Alex Kammer
Appearances
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
No, I appreciate that. This is a great time of year for a wellness check on Mr. Camera, so I appreciate that. Yes, I am the director of GamelCon, an annual tabletop convention that we run here in Madison, Wisconsin, that has now become the largest majority RPG convention in the world, which is insane. I can't believe it. But that's where we are.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
In addition, we have a publishing company that's been around for a little bit, but we're moving it forward more aggressively and making real strides and making bigger products and more interesting things. So we just launched our new website last week. So yeah, I do a lot of freelance design work.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
In fact, I just got my author copies of The End of Everything, my book that Alan Patrick and I wrote and I'm just so freaking proud of and delighted that it's ending up in people's hands right now. I'm super excited about that. So yeah, I have toes in various parts of the hobby. Fantastic. It's great to have you again.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I appreciate it. I hope it is. I think it's going to be really fun. It's been fun so far, and I can't wait to actually have 2025 when we get players seated at tables playing our content. I'm really looking forward to that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
They will be in 2025. What you'll see is if you're walking through the lobby of GamelCon this year, you'll see a Gamel publishing booth. And that's what I'll be propped up for most of the time. And I'll be passing out. You referenced, you saw on our site, a primer. We have printed copies that we'll be passing out, full color, little digest sized.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
shopping tote bags for the dealer hall that hopefully people will find useful. And so I can talk about the Organized Play program, which I'm super excited about because we've had a long relationship with Adventures League. Sean, actually, that's how I met you, gosh, 10 years ago or something when we first got into writing such a core figure in getting that program off the ground.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
and you know we could talk about adventures league to the extent you know we're interested as we swear it is now i suppose where it was and uh sort of why i'm doing this but uh i think we're in a really uh good position after running so much organized play and of not only just uh adventures league and dungeon dragons but other other rule sets that um
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I think we've got a pretty good sense of what really works, what players are interested in, and how we can make ours really fun and can do some things that a program like Adventurous League can't do for size reasons and corporate reasons or whatever those reasons are that we can do that others can't. So I'm really excited about that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Well, so I guess the first big why is it aligns completely with our core ethos for GameholeCon, and that is to celebrate this awesome hobby and bring as many people into it as possible to make it accessible and fun. And organized play has been awesome for that, right? I mean, just think of all the iterations that you mentioned.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So many of us got into public play, playing with strangers through organized play. And so the very concept that you could sit down at a table with a sheet and not know anyone else around the table and play D&D is amazing. And so that's sort of as a threshold matter, that's why, because I love it. I've written a ton for organized play over the years.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It's been super important to my development as a freelance author, to my development as being a DM, quite frankly. I've run so much, so many games for Pathfinder and for PFS and then through Adventures League and down the line. So it's important to me personally. But why now specifically?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Because Adventures League is, I think it's an understatement to say they're at a crossroads as what they really are and what they're going to do. You see for years, the last three or four years, really the main creators of content for the Adventures League have been Gamehole Con, and Baldwin Games.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We're the two premier partners that have sections of the Forgotten Realms in which we can write adventures. And so we've created content that we've run at various conventions, Gangwell Con, and then Dave, of course, is doing things at lots of places like Gen Con and Origins and so on. And that's been great.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
But it's kind of an interesting concept when you step back from it and say, wait a minute, we're writing content for a company to promote their product and we don't even get to sell it the way we want to sell it. We don't get to do exactly what we want to do with it. We have to get approval for basically writing our own content that we're running at our own show.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
that we then have to share if we sell anything half 50 cents on the dollar with the parent company who has nothing to do with the creation of that product in the first place. So there's that. And because there's really not much support from the company right now, I think they have other bigger things that they're obviously working on. And you guys have commented on this over the...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
past year about what's happened with the size of the D&D team. They just don't have the bandwidth to really do a lot with organized play. And I have now seen our organized play hall, which has been the largest eventually call in the world, decline over the last several years in size, just because we're losing DMs, we're losing player interest. Despite our best efforts, I think our content's great.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I think we have really... We operate the Adventure League Hall at a loss, quite frankly. I think it's just such an important thing. I want that to be a resource for attendees to come and sit down and play, and you don't have to have a big group to play with. That's why, I guess in broad strokes, and because so many friends in the hobby now that are interested in helping with this,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so we're going forward full steam and can really do a very, I don't, I just, you know, the sort of adjectives that are common in the marketplace, like bespoke or whatever, you know, that's what we're going to do.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We can do really fun things that we couldn't do for Adventures League in terms of the kind of stuff that players get and the kind of opportunities they'll have because we don't have a Wizard of the Coast or anyone else to answer to. We can just do it on our own.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Sure. While Gamehole Con has been rolling forward, while I've been writing freelance stuff for other publishers, several of the other Gamehole guys and myself have been writing content for Gamehole Publishing. We were creating our own setting called the Eastern Marches, and we were locating our adventures in this setting as it's collaboratively grown.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And, you know, Ed Greenwood has written a few things for us and myself and Josh Hoyt, and we have on our gameworldpublishing.com site, you can see those adventures. That's really the, those are the pillars that undergird the setting. And so as we're building out regions of the setting, that's when it became a little more sort of epiphany level for me.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Like, why don't we run organized play in this setting that we know so well and that we can also do it in a collaborative way? Meaning that because it's a relatively new setting, of course, and while we have a lot of content, it doesn't, you know, compared to the, you know, forgotten realms, you know, the mountains of content that exists for that or really any other major public setting.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
When freelance authors write for us and want to write an adventure, they can create a town. They can create any NPC they want. They can create monsters. They can do all that stuff because, again, we don't have any of the limitations that, first of all, a corporate... setting has. And this will be fun.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I think it's going to be great to be able to engage in this collaborative process of building the eastern marshes more fully while telling great stories in season-type settings as we go each year. We have season one sketched out. I'm right in the middle of writing episode one, the first adventure. And
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So that's why we're doing it in the Eastern Marches, and that's why it's called the Wardens of the Eastern Marches. Specifically, we have alliances that are in our program. There are six alliances. And that was one thing that I felt that the Adventurers League kind of
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Didn't kind of missed because the they had they have a similar structure, but it never became forward in the way the Adventures were written or play did you know the factions of course actions? Yeah, and those were cool and I liked them, but they didn't have any impact on anything They did more flavor in our setting at the beginning.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, well, and I can kind of understand it's, first of all, a lot of work. If you're going to create an adventure, I'll just tell you as a designer, writing an adventure, a three-hour adventure and having a main goal, a main objective, and then six side things.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So each alliance has something, their characters have something meaningful to do, not just go pick up a thing, you know, just really to advance a story, it's tricky. And when you are, writing content, especially relying on third party people to do it and disparate authors from all over the place, it's very difficult to keep a central concept like factions to really mean something.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So I understand what happened, but it was disappointing to me because I agree with you, Tess. It was awesome. Those banners. Early GamelCon, we replicated those banners for Adventure League. I mean, it was cool. I love that. I thought the concept was so neat that you're part of a cabal beyond just being a D&D player that meant something, that informed your character's actions.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And that's very much what we want to try to accomplish here. Cool.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Sure. Yeah, the Eastern Marches is a smaller part of a larger continent. And that's what you see when you pick up our guide or if you go on to our site and look at it, the map you referenced, that's what it is. It's focused on that portion of the larger continent, and we call it the Eastern Marches. But yeah, it is, as you described, there is a... frozen, colder.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
There's a northern hemisphere kind of analog. The history is that there was a mediocracy located in the north that dominated this region for thousands of years. And that's why that area is rife with ruins and abandoned watchtowers and things like that, that have all kinds of interesting things and all kinds of storytelling opportunities bordered on the
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
on the West by the, uh, uh, Columbus mountains, as you described, that is the, the second age in our setting is a, is an work kingdom that actually, um, established the legal system, uh, in our setting, uh, and also established all kinds of other institutions of learning and universities and so on. Um, and, uh, that was the second age and, uh, going forward in time.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Now we're in the modern age where, um, There is no central authority that governs the Eastern Marches. It's a series of basically almost feudal in that they're separate city-states and just regional powers. That is why the alliances are a thing. The alliances are the only overarching authority that have control or that can exert influence across the entirety of the Eastern Marches.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
There's one that say, for example, merchants and one that is more of a nature conservation, the Golden Conservancy. And their aims are then can be expressed throughout the setting because again, there is no central governmental authority. Larger cities in the South, It tends to be a little more rural in the south as well as sort of the breadbasket of the setting.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And then of course, more mountainous to the west and then this massive ocean, the Sapphire Sea to the east. So it's not heavily populated. There are a couple of bigger cities, but this is not like the Sword Coast for the Forgotten Realms in terms of just population density and stuff that's there.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Oh yeah, yeah. No, we're ready to, we could go, we could start now. I want, you know, the player's guide, this handout should, you know, hopefully answers most of those questions, at least in broad strokes. So We're going to start at GamelCon 2025 is the first time that you'll actually play. And then it's open source.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So anyone who wants to run this anywhere at a convention, a store, anywhere else are absolutely free to do so. We will have the adventures up for sale at a discreet price through our site and likely through the usual website. usual suspects where you can buy things. We're still talking to Beyond. We're talking to Wizards about this.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
They're interested, but they have so many things that they're doing with third-party content right now. I don't know if we're going to be carried on Beyond or not. TBD. But so once you start then, I guess you can bring a character from any... This is an interesting... Mike Shay asked me the same question. Yeah, so what happens if you bring a character from some really obscure publication?
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Because what we say is that you can bring any 5e character just from a published source. So obviously Ghostfire, or Kobold, or of course Wizards, or whatever you like. But just something that has been at least published and it's had eyes on hopefully a professional game designer help build that character class. And this is the tricky part of it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And what do we do when someone comes in with a T-Rex ninja laser beam bearing character? And that's undoubtedly going to happen. And so, it's going to be the ultimate DM fiat. They're going to say, look, that character, it's going to interrupt the fun of everyone else here. So, we can't allow that. with every presumption and leaning toward let everyone play what they want to play, please.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
As long as it's not interfering with others' fun at the table, that you don't have some sort of game-breaking character, you absolutely can play it in this system. I guess we have a standard of reasonableness that we hope that everyone can appreciate and accept and that there's a reason for it. That as long as you're bringing a reasonable character to the to the game, you can play it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Advancement is after you play one three-hour scenario, you can choose to advance. You don't have to level up. So you can level relatively quickly if you want, but you can stay at any level you like for as long as you like. And there are, based on the alliances, very specific rewards that happen at each level.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Um, for example, uh, at level two, you get an Alliance pin and if you play it at GamelCon, you'll actually get that pin. Um, it's going to be, we're having campaign coins are making them. I'll hopefully have them at the show to show off. Um, the cool thing, uh, uh, at other, uh, advancement piece is at level 10, you get an alliance signet ring.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And that's going to be, again, a physical ring that you can get. You come and play. That'll have your alliance logo on it. And that has spells that are in your ring and that you can cast as you like. There are three charges and there's a lesser effect that you can use for a single charge three times. Or there's one larger effect that you can burn all three charges at once to do something greater.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
um and i think you know again that's the kind of stuff that we can do because we feel like doing it and right um we can we can write our adventures in contemplation of that uh and um so i think i think people are gonna have a lot of fun with and also like real magic sites or certs man i love those magic certs from am and i was really bummed when they went away um and i understand why they went away it's just a lot of stuff but we don't have that problem so we have a
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I'll have some sample ones at the show, elaborate scripts that we're going to do that people can stop by and take a peek at. So it's going to be all that. We're going to have log sheets and all the kind of cool support that helps with players and DMs. Because even though we'll have
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
dozens of tables running at the same time, we're not trying to design something that's going to be run necessarily in a different country. Hopefully they do it, but they'll have to support however much of that they want to do is going to be on them. Gotcha.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. And organized play is particularly susceptible to that. I think that part of the hobby attracts min-maxers or whatever term we would like to apply to that. And I think it's cool too.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
fiddling around with different builds and trying to figure out what does the most stuff and where did that designer not think of the interaction between some ancestry feature with the class and oh my gosh, now I have a barbarian that's unstoppable, whatever. I get it, I understand the attraction, but for the sake of everyone's fun, we're trying to... And we'll see, I guess.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We'll see if... I hope we don't have to be more legislative in that. I hope that it'll work this way. So many great companies that are doing such good work. And my friends at Ghostfire and Kobold have also just given us license to use their monsters.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So even if we are in the yellow world, and for all God, we have so much stuff that we get to use that are IP from other companies that we'll be using in our
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
in our system so um you know it's not like we have to create we and we have a lot of we have a beverage of our own creatures but to be able to use all this stuff from these other great companies it's going to be awesome and it's certainly going to make the authorship a lot easier
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I mean, right? Isn't that the thing when you're a DM and you have players like, what's happening? I mean, isn't that really what we're trying to accomplish? Like, wait, what? You know, that's a big part.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
No, it was. And it's funny, we weren't even thinking about the Western Marches when we did that. But it is basically a kind of a blank slate part of that is called the Eastern Marches because of recent colonization. Larger societies from across the Sapphire Sea have come and that's what they've called it, the Eastern Marches, because it is.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
largely undiscovered other than some large coastal cities. So that's exactly why we call it that. But then I thought, oh, man, I can't believe there's already this whole thing out there called the Western Marches that is going to hopefully not create too much confusion.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That's the, my hope is that, uh, in the traditionally when anyone who has written for organized play, run games for organized play or play games and organized play, and they've been told, no, that we're going to try to turn as many of those in the asses as possible as just a philosophy. So, um, yes, absolutely.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
With, with GMs DMs that are going to, uh, to, especially that are, uh, want to, um, you know, run chunks of a season of ours and they have suggestions or ideas or thoughts on, on how to, where to, where to go left instead of right. Absolutely. We're very, we're very interested in that. And we hope that people are as invested and excited about it as we are with these stories. Because again,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
You know, D&D is better when the more people that are involved in it, the more people that are writing it, the more people that are contributing to a collective narrative. And especially when you're talking about world building, that's certainly what we hope happens, that people are interested in the setting and they want to contribute and want to create, you know, in our...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And my note to designers who are going to be working on this, you just go for it, man. Just write it. And as long as you're not altering things that are already on the map, we're going to almost certainly be good with it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, that's just that the we love the stuff. Right. And so these are going to be three and a half by five cards, cardstock, well printed things that we selected that size based on common binder sleeves.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
so these can be housed in a binder uh six per page easily um you know i still have my al binder and i was just looking through it the other day you know some of those oh man i just forgot about some of the great certs that i have from you know 2016 or whatever that was and you know before um it's so neat to have that um and so we have some this usual kind of uh prohibitions about how many magic items you could have active at one of the ones just you know typical sort of 5e stuff um but that's it so you have the the um
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
you actually have a physical tangible thing that is represents your, your magic item, everything from prosaic things from potions to plus one weapons to all kinds of other interesting things. And you know, that, that whole concept of weird, uh, either, um, recognition for something that you did or a one-off thing that's specific to a story is pretty cool.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And I, you know, being able to have one of those, um, certainly I love having them as a player. Um, I, I think our, our players are going to enjoy that too. Um,
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
and again these are going to be all open source so if people want to use these uh we're going to share you know they can absolutely have them um and uh because you know that'll so you can do these and if uh we've been several green stores have already reached out to us interested uh and wanting to do this amazing you know I can't even believe we're not we're just not even off the ground yet and they're interested and I think it speaks to that this is a really um a needed thing in our hobby you know that the accessibility
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So what we're going to do for this season one in 2025, we'll have 10 adventures and then an epic. So whereas the classic epic where the multi-table, the whole hall are together accomplishing a thing at the end, and Alan Patrick's actually writing that for us this 2025. Alan's been such a good bud for, you know, he's end of everything author for that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So we've been working together and all kinds of stuff now. And so he's been very helpful with that. So he's gonna be writing the epic. So 10 adventures that takes you through, you know, I can't remember the exact array. I think we have four, one through. So we, the adventures league was built on tiers. We do two, they're a little more refined, a little more smaller bites.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So ours are one through three. And so three levels instead of five. I think that makes it easier. I always struggled with that as a DM when I had, you know, two fifth level characters and three first and like, ah, how can I really make this a cool experience? So I think making tiers a little smaller will help with that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And, uh, so then with, um, uh, with the, our concept of you can level after one adventure, you can very, you could certainly at one show, uh, get your significant ring, you know, if you want it to, if you're so inclined to get to 10th level, um, and then the Epic will be for all levels. So that's going to be all done. That'll be at GamelCon 2025 and out it goes.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Uh, and so at least initially my, our focus is going to be.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
content for each year you know one at a time now we'll see to what extent other conventions and shows are interested and you know want to create content and absolutely interested in having that conversation and you know want to inculcate encourage it any way we can but that's where we are because we i just don't know yeah if someone's at a gaming store listening to this right they can also reach out to you right and run it there which is really cool because i think gaming stores are also really looking for a source of energy for their play these days
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So that's the plan. We're going to be formally hiring folks here. After the show, we're going to start getting the 10. I'm writing the first one and I think Josh is writing one. I think Royce is writing one. But beyond that, we have a bunch of slots that we're going to hire authors for. And like the way, I'm very proud of what we continue to do.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So this is also something I should say, we're not killing our Adventure League program at all. We will continue to... We will continue to produce great content, I hope, through our Border Kingdoms and we have a really great writing room. Joe Alfano has done a wonderful job with that.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I'm very proud of the fact that we pay our authors, we pay our editors, and that we take care of the folks who work for us. We're certainly going to do that with Wardens as well. But yeah, we're still going to continue to create AL content as well. Right.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Oh man, Sean, I'm so glad you asked me because this is the biggest deal in the world and the 50th anniversary of D&D is making me just shake all year long. I can't believe it. I'm just so amazed that we are here. I can't believe that D&D is 50 years old. It must mean that I'm older than 50, which is true. And so I can't believe it and I love it.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So lots of people are doing all kinds of cool things for the anniversary. I mean, there've been all kinds of stuff. And so...
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
when i was thinking about what could our show do what and especially in character keeping with our character of what our game will cons about when i think of dnd i think the way to best celebrate is to play the game um it's cool to watch a live stream and watch celebrities play that's absolutely great and to uh you know it was cool to be helped with the um the museum uh at gen con uh to john peterson and bill meinhardt and i put on the 50th anniversary uh
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
artifact museum at Gen Con. And that was really cool sharing the sort of stuff that I have sitting behind me here, the historical relics of our hobby. But I think truly the best way is to have the game be played by as many people as possible
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
And so for me, the highlight of the show will be our D&D celebration games, one-hour D&D games, fifth edition games, and advanced Dungeons & Dragons games that are going to be super immersive, going to be in its own special area that my partners in Shoe Dungeon are helping me with a lot. dungeon setting that is going to be in the lobby. In that special room will be four tables.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Dwarven Forge set up on each table. Modern Dwarven Forge for the 5e games. Resin Dwarven Forge for the AD&D games. Miniatures for both. There'll be lead painted miniatures for the AD&D games. Modern Wizkid miniatures for the 5e games. There'll be tactile puzzles for each game that Jeff Martin designed by a friend from Two Dungeons. Each one will have its own puzzle to solve.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
In a one-hour game, it's going to be third-level characters for both. You're kind enough to run some of it. I think the adventures themselves are compelling enough in a one hour setting, which is challenging for experienced players, but it's also designed to accommodate, to be a true learn to play.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So you have never played this game before, either AD&D or 5e and sit down and play it and you'll be fine because we really worked hard on our progenitor characters to make them easy to understand and have all the relevant information there on the sheet so you don't have to look stuff up. But I still will have spell cards there for the 5e game.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We'll have that kind of stuff that we need to make it easier for you guys that are kind enough to run these games. And so that's my hope is that... And they're almost completely sold out. I think there are 400 seats available in each and they're almost all gone. I think we're down to one has 10 and one has eight or something like that. So it's going to be awesome.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I just can't wait to see people rolling through these one-hour adventures and being able to take out go home with a cool cardstock pre-generated character and hopefully some real good cool memories of being able to play this immersive game in Dwarven Forged with great DMs. Man, do we have good DMs who are willing to volunteer to play this too, to run it for us. It's awesome.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
So that's for me the highlight. There'd be lots of other cool stuff, but that's what I'm really excited about.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah, I feel like they should be too. And I'm going to try. Yes, I'm definitely going to try to. We have two streaming areas as well. And so we have a lot of tech on hand. And I hope that I'm just, yeah, that's on this week. So we'll explore that. Because you're absolutely right.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Yeah. All credit to Mike Merles for honchoing that. He did a great job wrangling everyone and put that all together. So thank you, Mike, for that. Yeah.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
It's really good. Very kind of you to say, but yes, that we try to stay in front of it. It's not to be reactive with our growth to anticipate it because it's going to happen. And we're already up this year, about a thousand attendees over last year. And fortunately we took steps in our, um, our volunteer structure and how, you know, how we do things.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Um, for you, you'll see when you, if you will call me, look a little different and things like that. We're constantly tweaking things because what I just, cannot stand is having the experience affected by crowd size.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
We're going to cap, we're going to do something before... We'll never get to the point where it's a queue kind of show or an overcrowded vendor hall where you can't even get through or someone with a backpack clears you out and stuff. You just can't have it. I grew up going to shows and everything we do is informed by my and the guy's experiences at shows, what we like and what we didn't like.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
I very much appreciate that and the real gaming experience. Our show is about gaming. It's the common game and fan cons are great and there are more industries, things where you get together and have more mixers and great. But ours really is about sitting on the table and playing these games that we love and we're always going to have that as the focus.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
As far as other publishers, you're absolutely right. It's cool to have Catalyst Labs come in as heavily as they are. A big part of the Asthma Day leadership are coming this year to check us out. So it's these things that keep going like that because I think we have a good reputation in the industry for what we do and how we do it. So it's pretty neat to see. It was never the goal.
Mastering Dungeons
Wardens of the Eastern Marches! (MD 210)
Believe me, man, we were just happy there wasn't just us standing in a hotel back in 2013.