GMs, where do MOST of your RPG games take place?

May 4, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

GMs, where do MOST of your #TTRPG games take place? #DnD

— James Introcaso (@JamesIntrocaso) April 2, 2021

Consider how monsters affect encounter flow

May 4, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

daily #dnd creator tip: consider how monsters affect encounter flow. Will the monster hang around forever but never threaten the party? Good monster fights are like good drama: the outcome is realistic, and the characters are affected but not completely changed.

— Shawn Merwin (@shawnmerwin) January 27, 2021

What’s a more dangerous character to have in your party? Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil?

April 24, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

A lawful evil character would be better for the party because at least there are rules and collective goals that can be adhered to. They may have other goals but they can play nice within a group. Chaotic evil is like having a gremlin in your group. You'd want to kill them.

— WI_DnDSupport (@dndsupport) December 7, 2020

Is it weird that I practice character voices in front of the bathroom mirror?

April 23, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

Is it weird that I practice character voices in front of the bathroom mirror? No. I think you should take it a step further and film yourself doing the character voices. That way you can critique your performance. Maybe there's some kind of career for you here.
But no I totally practice voices and make note to myself to remember to use them down the line.

— WI_DnDSupport (@dndsupport) December 7, 2020

Creating a three hour epic adventure for levels 4-6 – Dungeon Master’s Guide with Satine Phoenix – ep6

March 24, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

what hello everybody out there welcome to this beautiful Sunday morning afternoon I don’t know where you are but it’s a beautiful day and today you’re here watching the Dungeon Master’s guide with me your host Satine Phoenix what are we doing here today we are going to show how easy it is to make an adventure we’re gonna make an adventure in about 40 minutes why 40 minutes because there’s a whole bunch of other things to do before we get to the event today we have really cool guests we have we have TJ storm and we have vivid bootcut I’ll do an introduction of them when they get here so before we get into all the nitty-gritty we have to talk about a couple of things we have Lauren oh go crazy and chat as our lead Maud and Lauren is going to wrangle all the things I’m about to talk about first we have the raffle you’re gonna raffle a Dungeon Master’s guidebook so a couple things you have to be in the chat to win I believe she’s already opened the raffle it’s exclamation mark raffle enter that in the chat and you will be entered into the raffle winning Bubble Bobble ah it will be drawn randomly near the end of the show so keep your eyes peeled you must be in the chat to win and you have to reach out to Lauren with your information who will then give us your information and then we will send it to you next week there are no location limitations we will send it anywhere in the world number 2 Dungeon Master questions we’ll be asking our guests three questions so go ahead and put your question in chat we’ll pick three of them only three put the word question in all caps right in front of there and Lauren will gather them and yeah only three are going to be picked so ask wisely or intelligently or with dexterity I don’t know use one of those things today’s theme is level 4 to 6 epic adventure a three hour adventure or intermediate players so before we go into that we are gonna actually go to one of our correspondents we have Lisa Chen the community manager dm’s guilt hi everyone my name is Lisa Chen and I’m the community manager for the Dungeon Master’s guild your go to marketplace for all sorts of D&D adventures and supplements and the best place to publish your own D&D creations for fun or profit I’m here today to share some real advice from real creators just like you today’s advice comes from Mt black an amazing writer out of Australia I will share some of his creations right over here and if you are a dungeon master who is looking to make that leap to creator and you have no idea where to start MT has some tips for you tip number one brush up on your writing skills unless you have an English degree or communications degree it’s entirely possible there are some nuts and bolts you still have to master honing your writers craft will set your products apart with professionalism and marketability tip number two read other adventures check out the most popular adventures well-rated adventures that catch your eye and read them figure out how they’re formatted how the adventure is designed also check out older adventures Dungeon Master skilled has a section called D&D classics which is really great for that and really get to know your subject and the topic you want to write about tip number three use the tools available to you you don’t have to stare at a blank piece of paper and figure out some sort of magic on your own Mt actually recommends the Dungeon Master’s guide for beginners there is an adventure design chapter that has tables that first-timers can generate an adventure from the dungeon master skilled also has a bunch of resources like style guides and templates to get you started I check out the resources for dmg creators section tip number four just do it keep it short keep it simple just get writing empty warns not to get hung up I’m grading the perfect first adventure because you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment it is more important to write hit that publish button which is the hardest part to getting started and then learn from the feedback you get and repeat the process that is all about what being a creator is well that’s all the advice that we have for you today until next time you can check us out at Dungeon Master’s guild calm thank you Lisa oh my god I have a question for you Lisa I don’t know if you’re out and chat right now but where did you get that shirt because that DN skilled shirt is super cool and I do believe we all want one well I am speaking for everybody we all want one so let’s figure out how to get that we have another set of Correspondence that are having a charity stream today hey save our shop stream cognitive merchants from Manchester so there’s a whole bunch of us Rudy and I are going to be on the stream today and I just wanted to show you how awesome their shop is so this is a custom dungeon master screen as a satchel it starts off as a satchel looks like this super cool here they have the maze Arkana logo that cutout is really neat and you just open it up you snap it off you just take it out like this and then bam bam you two can have one it’s super cool but on the other side of this one they were so cool and they put a sexy sateen eye and if you can see way in the middle of it is a maze Arkana logo the quality is incredible go check them out cognitive merchant we love them very much save their shop help us save their shop before we get into making an adventure bringing our guests on I want to talk about choice so we looked all over the internet we looked at our community we found a group to play with I really want to stress that it’s important that everybody communicate and yes you’re all playing your game but players have a choice to play in the game and I want everyone to understand that it’s okay for you to say this was a really fun couple of sessions I would like to choose to play in another game I would like to stop playing this game and I would like to explore another character somewhere else it is okay it hasn’t it doesn’t say anything about Dungeon Master’s don’t take it personally I think that’s what I’m trying to say don’t take it personally when your players doesn’t want to be there and you can actually tell you’ve got your players at the table and one of them starting to kind of disengage maybe you’re getting frustrated because they’re they’re scheduling is getting a little flaky there they start changing their minds or their decisions of what they want to play have a talk with them and I’ll give them the place and the space to say you know what I I don’t actually want to be here anymore and like I said do not take it personally because people have the choice to play in lots of different games players you can say no thank you and don’t worry about hurting other people’s feelings as long as you come from a place of honesty from your part like I don’t you could say thank you for allowing me to play at your table I hope your game continues to grow and then I wish you all well and that you would like to explore another game so that’s just a little bit of food for thought it is important that we don’t force ourselves to be in situations that are uncomfortable when you know there’s tons of tables that you can play at and lots of different ways to play lots of different stories to explore and on that note we are going to go to break and after the break we’re going to bring our guests on so first a commercial break and a little song from or not so live band sirens [Music] [Music] I’ve met wrong in council Grimm who tried to in a bet but then a drow who clearly won turned him into his pet I met an orc from glimmer wood his future was so bright but very minogue a mage and Dean win the fight and then I met the one who told me that I could go far that young and handsome Bowl beholder known as Anitha and he said I’ve gotten my [Music] [Music] I’ve had an all in snake wood and I really like to shield but then he met a cavalier who didn’t like to yield it seems that every path I cross is really with a curse but every time I come out fine so I guess it could be worse cuz then I met the one that told me that I could go far that young and handsome bold beholden and he said I’ve gotten my [Music] [Music] and we’re back ready to make an epic adventure are you ready to experience the creation of an epic adventure we have our guests right here in these seats we have bit of a bit and TJ storm and why don’t we hear from you guys I’m a camera you I’m here with you now it is us and we’re making an adventure together so why don’t you share over the audience how long you been DME how many times you p.m. and who are you what do you do well I am vivid visca and I am goodness and a cosplayer model I’m honest awesome show called sirens of the realms no big deal I’m kind of a professional cartoon weird Lane person I just kind of stumble around on the internet and do stuff as for DMing um it’s easier to say how many times I’ve d-end rather than how long because I’ve actually I started my own home game after playing with you for so long and like loving being a player I wanted to try my hand at actually telling the story so I started a home game I’ve done a couple sessions with that and by a couple I mean a couple like 12 hour long sessions please guys let me sleep and then actually last Tuesday I did my first public DMing on sirens mama bear was so proud yeah you cry it yeah yeah I mean y-you made me I also I also put my favorite was like in the chat everyone was like oh it’s she’s a new you know she’s gonna be so great and they’re like five minutes later they’re like no she’s ruthless she’s she’s learned from Stettin that’s a lot of rolling for survival I was very impressed thank you so much thank you for allowing me and I’m super excited I love storytelling and I’m stoked to continue my DM journey no TJ you’ve done you’ve mastered a couple of times why don’t you tell everyone your experience and [Laughter] awesome um my name is CJ storm I’m an actor performance capture artist and I’m the founder of the mind’s eye tribe action actors Academy but I’ve been deeming Dungy mastering for over 30 years and I absolutely love it it’s an amazing adventure a collaborative adventure and it’s wonderful congratulations by the way on your first bein adventure that is spectacular I’m loving it and I have like the best group and also like the group that I’m playing with none of them have ever played Dungeons & Dragons before so I’m actively teaching them how to play like a player as I’m learning as a storyteller it’s great that’s the best yes cool well we are going to jump in to this epic adventure creation so know if you were listening but we’re going to make an epic adventure for levels 4 to 6 we’re gonna make it feel like an epic adventure for intermediate players b.length will end up being 3 hours so you’re going to start I think we have about 30 minutes 40 minutes or so so where do we begin I think epic means it is larger than life it is it leaves a mark in the world so there’s adventures and then there’s epic adventures and Lord rings things like that were epic adventures so if we’re gonna go there we need an epic beginning see and it’s funny because my first instinct was to have a small beginning so it felt epic when you went out into the world I believe that is the case if you have a long time to play but we only have three hours so if we start small then we’re gonna have to build up but if we but if we can actually you can use your idea how about if we start small we start with our level four characters now we’re saying level four to six but insane that this is the adventure that’s not what the adventure has to end this is just the first part of perhaps a bigger adventure so in this first chapter yeah so we have our we have our characters and they are there but we have an epic character who’s attached to an epic group let’s say his name is something I know sir Gallagher’s something something some bigs yes yeah yes our Gandalf carrot and he’s like he walks in and he does something epic in the beginning of the adventure and then right in front of your eyes he and the epic heroes die right in front of you we crush them and you see the big bad and he looks sad he’s like hmm this task is done let us move on and he leaves his lieutenant behind a mini-boss if you play video games so the boss leaves and leaves the mini boss behind and the characters are like I would just be like no sorry and there’s nobody left to help the people we just crushed our heroes and only these guys are like whoa whoa there needs to be a reason no because like I said I’m super chaotic neutral so I would just be like hmm you have to how do we get them not to out yeah there needs to be a reason not to just like Bank on their moral compass or needs to be a reason for them that they cannot know about so if um someone comes in and is super amazing and then they’re immediately killed by the big bad why care um they’re I mean it could be like that one of your group was taken so you actually have like someone to fight for it could be that maybe or like a family member or someone related to well I mean the group could start out and they have like a character with them you know like that not so much the plucky sidekick but like it definitely equaled that is like uh you’ll be a good hand make whatever and like someone like grabs and takes them then there’s a reason for them to go after the big bad to get their friend back okay so how about this sit wherever wherever this location is it’s the players and their friends maybe it’s a tavern or maybe it’s whatever a celebration or something where maybe they’re celebrating the big heroes and so you know they’re actually with people so the dungeon master homecoming exactly so the the game master can choose so every player says oh this is who I brought with me so that the game master is like oh I’m taking this person then they have more of a need well and also you can definitely play with that and be like one person is taken another person is maimed another person is also killed another person like you know there’s gonna die away all their friends exactly but that gives everyone a personal reason I have an idea yeah so your characters sometimes if you have a hospital sometimes you need somebody to teach you to level up or or to get to the next level you need that sponsor you the high priest if you’re a cleric you need the knight Lord if you are a fighter your sponsors your mentors are there to introduce you at this party that you have and it’s this big event first we celebrate the great heroes and then we’re gonna look at the next generation and they point towards you guys and the people that are going to introduce you tonight you to raise you to that next level are also they’re your mentors and they destroy the epic heroes they take your mentors hostage and they leave I mean this is very much a its student becomes the master yes because you were literally put on your adventure to level up to ascend to save your your hero heroes so you’re going to save your yoda journey oh my this is saying the friends can still die these are everything extra push but exactly so opening feeling oh no this is all this is all happening so we have death of the epic people you’ve got your mentors or you have your friends and family they’re the big bad comes in swoops up takes a bunch of people kills means some people leaves the mini-boss which is how you get the players to feel like they have a chance right so that’s the opening good opening Wow yeah that’s how you that’s how you epic done one so we have three hours what’s the next step where do you guys go from there well we assumed that they beat the mini boss who is the mini boss the mini boss can be the end of the adventure so he’s the one that we’re going to eventually have to go up against the boss is epic level remember he destroyed the big guys so we’ll leave him for oh yeah I mean this is like their this is their treasures this is that lieutenant he’s still a beast but we could potentially leave him for the end of the adventure so you could do a double thing where at the beginning the group fights him and he just like sweeps on but then at the end of that three hours when they find him again it’s like more equal that they can beat that so they could feel epic that they in that time have grown enough and learned enough that they were able to defeat that boss if they couldn’t see all not all me you okay yeah she he there should be something that is his fatal flaw something that they learn in that first one I mean he should wipe the floor with me lieutenant should wipe the floor with him but the staff down or the thing and then if you can get him away from his staff or whatever that thing is then you have a shot okay so let’s let’s talk about this person this creature what it what are they ready we’re making it right now you want to make it Undead so it’s a more impressive separation okay so it’s an undead creature was it or you can only stack the odds in your favor like it’s day two it’s an undead probably a white okay how do you spell that ah w IG HT all right all right so why is this the big bads mini-boss what is me what is this personality let’s create this that’s terrible I mean whites are kind of like zombies that are caught in between on like dead and undead and they have like I mean they can actually like speak and talk so that way it’s not like the cool thing about white the word actually means man it’s an ancient word and and you know the cool thing about the India is the more you failed the more you learn it’s awesome beginnings of white okay so so we have a white he’s he was a man and he made a bad choice what choice did he make to get to this point I mean I don’t think that’s so much important yeah it will drive everything this is how we build this this this is kind of like the centerpiece for whatever he’s holding he’s like the ring whatever he’s holding he holds on to it so much it has sucked the life from him and if you can part him from that thing do you have a child okay so why is he working for the big bad greed got him his power and greed also got him chained to this guy I would say that the big bad is the one who originally had whatever he had like a staff a ring a piece of armor whatever and when he got that armor and took it and you know got that power from it he didn’t know that it was still connected so it’s like he got it and he assented but he’s still middle-management to the big bad can we use can we use we always do okay everybody always uses magic but I think they overlook the power of the gods can we use one of the old gods ball maybe one of the dead dreams okay I don’t know about this guy he’s the god of murder okay so okay goddamn murder be AHL eh eh am okay yeah isn’t it alright tell me more but wait tell me not and that would mean maybe our bad guy is a bald spot a child of all I mean that’s definitely epic yes fight you know like a godchild yes yeah yes oh yeah like even if like they like I send like the epic epic epic epic final boss he’s bald like take you down a god of Italy beyond bull quick story ball died during the Time of Troubles in the Federals oh and then but he saw his death coming so he had lots of children and left him everywhere this is one of them now most of them died along the way but a handful of them are still around in the world and this guy has finally risen to power and now he’s the he’s the boss again like going to for it but that could be the ball child’s main motivation is to perhaps hunt down the other ball children to like Highlander and like there can be only one year to be the next ball she did a Highlander reference that is awesome okay so we’re gonna go back because we have a lot to cover in a very short amount of time the staff let’s make up a staff let’s make this powerful thing what is it okay can you tell me anything about ball these be god of murder whose symbol is a skull yes I think blood droplets around it or fire around it okay so like long time yeah I mean the first thing I picture is a skull but um I say that it’s blood but when I say that I mean it’s like the actual like carving is all of these like vines coming out of the skull and they’re like wrapping around coming down question I’ve thought for a spook factor and atmosphere it is not carved it is a skull it is the skull of the first ball spawned that the boss killed put it on there and when you use it it cries blood that’s why you know and the blood feeds the vines yes yeah and that’s one of the things like if you actually hit in contact then it’ll absorb the blood because it steals blood that could also be a super helpful thing for these new people because everywhere he’s going he’s has this thing it’s lighter it’s literally breadcrumbs yeah and this guy is so powerful that he doesn’t even care that is really leading you to him that will also keep the party from getting off track because it’s literally like no it’s right there yeah but but to make it for a good party you have extra credit if you have a ranger because Rangers or the other one is gonna be like what is this and though they’ll be on in the heartbeat very biblical so let’s come up with a name for this white white fearful and ominous blade the light keep doing it are you dad’s favorite child maybe he has a nickname but his name is Dwayne yeah okay so what’s a nickname he’s got that and then that could be something they fund but they’re like his true name we make this guy we give we give him which is really really strong that’s why he Justin in the beginning and we gave him three weaknesses one if you can learn his true name your name is Dwight boom you leverage who’s named Joe and you chose do you chose this yes yes one true name Dwight Dwight man guy great guy well two wise yeah cuz it’s from Cormier awesome yes true name is number one what’s the second weakness get a staff for it yeah third daddy issues clarity well okay so how I just kind of threw that out right that wasn’t planning on if he is a child of ball wait no that is the big bad is the childhood pause yeah okay so let’s go back to Dwight what are the week to the son I do not know off the top of my head this guy is right he’s got his weakness is son all right Simon what he lost you only have like 15 minutes okay actually come up with encounters so B’s I guess is some the most simple thing is we have the beginning and the first fight that’s the entire first act is they’re gonna see this happen and fight this guy and probably lose ya know I have an easy way for them to stay on track and find him see the the blood pellets mm-hmm let’s put an old priest in there so that they can get some lore because they’re not gonna know yeah without the DM saying here’s some history for you but he might see this guy and be like you know he carries the stuff a bowl and you should be careful so there’s a old priest he’s so old that nobody thinks about him he stays in the temple and this is the part in the movie where you you know follow the breadcrumbs and you start to to find your way and maybe he can give you and this is a role-playing bit but if you spend enough time with him and you do a little bit of research you can find out some of the weaknesses but this is mostly role-playing in the middle yeah and this is also the journey there also needs to be some kind of like team-building and counter in there where they because they’re going to go in this [Laughter] guy and they’re gonna get like the floor swept with them they need something in the middle maybe it’s um like a horde of actual zombies that the whites sent back like go clean up my mess just something that they can get together and defeat and get kind of their confidence back and feel like they can do it because otherwise you’re gonna go up against this guy again and be like just got our butts kicked and in that encounter it’s a role play it’s it’s a combat but it kind of teaches you little things that could help defeat him and some of them could have clues and hints on them that would help you know like the weaknesses that you could work together with the priest so it’s not just one guy that’s like by the way these are his weaknesses you know a little bit like maybe they have some kind of like insignia or symbol on them that is like a Sun melting away or yeah so since its ball it’s the Lord of murder if we have those zombies if we have the zombie horde that he leaves behind in the city when maybe when they get their butts kicked they wake up in the old priests place and that he says I don’t know all the details but you can find me one of their soldiers and bring him back alive I can speak to the dead and they can tell us what we need that’s a whole hours yeah yeah that’s pretty good only would they have to fight these zombies that are sent back but they have to keep one alive and bring them back to the priest right someone just brings back the skull you’ve got all right so we have the celebration they wake up in the priests place the final fight where is it is it in the same location is it nearby are they gonna go somewhere nearby unless you want to travel but is it top of the mountain is it if he’s left his forces here and he’s the lieutenant he might be up on the hill he’s going to oh he’s been left behind to murder everyone so he’s preparing a ritual yeah they could they could literally like touch him along the way to like the next town thus getting that extra feel good that they have saved this next like impending town from him going on in them getting like the same like wait death horn fed babies guys it’s a sharp jagged mountain that he lives on top of oh is summer home and they have to make it up this super scary which is another cool encounter yeah it could be like the journey of so you’re fighting the elements to get up there having to work together to get up there because that’s part of one of the best days eternal Guardians because they’re dead they just stand guard all day and they never sleep okay so we’ve got the bring bring me a zombie yeah I just did an adventure where they had to go up like a dangerous mountain like that and I kept having them roll like perception and only like I had them do like the circle and finally the last guy was like so were you looking then I go I look over look down funny last I was like I look up and I’m like thank you because like all this stuff is rolling down the mountain and everyone looked around nobody they never dad dad looked up okay so survived the mountain you said Guardians yes zombie guards or whatever is appropriate for for later yeah and by this time they would already feel comfortable fighting at because they fought some before yes these could be just a little bit bigger and better get our honor while we’re okay and then we have the final battle okay so does this take place up in the mountain basically see this fortress right yeah wherever that might be or has because we actually have some people some fans who are building mats for this stuff so we can we describe it to them he might be up here but I don’t imagine it’s a permanent domicile because he’s come here strictly to murder the people his town and then he’s gonna move on back to catch up with his big boss yeah yeah it’s like okay so you know it could be it could be an old graveyard where he is collecting more bones to build more army oh it’s an old temple to Baal yeah alright okay so tell me a little bit about this temple what’s inside of it and what is so ominous that the player is not only to have to defeat him but kind of have to watch like maybe is it a thing he’s building is it yeah okay now from this point on you are now in strategy mode this is a different kind normally you just go inside and you pick a fight but you want the old priest to say look there’s the three things and if you can achieve all three you have a big chance if you only truly achieve one yeah so you have to achieve all three of those things number one you have to find its true name I don’t know how you do that by the way unless one of you can change shape and go have a conversation with them and say something you know but you have to come up with clever ways like either shroud themselves or hide away or over here they could here um while they’re going like up the thing one of the guards being like you’re the guys name is actually Dwight like the I mean nobody likes their boss like everyone okay you know I actually heard and so you could actually perhaps overhear it okay but I mean you would have to be super sneaky and actually be trying to listen you can’t just like walk up and hear it maybe it’s within here maybe it’s at the priests library maybe you know maybe you can put it in a couple different places so that when the player different chances to find it out but in in the end the players are gonna have to find ways to achieve all three things it doesn’t matter if it’s daytime inside of a cave so you’re gonna have to draw him out or you don’t have your thief sneak in and grab the the staff and get out before he notices it’s gone because once it’s in its hand it’s game over you could also pull some kind of vibe like legend type thing area use my ears that’s cool yes that is really cool actually so in that case as a dungeon master you would have to plant these items or these ideas in different like you’d really have to make the environment and I don’t want us to do that I would really like the individual Dungeon Master’s playing this to come up with ideas so maybe Rick when you’re putting this into the into the module it’s you know encourage the Dungeon Master’s to be creative one thing we do have is the old priest working for us he doesn’t have to be nice he can be like you’re just going to go straight and attack him again you’re an idiot and yeah you could say you better have a better plan than that mirrors or you know are you gonna sneak in are you just gonna try to grab it out of his hand and you you you make your players go I didn’t think about that because they never do until they’d be a reality check of their level and be like how long have you guys been doing this for you know you do you definitely have like a long way to go you need to think about this stuff if you want to be true heroes what was your masters say oh oh right in the ego yeah that’s really great work for it can also give them a little bit of healing stuff cuz they’re gonna take some bruises yeah and lastly when they get to his place they might start to see special guards and the special guards might be skeletons like because I like what you said about the bones and their skeletons just stand there under standing guard except the only difference is the thing that tells you that they’re different is that skeletons cry blood they’re just blood dripping out of there they could also have Andy what they see he sees that’s that’s why that’s why they’re special no that works with what I was gonna say so what they see he sees and I was going to say and all of their shields are reflective why do we need themselves because they’ve been standing outside so long the elements of polish them have like weathered it away this is one epic adventure so they get the they get this guy let’s talk a little bit about how the big bad is going to approach I think we only have five minutes to do this oh so let’s talk about the big bad and what how he might see the the players and how you might treat the players because that’s gonna be kind of like the dungeon master monster we’ll play this yeah and I would I would think in this situation that’s good for us to guide master it’s big big bad no one’s there worms he’s already destroyed them I mean he will wipe them out underestimates oh absolutely I mean granted what his soldiers see he saw and whereas they could hide a lot with the reflective shields there he’s still going to see them like come up so he knows that they’re coming but still he’s already wiped the floor with them he knows they’re coming he’s he welcomes it he’s like come on come at me bro oh so he’s more like your fly yeah I’m not really gonna pay attention to you until they prove they start proving that they’re more clever than doing things they are this and they also shows that it’s more than just level and brute strength you can ascend beat on your level if you plan and you actually use tactics that’s right this Rand or white should be a little bit special we should give him some special gear maybe he was a priest maybe he was a wizard but he should have you should have some extra special stuff more than just a basic life or assign all of that to the staff that way he doesn’t have the staff he loses all of his special goodies cool okay where does this take place there’s way down here bird Baldur’s Gate somewhere that’s a cool area yes and that’s where a lot of the malls spawn were so that’s that’s where they they were oftentimes okay I’m good with the geography so I’ll put in a small town somewhere near Baldur’s Gate okay yeah BG yay look baldur’s gate okay the old priest what is his name seems tonight no I stopped when she was letting me name things okay you’re like sheesh why I’m a servers there’s Samson Samson appender like because the morning would cool so him what is the what is what what is Dwight guy’s color name power name it has to be something over the top because this guy is compensating for like a life of Dwight Dwight life I am rubbish at naming things obviously I am I’m very much looking to you here because everything I do is trash death no greed gold what’s gold another word for gold Chinese glory glorious glory and his name is Gloria and we need a dark word afterwards yeah Lorien [Music] death maybe something with McCobb or naming people is like the hardest thing it’s usually the easiest part okay I something has to do with death you said in the cob or downfall Glorian like what might Slayer but something that like takes things away so what is the words life life with drain drain electric I’m trying to think of stuff that has to do with like the skull and the tears now so it takes away like life crier or like like prayer glory life Clare yeah Florian life and if you look at the mountain you look at the mountain right far away see it just the trees all say yeah you worked really hard to put all the big stones there last question all right this is a freaking amazing though by the way this is like super impressive what is the name of this module [Music] tears of wife we’re you call it tears of life life crier like it’s like the skull and everything or for truck of tears Trail of Tears Trail of Tears well not Trail Trek you don’t want the trail is noise like yeah I like that Trek of Tears trip yeah we need another word because that’s like two T’s and okay it’s a little awkward okay mission not might look adventure ocean quest quest for tears quest of Tears the white way a Ranger does okay gosh yeah you’re really good at pretty much every everything was great until we had a name stop we have 30 seconds toxic tears path of Tears temple of Tears temple of charity all right done temple of Tears okay guys this is one epic adventure and the best part is that it’s an epic adventure for almost pretty low characters but that’s this is what I love about Dungeons and Dragons is the improv it is the the fact that you came up with a really intense adventure within 40 minutes I really don’t know how much time it took but it was very fast and I’m so proud of you guys and I hope you guys really enjoyed the creation of this feels like the coolest pop quiz every Sunday here actually we are gonna go on hiatus for a few weeks and then we Dungeon Master’s guide we’ll be back probably late February early March while we upgrade but before we leave for today we only have like 10 15 minutes left we have some questions for you from our fans fan questions Thank You Lauren obba crazy first question from cosplay right asks [Music] how do you account for magic items in the party’s possession when building an encounter within any adventure would you like me to repeat the question I’d like you to repeat that question how do you how do you account for magic items in the party’s possession when building an encounter within any adventure I don’t I I used to but for me now it’s just a part of I I like a semi-realistic setting so sometimes you’re over prepared for something and you walk in and it’s a breeze sometimes you’re vastly underprepared and you’re like oh my god I left my house without pants so whatever it is you let them deal with it some teams like to I I used to do that when I wanted to defeat my players I’m like how am I going to beat them or at least challenge them I don’t anymore I let them figure out how to win and I think that’s more for me and watching them I think it’s more rewarding that they figure out we can’t just beat the thing over the head every single time we are going to have to sneak around it and come up with a way to beat it rather than just attack from the front sometimes it is you can attack from the front when you’re overpowered but other times you have to be clever I mean that’s like the entire adventure that we just wrote it’s it’s all about getting the magic thing away from the guy using like your tactics so yeah question number two from IO dinosaur the question is which part of adventure design tends to come first for you specific monsters a plot point nerd interesting location in this one we started at the beginning but how do you guys normally do that I usually start by plot points and I fill in monsters along the way that I feel would fit like the area the situation or where that story is going I never build an adventure starting out with monsters because also I mean it’s just the way that I DM and the way that I like to do things is that I like to have more of the focus be on the story rather than just encounter to encounter to encounter it it’s very much like writing and damning is very much like writing for me at least I see the center piece I see the thing the thing that I want to achieve in the end I want them to fight a dragon and then I go backwards and start to fill out everything that I need to get to that point but I always know where my journey is going to end and then I figure out which way I want to go there and that’s kind of what we did today we know that someday we want to meet the boss so we reverse-engineer everything and we take our time doing that and research helps a ton you can take your time saying what can challenge these guys or what gods do I have access to or what place do I want to be in and that fills out everything all by itself cool we have one last question and only a minute do it to answer it and I can’t even yeah Stewart our Wyatt asks when creating an encounter that has non combat elements puzzles chases etc what are good indicators of balance in your opinion having even thought to create a non-combat encounter has already brought you to the point of balance a lot of people will make their Opie fighter but nobody thinks to bring the guy who can open locks and if you don’t you’re already in trouble or if you have the wizard who can figure out the puzzle he’s smart enough and he has the backstory in the knowledge and the Arkana skills and history checks you’ve already started balance you’ve already start thinking about balance now you would like I mean I don’t know it also depends on the kind of players you have if you have a ton of murder elbows in your party then and only one person who really enjoys puzzles give them their puzzle maybe one or two and then put the supply enough action for everybody else I mean you can also mix together action with a puzzle like maybe to get elements of the puzzle you have to kill someone til I get it from them or it starts their blood or it’s something like that so that way you can actually like help bring in and be like yes you can go ahead and you can kill these people but for a reason pause their brains and it also it’s like it would just be really funny to watch this like fumbling fight or be like like pick up like the skeleton arm and be like I think this is a key and and for the advanced teams when you can mix those two at the same time that is gold if the fighters have to hold off the hoard while somebody’s trying to open this because they have you have 60 seconds if you can balance those two ah that is awesome absolutely well thank you guys for answering these questions thank you guys for asking the questions we chose three but there’s so many more in chat why don’t you guys who ask those questions take them to Twitter and with the hashtag ask dmg and we will answer them on the Twitter after the show and I have one more question for you guys so you know we all are very specific genes we have our own set of house rules that make our game our own so what are your house well give me like one house rule one thing that you tell your players to make your game you or it may be it’s something you do in your game that makes your game you okay for me it’s not everybody is a role player at first especially they’re just I want to show up and I want to kill orcs and kick in doors and stuff like that and that’s fun and that’s okay there’s totally fine I like to see the character come out so number one I reward role-playing with experience I’ll say put a check on your paper that was really cool and when they do something when they say I’m going to intimidate that guy I’ll say what are you gonna say now they don’t have to be the best speaker it’s a charisma check and of course your character has an eighteen and you are not the eighteen character that you’re portraying but you say look I know where your uncle lives and if you don’t tell me what I want to know [Laughter] and now now if they do a little bit of that even in description I’ll say do that an advantage now I reward them for even the smallest attempt to roleplay because it really brings a lot of life to the game to be able to see just a little bit of your character because now I know who you are I’m like oh okay I see how you are that’s cool and also the world now knows how you are and that could come those those create little adventures for you your your players are going to write your adventures half the time oh yeah and when they do that kind of stuff that creates nice little threads that you can come back and pull on later so that’s lady backing off of what you said something that I actually like to do before the games especially is I like especially um like I said with my home game I have people who have never played D&D before so to get them use they’ve never role played so to get them used to it I took every person and individually did a mini mini thing with them it was like a half an hour no roles no anything just like you wake up here you’re here there are eyes following you what do you do and I just talk them through it so that way they’re not worried about like well okay I roll what is this number it’s just like you rolled that that’s like that’s a pretty good go and it’s like one guy that I play with who had never role played was really nervous about doing any like kind of he who’s very focused on leaping numbers and everything he ends up running from this creature and I’m like okay in front of you there is a cabin there’s a door it’s got a big glass when I was like I jumped through the window and I’m like check that door alright I know I had him roll and he got like long story short he ended up just like rolling so that he just slammed into the window and didn’t break it at all and like fell and he’s like okay I I tried the door I’m like the door was unlocked the whole time that so he goes in any like on the spot like there’s an old woman in there and she’s like oh something just hit my window and he there with his nose broken and blood everywhere and he’s like the monster punched me like totally lied about it to save face but now he felt so much more comfortable that he had this thing where he was able to feel that fluid fluid roleplay that comes out so yeah I like to have these little moments with people individually to kind of build up their role-playing conference with just me and then put them with everyone else so they can like slowly dip their toe in and find themselves that’s awesome thank you guys for sharing your tips so you guys I have been asking you guys for the last five episodes to send in your GM House Rules Dungeon Master House Rules to DMV fan art at wizards calm and guess what we have some here for you today we have I believe four of them and we’re gonna run them right now thank you guys here we go hey there my name is Carlos Perez and today you talk a little bit about the house rules that I use in my games so the first one is on turtle creation if any of my players decides to go with race background combination that both receives non-optional proficiency in the same cue like for instance Goliath so they’re both receive proficiency on athletics then that character you have the proficiency and expertise on that skill follow me that I also use a different rule for rolling initiative if any one rolls the network 20th initiative will then roll the dice again same with the twenty and some with favor initiative it also happens unfollow the other side so if you roll a one you roll again and then have one minus that number two rolled in the dice plus you initiative hey I’m John patina also only played Wizards on Twitter Instagram I wanted to submit my little house rule that we’ve been using for a while for the Dungeon Master’s guide we were kind of dissatisfied with inspiration we found just getting an advantage on something was just way too easy already so a lot of times inspiration would go wasted so in addition I also I would forget to reward it as a dungeon master so there was that so what we do now is inspiration gets awarded after a session I let the players nominate up to three of the players for next session to have inspiration and then in addition our inspiration when you have it you get a little little castle little Peter castle to Crystal and you can use it to add a d6 to any ability to check saving throw or attack world much like the Bartok inspiration so we wanted it to mimic and use that ability that we we all kind of know and love so alright I hope you enjoy hi my name is usually the adventures League so I follow strict rules but this is my gym spheal my game is the ethical and cinematic expected style shots and hermetica feels unless otherwise they didn’t see that anything you say or do is something your character says or does I would ignore any and all call for mechanics tell me what you want our last photo when I need it please please please all attack and damage at the same time if you’re having someone you need to explain how or you can’t this includes but isn’t limited to but inspiration the little cool holes because even make the game more fun and I will do my best to reward you also try to know the school thing some other people and point them out I like to let the players director story I will push forward only if I see you struggling on sure all of these holes are to facilitate the main goal of this game which is to have fun and make it home before and family members get some asylum after the game is over if you have any questions about my decisions I’ll be happy to explain anything that isn’t the spoil hi my name is Jeff I identify as a sleepy Dungeon Master problem I was having at table well those players just not being very descriptive often there’d be a scenario and player just go stealth Jack night and I I find that really disruptive to the narrative I’m describing a scene going through so I am ended the rule that if you declare a skill check and roll you will have a disadvantage on that role if you just describe that you’re doing you walk up and say I want to try to sneak by that guard I’ll be straight wrong well might be role self check you say I’m gonna get a ball bearing for my pack I’m gonna throw it over the wall over there and hopefully create a distraction and then sneak past that guard I’m gonna give you advantage on that so it just really helped get players more descriptive and has kept the narrative flow of the game as my tip you guys are so awesome thank you so much for recording those and sending them to us so for everyone out there you too we want to hear what your house rule is has to be one minute maximum and we’ll be showing them on the end of every single Dungeon Master’s guide when we come back from our little break so you can submit that to dee dee fan art at wizards calm and that is the end of our show thank you guys so much for being here please you we have your Twitter handle but if you want to like share what you’re up to with the audience this is our wrap up so where can they find you so again I’m vivid visca that’s a div ID v IV ka my name is not vivica it’s viv Cox but yeah I check me out on Twitter I’m there all the time I post stuff I hang out and make sure to catch me every Tuesday well for the rest of January then we go on break but Tuesday’s right here on twitch dot we’re on the DMV yeah we’re in the deans but yes I’m on sirens of the realms I play the disaster sprite ghost and I break the game and she’s my DM and I’m sorry I just take that oh I am TJ storm you can find me on twitter @ TJ storm 0 1 or an Instagram at storms eye or on the webs at mind’s eye tribe calm I’m also on heroes in the Heroes of the veil for dandy be on and come join us and have some fun as we prompt over the countryside trying to stay alive thank you guys for watching thank you to our raffle winner a raffle is a Rick there oh no no no Eric the red 69 thank you so much congratulations for winning and Dungeon Master’s guide I have all your information right here and we’ll be sending your Dungeon Master’s guide out next week we want to thank our sponsors Dungeons & Dragons thank you so much for letting me do this it’s silly and I love it and I hope that everyone learns from this think you idol champions you go and play Idol champions now on PlayStation and Xbox that’s right you get to see me on PlayStation and Xbox is vanya them a little RPG you can also play it on Steam iPad and Android level up dice thank you so much for being a great sponsor a siren scape I do believe Ben has started scape jacked right into the system we can’t hear it here I hope you’re having a wonderful time of it wormwood Thank You wormwood for being our I think our longest sponsor we have we at maser Khanna have a contest going we have a fan art contest so go ahead and enter your fan art could be an art piece could be a music piece but this is for inkwell Society and if you win wait no wait in order to win you have to send one of those things to DMV fan are at wizards calm and then we’re gonna take the four best ones that we choose and we’re gonna put them on Twitter and you’re gonna choose the winner and the winner wins this beautiful wormwood dice fault and in Cthulhu script or whatever script this is I’m going to spoiler it it says equal society so this is one of a kind there aren’t any others like this I believe it’s inlaid script you can win that so check out our twitter at mais Arcana to get more information on that all your fan art though all of it send it to dandy fan art of wizards calm I now have access I’m going to read all of the emails the emails it’s true cognitive merchants they got in a really crazy accident and they lost a lot of their equipment so it said today is a big charity event where there’s a bunch of games going and we’ll be playing in that later today so go check out cognitive merchant Thank You maze Arcana production team as always you make us look so good and we adore you thank you laura noble crazy for moderating and thank you all for watching i’m sad to you phoenix your host here on Dungeon Master’s guide you can find me at sateen phoenix on all of the things and I will see you on Tuesday for a sirens of the realms on miss Arcana and Wednesday on inkwell Society Dungeon Master’s I really Ruttenberg and up next we have girls guts glory here on twitch.tv slash DMV at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time have a wonderful day

Creating a mind bending adventure for levels 4-6 – Dungeon Master’s Guide with Satine Phoenix – ep5

March 17, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

hello dear friends and welcome to the dungeon masters guide a Dungeons & Dragons amis ricotta production welcome to 2019 this is the very first episode of 2019 if you’re curious about what the heck Dungeon Master’s guide is about well first it’s a book I teach is Dungeon Master’s how to be Dungeon Master’s second this show we are going to show you how easy it is to come up with an adventure by showing you today we’re gonna make an entire adventure and then at the end eventually probably a month from now we’re going to put it on the dams guild for you to play today we have two guests we have Amy vorpal as seen on Nerdist and geek and sundry and AMC Theaters and second yeah and second we have ryan omega the DM for our kana hi music hunter production and life action role play the podcast I am snatching Phoenix I’m your host and before we start in the adventure creation there’s a couple little things I need to talk about first there’s a lot of firsts I just like pointing a lot we have a raffle we’re gonna raffle off the Dungeon Master’s guide book in the chat so be in the chat exclamation mark raffle TK is our mod for today our lead mod for today and once the other mods that are in there thank you all very much for your time so there’s a couple things we’ll be drawing the raffle randomly at the end of the show so keep your eyes peeled you must be in chat to win and you have to message TK after winning and make sure that she that she gets all your information there’s no location limitations and will send it anywhere in the world secondly DM questions so we’re going to ask our diems three questions at the end of the show so put your questions into chat using questions right before your question in all caps so that TK can easily find them and we’ll be curating them so include your questions but be smart about it don’t ask unrelatable questions there are no stupid questions there’s just unrelatable questions so today’s theme is and I hope our guests are listening phim is for level 4 to 6 characters for mind-bending adventure and this is an all-in-one adventure so there’s not going to be a part 2 or part 3 this is just a one shot level 4 to 6 so we’re gonna talk a little bit before they come on the show about compassion in communication now it’s 2019 it’s the first Sunday of 2019 this is a day to relax and come up with adventures and think about what you want for your players in the new year and it’s it’s a good time to set up the foundation with understanding how hard is it to find players it’s pretty hard to find players some of you prefer to play in person and in maybe you live in an area that it’s just the amount of people who are open about playing D&D there’s just not many of them and by you look and you look and maybe you can only find people on roll20 or fantasy grounds or another online source whatever it is however you find people you’ve not only dedicated yourself to running a game for all these people but you’ve dedicated yourself to run a game for other people who are volunteering their free time it’s your free time and their free time and hashtag 2019 ain’t got time for that there’s not much time available outside of surviving this world so everyone volunteers their time at the table but the other part to remember is off the table all the things that you do you make the story you prepare the encounters you try to time everything right and you sees the terrain the sounds think sirens gate for making is so easy the players though they not only dedicate their time to show up but they dedicate their time to create the characters that play in your story and it’s not your story it’s all of your story it’s the collective story so they make their characters they come up with the voices the backgrounds artwork they find artwork and find sounds that inspire them to be completely present when you guys all are at the game table not only that but they think about ways to work with their fellow players so nobody just shows up with a piece of paper there’s so much more thought put into it for you and for the players so everybody invests their time and energy into a shared collaborative experience the importance of setting expectations is so so it’s just so important you have to set expectations before the game starts what kind of story are other people investing themselves into how long is the campaign expecting to go what is the actual time investment that you require from them so I was thinking about this and I when I you I’m a comic book artist by trade and I remember selling my first comic book at WonderCon and I’m sitting there and I’m watching all these people walk around and I’ve got all my piles of books and I’m so excited and people are coming by and then they’re walking away and they’ll come by and they like I really love the art thank you and then walking away like wow I wonder I wonder what it’s about and this woman came up she’s about 10 years older than me that’s a little mousy woman and she’s like she started asking about the characters she talked about how much she liked the art and then she basically right before she walked away so that she didn’t want to invest her time and energy into a story that wasn’t going to be completed and that you know if there were more books than she would be happy to buy them so I thought about that a lot and I did a couple more conventions that year and I was like okay I’m not gonna take it personally that people aren’t buying my book and then the next year I had two other books come out she bought all of them and it was it really made me think about how important the expectations of the story that you are offering to share with other people you have to set up those expectations so really saying hey friends I would love to run a campaign for you you can expect the first run of the campaign to be four sessions and then after that let’s talk about what we can what you liked what you didn’t like if you want to keep going or not I think that’s going to be really good for all of us to go into the new year thinking about because we’ve all experienced falling in love with the TV show and it gets cancelled and it breaks your heart and the story’s never finished and you wonder if ever there’s gonna be a big comeback Firefly no there’s not going to be so set those expectations early communicate with your players see what they like as you go along don’t expect that everything’s going to be fine reach out to them figure out ways to talk to them figure out how how to communicate with them so that everyone’s needs are met because everyone invests their time with the expectation that their needs for a complete shared collaborative experience are going to be met and that is what you have to say about that so we’re gonna go on a short commercial break and then follow that up or I don’t know the order is because Andres genius and I just say words then there’s going to be a musical interlude by our sirens are not so live sirens band and then we will return with Amy vorpal and Ryan Oh you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we’re the ones you can tonight [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ha [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you thank you thank you for sticking around for the Dungeon Master’s guide are you ready for an adventure we’re gonna make an adventure and we have here with us today Amy vorpal and Ryan Omega well I know you super well why don’t you share great I’m Amy Paul I am a writer actress host singer songwriter and I’ve been on lots of different especially geeky a digital content on Nerdist geek and sundry also AMC Theaters and BuzzFeed and CollegeHumor doing all variety of nerdy stuff and I’m a Saturn’s of the realms alum I think Kylie gets a mention here every once in a while as well and and most recently I was able to actually Dungeon Master a holiday a holiday adventure for D&D beyond over around the Christmas holidays and I was also I also got to play with Chris Perkins on his Extra Life D&D beyond game hole con crazy out of control game I’ve been playing D&D for 20 years and been jamming only over the past two or three years I heard that you were contagious during that game started picking up your accent well chat made them I don’t think anyone anyone who wanted to have the derpy voice by that it was a one that Patrick was the Patrick Rothfuss was suffering from trying to deliver on these accents that chat was giving him he nailed Russian and then the only one he actually really really nailed was of my characters that’s awesome Thank You Ryan who are you okay I am right you may have seen me on Arcana High which I deemed on Mays Arcana I also appeared on theories feet run by Rudi Greenberg as dr. important Malakoff II the Chilton door and with such a Filipina box I would you know like I saw I was like those are my people that was the village I was born in including the mall the monas SM Megamall the main told ya it’s totally totally played into that and I aside from that I also have a podcast called like action role play alert podcast which is all about live action will play and I post that with Cynthia Murray from sirens of realms and Kai Norman from equal society so it’s all when big family here at Mays and on life action role play yeah so I actually had you guys role before we started but I was so excited to introduce you to everybody that I forgot what the roles were however a mere old of 12 all the – so you just knew that that was I think you knew inside that you were role was to see who’s gonna go first and introducing themselves you know I didn’t know if that was good or bad sometimes that can turn on its head so I assumed that 12 was better than – but you never assumed India be I don’t know I just usually some in 5e like just in general 12 is better than two there could be exceptions but we hear doughnuts any snacks or amount of people I know yeah just that amount is okay and they’re right here we are going to spend this time making an adventure the three of us and our friends in the audience are going to enjoy and watch but this is us and our brands and they’re gonna watch our brains go zing zing zing so the theme is levels four to six mind-bending adventure my friends we have less than 13 minutes how do we begin I well we heard you say this earlier in the stream and we kind of talked to that maybe this was a v’ as far as genre goes it’s gonna sink into fairytale yeah mm-hmm so we can’t file being like fairytales would be at least fun for someone who was not super familiar but has some experience behind them to do this kind of adventure and I wanted a scenario where they couldn’t solve everything like fighting and around level four to six is a good place for that yeah I agree mm-hmm so now we just go yeah okay cool um I guess I like to think of like what the final villain is and normally the final villain is someone they know and kind of have been in league with the whole time but I mean they turn out to be kind of a bad thing so they kind of help that person I mean this is basic and then turn it on its head and then that person is like thank you I’ll take that now and they’re like oh great and here’s your money and now I’m gonna go kill the world they’re like no way it’s not kill okay was actually the evil villain the entire time actually look at banjee because I actually I’m one of those people who actually do you see are we were talking about that too and I do the calculations and I also use a site called kobold Fight Club that helps out quite a bit too you can plug in the number of characters players that you have the number of levels that they have and it’ll tell you like what’s a medium difficulty easy hard deadly so let’s see what a banshee because we’re doing we’re doing three four to six okay so this is a CR for our characters with four characters level four that seems like it would be maybe we should do to it is the final boss final boss boss so it’s like Little Red Riding Hood and her sister right or should we do Banshee and like the wolf cuz the wolf like eight Red Riding Hood’s so it’s like they kill the wolf and then they have to also fight Red Riding Hood like that they killed the wolf and then Red Riding coat and she’s like thank you thank you you saved me and then they have to fight her too right and you know what by defeating the wolf you now did she now devours it’s so this is now mine okay yes okay so final boss final boss you think it’s the werewolf okay so we have the world is grandma is that we said no no the werewolf already killed Graham oh you’re right he doesn’t eat Red Riding Hood heats the grandma right so I think they’re fighting what did grandma’s anyway yes I think they’re fighting grandma is a word yes grandma is general that’s challenge level three so I think they’re a but also we add the Banshee and tuning yes that will do it and do the trick yes okay here’s what the final boss is they fight the werewolf because it’s evil and then and then it shape shifts back into grandma and they realize oh we might have killed the wrong thing and read writing that’s like no you killed the right thing this is what I wanted all along in fact I’m going to infect everyone with lycanthropy and they’re like no you can’t do that and then they have to kill Banshee Red Riding Hood okay yeah okay so we have the different parts see that this adventure is two to three hours okay so how do we be elements into an actual tree to three hours okay yeah so we they have just this whole land is kind of a kind of a small cottagey village right very poor there’s like a market town I think they weren’t necessarily they weren’t they were called to this city to investigate something that had been going wrong right like I guess a bunch of people turning into puppies a bunch of people turning into puppy er because it sounds cute like okay I want to investigate this thing that seems completely innocuous yeah maybe a little red riding-hood thought that oh right just copies where she’s raising them for her army of puppy people yes but she but she has implored she okay but there is someone who is gonna stop her it’s her grandma her grandma wants to stop her so Little Red Riding Hood has asked the adventurers to come and and help her basically because all of these puppies are turning into or all the people are turning into puppies and she needs just she needs to stop it turning into puppies even though it’s her all along right you need to bust out that puppy farm yeah well yeah he’s like oh my gosh it I’m so over works at the end and it’s expensive to raise puppy and all the poop and all the poop yeah she’s or the poop endless list of why puppies are bad so yes Little Red Riding Hood implores the adventure is to come and solve this puppy dilemma but really it’s a lycanthrope a dilemma yes which I love with any where things in here where rats their foot these humanoid where’s problems yeah Alyssa puppy problems ideally the adventurers are game right they’re gonna help this sad little girl who will make her like a cute age like 14 and oh yeah like she she doesn’t she’s not really wise she needs help but she looks like she’s like a lot yeah she’s just like well exactly oh and banshees are up so she actually she wears her hood to hide her banshee ISM so why can’t kind of curse oh well I did but yeah she so they’re all white and and like undead and whatever but she wears her hood to hide to hide that she looks crazy there’s also this thing called make up yeah she’s like extra Rosie and her lips are like extra P yeah so like I’m a little doll kind of like war would is a as an artifact yes it is oh yes yes Oh Jenna or whatever yeah I don’t know I don’t have the list but something like that okay what a kook of illusion all right yeah yeah very epic of illusion and it’s kind of a perma perma illusion spell yeah kind of thing that makes her younger and more youthful mm-hmm so they get there to town and the town oh it should be called something cute I don’t know like almost like one of those village bulletin boards yeah boy bill so it’s called throwing villain yeah no I she definitely wrote to them she targeted them okay right cuz they have to be there for a reason and what is she offering for a reward to solve the puppy problem well in life well yeah money but I was thinking an old rule Red Riding Hood she brought a bottle of wine to Grandma’s Oh would probably be like this really rare old wine that’s yeah it has some magical powers maybe it’s like one of those bottles of ever-flowing okay you know oh yes every wine or or like a sip of fountain of youth thing because that’s kind of her brand Oh our brand now these jewelry it’s a grandma yeah yes she’s like well grandma you know my grandma’s gonna die so you guys could have this just to solve the puppy problem because I only have one bottle mm-hmm it feeds for adventurers I know so yeah so the reward is yeah bottle of you okay so no shiny real quick what is that bottle what is the liquid in it do exactly um let’s say it adds a hundred years to your life oh I mean crazy like that today really well that’s good yeah but does it make you younger or does it extend on the back end I think stands on the back end so almost like it elongate your life see age slower type thing yeah okay oh yeah it will save you from God save you from disease either button X 400 years okay so we have a problem yes what’s next okay so you’ve got the different parts okay they get to thorn bell she’s gonna show them so we need to go we need to get them to we need to get into someone’s sad like whose kid actually did get turned into a puppy and they’re like mourning that um what we need to encounter – okay so an encounter where they meet meet up with this girl and they I guess it has to be on their journey to Grandma’s house yeah when you get someone’s super powerful who doesn’t want the adventurers they’re like they’re like it’s it’s such a like okay how are like how they’re pretty combat or like how are you gonna solve this problem that’s my son in there you’re gonna kill it they they like assume that they’re gonna kill the puppies or like experiment on them or something maybe Red Riding Hood we learn later has tainted the well of the town why would she want them dead she wouldn’t really want them no she wants puppies yeah she wants them to wait so she want the puppies or does she not want the puppies she was she went okay she wants to keep the puppies in this lycanthropy going well she needs to thwart grandma who’s trying to thwart Red Riding Hood so she’s she’s come up with this ruse that grandma’s the problem but since grandma has already infected these puppies and they can infect other people she no longer needs grandma does that is that yes oh so basically grandma infected somebody and then that person infected other people and now she’s trying to like control the herd and like creep like yeah that grandma out of the way so that she her happy not realizes that her like a throw he’s actually like oh it’s a problem mm-hmm it shouldn’t it she never wanted to bite anybody you know she didn’t mean to and and she just wanted the puppies grandma so Little Red Riding Hood’s growing up and grandma just wanted someone else to take care of oh this is revenge no simple nurturing oh I wanted another puppy she just wanted someone that she could be a werewolf with but then Little Red Riding Hood’s growing up and doing her own thing and maybe grandma’s like you’re weird now you’re actually becoming weird so like she bites the puppy or the she bites the kid but that kid starts biting other kids whereas Little Red Riding Hood’s like I could have a puppy army of like Anthrop so I can control them and raise them to listen to me and so she needs to get rid of grandma okay okay I’m very little lost so so who’s a bad guy grandma no right Red Riding Hood grandma are Red Riding Hood’s the ultimate bad guy yes but she convinces you that grandma’s the bad guy but all grandma wanted was just to raise another kid yeah but it’s kind of revenge too if Little Red Riding Hood didn’t necessarily want to be a lycanthrope you know initially yeah and she’s like well you made me this way now I’m gonna take it now I’m gonna lean in okay okay so it’s kind of legacy revenge yeah because you know like parents or like your parents and then you raise a kid and then they’re like uh your pain in my butt and then the kid has a kid and the grandparents are always like oh you’re a baby I’m gonna spend all my time with you and then the kids like yeah okay all that attend you know what I mean yeah so that’s like the grandma just wants to that connection of like taking care of a baby but then little red riding hood’s like oh so that’s it well Red Riding Hood is growing this army she’s blaming it on she’s like oh my grandma’s like spreading this disease and she needs to be stopped but it’s really Red Riding Hood and the real reason for her getting rid of grandma is because grandma’s also she’s trying to stop the army from from growing yeah okay got it um great that makes sense to me now but we do need like an initial some either a puzzle or like or an RPG encounter you know like I’d like it initially before we get to the bad guys I’m thinking that maybe if some of these like I guess older puppies come in and attack the village in the direction from Grandma’s yes like on driving into the town they yes immediately they see the problem and it’s it’s like where puppy is great because you’ve gotten the letter you’re on the way in before you get to Red Riding Hood do you experience a problem yeah oh okay we’ll just say it’s where puppies there’s no room we’ll give them stats for for something right and that could be more enemies but it’s a few more enemies these are so we’re almost all ready to see her three but I wonder if there’s I want to go to where a rat is maybe we could like do a where rats er too and then but like yes skin it as so it’s like maybe for where that’s still a lot maybe three we’re at rats oh my god I where Boris here for well yeah but skin like we’re back yeah two or three yeah depending on how big your party is I might make them be attacking children yeah because really you know maybe it’s they’re just kids but then they wear out out of conflict they wear out that’s awesome okay cool I love that okay so that’s what they’re they saved the children they kill some children where where puppies in the in the midst yeah it’s dark and then so that and then they go to Red Riding Hood right and they have that conversation yes where yeah where she’s telling them yeah this is this has been a problem for a little while you know go to Grandma take grandma out yeah yeah and then probably depending on the health level of the party like some encounter between the village and Little Red Riding Hood because it’s supposed to be I imagined that place is gonna be very remote cuz you don’t exactly want it okay what if they can we build a mob so the town actually is aware of what happened you know they thought they were saving people but the town is aware that they killed the puppies that used to be their children so there’s this like kill there’s like this mob kill the Beast I playing you killed my kids they make kind of rally and it’s just a pitchfork a type of mob but they’re not strong but they’re passionate mm-hmm and okay so this will be it so let Red Riding Hood’s like she knows that it’s not gonna go it’s not gonna go well and she there they’d have this little kind of encounter where they’re trying to sneak through the town and then and then there’s like a time sort of thing where they hear the villagers find the dead puppies and and they oh they’ve seen the puppies shift once they kill them they shift back into home there’s yeah because if they killed the kid then do they hide they can do like like how did it because that’s a real dilemma like emotionally like that’s impactful yeah and that could be some some dc-dc tags oh yeah and like it’s gonna compel the adventurers like okay we must absolutely come after grandma because if they are that ideally they would try to sneak through probably fail because the entire village is after them and then ideally they could use some RP to get out of it you know maybe intimidate them or or persuade them like we really we were trying to do our best we’re here to solve this problem but did you want these kids to be bitten to look we saved three of these children and and work work out or you know kill some I don’t know maybe they could be bloodthirsty gonna kill the entire village but I hope not I think I think it would be a good arty moment um to have this mob maybe maybe do you know none of them are that strong so maybe they do get some hits in but it’s like one or two hit points yeah I used to have different NPCs that are that have different personalities so as a game so you’ve got like some that are the angry parents summer that the police save us and so they have their own conflict within one another because they have been watching what’s going on yes let’s be good let’s make us a single woman like a single lady Baker and she is partial to the children because she’s always giving them sweeties and funds right and she’s just an emotional wreck and she’s been sad for like the past five months while this has been happening and and you want to ally with her because she’s she just immediate she embraces the children she treats all of them as if they’re her children she’s a dwarf let’s call her lady Maya mm-hmm she’s a she’s a buxom nurturing Baker in the town yes so already we could serve baked goods from your horse to Grandma but I also kind of want to catch someone on the opposite end so like a woodcutter like very gruff um like human yeah but then like sees like the kid is now his kid is now a puppy it’s like oh I’ll finally get some use out of this guy so someone who’s like just on the opposite horrible end it’s like is more than okay with this lazy kid now being an active puppies like now he can go in fetch them [Laughter] keep it simple like his name is max max max the woodcutter and that’s of these that are okay solid yeah one more a couple yeah they’ve actually probably got like six kids you know there’s the family that has just a bunch of kids and two two of them have already turned let’s see four of them have already turned and they’re they’re trying to save the last two I wonder if if we want to make this more dramatic like during that time a lot of like kids died in childbirth so they had six kids knowing that not all of them would survive right so it would be it would be incredibly tragic like they know for them turn it’s like okay we must absolutely save these other two kids and they almost lock them up because they’re like we don’t want them to be infected like the rest of the kid yeah out of their cages okay so we take it to a pen yeah like super tall look like and caverns and kettle open channel oh boy there we go but they keep they keep this they the unlike and therapy children in the cage in a cage uninfected okay and they want to keep them that way yeah okay that that actually is going to be a pretty decent encounter yeah having to go and talk to all those people so we have a short short amount of time left being like five minutes okay so we’ve got the last two parts we’ve got grandma and then we have Little Red Riding Hood so let’s design the encounter for grandma okay grandma is definitely dressed up in her you know in her bonnet and and I think this is how they get there mm-hmm grandma starts howling to summon like I guess she’s heard that the adventures are here and she’s kind of trying to her last rally to save herself and that and the kids too so she’s trying to get them together and they’re going to abscond from the town so she’s howling and everyone notices all the puppies are rallying grandma and that’s when the inventors and Red Riding Hood’s like oh no she’s calling them weren’t there we don’t know what she’s planning let’s let’s get to Grandma so they run to Grandma she’s dressed like that she’s in her wolf face so she can’t really talk right um ideally they see the kids and they started tacking her gosh but then do you get somewhere puppies I guess we could add some sozin final encounters to sometimes I like to add dumb minions that that are you know if they if they get hit they’re done you know a wear person older than Little Red Riding Hood like a boy oh so it’s just like you know just a big big quiet one okay cool so that let’s say yeah he’s there and rallying them let’s get the puppies out of there we don’t really want them killing more puppies so true maybe he’s rallying them away and she’s standing like staunchly to protect them as they approach and they’re and Red Riding was like killer killer so ideally they kill her she shifts back in her last dying breath she goes it was never me it was my granddaughter and you know for you all for you and and yeah I was like what are they talking about and maybe that in your last dying breath she can give them the true story they can insight check and then and then that’s when Red Riding Hood is like grandma you’re too late and she takes on her robe and it’s Banshee City okay so why don’t we go to we’ve got grandma and she’s just being protective yeah and that but Red Riding Hood has been with the adventures yeah travels with them to show them she basically takes them to Grandma’s house yes yeah that way she’s there yes and it’s obvious and they’re like oh you’re a friend oh you’re not her friend so grandma you’ve got the boy saying he’s like 16 yeah 16 so what does his name Rolfe from sounding is wrong yes the blick wolf yeah you’re right okay so it’s very simple you know like maybe this can take place in grandma’s house so you’re actually working with the terrain of like a small living room a kitchen a bedroom and like maybe another like play room yeah give him some gas lamps to light on fire things have to be set on fire all right then you have the final which is Rh because she’s hard at this time riding hood’ yeah she’s not so little anymore she reveals herself and yeah yeah she’s manchu she like monologues a bit so we know her her yeah motivations oh you have mama lager yeah and this is fun because they get the artifact at the end too they can have her her book of illusions illusion that they can win that in all their money all grandmas money all the baked goods we have one more I have one more item are you ready for this yes a basket of holding it’s just like adorable flowers there’s like nothing really in it yeah little everybody good did pick flowers you know essentially she is also just a little girl so she might be severely twisted and really messed up on and a banshee but also yeah okay so we’re gonna stick with their names Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma very simple it sets up expectations of what are you getting yourself into what is the name of this adventure it’s the last part Little Red Riding Hood wings hoodwinked alright thank you can’t write as fast okay why is this word so long yeah that’s severely twisted congratulations that is one mind-bending adventure done level four to six and yeah we only have about ten minutes left of the show oh my god so TK has been in chat collecting questions first I want to thank the raffle winner xavier underscore RS congratulations we will send you the Dungeon Master’s guidebook next week make sure TK gets all of your mailing information otherwise we can’t send it to you first question is by our dear friend Reuben yeah as dm’s when do you get an opportunity to play as a player and what do you look for most in your deal uh I actually look for a DM who will rein me in because I I do go out of balance quite often and I prefer a dungeon master who’s confident enough in the adventure to be like and you’re done now because I know but I also need to be checked and I I like to be checked nated yes i DM that’s very clear on their expectations of what they want in a game so that we’re all playing together so that’s really important to me I read the question wrong but you answered it right it’s as diems when you do get an opportunity to play as a player what do you look for most in your DM for those of you in the audience go ahead and put that your answer in chat because that’s a question next question is from bode eh how do you keep notes for your long running campaigns organized Google Docs the end I don’t know how I keep them organized I guess in the beginning it’s always I guess I go by character cuz it’s always like this character needs to know this this character needs to know this so I have each page for each character and and what they need to learn and seeds that they plan it I try each home game to introduce one character something big that that actually pertains to the party but it’s their time to shine for that home game so I guess by character yeah I kind of do the same thing but not when Google Docs just a straight journal that’s handwritten and and just you know like just the name and like any details because most of the time when I’m DMing half that stuff has just made up on the fly right and so I just need to keep track of whatever detail came up so I just keep that all that roll consistent the other thing I do while I’m gaming is I actually will write out stats of the monster on an index card because that helps me remember things but but also there’s a shorthand I use that I can I can track easier on an index card then in the in the book and if I need more details I’ll go in the book but yeah multi-medium yeah yeah digital yeah all the little things anything that can get you to quick reference right yeah I like gold and bull as well well then oh okay I have never used that that would be I’ve seen it yeah yeah okay see a Berlitz question is how to be aware if you are not being compassionate in your communication without spoken feedback how to be aware if you are not being compassionate in your communication without spoken feedback oh that’s really hard that’s just I think that’s just about being a person man like I just I don’t know that’s so hard if you’re insulting someone ideally you’re empathetic enough to realize it without being told but or or if it gets vibey how do you realize that it’s just a person thing so what I’ve noticed in my games if a player suddenly becomes very quiet like the moment they stop participating I will to go on a break and it go hey just checking in are you okay did someone do something and at that point when he kept that one in one communication then they could tell you what’s wrong even if they don’t necessarily know what’s wrong then what will what I’ve done in the past is I actually said okay let’s take a break for 10 minutes I’m going to have we’re gonna do a private scene once we do that private scene and then now they start talking again then it’s like okay now you’re ready to come back we start we continue again trust right so one of the ways is to get figure out a way to talk with them to make them feel safe with telling you how they feel because a lot of times when they close up or they start acting out or doing weird things it’s because they just don’t know how to express themselves and so making it whereas you’re creating a safe space for them and their thoughts where you’re not going to judge them or react to what they’re saying and really just letting them say this is how I’m feeling and being like hey are you thank you and then not reacting yeah but like it’s about your reaction and that’s what a lot of times people are afraid of they don’t wanna make you mad could you spend all that time making the adventure or sometimes people are free to fail they think whatever they’re going to do is going to be so stupid you know that sort of like I’m still I’m just gonna look foolish in front of everybody but gaming is a wonderful safe space to take a lot of risks so always encourage your players to take risks because they always make for better stories absolutely and if you guys have your you guys have more questions ask them in chat just right now or you can ask them on Twitter hashtag ask dmg I just made that up today I’m gonna use it because I feel like that’s something that we can all use to just kind of have more questions to bounce off of each other necessarily just even in this hour I was gonna say something again it’s the way we built this adventure I will say for one-shots I I like to know you don’t have to go farther than what you know so if you know a fairy tale amp up that fairy tale if you know a song or you’re inspired it’s definitely all inspired by that’s what role-playing is you’re jumping into like a world that you’re like that would be cool to play around in so you don’t have to conjure ideas all stories have already been told so lean into that yes so very short very brief your house rule that’s specific to you for your table players I don’t know that it’s specific to me but I use the rule of cool if we can find a way to make it work I really want it to happen especially if it’s cool my only restriction on that is if someone else actually does have a power that is very similar to that I don’t want to you know shadow them with your cool idea like if they can if they have speak with animals and you’re like well can I just speak to my familiar it’s kind of like well this person has it why don’t you just ask them to do it but definitely rule of cool all the way for me it’s very particular to me because I am a larper I’ve done it for a very long time come dressed to game so whether it’s a pizza article of clothing like it’s a certain coat that the character would wear or scarf or a necklace Ryan you do it for the gram I do it but it gets people into that headspace to be ready to game and generally they won’t generally speak in character for most of the time so it it gives players a lot of wonderful immersion and a lot of goodwill playing scenarios you guys have your house rule one minute is your time limit go ahead make a video and email it to the email this should be at the bottom of here I do believe it’s Dini fan art at Wizards comm I believe that it’s true I got the thumbs up therefore it is true thank you guys so much for being hired that was really so good I know that was yeah it’s that it’s really important that we like exercise and I feel like this kind of thing you guys can do this too with your friends just play play before you play um thank you guys thank you to the raffle winner thank you to Dungeons and Dragons and to all of our sponsors and Idol champions I want to do a shout out to you congratulations on Xbox and Playstation still awesome and thank you to Me’s Arcana we have our whole production team here today we have Steve sprinkles Rudy Ruttenberg Andre Barret bengrafton Chris Nichkhun and Melanie sprinkles Thank You TK so much for being my person on the ground I don’t know we’re gonna make up a title for you because that’s super cool and thank you guys for spending your Sunday with us next up we have girls guts glory at 3:00 p.m. so stay tuned and we will see you next week for the last episode of Dungeon Master’s guide until we go on break and in return when [Laughter] [Music] [Music]

Timed game play and puzzles – Dungeon Master’s Guide with Satine Phoenix – ep4

March 13, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

good morning dear friends happy Sunday morning or afternoon wherever the heck you are welcome to Dungeon Master’s guide here on the DME Channel I’m setting Phoenix on your host for today and we have a super-fun lineup we have very special guests here we have Rudy Ruttenberg and ELISA Teague and we are going to talk about every one but before I go into the details on that let’s look at what we have we have a raffle that we’re gonna do I’m gonna raffle off the Dungeon Master’s guide so TK our mod for today has opened up the raffle has opened up the raffle so go ahead and put exclamation mark raffle in there let’s see there’s some in some fine print here we will be drawing the raffle randomly near the end of the show and then TK will tell me who won you must be in chat and you must message TK in order to actually accept the raffle there are no location limitations and we will send it to anywhere in the world not the universe because that’s expensive there might be some delays in getting it because holidays we might send it next week or the week after I cannot be certain because I’m not in Seattle to send it that is poem I don’t know when he’d go as long vacation but you will get it in the New Year by the latest later on after we do our adventure for today we will gather three questions and chat so if you have a question for the Dungeon Master’s try to keep it on theme about converting games or ever on but question in all caps in front of your questions so TK can gather that up and then she’ll give that to me at the very very end so the theme for today is levels one through four for monster characters and ever on have notes that’s what I keep looking at the details of this are players as monsters timed gameplay and puzzles okay because are very very very special guests are not only Allie the puzzle mistress the queen of puzzles I don’t really know what we’ve landed on but both of those things are true we also have reading Ruttenberg who helped write keith baker’s wayfinders guide to ever on hmm guys are a very patient why don’t you I know all about you guys why don’t you share with the audience who you are and where they can find you sure I’m Alisa Teague and I am a primarily board game and puzzle designer but I also write a lot of adventures for dumb human dragons and I wrote the Gary Cohn epic last year and I’m writing it this year I can now say that publicly and I do incorporate a lot of puzzle material into my adventures because I feel like that is like my unique twist on things and I like to educate people on how to properly do that at their own tables and you can find me on twitter and instagram @ @ d keep it up and I don’t know if you can find my games in game stores all across the world yeah you can also you wrote you I don’t know the details but you were involved in the Arg oh yes yes yeah I can now say that at the time they’re not play that so I always forget to mention it so for the student of many eyes last year not only did Ivan Van Norman and I co-write the storyline for the string of mini eyes itself but leading up to the student menu guys we had an Arg going on on Twitter called hash tag no stone unturned and and at Fury and I ran that and I wrote all of the puzzles for that Arg which is an alternate reality game where we had teams of thousands of people solving puzzles and it was pretty cool and it all led up into the stream and MIDI eyes it was awesome yeah that was really impressive I had only heard of something like that a couple times before but yeah the way you guys managed and you actually gave all of our streams clues to put on our streams so that people and audience could get those clues to help them with the other clues yeah that was a pretty intense puzzle yeah I mean it’s cool because with something like that with an Arg we tried to immerse the the players into the world but also into our world so it was kind of combining D&D with real-life things that were going on we were sending people out to game stores to get pieces and hints and clues and stuff and everybody was working together you know they were on discord in different groups and they had things going on and team below and yeah I mean it was it was really fun it was really a cool way to introduce the stream thank you yeah it was really cool rooty Ruttenberg team Durnan they didn’t do as well no well I didn’t know that I don’t even think there was what I just thought I’d say that because I think there actually was well yeah if I had known I would totally help you speculation because nobody knew what the story was going to be right so everybody was speculating what was going on and who the major players were like they didn’t even know about polo and me and and the the most active team made themselves team below and they didn’t even know that below was the central character and they just guessed it randomly so and most people don’t know how how many pies Sternin has his fingers in anyway yeah that’s true so my name is Rudy Ruttenberg I am as Satine said the co-designer of the wayfinders guide to ever on a fifth edition update for the campaign setting of ever on that I got to write with Keith Baker I am also an actor a voice actor screenwriter a video game writer and the voice of dirt dirt so if you have sirens Gabe which is free so there’s kind of no reason for you not to one of the sound sets that you can download is the dragon highest official Dungeons and Dragons sound set which is actually for the owning portal and anything you use in there that has Durnan next to it that’s me including all of the insults there’s a random insult in there we don’t we went through every class and did two insults for each class so awesome so like there’s one about you know talking about like hey if you try and convert people in my bar I’ll throw you out kind of things but you know just voice about it you’d be about it I’ll be about it you were also Durnan at the stream of many ices I was doing sure no of course I just do the pose yeah and that was also another thing and one of the reasons why I wanted you both on because of that experience well also I just really think you guys are awesome and I love how different your brains are so you guys think about things very differently but you were both intense like super super intelligent and I really admire the way you puzzle your way through modules and such I just I got called intelligent which always makes my day so we today we do not have a correspondent video so we’re gonna talk a little bit about ever on okay the style of ever on first and then we’re gonna talk about converting from Forgotten Realms to ever on because that the adventure that we’re going to make today is an ever on adventure so I thought we should front load it with some more some ideas and and such and Rudy since you know everything about it you now know more about everyone than I do so I don’t you begin what is everyone everyone is a setting in which well the first off thing that I think everybody needs to know is that just if you go to if you are going to play an ever on you are not necessarily leaving everything behind you don’t have to relearn everything a lot of the things that are there are still going to be present from regular de ferran Forgotten Realms what have you over to ever on the saying is that if there’s a place for it in D&D there’s a place for it never on now what makes everyone different is the idea that it is a low wide magic setting it’s still very high fantasy it’s very pull in this the idea of swashbucklers but you also get the extra elements in there of a little bit of technology convenience technology made by low-level repeatable magic like the idea that basically is magic as a science in a way our kind of Punk it’s yeah that’s what we call it as our kana Punk and then it also has that other layer of a new R feel so the way that I like to kind of give somebody a real quick download to kind of understand what it is or what their what kind of game they’re going to be playing is it’s essentially every Harrison Ford movie ever from Indiana Jones to Blade Runner and even some Star Wars because we have airships we have what could essentially be your replicants in a way with the war Forge and there’s also a whole lot of really rich history that creates a different feeling in ever on because there’s essentially no real racism there’s no classism in a way it’s very much the political machinations that are all surrounding the the nationality so if you’re a dwarf you don’t necessarily have to know two workers you actually have more of a lineage ins to your nation and so you might speak elvish if you’re a dwarf if you are from on dare which has a high elven population it’s just kind of one of those things where there’s a lot of other opportunities to explore storylines you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to in favor including monsters who are actually like what we would team monsters who are actually accepted in the world plus we have dragon marked houses we have like I said the airships the dragon mark houses are kind of the people who have been able to use the magic through their bloodlines in that manifest in basically living tattoos that give them magic that allows them to not monopolize but kind of monopolize a certain section the commercial sector so let’s talk a little bit about the different areas because most people if you’ve heard anything about everyone you’ve heard of Sharan German talked about well we should say what that is but also the different major areas that make a bond so specific so one of the great things about ever on is that every character has a jumping-off point for having a real backstory that is involved and can connect them immediately because there was a major event called assembly the last war which was a very long war that could be considered a civil war between a kingdom but essentially ended up breaking that kingdom into five different nations and each of those nations Ward against each other until this what could essentially be like a magical nuclear catastrophe like a Cataclysm happened that wiped out one entirely so a nation previously known as sire or Kairi depending on where you’re from is now called the moorlands and it is essentially a toxic wasteland that has relics and its own living dungeon for the most part magic works differently inside its borders and you have these areas now that give characters a lot of flexibility to be from anywhere else but still have one common thread that connects them so you have the moorlands you have those are principalities you have up north you have a kind of raven lock area in karna and and then you even have a monster nation and rohan cool so very quickly let’s talk about converting your typical typical there’s nothing typical of Forgotten Realms but your typical Forgotten Realms high fantasy – ever on like what are the things that you think about when you say you have a pre-written module and you want to start converting sure I mean for me and and I’m saying this not as familiar with as I am with Forgotten Realms and I’m actually learning a lot from you while we’re talking about this for me this is really interesting because I feel like there are some definite it I guess there are some like equality’s in in certain areas of everyone where things could be more typical to convert over yeah and then there’s some things that I would find more difficult like anything that takes places like I know like deep in like out like elven type situations and stuff like that sure is a little bit harder for me actually only because the places in everyone that I’m more familiar with our place is more like cult or whatever where you know like dinosaurs and things like that where there’s like more of a conversion because I know that there are races that like ride dinosaurs a member on oh my god save me no you are thank you so much they’re not shoulder and this one two planes exactly so like I know that there are definitely ways to convert already written stuff for Forgotten Realms over to everyone right maybe there are some areas and everyone that don’t really have that you know equivalent situation so how about this since you’re very heavily into Forgotten Realms and I know I know it cuz I’ve written as well but ever on why don’t you start with like the things that you either find really fascinating and I can kind of move it over or something that is interesting that you’re like I don’t have no idea how this would work and we’ll see if I can break it down in a way that works so why don’t we do that as we’re making the adventure oh sure we are going to take a short commercial break move to our not so live band the sirens and then come back with making an ever on adventure with players who are monsters levels went apart [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] maybe we’ll bet your back million eyes never help fear and your path is on track [Music] [Music] you miss me by your strength and carry on please [Music] you find your hearts would flame you can’t believe it [Music] no you man [Music] you’ve always have a drink so is it true [Music] Oh [Music] hello and welcome back to Dungeon Master’s guide we’re here with Alisa and Rudy and we are going to meet very fast we’re gonna meet an adventure and ever on starring your characters that are monsters that’s right cool thing about ever on is that you can play monsters changelings shifters tyler star goblins what else we got Rudy uh well I would go through any of the races that came out for Boas good so orcs you got your goblins kobold there weren’t Noel’s but you could you could always take a buffer blog and rescan it to the null if you needed to know you know so awesome please two points well teeth wings they are rare we found out or like we like to call them in ever on skinnet ours yes some hairless minotaurs it’s not actually how they work right that’s a joke are you are you ready to make an adventure let’s do it where do you start when you make adventures well for me I start at the end I know that a lot of people work differently but for me I always start with one way and goal is and then I work backwards through different ways to get there so if this is my end goal then I’ll say okay there are you know three tips more ways of getting there and I actually make a tree going down of different ways that then come back down to like a trunk of where you start and so that way no matter where my characters decide to blow up my adventure you take it a different way it actually can naturally grow back to the culmination of the story yeah cool I start with the problem whatever the problem is that needs to be solved by that adventure or by that story whatever we’re trying to tell her that that’s where I start that’s interesting so like kind of right in the middle or close today usually the resolution area because it’s like kind of puzzles right you kind of need to know what the answer is gonna be in order to form your constructs so and this I like to pose it as a question first because then later it makes it easier to okay how about we start right now yep what’s the question the answer is the end goal ready what’s the question why don’t you give me a question I’ll give you the angle the question like the problem in the jury the problem in the story is that our players are trying to find out what is causing the destruction of whatever nearby forests is that okay sube are you good at continuously okay so then you’ve also in your question answered what our angle is right we essentially need them to figure it out but also how does that impact the characters or the forest and what is the next step or next module or we can hear and or is this the end we’re just doing one right so for a one-shot and it’s you’ve got the problem what’s the location location would be sure we’re doing monster stuff there are a couple of primary locations we could use the yelping regions we could use the Lee sovereign into battles principalities or drawing them is the most it’s the monster nation right so you have that you have the shadow March’s a little farther away and then also the demon ways okay so where do you start this sounds like a good place which one right drum is probably getting in us the most mileage all right the problem is that something is desecrating the force is it like a disease or is it a magical something or is it some things chopping things down sure so let’s let’s take that and start off with there are Knowles because the Knowles in this area or actually they’re not the demon or something Knowles we know from the Forgotten Realms is one of the big differences is that they’re actually known as the peacekeepers of drawing them so they’re the scouts they’re the eyes in the forest if you will for the hags they’re the sort of the daughters of saw Raquel which are they three hags that basically rule grow it and they have each little area kind of broken down with a warlord in charge of each report back up the Noles are the priests keepers between the Warlord’s so they can serve as our like quest givers know what you know because they have overseen all of this so there our quest there our base of knowledge here right characters so then what’s the inciting incident that we would normally have here for that you were saying that it could be chopped down like things can be chopping down I mean yeah I always go more magical in nature so I’m thinking about like magical disease like blackening all the tree they know something that’s like agora or a mutation yeah like why don’t we stick because of the morning yes that’s perfect so a very easy way to go with that as you can say that some of the monsters that were either mercenaries in the morn winds during the last war or sorry during sire whatnot during the last war are starting to report mutations in the forests or the plains they’re around the around probably the south eastern portion of Jolyon just southeast of grey wall are starting to report mutations and dying trees that are out of the ordinary yeah I think that’s great cuz you have really good character hooks depending on what the the players are you know the characters are like if you have somebody that has an attachment to this being their homeland or if they have an attachment to you know nature in general you can really get a hook of why do they want to help right let’s make it like a creeping crud let’s make it like something that is like basically growing out of the ground and taking and laying a new layer of what seems to be mutated organic material okay cool so we have the what we have so what is what is that anything so if we’re going to go like I would say that we can probably make that anything from failed experiments by you could use a necromancer we could use somebody maybe trying to figure out how to use blood magic again which was a big thing that actually ended up one of the moons way way way back when the Giants were created ancient ancient ancient order so essentially the dragons had to come and destroy the Giants and turn them into simpletons because they started manipulating blood magic so it could be a form of blood magic that’s out there okay but the important thing I think now go ahead No so so if that’s going to be like there’s a an ancient text or something or there’s a a magic sigil or an item if you will not alter anything or even the manifest owns anything like that we essentially need to be able to shut it down or destroy wait so if that’s the case we kind of have what our last encounter needs to be what our goal needs to be living but in a good module and a good story we have to have the ups and downs so we kind of need to Agatha Christie the thing where we have a MacGuffin it away yeah definitely so I mean I think that what we can put it in there is an assumption that this is happening from a different source right so while it could be somebody attempting to resurrect blood magic but maybe they can get some false information that there is actually maybe a natural reason that this is yeah they have to go and investigate so so a false positive here could be a manifesto am a bar em a be a are manifested own would end up connecting it to one of the realms that has a lot of necrotic negative energy and is known for being very nightmarish and in madness kind of style known as a portal kind of yeah like a gateway to other planets yeah if you think about it like in terms of favoring or Ravenloft which wasn’t originally a room but if you think about it that way it’s kind of like the mist right it’s not like just like a war portal that’s always open but it’s a time when the planets are aligned a little bit better right between the world kind of things things can cross over a little easier almost like in the way the upside down work and oh so a big you know you you come out on the other side of a tree or like you walk through a brush in like all of a sudden everything is nasty right okay so blood magic who is this person race see I always close and this is the interesting thing about converting to to Oberon is I’m always gonna go to like the evil stare stereotypical monster oh we always been human but yeah but now it has to be ya know I would go human how about this since we have asthma and asthma are also rare like teeth wings why don’t we make it a fall in azemar okay but the Fallen azemar is the MacGuffin if I manifest known as has corrupted that the blood magic is actually going to be coming from an item like an altar or something that can be destroyed okay so who is this person given as Amara or – tell me a little bit about this bad guy well for me I always when I’m developing that you know our bad guy character like what is their merit motivation is it an honest mistake is it just you know propagated by you know their own their own desires of what they want and they don’t realize what they’re doing to the world around them sure or are they just truly evil evil right so in everyone we don’t really do truly evil yeah everybody has motives everybody believes the the the hero of their own story there’s no real alignment in so everything should have they can have sins they can totally be not so good people but we try and make it over there later and usually bad guys have layers of protection above them like plausible deniability and stuff but in this scenario it’s a one-shot we’re not really looking to go to mystery route so this is very much going to be a guy or a girl let’s let’s come up with them we’ll just say Lewisohn it’s a good neutral name sure and listen in is a an azemar who has been corrupted by the nearby item or relic but doesn’t know that it’s actually there so so our characters in destroying the item are not only going to fix the problem but they are also going to save Lewisohn yes if they don’t kill our unknowing them yeah the bad guy is that miss it it’s the misunderstanding in that magic it’s the ignorance of how that magic is supposed to oh okay because they never want to see anything as we tackle themes that are different than favorite earrings very black and white in a lot of ways right everyone is almost all great so what is her by poisoning and this forest what does our bad guy want well if he’s being whispered to by the item right maybe it’s is it power or is it just or is it a false is it a false desire or to to fix something else that’s wrong so because it’s a MacGuffin kind of character we can actually even go the full pawn route in the sense of this this blood magic could be corrupting the vision like the actual way the world is perceived so this actually makes it seem to them like what they’re doing to the forest is actually saving it like they could essentially think they’re a druid trying to save right that’s what I’m saying like do they think do they have this false perception sure it’s actually trying to see something or trying to fix something else that’s wrong in the forest yes however if they’re unaware that they’re being corrupted then the players now have the extra burden of they can’t question Lewisohn they can’t they can’t torture or get the information out in that way so now we have to actually provide that way that that can happen all right cool so we have a reason we have an item this artifact as an alternative we say what is what just call it a relic so no let’s call it a corrupted oh yeah let’s call it a Kyber shard okay or uh let’s let’s even make something up for this and we’ll call it as Orion shard X Oh our why because zoria is the realm of madness that had its the moon that actually got destroyed so the by the blood magic that the Giants had to use to stop an invasion essentially cool walking walking dictionary in my back pocket whenever I’m right in adventures it’s perfect cool so alright let’s actually make the adventure path okay okay right so again I usually start at the top and go back sure but I think she’s are you talking kana logics you’re talking around logically you tell me where to start if you want to start back we can start at the ending and move forward okay we can start the bet the big battle at the end and then like wherever you guys want we’re gonna do so so let’s talk out the easy stuff sheriff’s the easy stuff is gonna be where we get this quest gray wall was a very easy place to start it’s the major capital city for drama it’s also not so far away from the from where the the sisters are that their agents can be there they can give you information etc so if we take that you can do your standard starting a tavern or you can do right and it’s always look I mean it is a standard for a reason but for me I think I would rather be there walking through the city and there are vendors and all nobody has anything that would normally be harvested from the force because it’s about work and like why there no food wiser no whatever because it’s all collected so I was gonna go with a ritual because they’re hags so essentially they’re witches and I was gonna go with like they’re attending essentially the religious holiday of it and let’s use the vendors there for the religious holiday okay so yeah whatever happens there’s no supplies need help yep and in this the characters are able to ask questions and learn that the vendors don’t have these usual supplies that would come next place and through your first act you’re basically having the QA learning what that is and then the second part because you actually mostly right before before acts for that so your second act there is the exploration and the travel to give me I mean we can even have in that first act like when they’re discovering this we can’t have a knoll interacting just with a vendor where they can overhear a conversation of oh we’ve witnessed this happening now there are no supplies right let me go back to my circle and see what’s going on and then maybe they would follow right you could very easily even just have a garden conversation that they over here search through variety of checks part two is going to be mostly getting to the forest doing exploration and getting the major clues about the MacGuffin and maybe this is just blunt as they see Lewis and out there doing things to the forest and then through maybe a an initial combat or mmm a social interaction we kind of want this to have a social interaction but we can also leave like a diary if they tend to be a little more murder hobo we yeah and then that way we can see what Lewisohn was up to and we can leave the information of where the where it all seems to be emanating you definitely have to leave some sort of clue like a diary or whatever absolutely just in case it was in meets the pointy end of a sword right but what if not that because they do believe we use diary in last week’s episode well okay well it’s not that then any conversation that he may have had with any people that may have been around so here’s he well it’s not just him right maybe he’s got other people around them are following him influencing his early we could go full Lucifer and have him actually taken a contingency of angels that have also gotten cultists angel you could have like an entire group of that the other thing we could do is there could be a sending stone that is actually like a chunk of the destroyed moon that is whispering these things and just whispers something on repeat and these things may not even ever come into play right and depending on how long of an adventure you’re running and like how you want to time things you can either stick them in there anyway or or not right okay so this might be following the crud to a like a druid circle sure where they actually gather and do a lot of things yeah like a Stonehenge yeah and then this would also be a thing to wear another clue we can give is that the crud gets thicker or more like when you walk on and it’s more springy just different things I like to give a myriad of clues to be able to kind of alter the difficulty of a module in the same way that CRS likes er we do for animal creatures so after we had that and you essentially have your midpoint being the information that you gained from Louis you now alerted to the the fact that Lewisohn is not the core cause might be a symptom but is not the cause and then you have the exploration phase where you make your way there let’s assume that this goes underground just because this makes it easy there’s there’s mountains in your area very much so and that gets us down to the roots so we actually will get to the root of the problem [Music] it’s very important to have catchy like two to three word headings for each one yeah yeah you can read a module very quickly and be like oh look everybody’s clever so when you go down and you you do that then we have our little movement through there you have exploration you can hand out more clues to kind of unravel the things that have been happening and give lower background for the world since this is a wonderful adventure that is also part of our job is to be able to share annual information of the world so you can have a room where you drop some of the other stuff I mean if this is like an underground lair of sorts right then there’s a lot of discovery that can be done in there and for groups that like things like treasure and whatnot right that it is a perfect place to drop certain you know bonuses and boons for things like that but then they can go through an exploration this is where I would stick a puzzle with it yes and they can find out a little bit more about Lewisohn and what his history is so whether he is babbling on like a crazy person with a sense of you know a sense of purpose that is false or whether or not he’s been killed by our group already or whatever they can still find out more about him in either case right by going through this okay so what is the puzzle what is not not details but like what kind of puzzle would you put in do so I mean in this format a quick writing it’s hard to explain the puzzle writing process but I always would take whatever my surround yeah governments are an environment and build it into the puzzle so if I’m in his underground lair office or whatever anything like books are great source or again I know you don’t want to go back to a diary but if he’s writing ramblings I would put in a secret code in the ramblings that had to be deciphered so things that make absolutely no sense then make sense through the solving of a puzzle writing is all over the key wall right exactly anything like that so that’s where I would put it in of course that process of writing a puzzle it takes longer than the time yeah we know what I would do in that scenario for a different type of puzzles I would probably go more actual organic environment and create a an obstacle course of sorts that’s gonna be reason we find to find our item you mean or to get to the next area like since we’re in a tunnel it’s not really a real when it’s up tall right so they have to go through it to get there so that’s a good place for you to be able to put roadblocks so why don’t we put the underground layer you have to go through an obstacle course in order to get to the actual layer part and that’s when the puzzle gets like a three put the puzzle that way we can have both the things exactly happen not I mean if this is if this shard is so valuable and important to listen he’s going to have it hidden on somewhere maybe and so he knows yeah so this if he knows about it right but I think I feel like you should know about it but he got by protecting it and is yeah right so we have only a couple minutes left so then where I would go from there is we have to get our fourth part so we need to get that final encounter regardless of whether it’s combat or otherwise and I think that where we go with that is we introduce simians because they are something that is very unique to ever on and very specific to the Zarya and you can have those right maybe the relic is actually a capsule that has been containing symbiotes and there’s a little hole in it or something like that and they leak out and that’s what’s on the listen and his or her buddies their compatriots etc that’s okay so as we rotate we brought like one minute left let’s walk through the final battle Jordan walk through that listened yet and this final battle okay so what I would think here is a good way to handle this is to have it be a two phase battle one is where you’re fighting creatures that have been corrupted by the Soviets they don’t necessarily need to be people or intelligent and then you have a hyper kind of like the next evolution of that where the symbionts are actually transforming your that you’re essentially fighting off like the animal versions of venom or carnage in order to destroy the shard which is probably like the gateway one of the only gateways our characters probably know that the source is the shard yes so they can also if they can get to it they can end combat by destroying sure if they know how right you actually could be the answer to the puzzle should how to destroy each other right and so you can use the environment for that as well correct you can have a whole scene to pick up so maegyr this is a temple like that underground Forgotten temple get me by the ancients yeah the the Giants were a lot of this stuff took place was in Xen durak so this would be like a fallen short off to the side likely if you were going to be always super more specific but it can be anything you want so is there something in me like the history of that part of the world well here’s so elves actually left because the elves were created by the Giants have been enslaved by the Giants and some of them will often created their own continent but others move to corvair at a certain time frame so it could be something that they brought with them over there and there could have been a like one group that like hoarded some of this and then actually made it actually started their own coal the coal was abolished but they didn’t get rid of that thing and the the proximity of the moons now the orbit and everything that is what’s really yeah that’s awesome that was super fast venture in 20 minutes so what is the name of this I mean we we call it the root of evil if we wanted to Oh or shard the dark or I love you’re putting your ponytail yeah right like um a host to many the arc okay what does that give it away yeah it kind of does anywhere’s well we can fix it in post thank you guys for participating in this today what’s using a terrible homeless huh terrible host I don’t like that name this is a good one root of all evil read about chars in the dark we’ll fix it in post you can’t if you guys want send us in chat what you think that okay so we are going to wrap this up we only have ten minutes left of the show it goes there that’s yes yeah Wow okay let’s see I got notes here thank you guys so much we are going to take questions TK can you please gather those lovely questions for us while we’re waiting on the questions from our audience why don’t you guys tell us a little bit about your house rules that make your game so specifically you well my house rules um I mean I am I don’t want to say that I’m like super rules lawyer you but I pretty much annum so when I think about what my house rules are it really has to do with puzzles in general so again I put puzzles into pretty much everything I do the groups that I play with really appreciate puzzles and so for me I adjust rules amps and skill checks in order for puzzles to work better and have a better workflow with the characters themselves and man it’s a really long explanation of how I do it but basically it allows our players to participate in puzzles no matter who their characters are so whether the player has personal puzzle knowledge or the ability to solve puzzles and whether their characters do my rules balance things out through skill checks cool and so that’s really where my house rule is coming into play it’s I will allow them to rule for things that normally would not apply to a situation in order to solve a puzzle so if you’re playing a character that isn’t exactly smart there are things that they can do to help solve the puzzle in a different way and if you’re it especially if you’re smart and you know how to solve a puzzle and if you’re not a puzzle person but your character is especially smart they can then also to get clues which would be their innate ability to solve the puzzle through their character hats awesome cool thank you rooty house parole please I almost want to ask you what my house rules are since you’re a player in my game but in order to not put you on the spot and to try and remember what they are on my end as well I think that my biggest one or the biggest ones that I use are the be considerate of the people that are having the scenes because I like the RP heavy stuff that’s what I won’t play because we can do the numbers all day long right but we might as well play a simulation in the game I like to see what people are going to do so try and ESA and try and do those things but ask permission with your eyes we we do this thing before ink well that you guys probably don’t see but every now and then we go we go I contact eye contact eye contact eye contact and what we’re essentially saying is make sure that before you enter a scene or before you blurt out in crosstalk or shut somebody down that you’re asking with your eyes for an invitation to the party and that’s a that goes a really long way because I’m very my main quote for for gaming in general for the way that I like to run games is that a world with no consequences of no consequence so you’ve learnt into a scene that you weren’t welcomed into in the first place or if you talk out of turn or out of character in a certain scenario I’m pretty much gonna use that as part of the game thing because you were not observing the rules that everybody else was had agreed to and the you agreed so if you don’t do that like there should be some sort of a no I like that a lot actually because it allows people to adhere to the social contract it sat down at a table we’re both of us I think are very big about our doing a session zero every game right before we start we take five minutes we do that and I’m a huge fan of my other major rule I think is which isn’t really a rule but my major thing is like what is your sin not a flaw on on something it happen to you but what is the selfish thing that you did and how does that color your and that’s like that’s really good for a noir game especially but cool okay three questions from the audience you first question by levee moat question is suggestions on helping players work the last war into their characters backstory doorway suggestions on helping players work the last war into the characters backstory oh okay so this to me that’s super simple because think about it in the same way and I don’t know where you’re from but think about it the same way of world war two essentially where everyone lets us sit is kind of in that sweet slot sweet spot between the romanticism and the danger of World War one in World War two we’re essentially in a Cold War era so everyone that you know either participated in the war or was affected by it and if they weren’t there should be a very specific reason and why so you can take a nation standpoint and say oh I’m from this nation this nation it was involving this stuff so I either worked as support for that I helped create some of the materials for that or I actually fought on the frontlines and if you didn’t why what were you doing what was the part of that that’s the easiest way I work things into the last war okay question number two oh sorry and what was the terrible thing you did during the war oh yeah that’s a good one that’s a really good one question number two from dwarf hunter that in equal what made you want to start the characters at level zero versus level one that’s you question yeah and this is an every way of an ever on show on Wednesdays that really is a dungeon master floor so for inkwells specifically what we wanted to do is be able to make sure that everybody didn’t come into that thinking they were already superheroes because that tends to be something that creates the murder hobo mantra that people get into and also it to me makes it harder for you to sit in the RP moments and to relate to each other because you’re so busy being worried about the power that you have so for zero the important thing was to essentially say we’re going to be playing your session zero for a while so that you can actually get to know your character so your characters can get to know each other and so that we can establish the group dynamic by personality and background rather than by oh I’m a ranger with zero experience being a ranger I actually really like that because what a lot of people don’t can’t really grasp is that once you become like even level one even but even by really by like level four you are such B so beyond any action hero any any fictional character you can dream of in any movie you’ve ever seen like you are so beyond that and then when you think about how low level four is in general and the whole scheme of things like people don’t realize how powerful they really are so giving them that chance to actually develop as a person as a character and give it history is really important yeah especially never on usually you’re lucky if you get to fifth level yeah because it’s a very low level and we have four minutes like so last possible dynamic and we’re just moving on calamity jane autumn asks to lighten the creative load on one person and i want one really brief answer to letting the creative load on one person what do you think of a rotating DM style of play sort of taking from the west marches format but adding it rotating DMS who lead the group through one shorter adventure so the same cast of characters traveling around together taking on shorter adventures I like it if you can work together and and not not try to take over the story from the last person in the railroad to the rest of your group because you have to understand if you’re doing a rotating DM system that you have to hand off the baton to the next person in a place where they can then take it and not protect it like it’s your baby yeah and and if they take it in a different direction they’re taking in a different direction and you have to understand that from the get-go again another part of the social contract yeah yeah it can get complicated very much so and for me I I tend to think that every player is just as much part of the story or storytelling the aspect is the DMS I only consider myself to be right now unequal one-fifth of the creative power and if you’re enabling the players they are telling the story they are being games and the thing all I’m doing is representing a consistent voice of the world right so the NPC’s will all sound the same you’ll know them I’ll know the courts for them and that’s not something that you have to all of a sudden remember and or that I have to remember that you add a quarter I think it actually probably doesn’t like the load I would say yeah well thank you guys for being on our show the Dungeon Master’s guide and I want to congratulate the raffle winners silver Locke congratulations you have a Dungeon Master’s guide I have your information right here Thank You t-case so much it is awesome having someone on the inside to gather all the information join the fray um thank you guys for being here thank you to our two Dungeons & Dragons and our sponsors I want to do a huge congratulations to Idol champions I love champions you can now play on xbox and playstation iPad Android and steam I’m excited selfishly because it completely on that and I’m a playstation girl so this week from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Monday through Friday we 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Harsh writing Advice: Ask yourself if you really want to write what you’re working on

March 12, 2021Zoltar Leave a comment

My HARSH WRITING ADVICE: Ask yourself if you really want to *write* what you’re working on, or do you want to *have written* it. I the latter, quit now. Yup. I've met a lot of would-be writers with a similar mindset. I think their daydream is autographing a book, not actually writing a book.

Don't get me wrong, I have rough writing days, just like anyone else, but building stories/doing the work has to be the focus.

— Jim Zub (@JimZub) January 30, 2021

Sage Advice D&D

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Consider how monsters affect encounter flow

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Creating a three hour epic adventure for levels 4-6 – Dungeon Master’s Guide with Satine Phoenix – ep6

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Timed game play and puzzles – Dungeon Master’s Guide with Satine Phoenix – ep4

Harsh writing Advice: Ask yourself if you really want to write what you’re working on

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