show but I had something I wanted to reveal a secret so this is a special secret so for years and years when I would be interviewed for Godhead people would ask they would always ask Oh your band’s name is Godhead where did you guys get that name and my sort of blanket boilerplate response was well Godhead means the closest thing you can be next to God so for a lot of people that’s religion sometimes it’s their job and for us it’s our music and then if we go ah and that was like my deep answer but the real answer of where I got the name God had for my band was inside this issue of fantasy gamer which I believed at the time was sort of a competitor to Dragon Magazine when she maybe for which I had which I had a subscription to so I had this since I was 12 and there was something in here that made me go that would be a great name for a band and here it is right here the Haven of the Godhead and at age 12 I said one day I’m gonna have a band named Godhead and it was from this issue of fantasy gamer and that’s really where her name came from oh my god thank you for sharing that that’s cold oh wow thanks that was an amazing show thank you for joining us here on geek and sundry thank you Jason for joining us I love your brain where can we find you on the Internet Jason Charles Miller comm on Twitter I’m Jason C Miller and every other social media platform Jason Charles Miller also you can find me every Thursday right here on geek and sundry’s youtube on forever verse awesome I’m setting Phoenix you can find me at setting Phoenix you can catch me every Sunday on twitch.tv slash maser kana and orphan echo and on Tuesday’s dungeon mastering Furies reach on twitch.tv slash D and D and on sagas with sundry dread on project alpha comm which I did the music for – that’s true can you do something else for us sure what do GM is such a fear the last thing you remember was you’re on watch it was second shift which is always the worst watch a few hours of sleep and then you’re being kicked awake by your gnome illusionist party remember hey share 10 that’s last thing you remember now you’re all alone the prone position you’re looking around and you realize your entire party is gone if you want a few more moments and you realize your party’s not gone you’re in a different place the forest is different the trees are wider taller and they’re black you reach out and touch the tree closest to you you realize it’s petrified you try to stand and then you realize your feet are bound you reach down to try to pull the ropes away and those aren’t ropes their webs and now your hand is stuck the next thing you see are two red eyes coming closer and closer to you and you hear echoing everywhere even inside your head the words who st. you roll for initiative [Music]

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