Zoltar

good morning everyone out there and twitch land welcome to twitch.tv slash dandy is it morning it feels like morning feel like I’ve it’s like eight o’clock in the morning but it’s not it’s about noon because that is when this show happens you have reached Dungeon Master’s guide you’re on twitch.tv slash D&D I’m your host Satine Phoenix and we were supposed to have our very first episode with imagine if you will be amazing water deep backdrop yeah but we don’t have all of our sets in it takes a little bit longer to do things and I do believe half of our production team is out sick so just like a true dungeon master we are done to mastering this whole thing and we’re gonna bring you a Q&A I will let you know who the guests are after I go back and Reva revisit something that we missed last episode there was a really funny little thing that happened with everybody because it was the sound went out right when I was introducing the new correspondents for this show for the future so I’m gonna do that right now are you ready are you ready ready we have Lauren urban Lisa Chen Allen Patrick Lauren urban is a community manager for a D and E beyond if you haven’t gone there yet go to Dean DB on comm it is pretty fantastic and what a lot of us use now for a characters in campaign building um we have Lisa Chen who is a dungeon master for DMS guild check that out Dan’s guilt calm you can make adventures and share it and sell it and then get feedback from people in the community it’s really good for I really enjoy it for that not only do you have PDFs of all the things but you get to get feedback which is important to know one is an island I’m gonna get a shirt that says that no one’s an island Allen Patrick is the community manager for adventurous league organized play if you don’t know about it go find out about it in ventures League comm I do believe next up we have so those are those are kind of obvious other community managers involved with Dungeons & Dragons well we’re taking it outside of the box we also have a and be from cognitive merchant in Manchester as our European correspondence out in the field Manchester has an incredible incredible D&D community I mean we were walking around and there’s boom beholder graffiti’d on the wall so that’s pretty awesome we also have Fenway Jones 15 year old Dungeon Master and she actually created Jasper’s game day and that is a charity event I do believe they’re just raising money all over the place at conventions at different game stores but the big event is next year check out Jasper’s game date online I do believe I don’t know exactly the address I’m a jerk face but you have Google you have whatever you search on go do that check it out also don’t forget please send us your 1-minute DM tips or not DM tips that’s a different thing one minute maximum House Rules Dungeon Master House Rules you have one minute that goes over one minute we’re not going to show it but that’s how you can participate in the show you send us your video one minute max – D&D fan art at wizards calm so those are the things now we’re going to get to these very amazingly patient people who are sitting right next to me on some of my favorite people on the planet Kelly Lin DeAngelo and Rudy Ruttenberg thank you guys for coming insert applause button thank you guys for being here on such short notice like true Dungeon Master’s yeah I mean you were gonna be here anyway yes well thanks for having me having me anyway that’s awesome yeah excited to be here yay why don’t you tell everyone both of you who you are exactly what you do in the real world and how they might know you all right should I start do I lucky I like here when I look here my general direction I should look in this direction hello hi I’m Kelly Lindy Angela hi I am the dungeon master for girls gets glory which is gonna be on after this emphasis the stage um I also play on sirens of the realm with Satine which has been awesome I’ve gmt– a couple games over at geek and sundry which I had been involved with for the last couple years and actually I write musicals and television and film that’s kind of my bread and butter which I do here in LA I’ve written for like a couple of television shows My Little Pony LITTLEST PET SHOP and then got off season two final space this year so I do a loss but I’m really happy to be here because the D I mean is myself oh yes and I haven’t be difficult yes I mean musical called starry I’ve written a couple of musicals but we’ve been running this one since summer and it’s about once a month and we have two more shows allowed coming up called starry which is about Vincent and Theo van Gogh out here in Los Angeles so if you’re in town I would absolutely love to share that with you because it’s the the distilled essence of everything I am essentially so my soul is up there on the canvas you get to make tear it apart you get to be the critic that sounds like fun and I’m you can find me on all the social thingies at Rudy woot you can also find me and Satine at maser comma which we are the co-creators for we put on a lot of productions even as a production company if it is not our show that is under the Major Arcana banner beyond that I am also a foam television writer and I am an RPG game designer you are yeah so you were talking about Lisa earlier being the community manager of the DMS go where we were able to debut the everone supplement wayfinders guy to ever on and I am the co-author of that along with Keith Baker and we are also going to be putting out a follow-up to that very soon called more graves miscellany which will essentially give you the university guide to different subclasses on as well as some of the new updated things that you need to know to really make ever on a very immersive place for not only your players but for your imagination to kind of grow and expand and to play Dungeons and Dragons and a little bit different like than you might be used to awesome yeah thank you so much for being a part of one of my bringing back one of my favorite settings I mean you you are actually who introduced me to ever on Andy kitty and I fell in love with it instantly and I started basically designing stuff for you for our game for fishin and that’s how that like that is really where the beginning of my design started so for everybody that thinks that like you can’t you know I need all this background and experience and all that other stuff I’ve only been doing game design for about two years and I’ve gotten to this place and it’s but satine can also tell you that I’ve spent yeah it’s been a lot of like four to six nights which when writing film television you only have to do when your shows and crunch yeah but for the most part that’s that’s probably been what obviously having a live stream didn’t hurt with the awareness of like oh this kid can design stuff but yeah oh man really has a great segue well we’re here to talk about today is dungeon mastering hence the Dungeon Master’s guide title but it’s about dungeon mastering comparing livestream dungeon mastering to home game dungeon master before we even get into the rest of the year of conversations it’s really important that you guys know that what we do isn’t just it’s not the same it’s different and we have reasons why it’s different you can’t compare yourself to what you see on TV because there’s a so much prep and so many reasons for all the things so you guys what is your background on dungeon mastering before you started streaming well it’s funny because I I was always a player for a long time I was a player and then finally about four years ago um I finally there was a discussion happening and suddenly D&D was coming kind of back on vogue and I just we couldn’t find a DM so I just started to pick up the book I read through it like 18 times maybe I actually created index cards without the spells on them to try to memorize them hmm and I was like yeah like flashcards like this is what a DM does right like you have to like know everything in the book I’ve seen 16 actually do the flash yeah yeah yeah I mean this is what I thought it was so I did that I just DM at home games for about two years until it suddenly became a professional opportunity maybe two and a half and that was that’s pretty awesome so that’s kind of my background at the I mean just some small home games with a lot of new players you had a lot of people at your games so cuz that’s actually how I heard of you cuz everyone is like oh my god you guys are so cool yeah it was the first game I played I did again I was really nervous about D I mean the first time and it was just that this rinky-dink apartment I had and I had 13 people in my first game who were all new to the D&D except for maybe one person and maybe two and so we’re all just sitting around with 13 people I’m like this this is what a dungeon master does right you can invite as many people as you want so I slowly started to learn the tricks of the trades of DME and also I think that I invited a bunch of people in because I wanted to eventually learn about all these different people who had different classes and I thought it would be like almost grinding myself like taking an advanced course in high school but I learned too quickly like it was one of course round scores but yeah and then I ran that game that started from there for about a year and a half too and then eventually had to move on to some other things but they’re still playing to this day those people I initially played with um it’s a good good group of humans nice cool and then my gaming experience started with with the group that we had kind of in fourth did or started in fifth edition that group was they got the play test for DMD next when they were kind of in between transformer movies and the x-men movies so they they needed extra people like a man I started playing with them and then when we had to go off because they had to go do production stuff I did production stuff on some other stuff I kind of like lost it for a little bit and but still had the itch and ended up going in a meet up which ended up being the meet up the Stettin initially already had unbeknownst to me as any matter she was and then I had already started to through that meet up I started to meet some of the other people in the community who introduced me into adventures League which I didn’t know about previously in any of my experience and from their adventures they always need to do an EMS we always need more people to come in and run games so if you want to run and you’re afraid you can’t fill out a table don’t worry about it we will give you a table of wakes so I started there almost by accident because I was at a convention I was playing and they had a DM they just couldn’t show up and they I’d already been play testing some of the new modules with them not that same group the link with the adventures League group that I’d made friends with I got to play test some of those modules because some of them were actually getting to write song and they knew me well enough to go hey we trust you enough with the table would you please run something like would you please run this and I’m like oh I guess what slot do you need me running I’m the one in ten minutes oh sure I guess well I know the game really well I know although I know ins and outs of the phb dungeon mastering I’ve seen enough different play Dungeon Master’s I think I can wing this and essentially I did it went pretty well and then from there I just started thinking about craft and and writing and how similar those two story telling mechanisms can be but also as a writer one of the things that we enjoy most is the problem solving of how does this affect this down the road and one thing that is almost parallel from design work is that you have to look at design and storytelling as it’s as if it’s a carpet and so when you move something you can bunch up in other places and become just an eyesore or just not work entirely costs people the trip fall bus they face open stuff like that so what we wanted to what I what I wanted to learn out of that was how to start making it feel seamless and especially for adventures League how to make it feel as though you’re not being railroaded we’ve been doing a lot of online shopping so when we’re doing so so then that kind of got me into the mode of doing it and I eventually and by invention I knew like probably the next con or the one after that was running four slots a day over 40 weekends so I was running anywhere between 12 and 16 games over a weekend which was hardcore there are some dm’s that are out there that still are doing that yeah fruits a nothing but the love street respect so write about them appreciating everyone else that’s coming in wanting to make sure that that nobody’s let down wrestle out of like the best part of a person’s heart it’s and our community is awesome we are very fortunate that this is one of the strongest RPG and gaming communities that is accepting and welcoming of the people that we’ve we’ve been fortunate enough to kind of find this this unity with this is neelima so that’s how we started the aiming and then at some point too 16 June 2016 I met Satine at the release for a for the Cerrone Kings Thunder and forced Gracie’s into a tank and we were sitting down at a table with our friend Chris Lindsey who is not our friend yet and we kind of like instantly clicked in our role-playing and then she and I went on hikes and talked about things dungeons dragons related and essentially it was like hey you want to do this thing yeah sure let’s do that okay do you wanna do yeah I can do that and then that’s how maze our content essentially get started yeah look hey and now it was like six days after we met would you need to do all the things yeah essentially I mean we’ve been created a slack that was you all buddies like doing doing all the things when you both transferred over you were invited into a new group that it already been started yeah you have we built that one from scratch with the show what was that like okay so there’s a couple e different things what is it like jumping in on someone else’s game on streaming with their own expectations what is it like building from scratch not knowing if everyone’s gonna get along like those are two really important things especially on stream which is harder than at a home camp game you’re just like okay guys not working versus oh my god it has to work yeah I definitely am in many ways a perfectionist I was really nervous I mean like really really nervous I’m not gonna lie like I had been running games at tables with people who started at first level who you know we were building up the levels together and the story together and I was actually I at that time I was already playing up my weekly Wednesday game that I still play I was playing pickup games every other Sunday like I was playing four to five campaigns a month and then suddenly I got invited to this amazing group of women who had this amazing opportunity who needed a dungeon master and I was like well yes like first of all and all woman’s gay that sounds incredible never done that before but then ii like secondly like these are all people who are actors too so like how upsetting would that be as a television writer to sit at a table full of people who are actors very talented actors and be able to play in that world with them so i was beyond the honored first that they even considered me and then to honored that they accepted me into the family because they’re just like the nicest sweetest group of people i think i’ve ever met truly like now literally i’m living with one of them actually they’re great and they’re fantastic players too but i while i was trying to figure out what that was like it was hard for me because i I was coming in definitely with a lot of personal fears and anxieties I was like I don’t we deemed for two years like am I even good at this like I get that people like you know enjoyed the games but I look at someone like Matt Mercer and I’m like her no matter sir like he’s amazing like how do I become like him and it’s it was one of those things where like I and I was listening to the Avengers own at the time and like all these amazing DMS and I just it the world was starting to craft itself and I didn’t see myself anywhere near as good as anybody else so I was trying to get over that like we I’m gonna be on a stream but those people are on a stream around a podcast like how do I feel how do I work through whatever this is and I had to actually just keep the thing that really helps me with drive that home and get a get over that fear was the fact that I have been writing my whole life and storytelling and narrative storytelling is something inherently within me so I just had to kind of lean on lean on the things that made me who I was and say okay I’m gonna put faith that these people have faith in me even if I haven’t been playing with that mess on this they’ve been playing even if they there’s expectations or needs or wants or desires I’m perfectionist it’s really just about being authentically yourself so I’ve said – like reaffirm that to myself for like three months well I think izaya T was you know as all the girls ready where we bonded are you cool and Kim is such a fantastic DeYoung cuz she’s so um she was just so into her character play and so into her world building to that I just wanted to I wanted to be myself but then also pay aha I like homage to everything she created so I’m hope I’m hopefully doing a version of that so there’s a bit of pressure on your side jumping into a group but they were very welcoming yes exactly I mean it I think that in any situation where our new diems needed or or anyone needs to come into a femme like a familial like situation like that as long as you are surrounded by good people it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter if you’re dreaming the game that’s ten years old it doesn’t matter if you’re training a brand new game I in my personal opinion is it’s really it really boils down to we just want to have a good time we want to plot this comes down to being considerate yeah because if they’re good people they can be considerate to the fact that you are new you need to be come acclimated to what is is going on and then they also need to acclimate to you because one of the things that Satine and I preach is that not every table is for every player yeah or every DM and DM styles are very much a reflection of your personality so Tina I have drastically different styles if it is like our choice I’m what we’re gonna play yeah but we can code DM and not many not many duo’s can do that because when you like I know Satine well enough to know when she needs to have the wings to open up and and to do that and I can kind of pull back a little bit and she knows that if there’s something that needs to make a turn or something like that she can basically just trust that I’m going to be right there because I’ve been listening to her the whole time and I know the worlds and the games and everything like that so the word worlds are the rules so that if she needs me I’m there and our like theories reach we co-wrote that entire thing and every week to change the story to work for two different groups and that’s that shows you that like there is a style and she maintained her style during it and I maintain my style during it and we came together for the launch of Furies reach and ran a game in front of everybody in a 90 minute block with a ton of players like well we have nine players Eliot geek and sundry at one point before she so to me like what we really have to be mindful of is that our future like where we’re going and where we’re gonna be is is it has to be open we have to be open to it like Satine would you have ever thought two years ago and you met me that you would be the community manager for Dungeons & Dragons because of Mazar because of what we built and it’s that kind of a thing I never would have thought that I actually would get to write ever on with Keith it’s just one of those things where we have the the world is going to kind of shift and change and we need to be ready to change with it just like when our players shift and change we need to be ready to shift and change with them and if we you’re courteous we’re keeping in mind the goals that they have for their characters and what they want out of a story just like they’re being courteous about the story that you were trying to facilitate now your story you’re trying to tell because it’s not your story you are one Fayette there six there eighth or whatever one fourteenth of whatever kind of story that you or whatever amount of people are there yeah yeah so let’s go back you jumped into a group and you created a group we I would be remiss if I were to say that I did anything simple as a dungeon master there is a crafting that has to happen and in orphanet go I’m a player man you know so why don’t you talk about what was like for you to get a bunch of people who some you play with some you haven’t played with what was it like what were the challenges of doing that for stream versus hopping into a normal game well things that we you know that you don’t know are things you again have to be able to roll with and learn as you’re going and be thoughtful about because one thing that all humans are in it to a degree is resistant to change and we want to be creatures of habit we want to do things the way we want to do them and the way we think we got to do them and sometimes we don’t consider how other people that other people are the same as us in that way and that we need to make sure that if we want to play something that is cooperative we have to be cooperative we have to try and them and so for our orphan echo game one of the things that we had to learn along the way was that we need to be communicative with people not just while we’re at the table but around it we need to be able to set expectations because you can’t you can’t be disappointed in somebody if you haven’t set their expectation appropriately or if you haven’t helped them to set a healthy expectation so coming together learning new people that I haven’t played with and then how they’re gonna gel with people that I have played with that was all and then making sure that the tone of the game that we were trying to play match the world in the setting and stuff like that and that that was accurately communicated to other people so while at the same time letting them know that they are part of the storytelling thing it was a lot a lot of time in our initial early things where Cetina be like well you’re telling the story I’m like no I’m not I’m not that’s the you have to appreciate that your players are part of that story telling process and in the moment we get at this and writing a lot and Hollywood especially but the moment an idea leaves your mouth it is no longer your idea it is number one been put out in the zeitgeist of the inner of the universe so it’s gonna happen to sooner or later and it may not be that you yeah but once you set that stage that’s that’s your input on the story now players are going to start putting their input in there and how that world reacts to them is going to inform their decisions and the consequences that come from those decisions you can’t be mad at somebody for treating the world as if it is inconsequential if you don’t give them the expectation that they’re the things they’re doing yeah so for those of you who are just jumping in and what is this this isn’t a game it’s not it’s a Dungeon Master’s guide and we’re talking today about dungeon mastering on screen versus dungeon mastering at a home campaign so why don’t we talk a little bit about Oh before that there is a raffle exclamation mark raffle in the chat Lauren yeah put exclamation mark in the chat when Lauren opens up the raffle and you could win a beautiful brand-new shiny smells like new not new paper Dungeon Master’s guide yeah so do that in the thing and if you have any questions on dungeon mastering for screen we’re going to take three of them Lauren is in chat and is going to is organizing that so I keep looking at my phone because because information lives here so why don’t we go ahead and talk about how do you prep what what are the difference in prepping really of a half hour left what’s the difference in prepping for screen versus prepping for for your home game on this one okay so in your prep for home I think the big difference is between being on stream and being at home one time limits right so you have you have a clock you have to be mindful of for your stream there may be are people that are willing to sit and watch you kind of fumble through settings for eight hours there are unlikely but there are players that will certainly sit there and fumble through it with you for eight hours you can have all day game of thones and whatnot but is that necessarily entertaining so one of the things again as a writer that we learn is that you really only want to share the things that are most pertinent two things that are going on either whether that’s character building her story building and in streaming you have to be able to keep those those margins pretty tight and know when to move on from something we had an incident in inkwell Society in the premiere this last Sunday or sorry last Wednesday where you got hammered on this gold bottle of I feel like that’s not it like you did yeah you dumb yeah you were super sad and it’s oh and this is it worked as a very good character building or character reveal for you but it was a little crazier than what we would normally do an inkwell but again it was all in your head you failed the wisdom saying oh yeah and then you got like a three on it you failed the wisdom save and then you were in the you were in the bathroom and the toilet started talking to you and then the sofa started talking to you and like this but these are all things but both important thing I would know it was his its emotionally destroyed cash it was like I have roses on my upholstery now anyway but the important thing was that as as Dungeon Master’s whether you’re at home or on stream you need to be gauging your players reactions and things you need to be constantly pulling the room watching for their towels and I know when sateen was over it because I know her well enough I’ve played with her enough I know and her her attention for that thing is starting to wane and likewise we had another player who wasn’t in the scene who wasn’t a part of it and that players sometimes really enjoys the hard-boiled nature of things but sometimes doesn’t enjoy the zanier parts or the the things that that you can feel it is not inconsequential right so it’s in it’s about managing all not only when Satine is done with it but when that player is done with it too and when the rest of this table is ready to move on because it has to stay interesting and then you do that at home but on stream I have to be mindful of how much time allotting for that sort of madam continue to move yeah yeah so the prep for that which Satine I think all three of us can know like your chant your prep for an online stream can change like that because somebody can’t show up because there’s traffic on the 101 because whatever yeah so you’re rolling Satine both Satine and I in our last couple of games had to essentially drop out entire acts or more of our prep and almost roll with whatever the players we’re gonna get why didn’t prep it all out silence there was nothing yeah nothing it was just you and we had master thing because in that particular case I front loaded all my prep so basically I designed the room and relationships in the city so that you guys could treat the stream like a home campaign where you just pick where you want to go sandbox and the thing is to is like I like I definitely my home games are exponentially different than the stream games because dreaming I mean for me personally I have a table that I play with that we hand-built my friends Averell and Richard helped me design it and then the whole group of people that I play with on Wednesdays legitimately we built a table in one of our looks so but when I am at the table I feel like I might have I’m home so I have my television and I do projected maps because as much yeah cuz it’s I’m not I’m not gonna lie I’m a dungeon master who is not good with their hands I can’t draw I wish I had that ability since healing I cannot draw if I practice a bunch of no doubt I could but my time is finit so I’d have to pick and choose what I spend my time on and I really don’t I’m merely not good at like Matt construction and I don’t like spending tons and tons of money and money and already painted minis so it’s like how do you for my style at home my digital maps help cut down that time in half and I can just play on those and change it off quickly show images of the different characters it’s just there’s a there’s a there’s an accessibility that is quick and easy and because these people are all my friends you know well we will let a joke went on for an exponentially a long time we will swear a lot more there’s alcohol involved usually or like there’s meals we’ll have or sometimes I’ll do like I’ll do very experimental stuff with them things by candlelight like we’ll put things on candlelight will juice dream sequences we’ll do like interesting flashbacks we’ll do usually story art sometimes built within the world of previous games that have been published like we we there’s a lot more room to play but also because there’s so much play the sacrifice of like deep emotional intent is kind of there for us because it’s just so light-hearted sometimes right that I love the fact that stream gives us a place to really dive more into character which is which is for me the dip the biggest difference in games I tried to meld those worlds as best as like I can but I do feel like levels of comfortability change cuz there is no camera on we actually on my Wednesday game started to record like just for fun we were like let’s do let’s try to do a podcast or something because we’ve been playing for years together and you’re all amazing in the moment that the podcast started everyone changed it was it was great but it was like oh listen to the pacing listen to the feckless crosstalk is happening like there’s things you sacrifice that comfortability and and comedy or self-editing yeah people will stop that it for sure yeah and as a storyteller I work in either facet but for my live streams I definitely feel that my prep is a bit more intentional and I actually pretty much run pre-built modules at home because I like to sandbox from pre-established world so I’ll put something in Princes or in horde or in tyranny or all take some sort of like small published journey an adventure and then build out from where I’m gonna train you though and I love to learn so at home I can like exercise lor and then here I am able to implement everything that I actually play at home that informs this tool right so it’s it’s it’s interesting it’s almost like taking classes on my own with all these amazing people and then coming here and being professional it’s really have to be thoughtful of is the feeling of not closure per se but of completion of like having some sort of compartmentalize ending your thing whereas in the home games you can kind of go until you hit that or you can cut it off and you know people are going to come back but like sometimes you get that feeling if you’re at a home game and things are moving slowly that you’re just not completing anything the things the story isn’t moving and to me I actually I actually really enjoy streaming because to me everybody is on it like everybody’s thoughtful and they’re thinking at each other everybody’s paying attention nobody shoot magic missiles and Adichie toes nobody’s you know pouring Mountain Dew all over the news and and usually we’re mindful enough because we’re censoring ourselves you’re not gonna have somebody necessarily tableflip on you but that also means that you have to be you have to be very thoughtful with the aftercare that happens after a session and about prep the zero before it yeah because everybody needs to feel like all that stuff they couldn’t say on stream they can talk to you about they can be open with it still needs to feel like that is your there everyone is your friend yeah because you’re going through the gauntlet together yeah you want it like that the biggest thing is like in either option like genuineness and like honesty or by far the most important like that doesn’t change right like the fact that we’re all trying to tell a good story together no matter what doesn’t change it’s just sound levels can really change too yeah yeah I mean like good see big easy thing for you to do to make you extreme a lot better is no eating on string no gum things like that it was super easy that’s like the opposite of what I spent the last twenty years thirty years doing at my table one of the things I’ve noticed is how when you’re playing a game at home it’s so casual everyone at the table tracks a story by their own way in their own way right they take what they want out of it but you put a camera in there everyone has to be mindful of what story of they’re projecting right and I think that’s the biggest difference is being concise and clear because you know at home you’re playing a game but on stream you’re telling a story right and you’re right you’re not telling the story we’re all telling this exactly and we’re involved and when people talk over each other you can’t get the story when somebody is over here talking and whispering in the camera or the microphone gets it and you’re the dungeon master and you’re trying to give that they miss out and suddenly the story is chaos when it goes out through that camera and then nobody can follow along at home cuz essentially what we’re making is some hybrid between a campaign and television right yeah and I I come from you know eight plus years of improv experience and so actually I think that’s probably been the most informative thing that I’ve ever had because the seamlessness that you get in on camera gameplay is improv experience that’s two things that’s a scene that’s self-evident yep that’s it’s being mindful not to go for the joke what’s a nice way the game you play the game and like that’s the thing is that I think really the reason why home games can feel so astronomically different than a streamed game is because of that element of like everyone’s improvising yeah everyone’s participating and that’s it that’s a really interesting point because coming from voice acting which I forgot to mention that we do I’m dirty yeah and we do them in the game right from the acting that we’ve done and the voice acting is that the reason voice actors make such good players and DMS is because number one you’ve got a script you go through you know you have to get these certain lines but then we get the opportunity to go through and and meddle with those and to try different feelings and thoughts which is what actors do when they’re doing prep for a scene or even just for an audition but in voice acting you get to go through and play with that with the mindset of a different character and then under and then go through the character’s backstory and start thinking about how are different ways that we can change that and as a dungeon master that helps us significantly because we have a script that we’ve kind of got right like like Satine and like you like what we’re saying is that like for for inkwell there’s like eight storylines going on so wherever the players go we’ve got something for it yeah it may not be something we’ve thought about this week but it is something that we we have a loose idea of and so we can improv and pull and draw what we need to in a scene in a game in that moment to get the reaction and make sure that it’s meaningful because when I’m playing when I’m done to mastering even if it’s at home or on stream the thing that stays consistent is that I want you to have some sort of emotional connection with what’s going on and that’s a storytelling trick yeah is that a scene should always have an emotional anger and so I always try to make sure that wherever you guys go there’s an emotional anchor even if that emotional anchor is the player that’s sitting next to the other player because satine’s character might feel for your character going through whatever it is you’re going through we were talking earlier with off-camera about passive versus active not only role playing the Casimir’s active storyteller actor and the way that somebody remains active in a passive environment is by choosing to care about the either the other people that are there or the situation and that takes them out of being passive because they are actively listening actively involved and engaged and you can see it happening so how do we relate all of this to the differences of streaming versus playing at home because you know everyone’s there at home to just spend their day off with their friends right like how do you do you bring anything from streaming back into your home play and how does that affect your players or do you just kind of keep them separate I think there’s an awareness kind of situation going on here because I think that what streaming gives us is it is the refined almost advanced version of what we do at home at home we can lag it’s very it’s very heightened and it’s also like what why are you doing this like what’s the intention of it is it to hang out with friends and be casual then don’t feel the pressure or the need to make it a stream you know or if something you are streaming in order to get people you know like workshop actors or get people you know into characters and roles that they would never get the chance to play like I know that Ali who plays Lilith on girls gets glory loves the fact that she gets to play somebody who’s kind of like evil and it does these like crazy things that like a lot of the time woman are not associated with so so so what is the exercise and the purpose alright you’re doing and and I can take that home I mean I take anything home I will take a free coffee home I will take it for you because I am take notes yeah I’m somebody who’s about who thinks they can learn in any area of life anyway or collaborative in any essence of being collaborative I feel like I’m learning whether it be in television writing whether it be in D&D and improv all of these things inform one another and to not say that my live streaming hasn’t affected my home play would be a disservice to that if I said no then that would not be I would have to look a little bit inside and say why why is that why am I not learning something or taking something away from streaming right I’m definitely learning about the professionalism the the timing is a big thing you can and an intent that I’m learning pacing and I learned that I used to smile a too much here’s one so I watch so here’s an interesting thing that streaming taught oh as a kid as a tell I yeah yeah I was we watching me plain as a dungeon master in the first couple episodes and I was like I smile too much and it gives no it doesn’t give anything away cuz you never know if it is good or bad with me you never know with this model um but like I was like I want to start to learn how to do a better still face and so these are things I would have never seen in my home game oh there are things is when I go back into my notes on the screen I will crack up on that I was completely straight face for while we were playing that was just like I was stone-cold whatever we were doing this thing but then when I go back and watch it I’m like how did I make it through that I know I think that ain’t no platitude for what you were talking about for the learning thing is that like when we stop learning we’re like sharks in a way when we stop learning we start dying and so like the best way for us to continue evolving and again we’re comfortable we don’t change but the best way is to continually seek out that that information gain and that change and then apply it intelligence versus wisdom wisdom is the ability to apply what you can learn through your intelligence yeah so this has been a very fast hour we have questions from the audience huh it is 1:45 is it I got like 5 a.m. so for those of you out there I say to these questions after these questions we’re going to choose the raffle so exclamation mark raffle get in there but we already have the questions so if you want to ask more questions just hashtag Dungeon Master’s guide a hashtag asks that team and then ask me in Twitter first question we’re gonna do these the first to fast the last ones a long one this one is from Geoffrey Kane thank you what is your feeling on props handouts at your table do you prefer them to be Dan made or player made on stream i have started incorporating more props on stream and they’re usually made by me but i love when the characters bring in i actually have been talking some of the girls about bringing in little elements of their character because i feel like sometimes when you can visualize it it just gets you even more immersed into the world and i’m and i’m an immersion astiz that a thing let’s coin it I’m an immersion astir of that one to me we were talking about meta and stuff again we just took you to watch it all Saturday but we were having this great conversation about meta verses and also codec which but meta is at the end ha ha um nobody got great joke yes right so with with the meta thing it’s like yeah immersion is important and but also especially if you’re on stream making sure that it is something that actually fits the setting and fits what’s going on and so that means that you have to be on the same page as your player or if the player is going to be bringing something in they need to know that that’s like if they come up with some profits it’s weird for where you are at then then you kind of like throw it’s gonna be a big question mark for people and I try to incorporate weird props but sirens is weird because it is situational but then it also becomes an exercise and improv like okay so then how does this work how do you do and you have to almost a blue sky right there before the game so that you’re not caught off guard with it speaking of caught off guard last night at the Extra Life game Chris Lindsay’s game was awesome yeah I watched I played he Dungeon Master 2 game by Lisa Chan and well Doyle would lose hilarious and super gross but there were these awesome awesome puzzles and there was like all these handouts and I’m like wow at home I would be like okay let’s do this let’s go into these puzzles and but you know having done so many streams now I’m like wow this is a beautiful puzzle not doing it on stream yeah to the king who who wasn’t talking anyway which was great so it was really interesting the kinds of prop set you use at home are not always the kinds are good for a stream yeah I did appreciate those puzzles because it was a puzzle introduced it was like a newspaper introduced and then another piece of paper of advertisements introduced and then as other thing that led back to all of those right it was this beautiful weave of Clue relationships oh cool so that is really interesting okay question two as a DM how strictly do you enforce rules on the stream let’s start with reading so it to me it’s situational dependent and being the dungeon master you get to kind of decide in the moment how you’re going to play that but to me the communication like all rules are is the baseline for communication so what that means is that it needs to be consistent because if you start letting one player ignore the rule then you’re kind of playing a favoritism or at least that’s how it’s gonna be seen if you’re playing and you change the rule constantly well then your players don’t have the touchstone of what does this mean to my character then I I could do this or I don’t plus they also don’t know how to explain it to you in order to get what they want out of it or to even get close so to me I’m more of a tell me what you’re trying to do and then let me see which rules are actually the ones that need to be implied as opposed to it’s the best way because you don’t want a player to go well I’m doing this and this and this and this but you as the dungeon master need to be knowledgeable to know okay but for this situation that the rule you’re trying to put into effect isn’t actually the rule that we would use and so and I don’t like it when players tell me which rules they’re gonna do unless I ask for the clarification ahead of time I can’t stand that because it’s like oh you don’t know what I think by the way that role doesn’t count I’m glad you got a crit and everything like that but you also just robbed the audience from getting to experience that with you because you did it ahead yeah right it’s just weird if you’re in the middle of the other thing isn’t it yeah I definitely think that rules create stakes because if you didn’t have rules then it would just be a bunch of people without any stakes doing anything they want and that’s just like a messy improv session i I think that rules it there the thing that make it worthwhile yeah it’s without them there’s no game and I’m not somebody who who hinges on rules by any means like I I will not stick to certain rules I’d like to break certain ones I like house I have certain house rules that I like to have but I do think that when you play within the world of something by paying respect to what that’s been created and what that’s giving you it gives people it gives certain people who need that opportunity to explore things and areas of their of themselves and their characters they never would had without rules a very dominant character or player personality could totally take over but by being able to have rules it then becomes a game it becomes a shared experience a collaborative storytelling you really can’t do dandy with one person in the DM you know it’s about six or seven people the rules provide that opportunity so I like rules as long as they help advance the story as long as they’re informative character choices and I often at times will break the rules for stronger storytelling points like two things that I do things that I would say really quickly to kind of like put that into a thing is that rules are important because they give new players the baseline for the thing if they’re not veteran players they might not know how to bend things certain ways or how to reskin something so it actually makes the people who would be more timid more open to to jumping in and to diving in because they can oh this is what that means okay I got that but the thing that I do for every single game whether it is at home whether it’s at a convention or whether it’s livestream is our session zeroes has somewhere in there my favorite quote that I live by that is a world with no consequence is a world of no consequence and you can say that the same way with games and with rules if it doesn’t matter then why are we doing yeah um thank you limited sea horses for that question I really enjoy having the rules but having having my players push them and then ending it but not like kind of bending it like really bending it but one of the things to go back to streaming versus not streaming games I have noticed we have a lot of new players on the streams one of the things that we have been doing if we forget rules or whatever and this is something that you know I think I did last week or the week before where okay you can’t actually confront your player at the table when you’re streaming you know it’s like okay well that wasn’t really a thing so writing notes after the fact having a review is really good but when you’re gaming at the table at home you’re like okay well let’s take some time you have 15 minutes to look something that you talked about at the time anymore on the street well you can’t take the time on stream because it doesn’t make for good television right so one of the things that we’ve been doing to kind of bypass that every once in a while actually sin I think we’re only been doing this with sin sin and Kenley been playing with them off camera yeah and we play such a casual game like either it’ll be a half hour or it’ll be two hours and it’s them exploring their characters and actually like training them so that when they go on stream they know it a little bit better okay last question we only have a couple minutes and I want to wrap this up with your house rules so that’s gonna be next hold on this question is by only play wizards question oh it’s death is it no wait no that’s a different tag for everything so one of the worries about streaming games is that it is expelled this is why this is the question of why I wanted to do this in the first place okay good job it is exposed a lot of players to D&D however I’ve encountered new players that expect home games to be like stream games in terms of game style and production how do you balance that and taper expectations that’s it there’s expectations yeah I mean the thing is is that I think that in a world in a world built on self-satisfaction and expectation that can be the antithesis of some of the best creative exploration so telling people right away like I know you might have expectations but this is let me explain to you what I am doing this for and just communicate like I’m doing this to create new friends to be social I’m doing this because I really enjoy battles and I love running through panel sessions I am doing this because I want something to do in my free time I want a new activity to take on like if you’re just honest about that then I think then it becomes more fun for everybody involved because when and it whenever somebody might place expectation on some that’s where the that’s where things will falter because nobody can meet anyone’s expectations unless you I mean I actually believe that fervently like what you can’t meet if you don’t know what they are and if you don’t know what they are especially if you’ve never played with them before so it’s about journeying through that and like finding common ground it’s about working on that together and if people aren’t coming in and they’re disappointed because it’s not crisp and refined there’s not Lacroix in the fridge and it look wise then then I think that they rather they need to re-evaluate what they want to get out of the game or they might need to take some time away and process all of that because because like I started playing D&D just because I loved the game and I started Dee I mean simply because I wanted to try to learn like I was a rough DL and certain people didn’t play with me and we’re like ooh I don’t know if this is the game style for me and I’m like you know what that’s fine and communicating that with me I won’t take it off it I will not be offended by it something that yeah something that Stettin and I I think that is a little bit different about the way that we’ve kind of come up as opposed to like see ours the CR as they’re there they played with those people for a long time they know each other very well but Matt and that plays every now and then was like you know force gray or like with other people grabbing in there and he has his style but everybody knows it because they’ve watched enough what’s the T and I have kind of had to champion and is the idea of when we bring new people in sometimes they don’t know how to play with the other people that are there sometimes they’re they play a different style of RPG there’s like you’re saying there’s always that need to facilitate what the expectations are supposed to be and we put a lot of effort into championing champion minging nomini session zero and that is a session zero at the beginning of your campaign and then add a check in about probably every three to four sessions but also I do session zero every single game five minutes at the beginning of a game whether I played with those players or not I remind them what the world’s like about what they’re doing and I take the time to go and find out what they want out of the game what they expect out of the thing because that way we can blend what our expectations are together and if they start to move back and forth we we can work with that together like the same thing with having with everybody knowing that this is a game of consent yeah you have to be ready for somebody to go hey I’m not comfortable with what’s going on and say yes okay let’s put a button on that or let’s come back to that or let’s just could you know cut that off of the route and that shouldn’t just be on you as a DM that is on every single person at the table because it is a shared cooperative experience where you recall storytellers so players out there communicate we do Dungeon Master’s wait you want and set expectations so that they understand Dungeon Master’s if you have groups that you like on stream talk to the dungeon master find out what’s important to them because we all learn from each other and that’s the point of this entire show Lauren Rubin is going to draw the raffle or has already and real quick what is your what are your house rules I only have the ones that I can only think about the top of my head or a couple and the power of positivity I do not round down for anything I round up everything like damage everything like that all rounded up so I went somethings have to I like to think it’s like it better for the villains and better for it they’re also the players and the only other thing is I do BAMF invisibility spell I usually like give people advantage as well as the plus tense and things like that there’s certain spells that I like to tweak for flavor text because I think they should be more powerful um so those are the two hospitals off the top of my head that I can think of otherwise like everyone be kind and be courteous and also always speak as your character if you can yep I would say that one of mine is active role playing and that’s not like there that’s not to pull somebody out of their comfort zone necessarily but it’s to help with preventing metagaming because if you’re if everybody knows that what they’re saying is to be taken in character then that means that when somebody says something you don’t have to go are you saying that and care about a character you just have the world react to it because it should be obvious when a player is addressing you as a dungeon master creating that bolsa teens very good by going master so that we know that what she’s saying is completely out of character that in school they do but that was but I mean like the things that we get that entire escapade with the drinking thing that happened in inkwell was because you said something meta that we didn’t let roll meta we ran with it and that created an incredible game that created an incredible moment that people loved like and made clips and clips and clips about so for me my home rules are be considerate to everyone else it’s at the table make sure that if you are doing something that makes another player as a player uncomfortable or the DM uncomfortable that you are mindful of that and you are ready to draw up like pull back and be thoughtful and then you must stay afterwards you must stay for a minimum of 15 minutes because we all need to hug it out and we need to talk about the crap that happened and if anybody if somebody leaves and they’re upset you’re letting somebody drive upset you’re letting somebody go out into the world with a bad situation that they got from this game that was supposed to be fun and supposed to be taking care of people yeah or you just need a hug because it was so fun yeah don’t miss those moments to like to gush about your game so thank you guys for being on our show this is like the first not official official episode of the Dungeon Master’s guide straight the road to you thank you for having us yeah big congratulations to glue crow who just wanted Dungeon Master’s guide brand-spanking-new not even used real quick I’m gonna over the next episodes I will give you little tidbits of my own house rules and one of them is don’t tell other players what they need to do don’t met a game right let the person make their own our choices and let them feel because fail is fun for story feel for story well first story we’re gonna wrap up thank you guys for spending your Sunday with us but don’t go away cuz in an hour girls cos Gloria’s gonna be back with this one and her friends so thank you all for watching this don’t forget to send your one-minute videos of your house rules to DV fan art at Wizards comm have a lovely afternoon you

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