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THIS IS A AN AUTOMATIC CAPTION TEXT from YouTube, so it’s not “perfect”. My advice is to use it just to help people like me that are not english speaking, to understand the Video/Podcast and do you recommendations for like classes yeah I mean I mean you are like the lead writer on this so maybe you have the inside scoop like I would prepare a little bit yeah well here’s the weird thing it’s like this game this this adventure can go in so many different directions because it’s it’s if you run a a bunch of like paladin’s and clerics which which kind of is maybe the first impulse that players my B’s like oh there’s there’s a hellish realms well I’m gonna I’m gonna run somebody who’s very holy that can go well for you you know you can there are boons and benefits that you can get from being a holy player or holy character that will serve you well in the infernal realms and then there’s items that you can encounter through there that can help you out that and and then you’re able to resist the temptation and corruption of avarice and that’s really a good thing it’s also a difficult thing because we’ve designed it in such a way that the righteous path is the most difficult path so so it is a double-edged sword if you run a tiefling character that is has predilections towards evil that can also help you out you can actually skate through some of these things that you wouldn’t a good character would normally have a lot of problems with you might be able to get through it however there’s so many temptations that you could wind up being a corrupted mess and a slave to an arch devil before you even get to the goal of the adventure so so in that case you know you can see the two different you know ways that a new player going into this and like you said you’re gonna find out about what your who your character is by the end of this adventure or at least halfway through it you know you’re gonna understand like oh we’re in way over our heads here or you’re gonna be like oh my gosh this is defining Who I am as a hero you know I know myself and I think I think I’m gonna do good down here you can have two of those things so as a DM as a new DM going into this I think it’s a Great Adventure because it’s it’s going on a lot of resonant tropes it’s going on a lot of things that you already understand as a consumer of fantasy and as a consumer of myth good at versus evil the light in the darkness that Devils are evil and scheming and conniving and you’ve got to be able to resist the temptation people all across the world understand that so and this this story and this campaign hits on that it’s on that note so if I just come to D&D for the first time I’m like I want to run adventure I get it I already get the premise of this adventure and I already understand how to run it as a storyteller so it’s not something that’s so abstract like if I was a new player and I wanted to play like a really obscure world that we have in D&D that I’m like I don’t really understand this I don’t understand who these people are and why are they mad at them and is this sci-fi is this fantasy like I’m not sure where I’m at like everyone might be a little bit difficult for a first-time DM to run if you go like if you can tell them like it’s about noir detective noir Pulp and then they’re like okay I get that I understand that then they can might be able to muddle their way through everyone there’s a lot of kind of upfront reading you have to do understanding like what is the last war about what it’s corvair because that’s a political intrigue yes yeah and there’s you know okay you can think of the dragon more houses as corporations and they’re evil or and they’re trying to get as much you know so so we’re trying to keep resonant stuff in that new players to the game can get so that the least have something to hold on to as they go on their crazy quest of imagination but you know ultimately there’s things that are kind of easier to understand and things that are harder to grasp so for something high fantasy like what we do a lot in The Forgotten Realms which is kind of our high fantasy setting which and I think that’s why it’s probably our most popular setting is that people understand it you know players understand it you can come from anywhere in the you know however you consume your media and game stuff you come to D&D and you’re like oh I get it this is you know I’ve encountered maybe Lord of the Rings or I’ve encountered you know Game of Thrones and so I have a baseline where as you get into like and was secure set like like let’s say we did the dune role-playing game it’s like I’m ass out our car or Bremen like what you know I’m a dub the Atreides clan what am I doing here and what are what’s the voice and what’s the weirding way like so but but this is true for players as well yeah like players who consume all of these different comics all these different yes all these TV shows understand like if you were a fan of penny dreadful or you’re a fan of Constantine or Doctor Strange or supernatural or you know even you know if there’s just so many different shows and books and novels about this subject matter like he was a player you’re like I get it yeah like I am on that slippery slope like Constantine is always like he’s always just writing that middle line between heaven and hell yeah he’s always that type of character and like you know the brothers brothers and Supernatural are always fighting the demons they’re trying to get through and so I think players automatically get it they get that struggle yes like characters and I think that’s why it’s something that resonates immediately yeah the other thing that I like about it I’m just going to this entire interview rock and roll man oh but the action is like really resonates because when you tell someone you’re in combat you’re like okay here here I go I am playing Dean D for the first time I swing my sword that cast my spell but now you’re telling them you are on a fertile war machine yeah that is what you’re doing you are in a blasted landscape there is almost virtually no plant life is like a desert hell dimension you are an infernal war machine and you’ve got all these weapons and this thing that screams and this thing that vomits and and you’re just fighting each other and they’re warlords and everyone who’s seen Mad Max understands okay this is the kind of combat I’m seeing in my head right now yeah yeah totally I mean I mean one of the things you could do is like you know with your players before you you run this adventure is you could go and just be like let’s have a fury road viewing and let’s have like a Hellraiser constatine viewing yeah and just that’s watch those two movies and you’ve got you’ve kind of got the vibe like for a player who who kind of hasn’t sort of you know immersed into that yet just watching those two movies then then you play this and you’ve got visual contacts complete visual context and also context is to like like the slippery slope and like how like the danger of where you’re going you know like you know as as the the plot thickens in to send to a furnace you know a DM all they have to do is you know say well you know now you can you smell of the wind of the sulfur coming at you and you can see the the sandstorm you know howling the distance and there’s biting flies buzzing around you and and the players are like oh man now we get it now we know what we’re in for this is this is going to be screwed you know and how do we survive down here you know and then then that moment of I mean I think this is one of those adventures where the the DND players are gonna understand all about the party like the party working together like wow powerful it is that we stick together and we help each other and taking rests and making sure that nobody is gets separated off because you know one of the things we’re trying to do in a virtus is to make it scale as different down here it’s it’s different you know distances are deceiving you know the the landscape moves and changes because it’s a supernatural plane it’s a magical plane of existence so the feeling that you’re small and you’re out of your own element and you’re sort of alone in this it’s it’s a predatory realm like and it’s it’s a arcane predatory realm like it’s coming at you from the supernatural and so anybody who’s like watch you know like or read old Conan in comics you know and the Lovecraft like that feeling of you’re not sure and you know the thing that prickles the sense of prickles up on your back in the neck and then there are demons that are coming through portals and you’re never sure what you’re going to encounter that stuff is just like food to generate this feeling of you know we are completely out of our element we’re completely in a different world and now now how do we how do we survive we have to use every scrap of our ingenuity we have to use every scrap of our magical power to survive down here and that’s fun I have a very specific question about descent into a furnace was a holly font okay why is this so adorable yeah so holly fans are they are a I believe they’re a second edition creature that we that we they’re Celestials and you know when there was a when we were designing this this adventure coming with a story we knew that it was going to be bleak and so there had to be some sort of levity and some sort of thing that breaks the tension and so there needed to be kind of a light-hearted character that went with you and so I thought about Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket kind of acts as your conscience as you’re going as Pinocchio is kind of going through his trials and tribulations and I thought well Holly fat would be a great character and I believe it was his Matt’s turn it actually came up with like it could be this this this Holly Fant creature so but anyway that was like that’s perfect that’s perfect so we put this character in there to just act as that thing to guide the characters through the adventure and so then in the next part of it was in the story we connected it to sort of the main plot line that the holla Fant was once a connected was Ariel the arch devil and she’s lost the the howl offense in this is called Lulu she’s adorable and but she’s lost her memories and she doesn’t know she has vague recollections of things so when you go to a furnace this hall event is is there to kind of guide you and she’s also a celestial being so she’s pure of spirit so she’s reminding you in times of temptation like oh don’t do that you know don’t Oh stay away from them is that the official canon voice it could be you know so so that that is a it’s a tool for the DM to you know either you know dissuade characters from making bad choices humor and Ed humor and add levity and had fun and laughs but yeah that’s where Lulu evolved from so it’s it’s an old D&D monster from way back and but and they are very quite powerful as written in the in the second edition or is it the second Monster Manual – it’s one of the other I’m clear on that but they’re quite powerful but Lewis and she has has lost her memories she’s been nerfed a bit so she’s not as powerful but as you go through and as Lulu starts to regain her memories she becomes more and more powerful and more and more of a presence and stays adorable

THIS IS A AN AUTOMATIC CAPTION TEXT from YouTube, so it’s not “perfect”. My advice is to use it just to help people like me that are not english speaking, to understand the Video/Podcast so you made a new ccantrip yes this is something even when I think about the archivist that appears in UA I realized there is no psionic energy you know damage causing contra and now we have one so there is but it’s vicious mockery oh that’s right and very yeah very tied to specific class yes and and so we for a while have been wanting to add to the game a versatile psionic themed cantrip precisely because the only other one we really have in the game is vicious mockery and that is so specific in its flavor yeah you don’t necessarily imagine the you know the person touched by some great old ones yeah to be mocking everybody perfect for bards and so we wanted to create this cantrip which you could easily see someone like the archivist and many of our other classes using and for now in the unearthed Arcana the cantrip is on the sorcerer warlock and wizard spell lists so those three classes at least in play tests have access to it and I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of it we also are exploring something different with this can drip in that it it has a a little sort of self interaction yeah where we made it so that given the theme we’re imagining you’re almost like driving a psychic spike into your targets head very visceral yes no than that and that was how I described it as when when we were working on it and I I said I would like us to go in this direction with it that was the visceral image that I gave that this should be a canned trip where you feel good using it round after round because there are some spellcasters who like to do that right it also is a nice setup for some other spells where you know you could use it one round and then benefit from deduction you just gave to your target saving throw on the next round if you’re a sorcerer you might be able to benefit from it on the same round right because of quicken spell that’s something we’re gonna have to look at in playtesting and also in final game development if people like this cantrip enough for it to move along in our process it might be a little too good it might be just right we’ll find out yeah it feels dangerous so as I’m reading it right now you hit some with this and then their next intelligent saving throw is reduced by 1/2 for their next saving throw of any kind is reduced by one day for right yeah mean stuff for a canter so yeah one d6 and then yeah you’re hurting you’re not a disadvantage not a disadvantage yeah but it’s like evil guidance 1.d4 now if they don’t have a saving throw to make after that it doesn’t matter but again we made the duration of the can trips effect so that the spell caster could then basically harvest that benefit on the next round or in the same round if they’re a sorcerer it is the creepiest can’t trip sense eldritch blast in my opinion because yeah like really smart good this has such built-in utility yeah right and but you are you know you’re not dealing a tremendous amount of damage but you are thinking tactically yeah and that’s why I enjoy about that spell oh yeah yeah just be glad in its initial draft it did 1 d-10 which of course is way too much depth knocking it down right we’ll see it might need to go down to a d4 oh but it will still be juicy if it’s a dpp-4 still be all do is drive that psychic spike into your targets skull you

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