Alternate death rule idea for D&D

January 3, 2021Zoltar 1 Comment

Alternate rule idea for D&D. When you fail all your death saves your character decides to give up adventuring and find a more simple life.

— Todd Kenreck (@ToddKenreck) September 4, 2018

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Off-The-Cuff Home Brew Games

December 23, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

hello and welcome to GM tips the show where my friends and I share with you our thoughts and suggestions on how to game master your role-playing game I’m your host Satine Phoenix co-creator of mais Arcana and a dungeon master on Furies reach today I’d like to talk about off the cuff homebrew games [Music] prepare research notes you’ve heard us say these things over and over prepare your game ahead of time come up with your story arcs and design your game using the techniques writers use for story crafting well today you’re going to turn all that upside down and discuss how to create adventures for your players on the spot no campaign books necessary you don’t have to be bound by pre-written story mm-hmm now if you told your players you want to play Dungeons & Dragons and they’re familiar with faerun and you’re say familiar with ever on you can still run games for them there are many similarities caves forests dungeons and the monsters within goblins or expand its you can pretty much make adventures in any realm not knowing the world’s exact details start by getting to know the characters have the player tell you the character’s backstory ask them how they met the other characters these details can help you get to know what direction your players want to explore here they’re starting to create the story even though they don’t know it one of the things that helps the illusion is weaving pieces of the players backstory into the adventure revealing them one at a time over time this keeps the players engaged and gives them more purpose in the world the thing I love about off-the-cuff homebrew is that the players have the freedom to explore whatever the heck they want maybe you create some major offense or villains but essentially you can just drop adventure seeds in the first session and allow them to pick up whichever path interests them maybe they start in a tavern and a couple people of threads they can follow or even a simple bulletin board with jobs they can explore these are the seeds that unfold the story over time but these threads don’t have to be complex you can find awesome plot hook generators all over the Internet pick them on the spot or download your favorites you don’t need to overthink this part and this is where improvising comes in handy listening I can’t stress enough well allow you to unfold the adventure your players want one thread can have them help a farmer which leads to a secret cult conspiracy which leads to a neighboring army and spies that leads to all of these things can be developed on the fly you have the handbooks you have the internet there even random generators for NPC NPC backstories encounters with various difficulty levels names tables and monsters I could roll on but instead let’s discuss this with nur darkest Dave and Ted from nur Taraki calm yay thank you guys for coming all the way all the way across America to come to Los Angeles and get interviewed by me I’m a huge fan I’m a huge fan of you guys thanks for having us I love your videos because I relate to what you guys say and one of the cool things about you is is all the homebrew stuff you guys talk about and that’s how I started playing for over a decade actually almost 20 years I’ve been playing all homebrew until recently and that’s pretty much our whole game now you guys need some more crognard on here anyway yeah so why homebrew because we like to create our own things we like to have our own sandbox and in addition to that doing homebrew allows you to make something unique you don’t want to use a homebrew if you’re just gonna make another iteration of Forgotten Realms you want to you want to have your own Flair your own enjoyment your own creations in the game yeah so why what about when you started playing Dungeons & Dragons and you had to be the game masters cuz that’s usually how we start what was it about the role-playing that made you want to just create on your own for me it was basically a creative outlet exactly that I can’t draw but I can tell stories and I can create things with my mind and and then share it with a group of people and in this collaborative story that we get to tell with Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games and from for me that’s that’s all there was every game I had been in been in for many years it was always just homebrew we didn’t pull out a module we didn’t run something to somebody else created it was always just oh well we play in the world we create so I didn’t know any better yeah I guess that’s how it works right so now you guys are experienced game masters and you don’t have to prepare so much in our pre-interview you talked a bit about the planting of seeds and using a couple sentences sure you know when I started I wrote everything out but as I gained more and more experience what I really learned was to just listen to my players they’re gonna they’re gonna fuel your game with tons of ideas if you just listen you know I heard the saying once you’ve got two years one mouth so you should be listening twice as much as you talk yeah and and with that the phrase what do you want to do is incredibly powerful and if you’ve got decent players they’re gonna sit back and they’re gonna give you what it is that they want to do if you speak spoon-feed them exactly what they want they’re gonna be happy with the session okay so tell me some what are the things what are the things that what are some seeds that you plant in them I don’t plant the seeds they do you know like the initial thing you know maybe I put something out there and they bite on and sometimes they don’t they needed to get ingredients to create a cure and they knew they were gonna have to barter with some hags for it and my one of my players is like oh this is gonna be like that fairy tale thing where I we can’t just buy stuff or trade stuff they’re gonna want something that’s meaningful to us and I was like oh yeah that’s exactly what it’s gonna be and they ended up walking away with loose memories and stuff like that and it’s like Eckerd throughout the whole entire campaign now okay but then how do you prepare for even that part where they have to get ingredients so at what point did they say I like that I want to go collect ingredients so okay so initially they had a problem that they were dealing with and you know there was basically a drug lord in their town in their city and they were looking to stop him but at the same time the drugs were turning people into monsters yeah essentially they you know they were using this drug called stank made from traveling i’ts and if they stopped using it people would turn into troglodytes so they need that they needed to cure those people so did you play in this game I did not this was a online game that he he runs with some of our fans it is ton of fun so you do homebrew online with fans you don’t actually know them very well no I did not know him until we started gaming together so how do you interact with like how do you and then learn what they want over through a screen even that sounds complicated I’ve always looked at D&D and gaming as an extension of friendship right so if I invite you to my table I’ve invited you to become my friend and we learned like any for any relationship you know we build it over time we have a facebook chat and we talk in there a lot of times and you know they would send me information and I take that information and use it to put back into the game and that’s always going to happen when you are at a table in game as well as out of game information is going to be said and you can turn that stuff into actual plot lines and threads based on either character wishes player wishes or a combination of the two biggest problem people bring to us is my players won’t take my hooks they won’t bite on my plots and you want to know why because they’re yours and not theirs switch it to theirs and you’ll never worry about that again that’s really good okay so you have you know you talk to your character or you talk to the players about their characters session one you plant the seeds they want to go in this direction like yeah awesome oh but they run into this direction you didn’t prepare monsters you have your books with you all right pulling it right out so there’s a couple different things that can be done here number one if you’ve planned that they’re gonna go off in this direction and you’ve got bandits that are gonna you know ambush them they don’t know what you’ve planned there’s nothing to say that you couldn’t pick up those bandits and put them in the direction that they went you’ve got your material plan you can still use it it’s just a matter of where the locations are worst-case scenario if you’re unwilling to make that change because it’s you know based on a certain locale that they’re not at all right fine you have might have to improv for a little bit unless you’re doing a live streaming game there’s nothing to say guys hold on saying I wasn’t prepared for this why don’t you guys go take a bathroom break I’m gonna spend a few minutes and and deal with this and you take a fun you take that time you plan and you ready to move on and you know what right say you had that ambush plan they never even leave the city what do you do right they’re not bandits anymore they’re thugs you know you just changed it up you know maybe they’re a gang in the end it’s in the city and they have a beef with one of the characters because who knows could be any could be a mistaken identity anything yeah so being able to like play it loose and improv is like pretty much a key element and off the cuff homebrew so you have your session 1 and your improv in it and now you kind of know what general thing that they want you go home and then start preparing what happens next so the whole time I’m running the sessions I’m taking notes right and it could be an MPC they run it to anything and then I’ll start feeding that back into the game or they’ll go back to that NPC or that location and becomes important to them and they kind of start telling you what’s important to them and listen just keep using and just keep building on it little by little it might be one or two words the first time they encounter that NPC but they encounter him again so now you add another couple of words so he just keep building on the belt what you did before in my in my game I try to actually encourage player agency whatever possible and it’s it’s a you know it’s a city that’s on on the rise and one of the players throughout there well I want to go to the place with the good bread and let’s go cook ok what what is that called I didn’t come up with it he did he named the place he named the guy and and it was it was great well every session there after that they’re in town oh we want to go we want to go back to this place we want to go talk to that NPC well the one time because there was this buildup of this powerful thing he’s not there you know something happened so that encouraged the players to oh no there’s a change in our normal routine because I can’t find this guy so you can build on those NPCs that they interact with and and want to interact with Oh a time and time again so essentially your unfolding an entire world with these players so you get to play with them versus having being the narrator of this of their stories right and that comes to like the you know that the key point of you start small and you build out so if you work on just that one town and those NPCs that they’re interacting with and then as the campaign goes goes on and they’d be given traveling you have more and more notes you don’t have to build an entire world in order to play DNA we’ve we’ve run our paired games out of the same city for a year and a half before they really hit any kind of serious divergent paths running D&D is a lot like any good show right on TV like Game of Thrones or Firefly anything like that where there’s a group dynamic it’s all about the drama and the tension in the relationships and if you can focus on that then like the the encounters in the combat becomes secondary and I find that the players get more involved and more engrossed in those relationships then what I would might be considered standard tropes of D&D and I look at it as DMD is a role-playing game and they put role-playing before game so I put that that emphasis far far more in my games so do you is it more of a social game that you guys play or is it combat heavy is it easier to improv I mean I know my answer to this but easier for you to improv social interactions or easier to improv combat or exploration I can personally do both I done my sessions I’m looking for roughly four to five hours one to two combats for the night and that’s it and most of my players they really that they enjoy that that arrangement socially the social engagement role-playing exploration these are all things that our players seem to really like so we kind of like hone in on them and I’m always trying to get like a reaction from them I want them to feel something you know and the the one game that we mentioned earlier is the scarlet sisterhood is great for that because they’re always doing interesting things and I just feed that you the last time we played you know they found a ghost baby and they want to fix it right and so like they get they got hurt really bad because they’re always trying to fix the monsters and convert the monsters and a lot of times I let him do it but every once in a while you got to give it to them and be like no this is a monster and it’s a bad thing but it creates these this dynamic where there’s like role playing going on and missed the combat and they have a problem to solve and they’re trying to find different solutions are you ready for the three questions shoot absolutely pregame House Rules okay so we actually have a unspoken pregame House rule so whenever we get a new player in our table that’s not familiar with the rules new to Dungeons and Dragons we’ve instinctively always just sat them next to a more experienced player and we just like created this buddy system where that they can help them with the mechanics or their character sheet and it doesn’t take away from the DM or what’s going on in the game a veteran player that has has full grasp of the rules and willingness to aid another player it’s going to allow the game to flow that much better because rather than having to speak up and interrupt everybody oh what do I do here how do I do this they can just turn to the friend next time and saying hey I want to do this how do I do that or where can I find this information and it’s a side small whispered thing that can happen and it not not interrupt the actual flow of the game and then a big thing for us – and we talked about this on our channel all the time is at the end that a gateway day we’re just playing a game if you’re a new GM you know be forgiving to yourself don’t worry about hopefully you’re playing with your friends and they’re just happy to be able to play the game or maybe you’re taking over the DMS chair from the previous GM and he’s happy to be a player now so you know it’s at the end of game day it’s just a game you’re not writing a novel hopefully you’re having fun and then and that is that is indeed having fun is a a crucial element to this game after all we’re playing a big game of make-believe with rules and if if you’re doing something that’s detracting from the fun or you’re not having fun you know find it find a way to you know get back in there and that that’s what that’s what everything is is about here this one goes to each of you favorite Jam moment so my feet somebody to choose from so I’m gonna go in under a minute I’m gonna go with when it happened many many years ago and I was being a smartass as a GM now my players their town is being invaded by this giant Hydra that it’s like half demon half dragon it’s ready to incinerate Ted’s character one of the other characters has a scroll he’s got to make a check just to even read it of flesh the stone and I’m like I just laugh at the players like I need to roll off for on this die and and I roll it in front dropping a table and I roll a three and he turns my big bad monster into a statue in in in that town in that city like just like as a straddled the wall all of its heads like the fire is just about to come out of its mouth and incinerate Ted’s character and that was it boom it was just done this was before legendary legendary actions and legendary resistance so it was definitely cool for me mine is a lot less descriptive I’m a much more improv DM I tend to run off of a sentence or two or less when I’m running for for my game and the one time I ran a session and the players absolutely loved it and you know they’re like oh you know you must have bubble the ball you spent all this time I’m like I showed him my notebook and I had three words written down and I’m like that’s what I ran off of tonight and he never pre-planned a session again because I mean that that’s kind of what what I tend to get if I if I plan heavily then the players don’t seem to have as much fun with it but if I just improv with it they’re in love with it so that that’s where I go tip to the audience could be anything what is each of your tips to the audience so we’ve been talking about homebrew and a lot of improv stuff right and preparation kind of so a lot of times you would get asked what is the right amount of preparation and that is whatever you need as the GM you know whether it’s like Ted said I write three words on a piece of paper or you come up with a bunch of pre-planned encounters and maybe maybe they’re not in a particular order maybe you come up with rumors and stuff like that whatever makes it easier for you it makes you feel comfortable you know you might need nothing or you might need a toolbox full of stuff these are strong draw from and go to in your times of need where like Ted said hey I need five minutes can you guys give it to me and you just go through your toolbox and put some things in order and boom you’re ready to go so I would wind up saying you know we talked about you know don’t get married to your ideas and and be prepared to change but on top of that don’t be afraid to improv don’t be afraid to change what has already been out there so if the players want to go in another direction and you’re you know you’re not ready for it just give it a shot this is a worst-case scenario is you’re gaming with your friends and you know they might they might not say oh that they might say this wasn’t your best session but every session winds up being a learning experience for a GM you know you you take every everything that happened and and build on it that’s how we build a skill set regardless of what it is and the same completely holds true to being a dungeon master thanks for watching GM tips here on geek & sundry a big thank you to our guest Dave and Ted for joining us you can find them on nur Taraki comm and youtube.com slash nerd Archy and all the social medias at nerd Archy I’m Satya Phoenix as always at setting Phoenix you can ask me questions to explore on this show at hashtag ask satine you can find me Sundays at noon or if an echo on twitch.tv slash maser Khanna and Tuesday evenings dungeon mastering on twitch.tv slash D&D and if you haven’t seen it yet check out SOG is a Sun read read on project alpha calm before we go can I ask you gentlemen a question absolutely would you please Jam us out of here certainly after a long journey you and your party have arrived at the town of Griffin GAF you find a local tavern you speak to a man who has a very thick accent it looks kind of swarthy you asked for room but he says there’s no vacancies in his tavern you argue with him for a little bit then you start speaking in another language to the curtain behind him and another voice comes out in the same language and he says well we might have something for you come with me follow me out of the tavern we have something off location but close by he turns he goes down a dark alley what do you do that was a real la experience though yes yes it was [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Epic Home Brews w/ Chris Lindsay

December 21, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

hello and welcome to GM tips the show are my friends and I share with you our thoughts and suggestions on how to game master your role-playing game I’m your host Satine Phoenix co-creator of mais Arcana and a guild a depth for D&D on today’s show we have Chris Lindsay from Wizards of the coast I got a chance to play in the epic game he wrote for Gary Khan there were 17 tables separated into three groups playing three parts of the battle all of the gems coordinated with each other through Chris the event leader major moments are timed and GM’s are brought in to play the major villain NBC’s this was so much fun I got to play a faerie blade singer named ma Gwen flashin I went to each table three separate times during the last leg of the game and they got to try to break the spell before I broke them after playing I figured out why people like these kind of games the players suddenly became a part of something important to the world they exist in so today’s theme is how to make your homebrew game feel epic tip number one part of something bigger in most games you can look forward to fighting small groups with your players if you want to make your encounter feel epic have the group be part of an army or organization they have people to report to and perhaps we’ll be able to call for reinforcements suddenly the group isn’t alone in the world and has a reason to feel responsible for the outcome of the events tip number two give them a choice prepare a few different choices for the players to pick from to be a part of the larger battle in the epic I experienced the table’s chose whether to be a part of the infantry at the frontline in the air fighting the Goblin airships or underground fighting in the ritual chamber each of these choices are important to the story and will make the party feel like they’re a major reason for the success of the overall battle you can use how they succeed or fail to gauge how the rest of the battle unfolds failure doesn’t mean death it could just mean they didn’t accomplish their goal on time but all choices have consequences there are always various levels of successes and failures play with these tip number three time to pre strategize tactics and many encounters most of our choices are reactionary to protect ourselves and something surprises us here you can give your group time to talk about how they can work together during the anticipated battle much like they would do in a war room let them ask the other NPCs about their tactics and use skills to find what their enemies or terrain is like what advantages they can use and other bits of information that will encourage them to think about ways around a situation this is where I encourage them by granting triple advantage to two or more players that go at the same time and can explain clearly how their moves would work together the GM is final say on whether that would work or not you can get them this time for planning and remind them they have a much shorter time to make decisions during the actual encounter tip number four and counter pacing timing is everything and timing in battle is another way to make things feel epic keep your game moving fast your players can roll their attacks and damage at the same time and they should have their choices ready to go I like to do a three-two one countdown for indecisive players I could roll on but instead let’s jump into conversation with the architect of diem skilled head of dandy Adventures League and the product manager of Dungeons & Dragons Chris Lindsay hey thank you for coming I’m so happy I’m through you are amazing at creating epics I love your writing your adventures are so much fun they’re really wild how how would you recommend for people to take that epicness and bring it to their table so the main thing about an epic adventure is that there’s a lot more going on than just what’s happening with the players themselves right there’s a lot of motion there’s a lot and you know moving parts and so forth it’s like the Battle of Helm’s Deep and so it’s it’s important to remember as the encounter progresses are as the adventure progresses to remind the PCs that there are these outside elements inside the scope of the adventure they’re playing and that they come into play and that they interact directly with the characters so that when they have those moments in the game where they might stumble something might be there to like pick them up pick them up yeah give them hope help them out remind them that that they are part of a larger squad or larger unit or larger organization something that that basically puts them in perspective that they’re just a very small part of a larger larger world yeah it’s really interesting so you don’t think about that when you’re writing adventures usually in one shots or even like small campaigns it’s like alright you’re going in you’re gonna go and fight a thing but taking that microcosm that little that little thing that you do and then having that effect you know like another group which affects another group which affects another group what made you start developing epics really it all comes down to movies right you see like these big big movies like all way backs like Ben Hur we had these massive battles and and the heroes are doing something and then something huge and unstoppable gets in their way but from the outside you got somebody who jumps in and does something to help them out all of a sudden you’re past it and you move on and you keep on going after you’re you know whatever it is your objective is right but the point is is that you have that feeling of scope and scale of being a part of something so grand and and that you know you can’t conquer it by yourself but if you could just do your one little thing that you need to do that everything will be okay that’s awesome so you have your group and they are connected with other groups yes in the big battle yeah how do you get them to actually remember that they’re a part of something bigger for example if you are playing in the adventure that we ran at Gary Cohn as they’re moving along the players might come up against like a horde of demons heading their direction and they’re thinking oh no this is it we’re done we’re all dead this we can’t we can’t possibly manage to deal with these demons right but then all of a sudden like from out of nowhere a massive wall of thorns comes up as the druid who’s like a hundred yards behind them cast this epic spell and like stops the demons off just enough so that the players have to deal with just these three demons and then they can continue moving right and then they reminded oh yeah there’s this guy back there you said to help us and they know that they’re a part of this much bigger force and that other people are actually looking out for them too at the same time yeah I mean if I were going to do an epic I might have the players the way they interact with the NPC’s would be how much they help them oh yeah oh yeah to the NPC’s like well I have these reinforcements but you’re not very nice so we’re gonna focus our energies over here and in a home game that’s totally possible then a home game I mean even in Nam Nam Mian is totally possible but it’s more like we have an alum game where the dungeon master can really focus on how the players have interacted in the past with other characters and I would be a liar if I didn’t say that a couple of parties haven’t died at my hands because they made poor choices in the past and an npc said and this is the point where I save you but time to take a water break [Laughter] other ways would be mmm maybe like a scrying stone to see how the other like the other side of the battles absolutely sending stones are also very valuable as you have like your own mini one-shot walkie-talkies medieval cell phones that’s pretty cool that’s where things like animal messenger also come into play right you’re there you catch me a little messenger spell and then like five rounds later somebody does something to help you out because they got the message yeah so you’ve got your group and they are there fighting and they’re fighting people are going down and people are going down as a game master do you are you the one that says okay there’s too many people going down right now I have to send in somebody to save them I don’t necessarily think of it as saving them I think of it as using those elements that are already present in the game nobody wants to feel like oh there’s no way I could have possibly done this without you know this other NPCs help the players still want to be even in an epic battle the players still want to be the focus they want to be the heroes of the day so it’s again this is important to remember which NPCs and which other characters outside of themselves that they’ve interacted with and the ones that they’ve had positive interactions with right are the ones they’re gonna help them then you can point back to this person came out to help you but they would not have done that if you wouldn’t have been such a cool person helped them out previously it’s important to set up those milestones ahead of time before you get to the epic like encounter itself so the Angels swooping in you know guardian Davis swooping in to like cast healing over like the entire party just not enough to bring them all the way up but enough to like give them two seconds of hope that they can continue moving on so mechanically if you’re designing a game and you want to make the players feel like the one thing that they’re doing is the most important in the epic there were three different paths that they could take yeah how do you make each one of those paths feel like this is this is the moment that you are saving the day you have to be really clear that if they don’t succeed that there are consequences and you have to make sure that they understand what those consequences are ahead of time you I mean epic scale battles don’t just happen out of the blue right they didn’t just go attack the Death Star out of you know nothing right they all knew what they were doing they all had a plan and they all knew what the consequences were if their part didn’t work so when there happen when they have that war table there that one more time but before they go into this big epic thing you have to have your NPC generals or whoever it is that’s in charge from their perspective explaining very carefully through the player characters what happens if they screw up and what happens if they don’t do that part and it’s gonna be different for each table for each group if whether you’re in the air or whether you’re on the land or whether you’re underground the consequences will affect what happens to the other groups dramatically so you’ve got your group you’re in this battle and they’re you’ve designed the adventure to feel really epic how do you use the environment in each encounter the environment is actually really really important because it’s in an epic encounter everything happens on a grand scale so in you know in your underground epic encounter as an example you would be going through the tunnels and you’re in tight spaces and then all of a sudden the telev will open up into this massive cavern and that’s like thousands of yards around and you get this feeling that you have to possibly be deep deep deep underground because nothing else would support this in there slag might syslog mites and there’s a huge lake and there’s like several like dotted islands through the lake is you’re looking out across the thing and then there’s a buzzing sound and you see the canoes and you have to get in the canoes but the whole thing feels so massive and as you’re rolling across the lake in the canoes you can see water turning in various places in the distance as things are starting to move and react to your presence and and really the scope of the environment is is vastly important if you’re outside like letting them know that weather exists is while be important in weather in epic encounters is never fun it’s never a sunny bright day you got pour down rain snow and hail they have to run across lakes of ice they have to worry about things breaking underneath them they’re crawling across like chasms and there’s big rope bridges that are gonna break you in second and there’s all these things swarming around them you just have to like it’s never gonna be it can never be fun so that’s interesting because usually not usually nowadays people are so into minis and so I feel like the minis actually keep the battles very small because you only have a certain amount of space to move the figures in but keeping it theater of the mind gives it that grander scale exactly because if you get into your descriptions and by the way for Dungeon Master’s out there it’s important that you you write up maybe a handful of descriptions ahead of time so you know kind of where the direction you’re going and it’s perfectly okay to ad-lib off to the descriptions and go off script and so forth but just to have something kind of to base yourself off of is really kind of key so you you know have that something to anchor you but but these are the theme of the mind is perfectly the best way to go in this case because nothing evokes the feelings that you’re gonna have as a player or as a dungeon master like what’s in your head putting everything out on to a battle man totally puts it into a confining space that has limitations and in epic there’s no limitations so if you were in battle and you’re fighting in that immediate moment then the minis make sense but if you’re going to the destination or just just in the description it’s better to have everyone be present and listening yeah pay attention ops pay attention it’s very important yes yeah and Trust is also very important that this this idea of I’m gonna give you all the information that you have at your disposal at any given moment I’m not leaving stuff out really I’m not necessarily always trying to kill you so I’m going to ask you three questions sure are you ready I’m totally ready I have to read this once I can never remember it okay what is your pregame house rule look like I don’t really have a pregame house rule list it’s more like abandon hope all ye who enter here [Laughter] okay that’s good it’s okay not to have one absolutely because a lot of people do yeah but um it’s I feel it’s really good to know that not everybody does nope second question what is your favorite jam moment my favorite jam moment actually happened very recently and it was at the stream of annihilation when we were playing and we’re playing in the groin game and I had prepared all of the grown characters ahead of time and I prepared the adventure but I knew that our I hoped I should say that it would kind of take on a life of its own and I handed the player characters out to everybody ahead of time and give them an opportunity to read them and so they could get their own feel for what it is that they were gonna do and it happened it was so magical as we kind of sat there and I think I almost did nothing during that game except for I sit back and watch this had come like before me as all the growing and I party started to interact with each other and it was in every once in a while I would jump in and it was kind of like being in a band and having that ultimate jam session yeah right as it just kind of jumped off each other that was really fun thank you and it’s funny because that was Rudy’s favorite Gio moment mm-hmm last question oh yeah quick tip for the audience my first investing only tip to the audience is remember if you’re a player out there that it’s just as important that you are focused on the fun of the entire group as a dental master is it’s not just about you the individual player you want to make it fun for everybody at the table that’s how you get invited back my job that’s our show for today Chris thank you so much for coming all the way to Burbank from Seattle just to be on our show please tell us where we can find you on the Internet and if there are any fun little things that you can share absolutely you can find me on the internet on twitter my twitter handle is at on attrex onn a TR YX and otherwise you can find me if you look very closely hunting through the jungles of cults looking for all the undead in the tomb of annihilation anything new coming up maybe there’s Zanna Thoris and Zanna thar’s has all the character options that you’re going to play that is awesome yes thank you so much new builds for everybody oh my gosh thank you for watching as always I’m Satine Phoenix at Satine Phoenix you can ask me gm2 questions at hashtag ask Satine and find me every Sunday at noon on may cerk honest or if an echo on twitch.tv slash means Akana and every Tuesday night dungeon mastering on twitch.tv slash dandy thank you for watching us here on geek & sundry and see you next time Chris there’s one more thing for you to do oh yes would you please GM us out of here absolutely you merge from the jungle into a vast marshland and in the marsh you stand amidst the ruins and wreckage of armies come pass and a mists a mist drifts over the entire land and through the mist you spy a vast army of undead one so insurmountable you can’t possibly imagine to feeding it but behind you you hear the armor if ik squeal of a million giant miniature space hampshire’s as the charge of the new multi-year assistance [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Permissions

December 16, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

hello and welcome to GM tips the show where my friends and I share with you our thoughts and suggestions on how to gain master your role-playing game I’m your host Satine Phoenix co-creator of Mazur Khanna and a dungeon master on Fury’s reach today I’d like to discuss something I hear a lot about something that needs addressing today’s theme is permission permission to be a kid permission to roleplay permission as a game master changed the rules permission to reward players and encourage them permission to throw everything you’ve read about right out the window to unfold your story the heart and soul of role-playing is imagining things with your friends there are tons of tabletop games that you can play that each have their own set of mechanics take these mechanics away and guess what you can still play in each of these worlds take away mechanics I’m not actually saying that I’m actually talking about the similarities of all these games playing Ivan Van Norman’s game Dredd taught me a lot about what’s actually necessary to roleplay Ivan the game master made the decision to not have character sheets so the story would unfold the way he wanted it to we discussed her character’s intentions and backstories with Ivan before the game started and from there he knew how to navigate us through his world with the simplicity of making poles whenever we made story altering choices we were able to honestly react to the situation at hand having played games with over complicated mechanics m4e and simplified games like Dredd it’s clear that each tables mechanics can change the feel and pacing of the games you have permission dear game master to decide which of these mechanics you want to use and which you don’t you have the control the rules are a guideline and before you start trying to lynch me I got this first hand for my friends Mike morals and Chris Lindsay over at Dungeons and Dragons use what makes sense to you toss are developed rules you want as long as you communicate these changes to your adventures before the game and everyone knows your rules for the table you have permission from me from Mike and Chris to alter as you see fit for your game you have permission to take the campaign books and modules and use them as inspiration you can take the lore and flip it on its head you can destroy cities and enslave nations freeze oceans it’s your story don’t like how racist a town is you can change them you are the storyteller and the players are there to explore your world this might not go over well for all your players some want to play in the world they know and love there are plenty of gamers who run by the book and there are tables for them as well unless you’re a part of organized play groups you have the freedom to manipulate everything I can roll on about this but instead let’s discuss this with one of the original crew members and producer for geek and sundry’s twitch channel Ryan green hey I’m so happy you’re here and excited to be here we in our pre-interview had so much to talk about it gives pretty crazy I love the history of you and your gaming experience yeah I kind of rambled on for quite a bit than that it was a consensual rambling so it’s okay but we landed on permission because what I didn’t realize is that in order to create the stories and go to the depths that we go to we need to have permission and we don’t often give ourselves permission well it’s interesting because I feel that that people feel so limited by the information that they’re given from books and modules and you know GM’s Gil there’s so much stuff in content that’s there that that people look in and say this is how it’s done and that’s not true no those are guidelines those oh those are suggestions now it’s good for players to have players and DMS to share a general consensus of how rules work but in terms of what you’re allowed to let to do both as the player and as the DM that’s that’s a completely different story to tell altogether yeah so for me whenever I begin to develop an idea it starts as just that just that idea just that simple little molecule of something and ice and I write a story around that I go and I go and I go and I say well what rules work for this and 15 is such a friendly friendly storytelling system because the rules are so simple but it’s important to know all the rules and and leave them and then manipulate them and then manipulate them after you understand it and we all have our general mechanics you have you know the d20 you have your damage you know little little the algorithm that you have to perform which is generally only three or four numbers yeah that’s it and as long as you’ll have that then you can start playing with with the permission of what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do what you allow your players do and you don’t allow them to do yeah and so for me one of the things that I love that I love to do is is allow my player to tell me something and so I I structure my thought process whenever we’re going say into an encounter I structure my thought process into three things first is the narrative the first priority is narrative then there is the mechanics and then there is the storytelling the actual narrative that I want to have so I have a general consensus as to what it is that I’m trying to achieve with my story but if the role player if the player actually tells me something that oh they want to run up and they want you to attack a bandit and they’re approaching they start describing the wind on their face and then that you know going through the leaves and subject and then sneaking up behind them and just to soft breath against the back of their neck to make their hairs rise and then slit their throat like yes let’s do this let’s do it so I’ll have them roll and if it’s high enough they just get a kill it HP doesn’t matter AC doesn’t matter I’m like you you I want you to the only AC that’s there is how much you gave me is how much the difficulty is is just it gets lowered with the more role-playing the more narrative you give me yeah because at this point I’m just the narrator for your story you as the player I’m just I’m just here to tell it but if you start writing your own fluid dimensions to it I’m all about it well what do you what happens when you have another player who sees that and it’s like that’s not fair they have X amount of hit points and in all this what are they what happens when they start I said well yeah if they just slit the pandas throat and you don’t like it that happened in two seconds what do you want to do you tell me how you stop that from happening tell me what the problem is that your character sees that because that you’re getting out of character emotions and you’re getting in character emotions you just told me you’re out of character what’s your in character and and then I want them to start engaging and start giving me that role plan that narrative because it’s not about it’s not always about min maxing it’s not always about the strict and stern mechanics of something DMS rewrite stuff all the time it might just be a simple spell or you know a little thing here and there but to completely forego combat mechanics in favor of storytelling that’s what D&D is about it’s about storytelling not about number crunching at least not so if you have a lot of players who are doing this super heavy descriptive role-playing do you manipulate the mechanics to the point where they all just kind of succeed because of the heavy role play well that’s where the next step comes in which is the mechanics and the storytelling itself because I might intend for a villain to escape now if they do things really well may start rolling those NAT twenties and they start getting there then I might have to change my story quite a bit but mechanics do have to limit what the players do just a little bit because otherwise if I if I let them do everything that they wanted at all times it gets out of control so that’s where the mechanics do come in and I have to say well you do have to see you know if you get hit you still have to perform a concentration check yeah because I like that and that does make sense you can’t you can’t stay focus on something after getting bludgeoned in the side of the head yes exactly and so that’s why that rule does exist but you know again if a rogue is going up and slitting a throne I’m like that’s something that you do as a rogue like that’s that’s a function that you have if a wizard did that different story Oh interesting so unless unless the character is dynamic in their backstory in their history says that they have this criminal origin that they you know the skull drudgery that they try and perform and that’s a little bit different but that’s because you’ve written me a narrative you’ve given me a reason why your character acts the way and performs that way as a wizard which is it seems out of character for the wizard class but in character for you so it’s like honest role playing will encourage you to reward the players absolutely constantly and and I feel that that’s the greatest thing that you can do for the players is reward them for role-playing and reward them for telling their story again I’m just narrating at this point yeah cuz I want them to come up with their dialogue I want them to come up with their monologue and furthermore whenever you’re you’re looking or you’re you’re listening to the story I want everyone at the table to stop and just listen and just think for a moment and not try and just go over to the ladder I don’t know this anime the Doritos and you know just going and I just want them to to be able to listen to what they’re saying is you’re gonna get so much more out of that because it’s about reacting that’s the that’s the honest role playing is reacting to the other person and there’s so many people at the table say there’s four players and a game master everybody’s reacting to one another so listen to what the other players are doing is what you’re saying listen to the game master and then kind of feed off of that yeah and then it because that’s gonna establish the type of things that you might that might influence your character and the player again that the in character in the out of character at dynamic which are two very different things and that that’s something that I feels really important for the roleplay itself is understanding those two elements because I might be angry that so-and-so just kind of bent the rules in the favour and the DM allowed it but then a and I had to say well what would my character do what would my character do in this moment if they can bend the rules I bet I can’t – but how far can I go to the limitations of my character so I think that a lot of people are afraid of letting go of the numbers I I agree I agree so how do you that so you gave one example on how to overcome that or do you have any other examples III try and tell everyone yes and no matter what yes and if if you know we’re having conversation of forest and one of the character says that Beehive is nearby suddenly a beehive is nearby and I’m like sure why not it really has no influence over the story yet but it’s there but and at the same time if like we were talking about the the Bandit going up or the Bandit standing there and someone slitting the throat now a dagger has a certain number that’s associated with it but at that point a dagger still deals a lot of damage to a jugular yeah I don’t care what a number says at that point if you’re if you’re telling me specifically what you’re doing then then that allows the numbers to just not exist but if you say I’m gonna go up and attack the Bandit then the numbers will exist okay so if you have like you have you have your dagger at the jugular and you’re like this is what I want to do heavy heavy role play I roll a one you still get to more or less do what you are doing but as you were approaching you misstep and you stepped on that twig getting the attention of the other ones you end up getting the dagger into the side to the side there because of the sudden attention that was drawn to you you still hit the guy and you still you know scratch the throat yeah but you don’t necessarily deal all the damage that you were intending and now as a rogue that was standing there all the attention on you is exactly what you don’t want to have happen yeah so I don’t want to take away from what you did from the intent of your action in the intent of your roleplay I don’t want to take that away but I am going to punish you because the mechanics told me to interesting so as a game master you are the one who can guide how far the role-playing can go I’ve seen some the mechanics a base on the mechanics but I always respect the role play first and then if the mechanics say that I can’t respect the role play do you know a die roll says I can’t respect I’m like well we’ll see I’m fudging it here and there budging I hear things you’re the game master you want to give the players a certain amount of openness but just here and there and then resurrection is actually another great example a character dies and it’s like well I’m a cleric I’m I guess but are you trained enough are you powerful enough can you actually do it do you have access to that spell do you still have the spell slot available or did you drain all of that ratings within you one day you know for that day and you know so the role play might be really rich but I’m like you know what’s better the fact that you can’t do something yes role play that you can’t do it you place your hands on their chest you feel the magic begin to surge through that radiant energy begin a search through you and in slowly pit her out you feel exhausted and you begin to collapse sucks because because that spell slots not there but I’m like I’m now going to let you know that you are fatigued from this and you are actually suffering exhaustion because you are over stressing your body yeah do it and then the players need to know that it’s okay yeah it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to have flaws and to be below a certain amount of hit points and all that I mean that’s that’s how life goes right and I want I want to as bring as many real-life rules that we have in restrictions that we have in our reality to the game without making it feel like real life and still feel like a game yeah are you ready for the last three questions I hope so what is your pregame house rule mmm definitely yes aunt mm-hmm definitely yes aunt I want people to feel comfortable and I want them and then I want and that they are able to make the story such as the beehive or the Bandit and I want them to know that it’s okay to not know everything as long as you’re trying yes as long you know you don’t need to know all the rules you need to know more crunch you don’t need to know exactly the the right path to take to level up in the most efficient way do what matters to you I this is your story this is your character just go do with it and everyone else is going to accept that around you because they don’t know better either what is your favorite GM moment I’m so lucky because it is a thing that I get to experience again and again with every campaign and it’s character creation oh and it’s because I can sit here and create characters all day you know that’s that’s what a DM does they create hundreds and hundreds of characters but especially with new players if I say we’re gonna create a character in a fantasy environment right now you already thought of something I don’t know what that is and it’s the first time that I get to interact with my player where I get we get to share our imagination and it comes together and we think of the exact same thing eventually we get to it but we get the exact same thing yeah and if I say it that you say Bart I’m like great you already know who your mother and father are you already know if they’re dead or alive you know if you were raised by wolves or bears you know all this I don’t tell me so I just it’s a questionnaire and an inquiry why I just start going in and you were writing a story together in that moment but it’s our story no one else in the room knows it and so to see a story written in seconds in moments that’s my favorite DM experience because then I look at everything that you created in that very moment I say well now how am I going to fit this in and how am I going to make sure to best represent your story in this game because it’s about you not me beautiful no GM tip for the audience okay so I kinda meant a little bit before but it’s listening stopping and listening whenever the dam is speaking you are listening whenever a player is speaking you are listening because there is so much to get out of those small moments the little nuances and it’s not just listening it’s watching because if I say sure we can go there that’s one thing but sure we can go there the influx in my voice yeah the expression on my face the the little bits of acting that you get from that can have an entirely different meaning exactly just because you weren’t talking to your friend because it wasn’t your turn yes and and if it’s stopping listening and paying attention like those are so important to be able to do absolutely thanks for watching GM tips here on geek & sundry a big thank you to Ryan for hanging out with us a pleasure where can we find you on the Internet so off for Twitter you can find me at hydro snail and my twitch is twitch TV slash hydro snail underscore Ryan green very long very nice I’m sateen Phoenix as always at sateen Phoenix and you can ask me questions to explore on this show at hashtag ask sateen you can find me Sundays at noon on orphan echo on twitch.tv slash major arcana and tuesday evenings dungeon mastering on twitch TV slash D&D and if you haven’t seen sagas of sundry dreads check it out on project alpha comm Ryan will you GMs out of here I’d love to so you find yourself on your knees hands bound behind your back you’re in some form of stone room possibly a cathedral moonlight shining through the stained glass looking to your left you see that stained glass the moonlight shimmering in the dust on it you see a falling star no an angel some sort crashing before you a man steps out of the shadows his face obscured with darkness he spreads his long black wings they’re broken and battered from combat feathers begin to fall from them and from the tips you can see that they are they have been burned and charred with battle but they are stained with blood looking at you hello bishop you look at me with such reprise you’ve seen me before yes you see his focus still the glance up back up to that stained glass window and back at you you can’t hear you you know hell hell is not a place of fire and brimstone you feel your body begin to heat and swell no he’ll there’s not a place of pain as you get an image of hooks flying towards you or agony you feel the hooks descend into your flesh no hell is a place where God doesn’t listen placing his hand upon your head your head you disintegrate into ash [Music] [Applause] you [Music] [Applause]

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Playing Dirty w/ John Wick

December 15, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

hello and welcome to GM tips the show where my friends and I share with you our thoughts and suggestions on how to gain master your role-playing game I’m your host Satine Phoenix co-creator of Mazur Khanna and a guild addict for D&D from breaking roles as a GM to manipulating expectations today’s theme is playing dirty the game master is a mysterious storyteller who weaves tales for players to find their way through the mind magician who wields possibilities she’s the one who dictates how the rules are used he’s the one that sets the pace and mood they’re the one that bends reality to help or hinder the group it’s easy to follow rules from a book but rules are merely guides to the game you have to respect game mechanics but once understood you can bend them to your will let’s list some ways you can twist your game for a more personalized experience tip number one environment manipulation sound silence mood music sound effects ambiance soundtracks lighting dim or bright changing as the adventure changes smell incense candles or foodstuffs whether a breeze from a fan heat or chill in the air all of these can be manipulated during the game try setting up the area before your players arrive for a more immersive experience establishing the mood before they even start playing tip number two adding mechanics from other systems the fun thing about homebrews is that you can not only take away rules but you can add in rules from other games what I really like is from 10 candles allowing the players to help develop the world around them creating facts within the scene that could possibly aid them or the NPC’s this I do selectively in a specific moment rather than all of the time tip number 3 allowing some rule-breaking based on excellent roleplay I get super excited when a player can roleplay the dice away when players have great ideas at normal rules contradict I’ll sometimes allow it because it encourages a group to be more creative and even work together tip number 4 sensory emotions evoke certain emotions not by telling your players what they feel but by placing things in the environment trigger words like birthday cake to evoke childhood memories mothballs or doilies might trigger the memory of one’s grandparents which might lead to a certain odor memory or sound you can draw out the feelings or move the players quickly choose specific words or textures to guide your players in and out of their own memories while traveling through your story you can describe these in-game or purposefully place items around the gaming room to subliminally evoke certain emotions both the real world and mine world are available to play with tip number 5 and PC is bending the world allow the players to affect the NPCs negotiate change their minds and reasons for things allow the players to affect the lives of the NPC is the way a conversation might change how a player sees the world and in the same vein trust that your players can handle being backstabbed by an NPC they trust I could roll on but instead let’s discuss this with any Award winner the author of play dirty and the creator of 7c John wick thank you so much for being here it’s very welcome thank you for inviting me and congratulations on all of your any’s this year that’s pretty mind-blowing it was really weird I I did not expect us to win anything and then boom boom boom boom boom and it was only our after the awards ceremony I was like did we win so let’s talk about played dirty what’s the philosophy behind play dirty the philosophy behind play dirty is that well I did two books of G M advice and the philosophy is that if role-playing games are the only literary medium where the author and the audience are the same person right I will do anything in my power to make that to make that happen you can watch a movie and you’re watching Tony Stark on the screen you’re not Tony Stark you can read a book and you’re not Jon Snow right but in role-playing game there’s a moment where your characters in trouble and you think I’m in trouble right and that’s the it’s the only literary medium that does that so if if every if if a game if there is a GM if I don’t try to just exploit that I’m feeling yeah otherwise you’re just playing a board game we may as well be playing dissent or talisman or anything else so I want you to not think my characters in trouble I want you to think I’m in trouble and it’s and and I will do anything in my power to make that happen anything you say anything well I’ve done there’s a lot of examples in the book and and a lot of it has to do with exploiting the environment using music using dropping the temperature in the room when I run horror games I call it Cthulhu and but for example I did a game called 30 which is where you play the last 30 Knights Templar and you go on this big magic journey right and at one point you’re the Knights Templar and you’re in the modern day you’re not exactly sure where you are and I’m explaining to you that you walk up to a door and the door looks and as I explained it looks a lot like your door to your house or your apartment or whatever and you knock on the door and as soon as I say that we’re sitting at the table there’s a knock at the door and the players all look up and I like what’s going on and they and one of the players goes to the front door and they open it and there’s a knight Templar at the door planning yes I had my cell phone on and my friend had his cell phone on and he does historical recreation so he put together his knight Templar outfit and as soon as the players in the game their characters the Knights Templar are walking up to the store that looks like their door and then there’s a knock and then they open the door and there’s a Templar at the door and that’s the moment where they go what is going on what what’s happening in the game is happening here and that’s an example of one of the things that I’ve done to make the players have that really brief moment where the line between who they are and who the character is is just gone so that’s a bit of planning and it’s kind of like a more severe how far do you go well it has a lot to do with consent right I have at my table I have a source contract which is that if if you’re gonna sit at my table and I’m gonna want to want more on my play dirty games you have to be prepared for anything to happen you have to be prepared to lose control your character you have to be prepared that maybe we’re gonna get up and move you have to be prepared for maybe I have planted things in the house or the apartment or people all of those things so it’s you have to be prepared for anything to happen your character and you have to be ok with it but then of course there’s always the time or somebody goes okay time out right and that’s the that’s my little symbol of okay time out I need to stop right because that that moment of breaking that wall can be really extreme can be emotionally extreme and so whenever anybody says timeout right that’s it everything stops the lights come up you know and and we all talk and we all calm down everything like that but that’s the kind of gaming that I’m interested in I’m not interested in playing a board game with role-playing you know I can roleplay as my character I can play world Warcraft and roleplay but that’s not a role-playing game a role-playing game is specifically designed for you to tell a cooperative story with your friends where you are the hero and you are crossing over into that hero realm like Greg Sanford says and having the adventure you and you come back transformed from the adventure right the whole hero journey thing and that’s what I’m interested in role-playing games so let’s talk a little bit about sensory emotions yeah and how you design your game with these people knocking at the door or changing the environment a little bit how did you how did you realize that that was a very valuable asset to have at the table it came a lot from theater right when I was younger I took which I think every GM should do should go to Community College drop the money and take an improv class right every every GM should do that it teaches you how to how to react instead of act it teaches you how to how to engage people and all that kind of stuff and that’s part of it right for me being a GM is far less about I’m going to tell you my story and much more about I’m going to help you tell your story so environment wise I think about where are they I know that like when I run a Call of Cthulhu game every Halloween it’s the first role-playing game I ever got was called a Cthulhu so when I run Call of Cthulhu I turn off every light in the house I unplug all the power for everything there is no oven light there is no clock light there’s nothing there’s no light and and then I drop the temperature in the house I turn the air-conditioning way up I start playing Polish horror music right in the rooms I will go and get friends of mine because I’m like I only have five people in my Cthulhu game and that’s it right and you know them that’s I know that yeah and that’s you know how how each of them responds so you’re really navigating all of them very specifically right and they have limits right like a friend of mine has a certain phobia that I will not cross right that’s that’s a no cross right but everything else he’s like everything else is fair game you can do whatever you want to me but this thing please do not do this thing so I respect that right and then and so I know what they’re all about so I design a story that is really tailored to them what they want out of the game I pay attention to character sheets and then I don’t have plans I have contingencies I set up I don’t really have long-term goals because no plan no GM plan survives first contact with the players so why make a plan right instead you go okay I’m gonna throw this at them and this at them and this at them and this at them they pick this up okay let’s go here right but otherwise the the other things that I do is I use vocal imitation I use I use vocal changes for different characters different NPC’s all wear different hats for NPCs I collect hats so I have different hats for all the NPC’s I will this is what I usually wear as a GM well wear a suit a black suit because it’s old called a Cthulhu gimmick the man in black and but I will change out into a different jacket or I’ll do the things so the players really feel like they’re talking to that character I will adopt physical mannerisms for that NPC and because of that the player start doing the same thing right they start going oh my character should speak with a lisp or I should speak I should speak with it right or and they start looking for things to to give their characters affectations to make the whole thing more some I want to say subversive which is what it is you’re actually subverting their expectations and subverting their their their preconceptions so that you can hit them in ways that that you know like I say and playing dirty that their character she cannot protect them well by watching other people get involved in that manner they they get permission to do that yeah and then they get permission to allow you to pull them deeper yes so it’s just kind of like the stages of interest the stages of involvement for them because everybody I feel sits at this certain level around the table like we’re gonna have fun we’re doing this thing but I know you and you’ll take me a little bit deeper and I trust all of these people and we’ll go a little bit deeper and deeper like we did with dread which was insane we just we all got so deep that you weren’t us anymore we were only the characters and we responded honestly that way so that’s what it sounds like from what you’re saying is by adding all these elements in you guys all had that contract where we’re going yeah I’m gonna go really deep yeah we’re gonna and and it’s gonna be fun and and and it has all of the rules of of you know of consensual play it’s like okay stop I need to stop right now and everybody’s like yes with respect to stop right or somebody like in r7c LARP one of the things we do is we have the thumbs up and the thumbs in the middle of the thumbs down so I was playing a villain in the in the 7c LARP just at Gen Con and I was really evil I was really really evil and one of the things we have is like when I engaged with with a with a woman in the in the game I was very evil I was very upfront I was very in her face and I was very physically touch her because that’s LARP right but I was very intimidating and I would get up into her face and then I would do this I just do a little the check-in yeah the chicken are you okay should I tone it down should I stop oh that’s beautiful right and that really comes from Danielle who do it and like it’s it’s something that we kind I kind of do an alarm anyway in a verbal way I’m like are you okay are you okay but in this way if I do this I don’t have to stop being my character I’m going to ask you three questions okay what is your pregame house rule look like we will talked about a little bit I have a when I run a play dirty game because I’ll run a regular games but when I put in a play dirty game there is a consent moment right and the understanding is is that I will do anything in this game I will break rules I will because rules are really about your character sheet is something that you’re using to communicate to me what you want right so I will read character sheets and will go through and also I will ask the players telling me three things about your character that aren’t on your character sheet what do you care about what would you die for what would you not die for what would you kill for those kinds of questions what is the most important thing to your character that’s not on your character sheet and once I have those as a GM I’ve got you what is your favorite GM moment that the Templar moment was one of them but I recently ran I was I was the villain in the LARP and and I I was playing a villain and I was with a player and I did the I said can I he was playing a priest I’ve had a scene priest from 7c and I said can you guy grab you by the collar and he said yes so I grabbed him by the collar and I said grab hold of my wrist so that you can you know and I dragged him across the room and I gave him a choice and I said you can either kill I’m going to kill someone in this room and because you lied to me I’m neither gonna kill this man I’m gonna kill that woman which one is it oh right and things happened and it’s a long story but at the end of the game he told me he said I’ve been a fan of yours you know for a long time I’ve read the play dirty books and I’m always looking for that moment that John wick a moment where for my players and he’s like and when you grab me by the collar and started dragging me I had two thoughts and the first one is my character is going to die and the second thought was oh my god I’m having my chammak woman and John wick is doing it to me and that was that was a really great he later he’s like you made my GenCon thank you and I was like yay because that’s my job my job as a GM is so that you have that moment and that’s my satisfaction mm-hmm third question is a quick tip to the audience that can be anything do not so there’s the mr. Miyagi rule mr. Miyagi rule is teachers say student student do and I apply that to games games say player do right so games tell you not just what the rules are about how to play them right don’t look at the rules so much look at what the game is telling you how you should play all right because people play call of cthulhu differently than they play D&D they play legend of five rings or seven see differently than they play apocalypse world or anything like that look at how the game is telling you how you should play is that really what you want to do right is that what you want to do is this again because that’s what’s going to happen the players are gonna read the rules okay rules whatever but they’re gonna read the parts that that are between the lines that say this is how you play the game is that the kind of game you want to play and if it’s not you should find a different kind of game that’s our show for today thank you so much for joining us here oh where can we find you on the Internet I met John Luke presents calm there’s also a John wick presents Twitter and John wick presents Facebook and it’s it’s real easy it’s just John wick presents and congratulations on all your successes thank you as always I’m Satine Phoenix at setting Phoenix you can ask me gm2 questions at hashtag ask Satine and find me every Sunday at noon on maser connoisseur if an echo on twitch.tv slash maser Khanna and every Tuesday night dungeon mastering on twitch TV slash dandy thank you so much for watching us here on geek & sundry see you next time wait can you do one thing for me anything for you would you please yeah miss out of here yes I understand you have your favorite character with you I do well this is your favorite character this is mirror that you made with Zach right so when you were very when you were younger you had a rivalry with an evil sorceress and and this rivalry went back and forth back and forth and you lost track of each other but you’ve recently discovered that she’s trying to become a lich so yeah so you and your friends you and your fellow adventurers are gonna go to her lair and stop her from becoming a witch I’ll it I’m sorry however as soon as you take a step into the dungeon something happens you feel odd your fingers go numb and and your tongue does it feels thick and and suddenly you’re a voice in your head and and your limbs freeze and tighten and you realize that you’re no longer in your body and you hear the voice of your old rival and she says I was mummified but now you are and I am in your body your friends don’t know this yet as a matter of fact I’m going to tell you this before the game starts so the other players don’t know and I have two goals mirror the first goal is to escape this place as you and the second goal is to hurt your friends as much as I now here’s how this works you Satine are going to be playing the evil sorceress and you are going to do your best to make sure that you hurt your friends and escape at the dungeon and every time that you roll a die any die I’m gonna give you a chance to escape to break this spell you’re gonna make a roll you’re gonna make a you’re gonna make a will save or a charisma save you know whichever version you’re playing and you have to roll higher than her and you have to make the save and if you do you will break one part of the spell you need to break three in order to get completely free now every time she rolls a die I’m going to give you an opportunity to roll you don’t have to roll but I’m gonna give you a deep bonus d for every time that you roll a die alright so you can save those d fours as you go so when you make your will save you can roll all those d floors with it or you can try to make the roll okay but every time you do and you fail part of you is going to die you get three chances so shall we begin [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: New Players

December 14, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

hello hello welcome to GM tips I’m your host sateen Phoenix co-creator of Mazur Khanna and a dungeon master on Fury’s reach today’s theme is new players [Music] but the different games available nowadays the different styles and rules and character sheets playing any RPG can seem daunting it’s our duty dear game masters to provide a safe environment for these new players some will have been video gamers than idea of RPGs and some might have no experience at all that shouldn’t stop any of them from learning my friend Christine woo asked me about Tandy and I ran her through a quick game with no character sheets or planning and only one died role I could have scheduled a game with her and walked her through the players handbook but that’s not the essence of RPGs in my opinion she had so much fun in that moment as she ended up getting the books and reading up on the game on her own because she connected with the heart of the game you know it isn’t easy for a lot of people to come out of their shell and perform in front of others but there seems to be a resurgence of people playing now I’ve seen a lot of new players stop playing after only 1 or 2 sessions because of how overwhelming it can get or how they feel they’re too far behind to catch up that’s absolutely not the case let’s take a look at different ways to ease new players into our favorite hobby before the game talk to them and find out what kind of character they are interested in playing do explain to them the benefits of this kind of race class combination don’t overwhelm them by suggesting all the things you think are badass they’re there to play the characters from their fantasies once they get the hang of it introduce them to other combinations give them the basic information and abilities once they seem to understand the order of actions and get the hang of the way you and your friends roleplay then give them more abilities before the next session don’t overwhelm them by asking them to calculate tons of numbers help them by pre calculating and modifiers so they can experience the play and roleplay rather than spending gobs of time with their heads in the character sheet hand them the exact dice will need for rolling attack dice damaged eyes etc so they don’t get confused trying to find the right die I say this over and over and I’m gonna keep saying it until it seeps in tell the players your house rules so they know how to play with you let them know to trust you with environment and PCs and situations in the end all they really need to do is tell you what they want to do the game master guides them to what they should roll to make the intention happen during the game you and the other players are their guide the new player will learn from watching what other players do show them the possibilities by role-playing with the other characters and allowing them to see the players play then give them specific moments to try their hand at role-playing decide how much influence you want the other players to have in teaching the new player during the game this is considered medic gaming draw a lines that the players don’t take advantage of being able to met a game outside of this specific case in your game it can quickly get out of hand I’ve seen it on this note be careful how you reprimand other players rules are set for ease of play but aggressive reprimanding can also deter a new player from the game role-playing games are fun don’t lose track of that there are a lot of rules and boundaries that navigate and with lots of practice you’ll get better at it rules how much is too much rules heavier rules light they still need to be communicated I find that giving them a basic rule rundown of things they can do before the game starts and then gradually teaching them as they go is optimal a lot of people learn by being put in situations rather than having to memorize so be patient with them I could roll on but instead let’s discuss this with writer master of the gauntlet a musical improviser with robot teammate Chris Bramante hello thank you for coming for having me sateen you’re a fantastic game master thank you I saw it with my own eyes oh you were a fantastic player you are the man in charge of the gauntlet yes yes I was very impressed it’s very fun and lively and easy to play well I’m glad that it was yeah gauntlet is designed in order to let new players come in that day you can create your character but you don’t create a character sheet we have a character sheet already built for you and you just use your weapons and your you know your will and your fortitude but beyond that stats aren’t that important to the show it was really cool because you asked me what do you want to play what kind of character do you want to play and it was that was as simple as your character sheet seemed to be like oh I want to play a wizard or oh I want to play a paladin of some sort and you’re like okay well that idea fits into this character sheet and you had us make backstories and stuff but it was actually very simple so how did you come up with that easy character sheet so you have all the different classes each of them have kind of the best weapon that matches that class best is obviously subjective but what we did was we took three different kinds of weapons each person gets just to come in fill out your name as long as you know who you are everything’s there for you and just it’s a hack and slash I think is the term just a dungeon crawl you’re going from room to room you’re escaping you’re killing these creatures you’re collecting skulls which is why I’m the skull giver I montiek the skull giver and so I didn’t even do that because I’m pretty new to GME myself the first time I ever GM was live on Twitch that’s cool it was pretty nerve-wracking until it started happening until I sort of just sort of rolled back into my head you know eyes disappeared came back as a Monty ah command I thought but before that it all seemed kind of overwhelming but then it just gets natural as it goes on just like I suppose life is and so I want people who have never played to be able to just come and have fun and fantasize and improvise and do their thing and one of the ways you do that seems to be with having a light-hearted game yeah so you mentioned something before about you your view on comedy and your view on being playful with players can you talk about that one thing that I always think about comedy but also taking something seriously is I don’t want too much like meta fourth-wall breaking because I am a lord of the Rings fantasy head I love that stuff but I also don’t want things to be the same so what I try to bring to the gauntlet is this ridiculous almost Mel Brooks ian silliness exactly that’s exactly it was writer on Mel Brooks yeah thank you like I’ve be missed the no clops is one of the characters I like to play he was a cyclops and then he was blinded by neuron Dean the night boy so now he’s the no klopse just like dumb stuff that makes me laugh but I try to treat it as if it’s super serious and some of the times where I struggle in the show is if a performer doesn’t act like their life is in danger mm-hmm because I what I always feel about if you’re going to make believe you must believe and one of the most freeing concepts for me as an improviser was when a teacher told me don’t try to be funny don’t think that you’re funny don’t be thinking in that way choose a character be that character and then just believe that you are and then see what happens so for me that’s how I want to perform in a show so when we’re doing a live twitch stream it’s different because it’s a show it’s not just it’s not a long-form campaign you don’t have the time to really think it through in the way that you would when you’re getting together with a group without people expecting you to keep their attention so what I want to do is create a situation in which you can just tap in believe who you are know what your weapons are and how to use them and then just keep moving and keep going so the rules for the game Pathfinder Dungeons & Dragons or whatever they’re pretty intense yes how did you simplify it to communicate to the new players that come in on your come in to your game so that they would understand it easier what I do is if someone’s never played at all the way I describe it to them is think of this as verbal storytelling in which the dice is a conduit to chance that’s what that’s all it is we’re going to talk about what’s happening I believe it’s second is a GM you’re speaking in second person which is you this you that and usually once they understand that and then the basic concept of can I hit and what does it do mm-hmm and then describe what you’re doing walk us through it once they get that and we do a couple practice rolls like I have it in columns it’s like you’re always going to strike then you roll the die explain to them all they’re dice and at first you can kind of see like this like math and like the way that you’ve simplified it not just for the players but for you so that you get the players through the dungeon because one of the things I noticed that when we were playing your game is I didn’t even think about the rules the way you showed it to us it was what are you doing and we were just kind of moving and it it was second nature but that’s playing and that’s what role-playing games are is I’m doing this what are you doing this is what the other guy is doing and it’s just the that really fluid movement through the adventure yeah and your group is so fluid because you have a relationship together all right you came in there and it was I could even sense it was such a pared down version for you like Cayenne Midian and & my linh magic ARRA what a character it was just instantly you guys were just flowing through it and I try to bring in groups that at least have one person that they know because an established rapport takes it to the next level the times are I’ve brought in individuals that don’t know each other it’s definitely a roll of the dice in terms of will they connect or will they freeze up will they not engage and then even though they write out these bios of character explorations based off of questions I’ve asked them they don’t necessarily use the information because sometimes it feels like it’s probably just the brain as processing like am I doing this right yeah do you have anything else you want to say about this um yeah people I always want to make sure that that just the realm is kept within like if you want to do meta earth jokes you can do them but do them in this world like we had someone who initially wrote a sheet and they wanted to be a surfer in Santa Monica and the way I phrased it to them is even though Amontillado is over a thousand years old has died many times and has gone to all different sorts of dimension he knows what Santa Monica is but you guys don’t so he did a quick edit of it and then it was he was a turtle rider from Montes Anika oh gosh and so he can still do his comedic performance in that way but with making it true to this world which is a realm I called eros although now we’re in the alternate dimension of hey hey rose and then some people get sucked into the all horse version of that dimension which is hey rose fun funfun it all kind of just comes up as it’s happening yeah that’s gaming and that’s improv so I’m gonna ask you three questions three quests just same questions I ask every guest questions three answer you these questions three yeah let’s see if I can do it what is your pregame house rule the pregame house rule is to like each other to the players like each other you are all together you’re on the same team you’re not attacking each other you will never any point in the rules of this game draw a sword against another player so why have a sword of words these are your friends we try to do a few improv warm-ups beforehand make eye contact and then of course like I was saying believe believe that you are who you are the stakes are high you are not in Earth right now you are in darros that’s the rule let’s play awesome what is your favorite GM moment my favorite GM moment was when the chat created an emote of my head and I what that did to me was sometimes I feel like things make sense when you see that it makes sense to someone else so I grew up as a punk rock kid I used to sing in a punk band called the mashed potatoes I was never quite a metal or goth person but I always hung in those realms but big fan of the misfits growing up and so when I play in fantasy realms even though I am a pacifist in a very peaceful person who doesn’t even I don’t play violent video games the only time that any sort of violent urge just kind of naturally pours out is in fantasy roleplay games where it’s like oh I just described a gross flaying of an orc I guess that’s in there somewhere but when they created the emote as I am a montiek the Skull giver someone I was looking at the chat I always begin it with my little intro scream that you’ve entered the gauntlet and I looked at chat and all of a sudden there is me with the robe and my hair sticking out and then a skull for my face and I was like okay they understand what I’m trying to do and now I understand what I was even doing so it was a conversation and that the chat kind of helped me become what I wanted to become in there creating of that emote that’s awesome no a quick tip to the audience doesn’t have to have anything to do with what we talked about today oh great do I look to you or do I look to them you can look to whoever you want okay hi so look to you a quick tip would be something that robot teammates improv coach taught to us which is to dig your heels sometimes when we’re creating an improvised story live in front of a crowd things go off the rails the story we were the story we were intending to tell is not being told sometimes the instinct is discomfort and nervousness and looking to each other and you can sense this kind of like oh I wish I wasn’t here why are we doing this people are looking at us expecting to be entertained to be satisfied so what our coach taught us was especially when that happens double down even further even if it has gone fully crazy and angels are coming out of your ears and babies are singing and lasses dig your heels into the dirt as if it was exactly your plan and so that is something that I try to do in life and definitely do in GME that’s an excellent GM tip thank you thank you that is the end of our show for today thank you for watching GM tips on geek & sundry and thank you Chris for being here oh thank you for having me where can we find you on the Internet oh you know places I’m Chris Tremonti you can find me as a montiek on Twitter Instagram and YouTube as well as every Thursday on the gauntlet on twitch.tv slash hyper RPG you can find me on Fridays at 9:30 on geek & sundry twitch where we do gather your party with robots you mate and those are the places to find me it’s true I’ve seen them on those places as always I’m Satine Phoenix you can find me at Satine Phoenix and you can catch me every Sunday on twitch.tv slash maser kana and orphan echo and Tuesday is dungeon string Furies reach on twitch TV / D&D and on SOG is a sundry dread on project alpha comm Chris mmm are you ready to GMs out of here oh I hope so to all you creatures seeking quest your whims and wits now face a test the story needs you take the helm guide us through your mythic realm trust your dice expect surprise conceive believe and improvise construct a world consumed in conflict a Forgotten forest danken haunted imagination use it wanted confront the fire face the gauntlet find the adventure hiding within the time is now so just you [Music]

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: The Neverending Story w/ TJ Storm

December 4, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Alignment w/ Jason Charles Miller

November 27, 2020Zoltar Leave a comment

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

Sage Advice D&D

Questions on Dungeons & Dragons answered by designers

Widgets

DM Tips

Alternate death rule idea for D&D

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Off-The-Cuff Home Brew Games

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Epic Home Brews w/ Chris Lindsay

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Permissions

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Playing Dirty w/ John Wick

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: New Players

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: The Neverending Story w/ TJ Storm

Satine Phoenix DM Tips: Alignment w/ Jason Charles Miller

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: